The bump mapping on a G400 isn't too bad, but from the uses I've seen of it are pretty cheesy. It's almost as if it's thrown in to satisfy a check-box on the box (Yes! We have bump mapping).
Of course, Matrox could start doing the Right Thing and also expose bump mapping as an OpenGL extension (nVidia does this with all of their nifty-new features), but I'm not holding their breath considering they can't even get basic OpenGL functionality working.
nVidia's been pretty good with OpenGL (at least on Win32 platforms -- nVidia on Linux is not something I've tried before). I've got a nVidia TNT2 card at home and it's got the best OpenGL drivers I've seen on a consumer card. They're stable and I've not seen any visual "weirdness" that I've seen on other cards when using OpenGL (the G400 comes to mind as a particularily bad example). You've got to remember that nVidia scooped up a lot of SGI people to work on their OpenGL drivers, and it shows. Plus, a lot of the technology demos nVidia puts out use OpenGL.
In other words, nVidia is the good company when it comes to OpenGL. I'm not sure, though, who'd be the bad company (3dfx? matrox? ATI?).
Sony did create a version of the PlayStation that the average programmer could develop for called the Net Yaroze (spelling may be off a bit). A couple of problems, though:
They were rather expensive. The only price I heard for one was around $800US. I'm not sure what PlayStations were going for then, but it was probably a quarter of that.
They were incompatible with the normal PlayStations. Sure, I could develop a game on the Net Yaroze, but I couldn't send copies to my friends so they could give it a whirl. I don't know about you, but while I get a kick out of programming, I also get a kick out of having other people use my software (especially when it comes to games). I think the reasoning for this, though, was so that people couldn't develop for the PlayStation without paying the licensing fees.
I simply need more time and they give me only power.
You're not using that power effectively, then. Everybody knows that a processor that's twice as fast allows you to get your work done in half the time. >:)
Not really. The use of pointers in a language doesn't necessarily mean you can't also use garbage collection. Heck, there are garbage collectors out there for C. You can find one of them here. I've used it before and it seems to work fairly well.
Just a random thought, but what happens if you're using a technology like this in, say, an apartment building? Is it even feasible? Assuming that it is feasible, two things that immediately come to mind are:
Security: Could someone in another apartment sniff my packets?
Bandwidth: How many people would have to be in the complex before the internal network became saturated?
Security might not be a big deal to most people, but I'm sure bandwidth would be. Things to think about....
I think ageism is just as bad at the other end of the spectrum. I'm 15, and while I'm no Kung Foo master, I've been frequently doubted as per my coding ability. Just cause I lack experience doesn't mean I'm bad at coding. I was best in my class (a class I took at IU), but the social dynamic was often that of condescention. It's just as hard for us little guys, I'll have you know.
Ahhh, I remember when I was young (well, younger, as I'm only 23) and I thought I was a damned good programmer. Now I realize that while I wasn't bad, I wasn't that great either -- looking over code of mine from high school makes me shudder. Plus, if you've not got any experience, then how can you claim that you're any good? Remember, programming gets a lot different when you go from writing 500 line hacks that never see the light of day again to maintaining code that's at least 10,000 lines that people actually use.
IOW, patience, little one. Soon you shall blossom. Or something like that....
The thing I like about this is that it only takes one year. It seems with a computer science degree, half of anything you learned more than a year ago is obsolete.
People seem to forget (or not know in the first place) that a good computer science degree isn't about learning how to use the latest operating system, or how to use the latest languages, but rather the principles behind each. Sure, we learn various languages, but we also learn the common features between languages, and the different styles of programming. Makes it really easy to pick up a new language when you've already seen one similar to it in the past.
As for staying current, sure, the stuff that's used out in the world changes fairly frequently, but to use your example of the Windows line, how different in Win95 from Win98? WinNT? Win2K? Not *that* different. As for Unix, well, it pretty much looks the same (from the command prompt, anyway) as it did back in 1995 when I started my degree. The only really new language that's come out has been Java, and it's not exactly a hard language to learn. Regardless, if you're interested in computers as a whole, keeping on top of the latest operating systems or the latest language shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you're not interested in the field, well, one has to wonder why you got a CS degree in the first place.
It's a whole lot easier to set up and use "out of the box" than Linux.
Maybe for you.
I've worked with Windows (primarily NT/2000 these days) for ages, and Linux for a while, and I must say that installing Linux and getting it running is about as easy these days as getting Windows up and running. However, where I've found Windows outshines Linux is when you're tweaking stuff after the installation. The best example I can think of is resolution/refresh rate -- in Windows it's a couple of dialog boxes and I've got the resolution and refresh rate I want. As for Linux, I've got the resolution, but damnit it's not simple to change the refresh rate. Modeline calculations? Ugh, no thanks.
There are other things as well that cause less stress under Windows (application installs come to mind), but hopefully they'll decrease in number as time goes on. People will probably say that Linux isn't supposed to be as simple as Windows, but at the same time it's nice to have an OS that doesn't make your life too difficult.
--- You can go right on admitting that, too. It does one thing, and only one thing, well, and that is user interface. ---
[Insert fits of laughter from the Mac crowd here]
The one thing I've found after discussing user interfaces over the past few years is that while some interfaces may be just plain bad, there are far more that some people find good and others find bad. I know people that swear by MacOS and swear at Windows. I, myself, do the opposite:) Still others prefer X-Windows over anything else, and so on. After a while, it just comes down to personal taste, and there's usually not much sense in arguing over personal taste....
What would we do with - probably 600 meg - of patchily developed *windows* source code? Apart from grep for four letter words? Or go looking for remenants of the microsoft network code (grep "blackbird")? Who here has the clobber to even build such a thing at home, let alone develop on it.
Once, many moons ago, I interviewed at a graduate school for a research assistanship. The position was to help a professor with some research into OS security mechanisms (or something similar, I can't remember the specifics). During the interview, he mentioned that he has a choice over NT and Linux. He chose Linux for, among other reasons, it was a *lot* smaller to work with than NT. The sheer volume of the source code was huge, let alone the time and space to build the beast. Thus, if something like the 9x or NT source code was opened, I doubt as many people could contribute to it as, say, Linux.
Inefficient you say? Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup truck full of floppies.
I've heard this saying before, but using station wagons and 747s instead of pickup trucks, and CD ROMs and DATs instead of floppies. It does raise a good point about bandwidth, though. However, the latency is awful. Not the sort of connection you'd want to play Quake on, that's for sure.
No reason to worry about Linux viruses yet, but mostly because the platform is not popular enough to have a widespread effect (and this is the real lesson of zoology, viruses in nature are mostly used by evolution to limit large populations. This is why there are mostly Windows viruses; evolution wants to limit its growth).
That's not correct at all. Evolution doesn't use viruses to limit large populations -- that implies that, on at least some level, evolution has some degree of planning to it. Evolution, in reality, doesn't plan at all. You're born, and if you've got the "right stuff", you get to survive long enough to reproduce, otherwise you're dead. That's how evolution works.
However, viruses might be more more prevalent in a large population because there are more hosts to infect (thus it's easier to survive). Also, with the increased number of hosts, it's easier to spread from one host to another, thus making survival easier yet again.
Thus you can use evolution to explain the larger number of viruses in a larger population, but not in the way you originally did.
Methinks that you should check your facts before posting, especially ones as trivial as stating "this OS doesn't support SMP", when it very clearly does.
Part of the overcrowding has to do with the renovations on the second floor -- all of the lab space down there disappeared, so the Macs and PCs came upstairs to the third floor. I've heard rumours from people "in the know" that the space will be reclaimed next academic year (F00), and some space on the second floor will be for undergrad.math terminals. It sucks, but it shouldn't suck next year.
I'm not sure how the other schools form teams, but at Waterloo we do it by holding local contests (usually in October), and having the top six people form two teams (the A and B teams). These two teams compete at the regionals and the best goes on to the finals.
As for coaching, there's a professor here (Cormack) who handles most, if not all of, the coaching. I've no idea how much time is spent preparing for such things, but I've been under the impression that there is some preparation. Next time I run into some of the ACM people at school (I seem to know the bulk of the current and past contestants from Waterloo -- probably by hanging out in the Pure Math Club with 'em), I'll have to ask them how much training they do.
Preparation -- speaking as someone who used to be active in various scholastic contests in high school, preparation can play a large role in performance. By doing old contests you get a feel for how the questions are set up and asked, and so when the Big Day comes, you've already got a feel for the whole thing. Still, preparation can only help so much -- you still need a fair bit of talent to do well.
The only reason we'd be on the sixth floor is for Statistics (shudder) or Graphics (the lab is on the sixth floor. Most mathies hang out on the third floor, since that's where the bulk of the labs are, as well as the clubs.
As for PoETS (or however it's spelled), I've been in there a couple of times. It might've been the times I've been in there, but it's not all that thrilling. I'm sure the hoardes of drunken engineers didn't do much for the ambiance, either.
(Off-topic and probably not of interest to non-UW people)
I've seen a lot of people in MC, and been surprised later when I've found out who they were. Most of them I'd met online before, primarily in the uw.cs.cs* newsgroups (the course discussion newsgroups). I've a feeling the same things happened to others at Waterloo, as well as people at other schools.
(I realize this is slightly off-topic, but what the hey...)
The comments in the article body (for lack of a better word) mentioned health benefits as a reason for not leaving a company. The lack of universal health care coverage is one of the reasons I'm rather reluctant to get a job in the States. Sure, as long as you're working you're fine, but if you decide to quit, or are laid off, or are fired then you'd best not get sick. It's a rather scary proposition.
Granted, the diapers, the car payments, and the mortgage are still issues, but you can solve at least one of them by not reproducing, and the other once by cycling:)
You've got to remember that Windows 2000 is basically Windows NT 5.0, not the next version of Windows 98. Windows NT was written for 32-bit processors from scratch -- thus there won't be any 16-bit code in there in the first place.
If you're going to gripe about a MS product, make sure the gripe actually makes sense.
Up here in Canada (which is, at times, different from the States), the high-tech industry seems to be fairly sane about working hours. I've been searching for a job recently and all of the firms have said that the work week rarely goes above 40 hours/week. If it does go up, it's usually right before a release. I can cope with wacky hours for a few weeks every eighteen months or so:)
From what I've heard, though, this wasn't always the case. One of the companies, for example, had a reputation of being a sweatshop -- 60 hour weeks were the norm for most of the development cycle. Then they found out they couldn't hire anybody, so the hours went down to sane levels.
I guess it goes to show you that if people refuse to work under certain conditions, then the conditions will improve.
I have an older Wince device and I'd love to play around with it, but being a broke college student, I just can't afford the 'MS Tax'.
Well, if you're a student, there are educational discounts. VC++ Pro for $100, and that's with a copy of NT. I'm not sure what VC++ for CE goes for under educational pricing, but it can't be much.
Of course, free tools cost less than cheap tools, and it is a shame that there aren't alternative development environments for CE.
I've got a WinCE device (a Philips Nino), and I've had the opporitunity to work with a number of other ones as well. All I can say for the hardware is that it's more impressive than the hardware found on a Palm. The Nino has 8MB of RAM, a 32-bit processor (MIPS R3000), a backlit display, and the ability to recharge the batteries while docked. Last time I checked the Palm was running off of a 68K with somewhere between 1MB and 2MB of RAM, backlighting wasn't common, and you couldn't easily recharge the batteries. WinCE devices with colour screens rock, too:)
As for stability, I've had few problems with the Nino. It hardly locks up (maybe once every two months), and when it has locked up I've been able to reset and not lose any information. I'm not sure how this compares to a Palm as I've not used one for extended periods of time.
Developing for WinCE is nice, too. Again, I've no idea how this compares to Palm development as I've not used it. I've talked to people who've done both, and the consensus is that WinCE is a nicer platform to develop for than Palm.
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The bump mapping on a G400 isn't too bad, but from the uses I've seen of it are pretty cheesy. It's almost as if it's thrown in to satisfy a check-box on the box (Yes! We have bump mapping).
Of course, Matrox could start doing the Right Thing and also expose bump mapping as an OpenGL extension (nVidia does this with all of their nifty-new features), but I'm not holding their breath considering they can't even get basic OpenGL functionality working.
Feh.
nVidia's been pretty good with OpenGL (at least on Win32 platforms -- nVidia on Linux is not something I've tried before). I've got a nVidia TNT2 card at home and it's got the best OpenGL drivers I've seen on a consumer card. They're stable and I've not seen any visual "weirdness" that I've seen on other cards when using OpenGL (the G400 comes to mind as a particularily bad example). You've got to remember that nVidia scooped up a lot of SGI people to work on their OpenGL drivers, and it shows. Plus, a lot of the technology demos nVidia puts out use OpenGL.
In other words, nVidia is the good company when it comes to OpenGL. I'm not sure, though, who'd be the bad company (3dfx? matrox? ATI?).
Just my thoughts on the matter.
I simply need more time and they give me only power.
You're not using that power effectively, then. Everybody knows that a processor that's twice as fast allows you to get your work done in half the time. >:)
-j
Combining pointers/gc. Are they INSANE?
Not really. The use of pointers in a language doesn't necessarily mean you can't also use garbage collection. Heck, there are garbage collectors out there for C. You can find one of them here. I've used it before and it seems to work fairly well.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
-j
Hmmm, I wonder if the segfault.org logo on my shirt counts....
Just a random thought, but what happens if you're using a technology like this in, say, an apartment building? Is it even feasible? Assuming that it is feasible, two things that immediately come to mind are:
Security might not be a big deal to most people, but I'm sure bandwidth would be. Things to think about....
I think ageism is just as bad at the other end of the spectrum. I'm 15, and while I'm no Kung Foo master, I've been frequently doubted as per my coding ability. Just cause I lack experience doesn't mean I'm bad at coding. I was best in my class (a class I took at IU), but the social dynamic was often that of condescention. It's just as hard for us little guys, I'll have you know.
Ahhh, I remember when I was young (well, younger, as I'm only 23) and I thought I was a damned good programmer. Now I realize that while I wasn't bad, I wasn't that great either -- looking over code of mine from high school makes me shudder. Plus, if you've not got any experience, then how can you claim that you're any good? Remember, programming gets a lot different when you go from writing 500 line hacks that never see the light of day again to maintaining code that's at least 10,000 lines that people actually use.
IOW, patience, little one. Soon you shall blossom. Or something like that....
(note to Signal 11: Microsoft's stock symbol is not MSFS!)
MSFS is Microsoft Flight Simulator, not Microsoft.
People seem to forget (or not know in the first place) that a good computer science degree isn't about learning how to use the latest operating system, or how to use the latest languages, but rather the principles behind each. Sure, we learn various languages, but we also learn the common features between languages, and the different styles of programming. Makes it really easy to pick up a new language when you've already seen one similar to it in the past.
As for staying current, sure, the stuff that's used out in the world changes fairly frequently, but to use your example of the Windows line, how different in Win95 from Win98? WinNT? Win2K? Not *that* different. As for Unix, well, it pretty much looks the same (from the command prompt, anyway) as it did back in 1995 when I started my degree. The only really new language that's come out has been Java, and it's not exactly a hard language to learn. Regardless, if you're interested in computers as a whole, keeping on top of the latest operating systems or the latest language shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you're not interested in the field, well, one has to wonder why you got a CS degree in the first place.
As always, my two cents on the whole issue.
It's a whole lot easier to set up and use "out of the box" than Linux.
Maybe for you.
I've worked with Windows (primarily NT/2000 these days) for ages, and Linux for a while, and I must say that installing Linux and getting it running is about as easy these days as getting Windows up and running. However, where I've found Windows outshines Linux is when you're tweaking stuff after the installation. The best example I can think of is resolution/refresh rate -- in Windows it's a couple of dialog boxes and I've got the resolution and refresh rate I want. As for Linux, I've got the resolution, but damnit it's not simple to change the refresh rate. Modeline calculations? Ugh, no thanks.
There are other things as well that cause less stress under Windows (application installs come to mind), but hopefully they'll decrease in number as time goes on. People will probably say that Linux isn't supposed to be as simple as Windows, but at the same time it's nice to have an OS that doesn't make your life too difficult.
---
You can go right on admitting that, too. It does one thing, and only one thing, well, and that is user interface.
---
[Insert fits of laughter from the Mac crowd here]
The one thing I've found after discussing user interfaces over the past few years is that while some interfaces may be just plain bad, there are far more that some people find good and others find bad. I know people that swear by MacOS and swear at Windows. I, myself, do the opposite :) Still others prefer X-Windows over anything else, and so on. After a while, it just comes down to personal taste, and there's usually not much sense in arguing over personal taste....
What would we do with - probably 600 meg - of patchily developed *windows* source code? Apart from grep for four letter words? Or go looking for remenants of the microsoft network code (grep "blackbird")? Who here has the clobber to even build such a thing at home, let alone develop on it.
Once, many moons ago, I interviewed at a graduate school for a research assistanship. The position was to help a professor with some research into OS security mechanisms (or something similar, I can't remember the specifics). During the interview, he mentioned that he has a choice over NT and Linux. He chose Linux for, among other reasons, it was a *lot* smaller to work with than NT. The sheer volume of the source code was huge, let alone the time and space to build the beast. Thus, if something like the 9x or NT source code was opened, I doubt as many people could contribute to it as, say, Linux.
I've heard this saying before, but using station wagons and 747s instead of pickup trucks, and CD ROMs and DATs instead of floppies. It does raise a good point about bandwidth, though. However, the latency is awful. Not the sort of connection you'd want to play Quake on, that's for sure.
:)
That's not correct at all. Evolution doesn't use viruses to limit large populations -- that implies that, on at least some level, evolution has some degree of planning to it. Evolution, in reality, doesn't plan at all. You're born, and if you've got the "right stuff", you get to survive long enough to reproduce, otherwise you're dead. That's how evolution works.
However, viruses might be more more prevalent in a large population because there are more hosts to infect (thus it's easier to survive). Also, with the increased number of hosts, it's easier to spread from one host to another, thus making survival easier yet again.
Thus you can use evolution to explain the larger number of viruses in a larger population, but not in the way you originally did.
Wow, Linux doesn't support SMP? The mind boggles.
Methinks that you should check your facts before posting, especially ones as trivial as stating "this OS doesn't support SMP", when it very clearly does.
(Hoo boy. Way off-topic.)
Part of the overcrowding has to do with the renovations on the second floor -- all of the lab space down there disappeared, so the Macs and PCs came upstairs to the third floor. I've heard rumours from people "in the know" that the space will be reclaimed next academic year (F00), and some space on the second floor will be for undergrad.math terminals. It sucks, but it shouldn't suck next year.
I'm not sure how the other schools form teams, but at Waterloo we do it by holding local contests (usually in October), and having the top six people form two teams (the A and B teams). These two teams compete at the regionals and the best goes on to the finals.
As for coaching, there's a professor here (Cormack) who handles most, if not all of, the coaching. I've no idea how much time is spent preparing for such things, but I've been under the impression that there is some preparation. Next time I run into some of the ACM people at school (I seem to know the bulk of the current and past contestants from Waterloo -- probably by hanging out in the Pure Math Club with 'em), I'll have to ask them how much training they do.
Preparation -- speaking as someone who used to be active in various scholastic contests in high school, preparation can play a large role in performance. By doing old contests you get a feel for how the questions are set up and asked, and so when the Big Day comes, you've already got a feel for the whole thing. Still, preparation can only help so much -- you still need a fair bit of talent to do well.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the issue.
The only reason we'd be on the sixth floor is for Statistics (shudder) or Graphics (the lab is on the sixth floor. Most mathies hang out on the third floor, since that's where the bulk of the labs are, as well as the clubs.
As for PoETS (or however it's spelled), I've been in there a couple of times. It might've been the times I've been in there, but it's not all that thrilling. I'm sure the hoardes of drunken engineers didn't do much for the ambiance, either.
(Off-topic and probably not of interest to non-UW people)
I've seen a lot of people in MC, and been surprised later when I've found out who they were. Most of them I'd met online before, primarily in the uw.cs.cs* newsgroups (the course discussion newsgroups). I've a feeling the same things happened to others at Waterloo, as well as people at other schools.
(I realize this is slightly off-topic, but what the hey...)
:)
The comments in the article body (for lack of a better word) mentioned health benefits as a reason for not leaving a company. The lack of universal health care coverage is one of the reasons I'm rather reluctant to get a job in the States. Sure, as long as you're working you're fine, but if you decide to quit, or are laid off, or are fired then you'd best not get sick. It's a rather scary proposition.
Granted, the diapers, the car payments, and the mortgage are still issues, but you can solve at least one of them by not reproducing, and the other once by cycling
Just my 2 cents.
You've got to remember that Windows 2000 is basically Windows NT 5.0, not the next version of Windows 98. Windows NT was written for 32-bit processors from scratch -- thus there won't be any 16-bit code in there in the first place.
If you're going to gripe about a MS product, make sure the gripe actually makes sense.
Up here in Canada (which is, at times, different from the States), the high-tech industry seems to be fairly sane about working hours. I've been searching for a job recently and all of the firms have said that the work week rarely goes above 40 hours/week. If it does go up, it's usually right before a release. I can cope with wacky hours for a few weeks every eighteen months or so :)
From what I've heard, though, this wasn't always the case. One of the companies, for example, had a reputation of being a sweatshop -- 60 hour weeks were the norm for most of the development cycle. Then they found out they couldn't hire anybody, so the hours went down to sane levels.
I guess it goes to show you that if people refuse to work under certain conditions, then the conditions will improve.
Just my 2 cents.
I have an older Wince device and I'd love to play around with it, but being a broke college student, I just can't afford the 'MS Tax'.
Well, if you're a student, there are educational discounts. VC++ Pro for $100, and that's with a copy of NT. I'm not sure what VC++ for CE goes for under educational pricing, but it can't be much.
Of course, free tools cost less than cheap tools, and it is a shame that there aren't alternative development environments for CE.
I've got a WinCE device (a Philips Nino), and I've had the opporitunity to work with a number of other ones as well. All I can say for the hardware is that it's more impressive than the hardware found on a Palm. The Nino has 8MB of RAM, a 32-bit processor (MIPS R3000), a backlit display, and the ability to recharge the batteries while docked. Last time I checked the Palm was running off of a 68K with somewhere between 1MB and 2MB of RAM, backlighting wasn't common, and you couldn't easily recharge the batteries. WinCE devices with colour screens rock, too :)
As for stability, I've had few problems with the Nino. It hardly locks up (maybe once every two months), and when it has locked up I've been able to reset and not lose any information. I'm not sure how this compares to a Palm as I've not used one for extended periods of time.
Developing for WinCE is nice, too. Again, I've no idea how this compares to Palm development as I've not used it. I've talked to people who've done both, and the consensus is that WinCE is a nicer platform to develop for than Palm.
Anyway, just my 2 cents on the whole matter.