I don't know about all of the claims the article makes. I've been following a blog for some time, and he recently interviewed at Google. Check out these links about some of his experiences:
I know this is pretty off topic here, but indulge me for a little while.
Why is it that hardware support these days is so much more tricky than it was in the early days of home-brew computers and for a while afterwards? In the book iWoz (no, I'm not an apple fanboi, I just like technical history) Woz talks about writing the drivers for the floppy drive on the Apple II(it could have been the first apple, so correct me if I'm wrong). The floppy drive manufacturer provided the specs so that anyone could use the hardware. These days you're locked into using the manufacturer's drivers.
Almost all hardware manufactueres shouldn't really care if you use their drivers or not. I'll say that video cards, and maybe audio cards, get a pass on this one, because the better the drivers are, the better position they are in for their industry. I would think it would be most advantageous for the manufacturers to say, "Here are the specs, and here's our driver." That way if some other OS needs a driver, then the manufacturer doesn't have to write the driver for it, and the OS developers don't have to reverse engineer how to work with the hardware device. I'll admit that I'm no OS developer, so maybe that's the way it is for most things, but it seems that you hear a LOT about Linux developers having to reverse-engineer drivers.
Why is it that hardware support has to be such a hit or miss? Woz's floppy driver was actually faster than the manufacturers, because he realized you could just push the needle once and let momentum carry it across, instead of stepping over each track. I think that's a good example of a win-win situation.
This is a tad off topic, but MySQL deserves its spot up there.
We've been using MySQL for several years, and recently we decided to purchase the MySQL Enterprise license. Their monitoring tools are AWESOME! I get a text message if a server goes down, replication stops, etc. There are also historical reports and graphs of very detailed information that, I think, you can't get with MRTG and other SNMP monitoring tools. It also gives me suggestions for improving MySQL's performance on that particular server. Even better, it's dirt cheap compared to the other enterprise offerings, and you get support with it.
All in all, I love MySQL, and Google releasing code that makes it better can only be good IMO.
I think I can understand your sentiment. It's difficult for a person new to Linux to know which library set they should use.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't LSB trying to make those standards? They might have some criticism on how they do things, but the idea is pretty much there. Wouldn't it be great if there was a standard API for doing things, and then the different projects could plug into that API? That way you get much better interoperability. That particular sub-set of the community that develops for the API should then be able to submit suggestions for changes to the API as needed.
You could say getting a Camry instead of a Lexus GS. They're both made in pretty much the same shops by the same company. The GS just has a ton more features than the Camry.
And I couldn't care less who sells the most processors.
AMD *should* care how many processors they sell. Not only because they make money, but because they have an obligation to their shareholders to do so. They're a publicly held company.
I would suggest that others would agree that AMD has been pretty darn good about not lying to the public about their products (though I suppose it could be debatable), but that doesn't mean they couldn't get their name to be more recognizable.
The point I was trying to make before was that it doesn't matter if AMD has a superior product if people don't know about it. Intel is competing and starting to use a few of the same technologies that AMD has already produced. The reason this is creating so much buzz is from the fact that Intel knows that the general population doesn't know what AMD has to offer. They just know that AMD competes with Intel (maybe).
I get the sense that there's a huge difference in public opinion between AMD and Intel. Intel has boat loads more cash, so they can do a lot more marketing. When that happens, people think that AMD is worse off. I know AMD has been around with almost no marketing, but it might be time to start engaging, rather than relying on the techies (/.ers too) to spread the word. I don't know about you guys, but non-technical people sometimes don't like to hear the technical jargon, so they listen to the TV.
I think the second video was the best, but rather than just say "Yeah, people help us keep up with the times" why not have her change outfits to show that if you don't like Gnome, use KDE, Fluxbox, Xfce, etc. That would have made the video cooler.
I still like the quote about Vista staying the same for 6 or so year. That was priceless:)
I specifically chose a house with a 30 minute commute to help with that split.
I'm pretty much the same way as well. I used to have a 30 minute commute (or more, depending on traffic), but now I work from home. I enjoy being able to take a 10 minute break and play with my 2 year old son rather than walk around the office, but it's a lot harder to get work off my mind when I "clock out". That doesn't even take into account the on-call status either.
Anyone have suggestions for getting out of work mode and back into home mode?
As for heavy metal being related to gifted children.. Hmm no. Because music is a personal thing and people will tend to enjoy what they are exposed to at a young age and leaves a lasting impression.
I'll agree a little bit to this, but it's not always the case. For example, I grew up in the rural midwest United States. The only radio shows were country, and classic country, or news. We didn't have MTV or VH1 or any of that stuff either. Only CMT. I'm not sure how I got into it. I think I was visiting somewhere and saw some metal music on a music video channel. From then on I was hooked. That wasn't until I was 16 or so. I wasn't exposed to it at all... I just knew I liked it.
Okay, I know that I'm a lot more technical than the general masses out there, but it took me all of 10 - 15 minutes to get Knoppmyth set up and working. I had a spare computer lying around, so I bought a Hauppauge PVR 350. I did have to tweak the sound a bit to get it to work right away after booting, and I did have some bad memory that I replaced (lock ups were not fun).
I enjoy being able to log my server usage with MRTG though. I'd like to see if Tivo can set up SNMP traps.
I will say that at the moment, Tivo is going to be a lot easier for the "moms and grandmas" out there to set up. Heck, they'd probably still need someone to set that up. There are pre-installed MythTV solutions though. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 Is one such product. It's definitely more than Tivo, but at the moment there's no need for a monthly fee.
So, Tivo is currently more user friendly to set up. That could change if more people start offering comparable MythTV setups at comparable prices though.
If an English teacher's 50% cut to a Physics teacher's pay bothers the English teacher, he (she) need only get the necessary background to qualify to teach physics. It seems like a simple equation... it's kind of (not exactly) how it works in the job market.
Difficulty is the opinion of the person studying the material. I am sure there are many English majors that would contend that many Math or Science students do not understand or grasp many of the concepts of the English language. The same goes for Music teachers. There's far more to learn about music than reading notes. There's music theory, composition, etc. All of that takes a particular training. That's not to say that there is more demand for English/Music teachers though.
If we only push math and science, will we not end up with a society without culture? I am a developer, and I often think I should take some art classes, because I don't comprehend color theory, placement, etc., and that would help with GUI design.
That being said, I would vote for an experience/performance pay scale, rather than bases on the "perceived" difficulty of a course. If you want to say, "Music isn't as complex as physics", you might be right, but I am sure there are some people who think BASIC is harder than Delphi, or something else that would correlate to this example.
You don't even *have* to make biodiesel. The diesel engine was originally invented to run off of straight peanut oil. As an example of what can be done, there are kits out there to have your engine run on used cooking oil http://www.greasecar.com/ Using cooking oil is also completely carbon neutral when used as fuel this way. Here is some data that compares the levels of emissions http://www.greasecar.com/tech.cfm (though it could be slightly biased)
AJAX isn't all that new. It's just a different way of thinking about how the browser interacts with the server. You *could* make your server programming language handle all this AJAX code to call server-side functions from the client, but wouldn't it be better to see the big picture? JavaScript can be used as more of a client, and the server can be more of... well... a server. Also, people tend to be over-using AJAX, which then brings the web browsing experience to its knees.
I think it's better to just use a JavaScript library to handle a cross-browser implementation of XMLHttpRequest that accesses your server, and your server handles those requests? There's really no need for all this complexity that's being introduced.
JavaScript gets a bad wrap, but I think that's generally from people who don't understand the language. You can do very interesting things with it... you just have to know what you're doing... and what you want it to do.
It depends on the situation you're in and the company you work for.
I do however think that if you telecommute, that you have to work a little bit harder to make sure managment "sees" what you are doing. As long as they know you're being productive you should be fine.
I've been telecommuting for about six months now. I worked at the office for a year, year and a half, before my family and I decided to move. The company actually asked me if I would be interested in telecommuting. Now I actually have two other programmers that I directly manage. It's a lot of work to manage remotely, but VPN, phone, internal IM, email, etc. help. You don't have the cooler time talk, so you have to make up for it in other ways. It's easy to let your guard down though.
With all that said, I do enjoy telecommuting. It gives me more time with my wife and son. I can sleep in until I have to get up and clock in for work, and then take my shower on my lunch break if I want. My day is a lot more flexible, and because of that I think I'm more productive. Communication is very important though. You can't be a black hole that people only hear from time to time, that's when telecommuting is dangerous.
This has been partly covered by others already, but this attack really isn't that hard to prevent. In order to perform this attack, the attacker has to first be able to post JavaScript code onto the page. This would be something like putting JavaScript code into your posts on/. or some other website that allows people to author content on the Internet./. is already safe from this attack. They don't let you put JavaScript code in your posts. That's pretty standard web programming security (filter input, escape output).
I suppose he could still inject the code by putting javascript: [put code here] in the address bar. Don't believe me, try this...
javascript: alert('It works');
But even then, the code injection is still limited to the attacker's session only. Oh, no! he can capture his own information. The world is comming to an end!
On a serious note... I hadn't thought about extending XMLHttpRequest like that for a security vulnerability. I'd give him credit for thinking that up.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about all of the claims the article makes. I've been following a blog for some time, and he recently interviewed at Google.
Check out these links about some of his experiences:
http://www.dustindiaz.com/interview-experiences/
http://www.dustindiaz.com/google-job/
I know this is pretty off topic here, but indulge me for a little while.
Why is it that hardware support these days is so much more tricky than it was in the early days of home-brew computers and for a while afterwards? In the book iWoz (no, I'm not an apple fanboi, I just like technical history) Woz talks about writing the drivers for the floppy drive on the Apple II(it could have been the first apple, so correct me if I'm wrong). The floppy drive manufacturer provided the specs so that anyone could use the hardware. These days you're locked into using the manufacturer's drivers.
Almost all hardware manufactueres shouldn't really care if you use their drivers or not. I'll say that video cards, and maybe audio cards, get a pass on this one, because the better the drivers are, the better position they are in for their industry. I would think it would be most advantageous for the manufacturers to say, "Here are the specs, and here's our driver." That way if some other OS needs a driver, then the manufacturer doesn't have to write the driver for it, and the OS developers don't have to reverse engineer how to work with the hardware device. I'll admit that I'm no OS developer, so maybe that's the way it is for most things, but it seems that you hear a LOT about Linux developers having to reverse-engineer drivers.
Why is it that hardware support has to be such a hit or miss? Woz's floppy driver was actually faster than the manufacturers, because he realized you could just push the needle once and let momentum carry it across, instead of stepping over each track. I think that's a good example of a win-win situation.
Okay, mod me off topic.
This is a tad off topic, but MySQL deserves its spot up there.
We've been using MySQL for several years, and recently we decided to purchase the MySQL Enterprise license. Their monitoring tools are AWESOME! I get a text message if a server goes down, replication stops, etc. There are also historical reports and graphs of very detailed information that, I think, you can't get with MRTG and other SNMP monitoring tools. It also gives me suggestions for improving MySQL's performance on that particular server. Even better, it's dirt cheap compared to the other enterprise offerings, and you get support with it.
All in all, I love MySQL, and Google releasing code that makes it better can only be good IMO.
I think I can understand your sentiment. It's difficult for a person new to Linux to know which library set they should use.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't LSB trying to make those standards? They might have some criticism on how they do things, but the idea is pretty much there. Wouldn't it be great if there was a standard API for doing things, and then the different projects could plug into that API? That way you get much better interoperability. That particular sub-set of the community that develops for the API should then be able to submit suggestions for changes to the API as needed.
Just my 2 cents
You could say getting a Camry instead of a Lexus GS. They're both made in pretty much the same shops by the same company. The GS just has a ton more features than the Camry.
AMD *should* care how many processors they sell. Not only because they make money, but because they have an obligation to their shareholders to do so. They're a publicly held company.
I would suggest that others would agree that AMD has been pretty darn good about not lying to the public about their products (though I suppose it could be debatable), but that doesn't mean they couldn't get their name to be more recognizable.
The point I was trying to make before was that it doesn't matter if AMD has a superior product if people don't know about it. Intel is competing and starting to use a few of the same technologies that AMD has already produced. The reason this is creating so much buzz is from the fact that Intel knows that the general population doesn't know what AMD has to offer. They just know that AMD competes with Intel (maybe).
I get the sense that there's a huge difference in public opinion between AMD and Intel. Intel has boat loads more cash, so they can do a lot more marketing. When that happens, people think that AMD is worse off. I know AMD has been around with almost no marketing, but it might be time to start engaging, rather than relying on the techies (/.ers too) to spread the word. I don't know about you guys, but non-technical people sometimes don't like to hear the technical jargon, so they listen to the TV.
I think the second video was the best, but rather than just say "Yeah, people help us keep up with the times" why not have her change outfits to show that if you don't like Gnome, use KDE, Fluxbox, Xfce, etc. That would have made the video cooler.
:)
I still like the quote about Vista staying the same for 6 or so year. That was priceless
I specifically chose a house with a 30 minute commute to help with that split.
I'm pretty much the same way as well. I used to have a 30 minute commute (or more, depending on traffic), but now I work from home. I enjoy being able to take a 10 minute break and play with my 2 year old son rather than walk around the office, but it's a lot harder to get work off my mind when I "clock out". That doesn't even take into account the on-call status either.
Anyone have suggestions for getting out of work mode and back into home mode?
As for heavy metal being related to gifted children.. Hmm no. Because music is a personal thing and people will tend to enjoy what they are exposed to at a young age and leaves a lasting impression.
I'll agree a little bit to this, but it's not always the case. For example, I grew up in the rural midwest United States. The only radio shows were country, and classic country, or news. We didn't have MTV or VH1 or any of that stuff either. Only CMT. I'm not sure how I got into it. I think I was visiting somewhere and saw some metal music on a music video channel. From then on I was hooked. That wasn't until I was 16 or so. I wasn't exposed to it at all... I just knew I liked it.
After all, alternative != better.
:)
Don't you mean alternative !== better? Alternative can have positive sides to it, so it is truthy, but it is not identical to better
Okay, I know that I'm a lot more technical than the general masses out there, but it took me all of 10 - 15 minutes to get Knoppmyth set up and working. I had a spare computer lying around, so I bought a Hauppauge PVR 350. I did have to tweak the sound a bit to get it to work right away after booting, and I did have some bad memory that I replaced (lock ups were not fun).
I enjoy being able to log my server usage with MRTG though. I'd like to see if Tivo can set up SNMP traps.
I will say that at the moment, Tivo is going to be a lot easier for the "moms and grandmas" out there to set up. Heck, they'd probably still need someone to set that up. There are pre-installed MythTV solutions though. http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 Is one such product. It's definitely more than Tivo, but at the moment there's no need for a monthly fee.
So, Tivo is currently more user friendly to set up. That could change if more people start offering comparable MythTV setups at comparable prices though.
If an English teacher's 50% cut to a Physics teacher's pay bothers the English teacher, he (she) need only get the necessary background to qualify to teach physics. It seems like a simple equation... it's kind of (not exactly) how it works in the job market.
Difficulty is the opinion of the person studying the material. I am sure there are many English majors that would contend that many Math or Science students do not understand or grasp many of the concepts of the English language. The same goes for Music teachers. There's far more to learn about music than reading notes. There's music theory, composition, etc. All of that takes a particular training. That's not to say that there is more demand for English/Music teachers though.
If we only push math and science, will we not end up with a society without culture? I am a developer, and I often think I should take some art classes, because I don't comprehend color theory, placement, etc., and that would help with GUI design.
That being said, I would vote for an experience/performance pay scale, rather than bases on the "perceived" difficulty of a course. If you want to say, "Music isn't as complex as physics", you might be right, but I am sure there are some people who think BASIC is harder than Delphi, or something else that would correlate to this example.
You sure can code ASP on Ubuntu/Linux. http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET_and_mod_mono It works with the apache web server.
You don't even *have* to make biodiesel. The diesel engine was originally invented to run off of straight peanut oil. As an example of what can be done, there are kits out there to have your engine run on used cooking oil http://www.greasecar.com/ Using cooking oil is also completely carbon neutral when used as fuel this way. Here is some data that compares the levels of emissions http://www.greasecar.com/tech.cfm (though it could be slightly biased)
AJAX isn't all that new. It's just a different way of thinking about how the browser interacts with the server. You *could* make your server programming language handle all this AJAX code to call server-side functions from the client, but wouldn't it be better to see the big picture? JavaScript can be used as more of a client, and the server can be more of... well... a server. Also, people tend to be over-using AJAX, which then brings the web browsing experience to its knees.
I think it's better to just use a JavaScript library to handle a cross-browser implementation of XMLHttpRequest that accesses your server, and your server handles those requests? There's really no need for all this complexity that's being introduced.
JavaScript gets a bad wrap, but I think that's generally from people who don't understand the language. You can do very interesting things with it... you just have to know what you're doing... and what you want it to do.
It depends on the situation you're in and the company you work for. I do however think that if you telecommute, that you have to work a little bit harder to make sure managment "sees" what you are doing. As long as they know you're being productive you should be fine.
I've been telecommuting for about six months now. I worked at the office for a year, year and a half, before my family and I decided to move. The company actually asked me if I would be interested in telecommuting. Now I actually have two other programmers that I directly manage. It's a lot of work to manage remotely, but VPN, phone, internal IM, email, etc. help. You don't have the cooler time talk, so you have to make up for it in other ways. It's easy to let your guard down though.
With all that said, I do enjoy telecommuting. It gives me more time with my wife and son. I can sleep in until I have to get up and clock in for work, and then take my shower on my lunch break if I want. My day is a lot more flexible, and because of that I think I'm more productive. Communication is very important though. You can't be a black hole that people only hear from time to time, that's when telecommuting is dangerous.
This has been partly covered by others already, but this attack really isn't that hard to prevent. In order to perform this attack, the attacker has to first be able to post JavaScript code onto the page. This would be something like putting JavaScript code into your posts on /. or some other website that allows people to author content on the Internet. /. is already safe from this attack. They don't let you put JavaScript code in your posts. That's pretty standard web programming security (filter input, escape output).
I suppose he could still inject the code by putting javascript: [put code here] in the address bar. Don't believe me, try this...
javascript: alert('It works');
But even then, the code injection is still limited to the attacker's session only. Oh, no! he can capture his own information. The world is comming to an end!
On a serious note... I hadn't thought about extending XMLHttpRequest like that for a security vulnerability. I'd give him credit for thinking that up.