Why not??? humans today have to face global warming, ozone problem, Bird-Flu (H5N1), SARS, Ebola, HIV, climate change, mortgage crisis and no wii at stores !!!
Today, major swiss watch manufacturers declared they will be out of business in another decade as the atomic clocks will become the mainstream user friendly wrist watches.... ohh wait... aren't we too late to issue this news.. hold on..
I am not a software programmer, just an engineer who is familiar with number of programming languages.
Regardless what language, I usually try to do first is to get the requirement and write a very controversial, uncommented, messy code which fulfills the requirement. Once its working perfectly, I investigate the ways to improve its performance in whatever ways possible and make a finalized version with comments.
Back in my uni days, one assignment was to write a MIPS emulator (for a large pool of commonly used instructions). Others were wrestling with neat codes while I highly insisted on the accuracy and reliability of the code. After 2 weeks of double shot espresso, I developed a perfect emulator, which later selected to share at the Uni server as a reference. Of course I did lot of finalizing (commenting, renaming variables etc.)
I was quite scared at first, as many would not understand my code (because many were using this to the follow up assignment, losely based on this code). But... astonishingly, people didn't find it a big issue at all.
So.. some of my experience in bullet form
- write simple code, forget about bringing complexity as its not gonna help you when things go large. - use as many as functions/classes. - name variables with common names rather with encrypted security code. - first concentrate on the reliability of the code, make it work.. then think about how to improve. - rule of thumb "less complexity, less things can go wrong" (this is why many GT cars are electronically not fancy)
I saw one site (TGdaily as I recall) report some weeks back about similar thing done by Intel people using their terascale processor (still in testing phase). Where they played an entire foot ball match, so the tera-scale can monitor, run some algorithms and provide statistics like How many goals, tries, corner kicks etc. etc.
I think the statement "stop citing from wikipedia" should be changed to "stop citing 'developing stories' from wikipedia".
I see many of the articles in wikipedia are related to current event (can be anything from political, controversies, scandals, religious matters etc) and it keeps on developing every hour. So those articles aren't the best things to refer at all costs. Other than that, things from the past and articles relates to science/technology are quite accurate, I must say.
Its not a matter of asking "whether wikipedia is trustable". Its a matter of asking "whether humans are trustable". Okay... only recently, Pluto was kicked out of the solar system. But still, any school kid can refer to a 2002 Britanica and say "Pluto" is a planet and its the 9th in our solar system. And this is not the first time 'we', human kind, mistakenly understood things. If you look at medical bioscience branch, they define different things differentley in different times (e.g. blood clotting... that mechanism had been re-interpretet few times over the known history).
As a scholar, what I find it really hard is, catching up a theory or something from a very concise description. Most books explaining it in few pages, but actually what they does is, playing with words, you don't get the exact facts or the core stuff). I find wikipedia has this incredible capability of concisely describing stuff.
Other thing is.. most of the time.. we hear many things through many people and experiences... you know it is correct.. but no reference to cite. So read the books.. it was a great experience to read Google Books last time to find a proper reference, since recently, collection of open-books are limited, so.. go to library and flip pages.. naah.. we are in 21st century, why do that. So.. internet.. wikipedia....ORRR just stuck with books.. read till you find what's in your head.
I think this is a great move and everyone should involve in it. Why I say this, because this is something much we needed at this point of the history.
I am sure hardware has gone to some extreme ends in doing the number crunching tasks.. in both accuracy and efficiency (less time in calculations). But still, this power is much un-tapped for some reason which I have no clue of.
While I was a college student, we were somewhat forced to use MATLAB as the default mathematics software. It was the case for most maths, control and communication related modules. MATLAB is quite easy in its commands and help catalog. Most importantly, it easy to view the results in many different forms and shapes (i.e. array, charts..). Also its a great array operation language.
But MATLAB suffers significantly in its computation speed. I am sure, pretty much all of the research community has noticed this. Yes, there are ways to over come this with minor coding tricks. But it won't shorten the time dramatically. The hard way to get a good processing speed is to buy the Distributing Computing package.. which is money (+ global warming).
I expect SAGE to concentrate on this speed issue. YES we can choose something like C++ or Fortran (I love those languages). But lets say, if you have to code something like a CDMA simulator (or any comms simulation model)... C++, Fortran maybe the toughest languges in coding and debugging (due to lack of results viewing capability).
When I was a uni student, I learnt Java, C++, MIPS Assembly and MATLAB. Our scope was pretty much on Scientific number crunching. Hardly anything to do with software industry, even if there anything, they are on Linux plaform based on some kernel developed by some guy. Pretty much all the other software (like layout designing, optical network designing) are wither freeware or something not mainstream.
Now here I am in industry. Only now I realize the disaster. IMHO if they based their assignments and stuff more realted to industry software, it would be more beneficial for me to find a job and even to do a marvellous job to impress my bosses. Since I know only the concepts, I have to learn from scratch pretty much everything what I find in my job. And it takes time to perfect, which is something my bosses don't have as it is competition out there.
So.. in my conclusion, it is better to tech them something useful in future and delivering the concepts through that, rather going with software which are not common in the outside world.
I am in the same position as 'small IT firms'. Here is my story...
I am a south asian. Obviously, I don't have much wealth to afford a degree in US or UK. So I went to south-east uni investing all my money to earn the B.E. Meantime, I found it interesting to do research, which was inevitable as I got many awards both inside and outside of the university for my work. On top of that, few publications in local conferences.
After my undergrad, I started applying 'somewhat recognized' universities to continue with my PG. Disaster... all they do is encourage to go through the painstaking application process (which also needs to pay considerable amount of money + other transcript charges + courier). Then they confirm in an e-mail saying "you not worth it".
What I understood, if I had a degree from a top university, I would have much better chance in getting into a good PG university (probably with funding). So I had no option but to join the same old university to continue my studies. I have to work my way up, like working for small unis first, then gain experience, more publications so on.. there might be a chance to go up to a good university, but I doubt about the chances.
Same thing with IBM and any other big cooperation, they don't give much consideration on working with small firms. Isn't this the reason why 75% of the start ups die at the begining ???
As of today, my current working place is undergoing a huge floor planning exercise. As a consequence, we (engineers) have to move to a new area where only desks and chairs were provided. No more cubicles. So here are the UPs and DOWNs...
UPs
1. Face-face with all in the room. 2. When boss (he has a seperate room) is speaking, everyone gets attention. 3. No need to travel minor distances to share ideas with fellow guys. 4. Aware about who's coming and who's leaving the engineer's area. 5. No more secret discussions with fellow guys.
DOWNs
1. No privacy at all. 2. Hard to escape without noticing to anyone. 3. Hard to concentrate as so many other, loud, useless grape-vine is broadcasting in the surrounding environment. 4. Too much peer pressure, so hard to do little, enjoyable things (like posting in slashdot, watching top gear). 5. Getting too much garbage on your desktop from passing by people. (mostly, your fellow guys around). 6. Great danger in missing things (Specially.. important documents).
No cubicle/office is very good for technicians and field officers, as 80% of their time, they are at some work site.
I remember, Microsoft did an advance research on this work-floor arrangement... can anyone share it with us???
From what I heard, neither Bill Gates nor Microsoft found internet to be a boomer at any point of the history. This is why it wasn't integrated to early Windows versions, even late as Win 3.1
Anyway.. only now they are taking most of its advantage over internet, including WGA, updates etc.
I don't know where I read or saw this. But I heard that someone saying the new space race is not for fun or just to show off power. It is much to do with finding hidden He3 isotopes in the moon crust. I don't know how to draw the structure of a such isotope, but it has been told, He3 can provide lot of power.
Who knows??? Think I am gonna see a 21st century gold (more sorta Helium) rush....
Slashdot Mirror
Why not??? humans today have to face global warming, ozone problem, Bird-Flu (H5N1), SARS, Ebola, HIV, climate change, mortgage crisis and no wii at stores !!!
Today, major swiss watch manufacturers declared they will be out of business in another decade as the atomic clocks will become the mainstream user friendly wrist watches.... ohh wait... aren't we too late to issue this news.. hold on..
NSFW??? What the Fark ???
I am not a software programmer, just an engineer who is familiar with number of programming languages.
Regardless what language, I usually try to do first is to get the requirement and write a very controversial, uncommented, messy code which fulfills the requirement. Once its working perfectly, I investigate the ways to improve its performance in whatever ways possible and make a finalized version with comments.
Back in my uni days, one assignment was to write a MIPS emulator (for a large pool of commonly used instructions). Others were wrestling with neat codes while I highly insisted on the accuracy and reliability of the code. After 2 weeks of double shot espresso, I developed a perfect emulator, which later selected to share at the Uni server as a reference. Of course I did lot of finalizing (commenting, renaming variables etc.)
I was quite scared at first, as many would not understand my code (because many were using this to the follow up assignment, losely based on this code). But... astonishingly, people didn't find it a big issue at all.
So.. some of my experience in bullet form
- write simple code, forget about bringing complexity as its not gonna help you when things go large.
- use as many as functions/classes.
- name variables with common names rather with encrypted security code.
- first concentrate on the reliability of the code, make it work.. then think about how to improve.
- rule of thumb "less complexity, less things can go wrong" (this is why many GT cars are electronically not fancy)
reminds me of "hole in my soul" by Aerosmith
remember ICE AGE 2??? where there was a 9 ton possom ???
Was it Intel Tera-scale ???
I saw one site (TGdaily as I recall) report some weeks back about similar thing done by Intel people using their terascale processor (still in testing phase). Where they played an entire foot ball match, so the tera-scale can monitor, run some algorithms and provide statistics like How many goals, tries, corner kicks etc. etc.
Hold Your Wee for Wii !!!
2001 space oddyssey
Chandra : Are you a Chat-bot??
HAL9000 : no, I am made in USA
Chandra : but but...
HAL9000 : but ???
Chandra : Your main server is in Russia....
Hope they not gonna 'Bar Code' the organs...
as I earned bad karma for just being too frank about linux last time :)
I think the statement "stop citing from wikipedia" should be changed to "stop citing 'developing stories' from wikipedia".
I see many of the articles in wikipedia are related to current event (can be anything from political, controversies, scandals, religious matters etc) and it keeps on developing every hour. So those articles aren't the best things to refer at all costs. Other than that, things from the past and articles relates to science/technology are quite accurate, I must say.
Its not a matter of asking "whether wikipedia is trustable". Its a matter of asking "whether humans are trustable". Okay... only recently, Pluto was kicked out of the solar system. But still, any school kid can refer to a 2002 Britanica and say "Pluto" is a planet and its the 9th in our solar system. And this is not the first time 'we', human kind, mistakenly understood things. If you look at medical bioscience branch, they define different things differentley in different times (e.g. blood clotting... that mechanism had been re-interpretet few times over the known history).
As a scholar, what I find it really hard is, catching up a theory or something from a very concise description. Most books explaining it in few pages, but actually what they does is, playing with words, you don't get the exact facts or the core stuff). I find wikipedia has this incredible capability of concisely describing stuff.
Other thing is.. most of the time.. we hear many things through many people and experiences... you know it is correct.. but no reference to cite. So read the books.. it was a great experience to read Google Books last time to find a proper reference, since recently, collection of open-books are limited, so.. go to library and flip pages.. naah.. we are in 21st century, why do that. So.. internet.. wikipedia....ORRR just stuck with books.. read till you find what's in your head.
I think this is a great move and everyone should involve in it. Why I say this, because this is something much we needed at this point of the history.
I am sure hardware has gone to some extreme ends in doing the number crunching tasks.. in both accuracy and efficiency (less time in calculations). But still, this power is much un-tapped for some reason which I have no clue of.
While I was a college student, we were somewhat forced to use MATLAB as the default mathematics software. It was the case for most maths, control and communication related modules. MATLAB is quite easy in its commands and help catalog. Most importantly, it easy to view the results in many different forms and shapes (i.e. array, charts..). Also its a great array operation language.
But MATLAB suffers significantly in its computation speed. I am sure, pretty much all of the research community has noticed this. Yes, there are ways to over come this with minor coding tricks. But it won't shorten the time dramatically. The hard way to get a good processing speed is to buy the Distributing Computing package.. which is money (+ global warming).
I expect SAGE to concentrate on this speed issue. YES we can choose something like C++ or Fortran (I love those languages). But lets say, if you have to code something like a CDMA simulator (or any comms simulation model)... C++, Fortran maybe the toughest languges in coding and debugging (due to lack of results viewing capability).
whos' the product promoter????
Haris Pilton???? or BenkerTill????
When I was a uni student, I learnt Java, C++, MIPS Assembly and MATLAB. Our scope was pretty much on Scientific number crunching. Hardly anything to do with software industry, even if there anything, they are on Linux plaform based on some kernel developed by some guy. Pretty much all the other software (like layout designing, optical network designing) are wither freeware or something not mainstream.
Now here I am in industry. Only now I realize the disaster. IMHO if they based their assignments and stuff more realted to industry software, it would be more beneficial for me to find a job and even to do a marvellous job to impress my bosses. Since I know only the concepts, I have to learn from scratch pretty much everything what I find in my job. And it takes time to perfect, which is something my bosses don't have as it is competition out there.
So.. in my conclusion, it is better to tech them something useful in future and delivering the concepts through that, rather going with software which are not common in the outside world.
(just an opinion, don't mod me down)
which photo editor they used???
1. photoshop (original version)
2. photoshop (pirated version)
3. M$ paint
4. some unknown chinese software
I am in the same position as 'small IT firms'. Here is my story...
I am a south asian. Obviously, I don't have much wealth to afford a degree in US or UK. So I went to south-east uni investing all my money to earn the B.E. Meantime, I found it interesting to do research, which was inevitable as I got many awards both inside and outside of the university for my work. On top of that, few publications in local conferences.
After my undergrad, I started applying 'somewhat recognized' universities to continue with my PG. Disaster... all they do is encourage to go through the painstaking application process (which also needs to pay considerable amount of money + other transcript charges + courier). Then they confirm in an e-mail saying "you not worth it".
What I understood, if I had a degree from a top university, I would have much better chance in getting into a good PG university (probably with funding). So I had no option but to join the same old university to continue my studies. I have to work my way up, like working for small unis first, then gain experience, more publications so on.. there might be a chance to go up to a good university, but I doubt about the chances.
Same thing with IBM and any other big cooperation, they don't give much consideration on working with small firms. Isn't this the reason why 75% of the start ups die at the begining ???
As of today, my current working place is undergoing a huge floor planning exercise. As a consequence, we (engineers) have to move to a new area where only desks and chairs were provided. No more cubicles. So here are the UPs and DOWNs...
UPs
1. Face-face with all in the room.
2. When boss (he has a seperate room) is speaking, everyone gets attention.
3. No need to travel minor distances to share ideas with fellow guys.
4. Aware about who's coming and who's leaving the engineer's area.
5. No more secret discussions with fellow guys.
DOWNs
1. No privacy at all.
2. Hard to escape without noticing to anyone.
3. Hard to concentrate as so many other, loud, useless grape-vine is broadcasting in the surrounding environment.
4. Too much peer pressure, so hard to do little, enjoyable things (like posting in slashdot, watching top gear).
5. Getting too much garbage on your desktop from passing by people. (mostly, your fellow guys around).
6. Great danger in missing things (Specially.. important documents).
No cubicle/office is very good for technicians and field officers, as 80% of their time, they are at some work site.
I remember, Microsoft did an advance research on this work-floor arrangement... can anyone share it with us???
preview on future slashdot posts...
"keeek keeek keek kook kook kek keeeeeeeeeek"
I am sure, google will work on a GoogleChimp really soon.... for chimps to search online...
"No Red Hats inside"
"No Lizards inside" (s u s e)
"No harsh language inside (i.e. I am gonna f!@#@#$ kill you)"
Apple was discovered by Isaac Newton in 16th century...
Microsoft was discovered by Bill Gate somewhere in 70s..
That's why Apple is there and Microsoft is not there...
From what I heard, neither Bill Gates nor Microsoft found internet to be a boomer at any point of the history. This is why it wasn't integrated to early Windows versions, even late as Win 3.1
Anyway.. only now they are taking most of its advantage over internet, including WGA, updates etc.
I don't know where I read or saw this. But I heard that someone saying the new space race is not for fun or just to show off power. It is much to do with finding hidden He3 isotopes in the moon crust. I don't know how to draw the structure of a such isotope, but it has been told, He3 can provide lot of power.
Who knows??? Think I am gonna see a 21st century gold (more sorta Helium) rush....
how about sex toys... are they open source???
have they done anything to stop the memory leak? its the only draw back I see in FireFox.
I saw one of my friend (using a PC with 1GB memory) wasting 250MB just for the FireFox. phew!