Minor sidenote: their are a goodly number of addon libs associated with SDL that address some of the things you say zoolib offers. (image and movie file formats, networking, fonts, etc. etc.). This is not to knock zoolib (about which I know basically zip), I'm just pointing it out for the sake of completeness.
But if they're doing it over an IR port they're probably within arms' reach... So you can shoot them or stab them or pinch their nipple and make
'em holler for their mamma...:-) Come on, how many times have you wanted to get one of the 31337 hax0r d00ds in spanking range?
Python has always been a superior language to Perl...
I realize you're just trying to be funny, but them's fightin' words.;-)
Seriously though, use the right fsckin' tool for the goddamned job at hand. Python has cool features, and so does perl. Anyone who focuses solely on Python's OO syntax simplicity vs. perl's is really missing the point.
(personally python annoys me but that's just cuz' the whitespace-as-block-delimiter thing rubs me the wrong way, code just don't look right unless it's got curly braces (this is the same reason haskell and lisp and scheme annoy me, oh wait, they also annoy me becuase they're functional languages, but that's another 20KB rant in of it's own right)...;-))
(I don't own a palm(-compatible) but I wish I did. Techie toy #1 on the post-graduation buy list.)
Doesn't the PocketC thing require the users to install a runtime or something? Are there any C-like environments for the Palm (that like PocketC run entirely on the device) that compile "pure" binaries (i.e. runtime-less)?
Good, it ought to be able to keep Congress from doing anything for at least another few years...;-)
And if they have archives of the alt.binaries.* or alt.bainaris.* heiarchy, that should keep the Congresscritters occupied for a good loooooong time...
I thought it was display postscript, not display PDF? Of course for all I know they just changed the name because most people today recognize PDF quicker than PostScript.
Well, the First Amendment doesn't neccessarily apply to an 8 year old. You don't get Rights until you can accept the Responsibilities that come
attached to them.
I happen to be taking a law class right now, focusing on (among other things) consitutional law. Last time I looked at the Consitution (amazing how many people invoke the Constitution of the United States in normal discourse when they haven't read it, or read it well), which was about three hours ago, there are no stipulations as to age in any of the amendments that are commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights.
As an example in which it is explicitly stated that minors, and further minors as students, still have full and equal access to the BoR, see the US Supreme Court case TINKER V. DES MOINES SCHOOL DIST., 393 U.S. 503. (the text can be read here among other places). (As a historical sidenote, my mother was friends with the kids in question, back in Des Moines in the mid 60's.)
So in short if a 1st grader wishes to say he thinks the school's administration is wrongheaded, and does so in a manner that is not inciting to riot, constitutionally he is completely free to do so. If the administration doesn't like that, tough titty.
Also, it could be put forth that Schroedinger argues against the existence of objective fact
Just a nitpick, but you're probably thinking of
Heisenberg, of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Further, this only really applies on the quantum scale. You can be pretty sure of what
road you're on, even when you look at the speedometer...;-)
Well, you can always install both and try them out.:-) For me the reason I always prefered gnome over KDE was the freedom to change window managers (as well as pretty much anything else, GNOME is very flexible). I'm finicky like that. Actually now since I found that all I was using gnome for was a program launcher, I dropped it completely in favor of Enlightenment (0.16.5 at the moment). Saves some ram (which is a good thing when I fire up vmware and xmms at the same time;-) ).
At the same time, what I've seen of KDE 2.x looks nifty. I think a lot of it boils down to personal preference, technologically they're pretty much the same. So use whatever makes you happy/productive/whatever.:-)
I'm not familiar with this thing at all, but if the information is carried over a serial cable, could you make or buy some sort of Y-splitter, with one end feeding into a listening serial port so you can match up actions with output? Same theory as figuring out what a proprietary networking protocol is doing by putting a packet sniffer between the output-generating machine and it's server or client.
Anyhow, just my 0.02 USD. (Oh, and there are perl modules to do serial programming IIRC. So pushing the bits shouldn't be a problem, just see CPAN.) An even easier approach would be finding some docs;-) but that has less hack appeal.
Especially if they meet a price point such that it is economical to use the tags in a throw-away manner. Imagine being able to poll the contents of a warehouse/transit container/etc. in real time and without worrying about a guy missing something with his handheld inventory scanner.
Another cool use would be at the grocery store. Fill your cart with tagged items, when you walk out (no lines or cashiers) the scanner tallies the total and sends you an itemized bill at the end of the month or charges your debit/credit card. Or the book store (same idea). "But... but... then the Man would know what I bought!" He already does. Database A (books sold to CC#) JOIN to Database B (CC# to customer information), SELECT as needed. Note that all of that already exists except that a human and a POS system facilitate the transaction instead of radio waves.
Heck, if they're really cheap, combine them with microsensors for things like soil nitrogen content, soil moisture, etc. and some triangulating receiver stations for dumped-out-of-the-back-of-a-plane microagriculture monitering stations. Or if they're really light combine them with a streamer and some triangulating stations to measure air currents inside of a tornado/storm (combine with thermometer and or barometer for information from inside the storm). The whole unique-id-to-position thing could be extremely handy for field measurements of all types, particularly if it is effectively zero marginal cost to the instrument.
If you live in an "at will" employment state (most in the US are; naturally if you live somewhere else disregard this), you can give your employer the finger right now with no reasons needed and walk. Do you think they'd give you two weeks notice if you were about to be fired or laid off?
WRT the conflict of interest angle, they have no need and no right to know where you're moving onto. If they do find out where you went to, they can't prove that anything you did at employer A's workplace led to you getting employed by company B. (I mean really prove it, like to the standards of evidence in a court of law.) If you're really worried about this talk to the corporate attorney of company B or a private attorney.
If your present employer is laughing off business, that's a really good sign that they are idiots or assholes or both, hoc ergo an even better sign that it's time to move on.
nah, their hardware is still not really competitive with the utter cheapness of x86 stuff outside of niche markets. If you beleive some figures as to desktop share, for every mac sold, 10 x86 boxes are (probably more than that becuase not every x86 box is destined to run windows (just the vast majority of them)). If they want to compete they need to offer a functional machine for <= $500-600 (becuase I can build or buy a perfectly reasonable machine for that much from any of a dozen or more places off the top of my head).
Say whatever you want about Apple software, but realize that they are and always will be (more than likely) a hardware company. It's not "Buy OSX, it's great!", it's "OSX is great! Buy a mac...".
So they have the mindset (Jobs is just as much a monomaniac as Gates is, he just trys to appear nicer while I don't think Gates cares one whit), and potentially the software (if they write their own office suite becuase as soon as MacOS was a threat to MS...), but they'd have to port to x86 for any monopoly plans to work. I don't see this happening any time soon, for political reasons more than technical ones.
Gamers typically have high expectations of performance and appreciate high quality machines.
There are also enough of them to have a pretty decently-sized niche market. Advertise in magazines like PC Gamer and the rest.
On thing you have to consider in this market is that many gamers (I used to be a hard core gamer but I don't have time anymore, plus I use my machine for more useful purposes now) build their own, in the absolute perfectionist tweak-and-tune-everything quest for the maximal performance from the given hardware resources. So two key features to have and advertise are: 1) quality components at every level (check sites like tomshardware.com and anandtech.com to see what's getting rave reviews, your target market reads these sites too), just like they would have bought if they were doing it themselves, and 2) standard components (corollary to 1) really), like a good quality, open and easy to access case, motherboards that have a minimum of integrated crap, etc. becuase this assures them that when they decide to upgrade in 6-12 months, it won't be a pain in the ass like it is with some big-name proprietary schlockfest like Cumpaq or Crapway.
Word of advice: go AMD. Their processors are both cheaper on average than the Intel line, and generally outperform them. This offers your customers better performance for a lower price. This is the definition of a win-win situation.
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Fuck Censorship.
doubt it's a winmodem Re:56k Modem
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Palmtop NetBSD
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· Score: 2
I somehow doubt it's a winmodem. The processor isn't exactly a computational beast (133mhz, no idea how it would compare on a mhz-mhz basis to an x86 for FPU-intensive stuff like DSP (which you need if yer modem has no hardware chips to do it for the cpu)). If it is a winmodem, I reeeeeally doubt it'll keep a reliable connection, and of course since it'd take up ~99% cpu, all your other apps are going to halt, and your batteries would drain really damn quick... So unless the HP engineers are idiots it's probably a real modem (gotta figure the thing costs enough that the extra $50 or less that differentiates a generic windmodem circuit from a real modem circuit is "invisible").
One: memory is dirt cheap right now. seriously. a 128mb stick of pc100 is like $40 where I live. see pricewatch.com for more US prices. If you live somewhere else I don't know if this point would be relevant. So you could probably at least approach the "ok performance" range, especially if you have family that would be sympathetic for your school-related need of an upgrade.
Two: argoUML, a GPLd and reasonably decent java UML program. (argouml.org) It performs just fine on my machine (450mhz, 128 mb of pc100 ram).
Three: TCM, the toolkit for conceptual modelling. Haven't played with it much but it looks pretty nifty. Also it isn't in Java. Again it runs fine on my machine. Does stuff besides UML too, I'm new to this whole modeling/specifying bit, so some of the functionality didn't make much sense to me.
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Re:DSL should go away anyway
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DSL Woes
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Well, I completely agree that dialup basically sucks. But it isn't completely useless: if you need to connect from multiple locations and use the same provider it's pretty much the only game in town (I'm thinking specifically of somebody who owns a laptop and has to travel hitehr and yon, not every motel 6 has a 10baseT port in every room...).
But yeah, I too think that xDSL is probably the best broadband solution today, for technological as well as political reasons (i.e. opposing cable monopolies). Particular to the tech reasons, why are cable companies a) so unbelievably paranoid about people running their own servers? (hello, I like to be able to ssh home from work to check on stuff:-( ), and b) so finicky about static IP addresses? Grrr, Time Warner pisses me off...
I'm taking a business law class right now (my main course of study is computational chemistry, as a side note). IIRC, most contracts (yes, including NDAs and noncompetes) cease to take effect when you leave the job. Now, if you sign an NDA or non-compete as part of a severance package it's a different story, as that contract is being made with the explicit understanding that the time period under consideration is post-employment. Time-of-hire contracts are on much shakier ground. (Basically, putting restrictions on your freedoms as an individual after you cease to receive compensation from the corporation is giving them something for nothing, and this is frowned upon in the judicial system.)
The "Rights of Man" do not apply to corporations, and corporations do not enjoy the protections of the Bill of Rights in America than an individual would (e.g. corporations are not protected by the 5th amendment). Further, corporations have a much more limited access to the 1st amendment free speech guarantees than individuals do. Corporations only win cases as frequently as the do becuase they can afford better and more lawyers, dramatically underscoring that what is legal and what is just are widely divergent in many cases.
In the end, the world is not perfect people, and though many of you seem to have a sweet undergraduate notion of freedom of speech being
absolute, in the real world it is often not practical. And there is no world more real than the world of industry.
Leaving aside your puerile assertation that undergraduates are somehow less clued than the work force, the freedom of speech is for all intents and purposes and absolute in America. There are certain very specific instances where this can be restricted, generally only when your excercise of that freedom presents a clear and present danger of harming the rights of another person. Eg. yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is none impinges on the right of theater-goers to not be trampled in a mad stampede for the exit. Note that this DOES NOT in of itself imply that freedom of speech is taken away if if might cause a loss of money to the corporation, there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to make money.
In short I suggest that you actually read the law at least somewhat before trying to base arguments on it.
And the move from C to Perl really isn't that great a leap.
I definitely second that. Perl is really, really easy if you know C, esp. if you know your way around a shell script too. Suggested order of reading: Learning Perl (llama, ORA), Programming Perl (camel, ORA) and the Perl Cookbook (don't recall cover, ORA) at roughly the same time (start doing you're own stuff here to cement the knowledge), after that Advanced Perl Programming (tiger, ORA) and/or Object-Oriented Perl (D. Conway, pub by Manning). That's pretty much a complete course in everything there is to know about perl (you can be very productive just reading the first two or three).
One cool thing about perl is that it's applicable EVERYWHERE. Not just the web with CGI and database stuff, but also as a system admin tool, as a programming automation tool (no more nasty shell scripts to run tests), as an embedded scripting language for a C application, etc. etc. Perl was around ten years ago but it has changed quite a bit since then, and much for the better I've heard.
Just my two cents, but having had experience with C and C++ before learning Java, Java "feels" more like C than C++. If you can learn well on your own, I'd suggest Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel, since you aren't a newbie programmer. It isn't really a syntax book, but it helps you understand how to think about problems in the Java way (like getting use to Strings instead of char arrays, as a trivial example; using objects instead of functions to organize code as a less trivial example). For a syntax book, definitely check the Java (tiger) book by O'Reilly, and the companion Java Examples book.
XML is kind of a nebulous field. Sort of like HTML in the 96-era, it is far from certain how some of that stuff is going to settle out. Moreso becuase by it's very nature the XML you use on the job may not be the XML some other company is using, so you sort of have to know what you're going to do with it before you start learning it. "Just XML" by John Simpson is pretty good as a general overview from first principles. The XML pocket reference by ORA is also good; and I'm looking forward to reading their Learning XML book too (think it was just published).
Also, keep in mind that Unix and C are still very valid skills to have[1]. Searching on dice.com or monster.com will surely underscore this (alhough Java and XML are of course nice icings to have). If you want to brush up on Unix cheaply, get an inexpensive used x86 box or use any spares you might have combined with a free unix like *BSD or linux (www.cheapbytes.com for uber-cheap media, www.used-pcs.com is a local (Austin, TX) store, good example of how cheap a perfectly capable machine can be).
Of course if you have a hard time learning on you own (I sort of do, I didn't really grok java until I tooks some classes on it), there is always local community colleges and/or tech training classes. The advantage here is of course flexible scheduling.
Take this next statement with a grain of salt, as I just turned 23: I think that a lot of the old-worker-bias-in-tech is sort of self-inflicted by the older workers. I know that as you get older and have a family and stuff, you may not have as much flexibility as somebody my age to learn every new tech that comes down the pipe. But taking a class or two a year can't be too impossible. In other words, if you're whining becuase nobody wants MVS or JCL or whatnot wizards, well, what can I say but that you've had a good 10+ years to realize that those things were falling out of favor? Keeping reasonably current may just mean looking at the job ads in your area every six months or so to see what the trends are and then taking a class at night or buying a few books if it looks prudent to learn a new skill or two... Programming is technology-driven, but there are I think many things in the field that are made considerably easier by the maturity that additional experience (both with managing a project and time[2], like a professional engineer, and with thought patterns like "oh, well, X alogorithm is a good idea for this data, hmm, how do I write that in the language du-jour?") brings (much like the concept of "mathematical maturity" whereby the more math classes you've had, the easier they get even if they're in different areas of study because of the common mindset; if thatmakes any sense).
Anyway, best of luck!:-) (last sidenote: www.bookpool.com for heavily discounted tech books, esp. cost-effective if you're ordering multiple things becuase shipping works out to be a fraction of what sales tax would have been)
[1] Of course the unix landscape has probably changed a bit in the ten years you've been outside the field. But probably not so much that you couldn't quickly bridge the gap. Again, free unix to the rescue (x86, sparc, alpha, basically any arch you can name is supported by something free). And solaris is free (x86 and sparc, see ebay for cheap sparc stuff, but you'll probably want a sparc5-170 or better to run solaris 8) to hobbiest folks, as is SCO (x86), as is tru-64 (alpha), etc. (many commercial unix vendors have responded to the linux tide by offering hobby and noncommercial licenses for free or cost-of-media; leaving the only barrier in the form of getting the proprietary HW to run it on). I imagine that to a large extent the changes have been more in user environment than on the programmatic level (yeah hardware has mutated a lot, but C #includes still do the same thing, and I bet printf() wasn't much different then...;-) ) I think I was looking at a career survey on dice.com and the most frequently requested Unix-type skills were on Linux and Solaris, in that order; followed by HP-UX and AIX roughly tied in 3rd.
[2] the best code in the world doesn't count for shit on a stick if it's released six months late. Language proficiency is, off the cuff, maybe 10% of release time. The rest is all time/project/people managment and skills, something I think many people my age aren't clued into just yet... 80-hour-a-week code binges are a sign of poor managment.
May Day might be a historically consistent day for rebellion/mischief/etc. Hey, it works for the anarchists and whatnot, no?
Problem is that these "internet trash" have exactly 0 respect for rules to begin with, so thinking that all of them (or probably even a significant portion of them) would abide by the one-fun-day-a-year approach is probably optimistic. Cool idea though!:-)
On a funny note, the best way I ever came out to someone (other than posting to Slashdot;-) was when a (straight) friend of mine and I were at
dinner and he said, "well, Aaron, all the best sysadmins are fat, bearded and gay. So, I guess 2 out of 3 isn't bad." My reply was simply, "actually,
that'd be 3."
That is pretty funny.:-) I'd always heard that the Universal Indicator (chemistry in-joke) for system admins was: bearded, with glasses and suspenders. But I think that maybe the suspenders have gone out of style. (On gender/orientation, ~50% of the really good sysadmins I've worked with were women. (yes, 50% chance chromosomally, but that's in the general population, in the tech field it seems women are rarer).)
That's the price listed on their online store. Maybe the walmart version comes with more crap.:-) It does look like a cool device. My main question is: if this thing can do all that and cost $99.95, why does a Palm (whatever, V? VII?) do the same stuff and cost 3x as much? (struck by insomnia, reading slashdot, urgh...).
yeah, but floppies don't look as cool when you microwave them...;-)
I remember back in "The Day" when I new some crazy kids in the dorm who wrote some sort of script to auto-order member kits from AOL, just for the floppies. They'd come back every week or so from the post office with an armload of the things. I don't think AOL every caught on, the mail room guys just got pissed so they quit.
Slashdot Mirror
Minor sidenote: their are a goodly number of addon libs associated with SDL that address some of the things you say zoolib offers. (image and movie file formats, networking, fonts, etc. etc.). This is not to knock zoolib (about which I know basically zip), I'm just pointing it out for the sake of completeness.
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But if they're doing it over an IR port they're probably within arms' reach... So you can shoot them or stab them or pinch their nipple and make 'em holler for their mamma... :-) Come on, how many times have you wanted to get one of the 31337 hax0r d00ds in spanking range?
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I realize you're just trying to be funny, but them's fightin' words. ;-)
Seriously though, use the right fsckin' tool for the goddamned job at hand. Python has cool features, and so does perl. Anyone who focuses solely on Python's OO syntax simplicity vs. perl's is really missing the point.
(personally python annoys me but that's just cuz' the whitespace-as-block-delimiter thing rubs me the wrong way, code just don't look right unless it's got curly braces (this is the same reason haskell and lisp and scheme annoy me, oh wait, they also annoy me becuase they're functional languages, but that's another 20KB rant in of it's own right)... ;-))
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(I don't own a palm(-compatible) but I wish I did. Techie toy #1 on the post-graduation buy list.)
Doesn't the PocketC thing require the users to install a runtime or something? Are there any C-like environments for the Palm (that like PocketC run entirely on the device) that compile "pure" binaries (i.e. runtime-less)?
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Good, it ought to be able to keep Congress from doing anything for at least another few years... ;-)
And if they have archives of the alt.binaries.* or alt.bainaris.* heiarchy, that should keep the Congresscritters occupied for a good loooooong time...
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
I thought it was display postscript, not display PDF? Of course for all I know they just changed the name because most people today recognize PDF quicker than PostScript.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
I happen to be taking a law class right now, focusing on (among other things) consitutional law. Last time I looked at the Consitution (amazing how many people invoke the Constitution of the United States in normal discourse when they haven't read it, or read it well), which was about three hours ago, there are no stipulations as to age in any of the amendments that are commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights.
As an example in which it is explicitly stated that minors, and further minors as students, still have full and equal access to the BoR, see the US Supreme Court case TINKER V. DES MOINES SCHOOL DIST., 393 U.S. 503. (the text can be read here among other places). (As a historical sidenote, my mother was friends with the kids in question, back in Des Moines in the mid 60's.)
So in short if a 1st grader wishes to say he thinks the school's administration is wrongheaded, and does so in a manner that is not inciting to riot, constitutionally he is completely free to do so. If the administration doesn't like that, tough titty.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
Just a nitpick, but you're probably thinking of Heisenberg, of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Further, this only really applies on the quantum scale. You can be pretty sure of what road you're on, even when you look at the speedometer... ;-)
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
Well, you can always install both and try them out. :-) For me the reason I always prefered gnome over KDE was the freedom to change window managers (as well as pretty much anything else, GNOME is very flexible). I'm finicky like that. Actually now since I found that all I was using gnome for was a program launcher, I dropped it completely in favor of Enlightenment (0.16.5 at the moment). Saves some ram (which is a good thing when I fire up vmware and xmms at the same time ;-) ).
At the same time, what I've seen of KDE 2.x looks nifty. I think a lot of it boils down to personal preference, technologically they're pretty much the same. So use whatever makes you happy/productive/whatever. :-)
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
I'm not familiar with this thing at all, but if the information is carried over a serial cable, could you make or buy some sort of Y-splitter, with one end feeding into a listening serial port so you can match up actions with output? Same theory as figuring out what a proprietary networking protocol is doing by putting a packet sniffer between the output-generating machine and it's server or client.
Anyhow, just my 0.02 USD. (Oh, and there are perl modules to do serial programming IIRC. So pushing the bits shouldn't be a problem, just see CPAN.) An even easier approach would be finding some docs ;-) but that has less hack appeal.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
Especially if they meet a price point such that it is economical to use the tags in a throw-away manner. Imagine being able to poll the contents of a warehouse/transit container/etc. in real time and without worrying about a guy missing something with his handheld inventory scanner.
Another cool use would be at the grocery store. Fill your cart with tagged items, when you walk out (no lines or cashiers) the scanner tallies the total and sends you an itemized bill at the end of the month or charges your debit/credit card. Or the book store (same idea). "But... but... then the Man would know what I bought!" He already does. Database A (books sold to CC#) JOIN to Database B (CC# to customer information), SELECT as needed. Note that all of that already exists except that a human and a POS system facilitate the transaction instead of radio waves.
Heck, if they're really cheap, combine them with microsensors for things like soil nitrogen content, soil moisture, etc. and some triangulating receiver stations for dumped-out-of-the-back-of-a-plane microagriculture monitering stations. Or if they're really light combine them with a streamer and some triangulating stations to measure air currents inside of a tornado/storm (combine with thermometer and or barometer for information from inside the storm). The whole unique-id-to-position thing could be extremely handy for field measurements of all types, particularly if it is effectively zero marginal cost to the instrument.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
If you live in an "at will" employment state (most in the US are; naturally if you live somewhere else disregard this), you can give your employer the finger right now with no reasons needed and walk. Do you think they'd give you two weeks notice if you were about to be fired or laid off?
WRT the conflict of interest angle, they have no need and no right to know where you're moving onto. If they do find out where you went to, they can't prove that anything you did at employer A's workplace led to you getting employed by company B. (I mean really prove it, like to the standards of evidence in a court of law.) If you're really worried about this talk to the corporate attorney of company B or a private attorney.
If your present employer is laughing off business, that's a really good sign that they are idiots or assholes or both, hoc ergo an even better sign that it's time to move on.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
nah, their hardware is still not really competitive with the utter cheapness of x86 stuff outside of niche markets. If you beleive some figures as to desktop share, for every mac sold, 10 x86 boxes are (probably more than that becuase not every x86 box is destined to run windows (just the vast majority of them)). If they want to compete they need to offer a functional machine for <= $500-600 (becuase I can build or buy a perfectly reasonable machine for that much from any of a dozen or more places off the top of my head).
Say whatever you want about Apple software, but realize that they are and always will be (more than likely) a hardware company. It's not "Buy OSX, it's great!", it's "OSX is great! Buy a mac...".
So they have the mindset (Jobs is just as much a monomaniac as Gates is, he just trys to appear nicer while I don't think Gates cares one whit), and potentially the software (if they write their own office suite becuase as soon as MacOS was a threat to MS...), but they'd have to port to x86 for any monopoly plans to work. I don't see this happening any time soon, for political reasons more than technical ones.
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Fuck Censorship.
Just a side note, I think that argoUML can do this as well. I don't know how full featured it is. :-) Hey, options are good!
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Fuck Censorship.
Gamers typically have high expectations of performance and appreciate high quality machines. There are also enough of them to have a pretty decently-sized niche market. Advertise in magazines like PC Gamer and the rest.
On thing you have to consider in this market is that many gamers (I used to be a hard core gamer but I don't have time anymore, plus I use my machine for more useful purposes now) build their own, in the absolute perfectionist tweak-and-tune-everything quest for the maximal performance from the given hardware resources. So two key features to have and advertise are: 1) quality components at every level (check sites like tomshardware.com and anandtech.com to see what's getting rave reviews, your target market reads these sites too), just like they would have bought if they were doing it themselves, and 2) standard components (corollary to 1) really), like a good quality, open and easy to access case, motherboards that have a minimum of integrated crap, etc. becuase this assures them that when they decide to upgrade in 6-12 months, it won't be a pain in the ass like it is with some big-name proprietary schlockfest like Cumpaq or Crapway.
Word of advice: go AMD. Their processors are both cheaper on average than the Intel line, and generally outperform them. This offers your customers better performance for a lower price. This is the definition of a win-win situation.
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I somehow doubt it's a winmodem. The processor isn't exactly a computational beast (133mhz, no idea how it would compare on a mhz-mhz basis to an x86 for FPU-intensive stuff like DSP (which you need if yer modem has no hardware chips to do it for the cpu)). If it is a winmodem, I reeeeeally doubt it'll keep a reliable connection, and of course since it'd take up ~99% cpu, all your other apps are going to halt, and your batteries would drain really damn quick... So unless the HP engineers are idiots it's probably a real modem (gotta figure the thing costs enough that the extra $50 or less that differentiates a generic windmodem circuit from a real modem circuit is "invisible").
Sorry of this is incoherent, I'm dead tired...
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One: memory is dirt cheap right now. seriously. a 128mb stick of pc100 is like $40 where I live. see pricewatch.com for more US prices. If you live somewhere else I don't know if this point would be relevant. So you could probably at least approach the "ok performance" range, especially if you have family that would be sympathetic for your school-related need of an upgrade.
Two: argoUML, a GPLd and reasonably decent java UML program. (argouml.org) It performs just fine on my machine (450mhz, 128 mb of pc100 ram).
Three: TCM, the toolkit for conceptual modelling. Haven't played with it much but it looks pretty nifty. Also it isn't in Java. Again it runs fine on my machine. Does stuff besides UML too, I'm new to this whole modeling/specifying bit, so some of the functionality didn't make much sense to me.
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Well, I completely agree that dialup basically sucks. But it isn't completely useless: if you need to connect from multiple locations and use the same provider it's pretty much the only game in town (I'm thinking specifically of somebody who owns a laptop and has to travel hitehr and yon, not every motel 6 has a 10baseT port in every room...).
But yeah, I too think that xDSL is probably the best broadband solution today, for technological as well as political reasons (i.e. opposing cable monopolies). Particular to the tech reasons, why are cable companies a) so unbelievably paranoid about people running their own servers? (hello, I like to be able to ssh home from work to check on stuff :-( ), and b) so finicky about static IP addresses? Grrr, Time Warner pisses me off...
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I'm taking a business law class right now (my main course of study is computational chemistry, as a side note). IIRC, most contracts (yes, including NDAs and noncompetes) cease to take effect when you leave the job. Now, if you sign an NDA or non-compete as part of a severance package it's a different story, as that contract is being made with the explicit understanding that the time period under consideration is post-employment. Time-of-hire contracts are on much shakier ground. (Basically, putting restrictions on your freedoms as an individual after you cease to receive compensation from the corporation is giving them something for nothing, and this is frowned upon in the judicial system.)
The "Rights of Man" do not apply to corporations, and corporations do not enjoy the protections of the Bill of Rights in America than an individual would (e.g. corporations are not protected by the 5th amendment). Further, corporations have a much more limited access to the 1st amendment free speech guarantees than individuals do. Corporations only win cases as frequently as the do becuase they can afford better and more lawyers, dramatically underscoring that what is legal and what is just are widely divergent in many cases.
Leaving aside your puerile assertation that undergraduates are somehow less clued than the work force, the freedom of speech is for all intents and purposes and absolute in America. There are certain very specific instances where this can be restricted, generally only when your excercise of that freedom presents a clear and present danger of harming the rights of another person. Eg. yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is none impinges on the right of theater-goers to not be trampled in a mad stampede for the exit. Note that this DOES NOT in of itself imply that freedom of speech is taken away if if might cause a loss of money to the corporation, there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to make money.
In short I suggest that you actually read the law at least somewhat before trying to base arguments on it.
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I definitely second that. Perl is really, really easy if you know C, esp. if you know your way around a shell script too. Suggested order of reading: Learning Perl (llama, ORA), Programming Perl (camel, ORA) and the Perl Cookbook (don't recall cover, ORA) at roughly the same time (start doing you're own stuff here to cement the knowledge), after that Advanced Perl Programming (tiger, ORA) and/or Object-Oriented Perl (D. Conway, pub by Manning). That's pretty much a complete course in everything there is to know about perl (you can be very productive just reading the first two or three).
One cool thing about perl is that it's applicable EVERYWHERE. Not just the web with CGI and database stuff, but also as a system admin tool, as a programming automation tool (no more nasty shell scripts to run tests), as an embedded scripting language for a C application, etc. etc. Perl was around ten years ago but it has changed quite a bit since then, and much for the better I've heard.
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Just my two cents, but having had experience with C and C++ before learning Java, Java "feels" more like C than C++. If you can learn well on your own, I'd suggest Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel, since you aren't a newbie programmer. It isn't really a syntax book, but it helps you understand how to think about problems in the Java way (like getting use to Strings instead of char arrays, as a trivial example; using objects instead of functions to organize code as a less trivial example). For a syntax book, definitely check the Java (tiger) book by O'Reilly, and the companion Java Examples book.
XML is kind of a nebulous field. Sort of like HTML in the 96-era, it is far from certain how some of that stuff is going to settle out. Moreso becuase by it's very nature the XML you use on the job may not be the XML some other company is using, so you sort of have to know what you're going to do with it before you start learning it. "Just XML" by John Simpson is pretty good as a general overview from first principles. The XML pocket reference by ORA is also good; and I'm looking forward to reading their Learning XML book too (think it was just published).
Also, keep in mind that Unix and C are still very valid skills to have[1]. Searching on dice.com or monster.com will surely underscore this (alhough Java and XML are of course nice icings to have). If you want to brush up on Unix cheaply, get an inexpensive used x86 box or use any spares you might have combined with a free unix like *BSD or linux (www.cheapbytes.com for uber-cheap media, www.used-pcs.com is a local (Austin, TX) store, good example of how cheap a perfectly capable machine can be).
Of course if you have a hard time learning on you own (I sort of do, I didn't really grok java until I tooks some classes on it), there is always local community colleges and/or tech training classes. The advantage here is of course flexible scheduling.
Take this next statement with a grain of salt, as I just turned 23: I think that a lot of the old-worker-bias-in-tech is sort of self-inflicted by the older workers. I know that as you get older and have a family and stuff, you may not have as much flexibility as somebody my age to learn every new tech that comes down the pipe. But taking a class or two a year can't be too impossible. In other words, if you're whining becuase nobody wants MVS or JCL or whatnot wizards, well, what can I say but that you've had a good 10+ years to realize that those things were falling out of favor? Keeping reasonably current may just mean looking at the job ads in your area every six months or so to see what the trends are and then taking a class at night or buying a few books if it looks prudent to learn a new skill or two... Programming is technology-driven, but there are I think many things in the field that are made considerably easier by the maturity that additional experience (both with managing a project and time[2], like a professional engineer, and with thought patterns like "oh, well, X alogorithm is a good idea for this data, hmm, how do I write that in the language du-jour?") brings (much like the concept of "mathematical maturity" whereby the more math classes you've had, the easier they get even if they're in different areas of study because of the common mindset; if thatmakes any sense).
Anyway, best of luck! :-) (last sidenote: www.bookpool.com for heavily discounted tech books, esp. cost-effective if you're ordering multiple things becuase shipping works out to be a fraction of what sales tax would have been)
[1] Of course the unix landscape has probably changed a bit in the ten years you've been outside the field. But probably not so much that you couldn't quickly bridge the gap. Again, free unix to the rescue (x86, sparc, alpha, basically any arch you can name is supported by something free). And solaris is free (x86 and sparc, see ebay for cheap sparc stuff, but you'll probably want a sparc5-170 or better to run solaris 8) to hobbiest folks, as is SCO (x86), as is tru-64 (alpha), etc. (many commercial unix vendors have responded to the linux tide by offering hobby and noncommercial licenses for free or cost-of-media; leaving the only barrier in the form of getting the proprietary HW to run it on). I imagine that to a large extent the changes have been more in user environment than on the programmatic level (yeah hardware has mutated a lot, but C #includes still do the same thing, and I bet printf() wasn't much different then... ;-) ) I think I was looking at a career survey on dice.com and the most frequently requested Unix-type skills were on Linux and Solaris, in that order; followed by HP-UX and AIX roughly tied in 3rd.
[2] the best code in the world doesn't count for shit on a stick if it's released six months late. Language proficiency is, off the cuff, maybe 10% of release time. The rest is all time/project/people managment and skills, something I think many people my age aren't clued into just yet... 80-hour-a-week code binges are a sign of poor managment.
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May Day might be a historically consistent day for rebellion/mischief/etc. Hey, it works for the anarchists and whatnot, no?
Problem is that these "internet trash" have exactly 0 respect for rules to begin with, so thinking that all of them (or probably even a significant portion of them) would abide by the one-fun-day-a-year approach is probably optimistic. Cool idea though! :-)
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That is pretty funny. :-) I'd always heard that the Universal Indicator (chemistry in-joke) for system admins was: bearded, with glasses and suspenders. But I think that maybe the suspenders have gone out of style. (On gender/orientation, ~50% of the really good sysadmins I've worked with were women. (yes, 50% chance chromosomally, but that's in the general population, in the tech field it seems women are rarer).)
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That's the price listed on their online store. Maybe the walmart version comes with more crap. :-) It does look like a cool device. My main question is: if this thing can do all that and cost $99.95, why does a Palm (whatever, V? VII?) do the same stuff and cost 3x as much? (struck by insomnia, reading slashdot, urgh...).
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yeah, but floppies don't look as cool when you microwave them... ;-)
I remember back in "The Day" when I new some crazy kids in the dorm who wrote some sort of script to auto-order member kits from AOL, just for the floppies. They'd come back every week or so from the post office with an armload of the things. I don't think AOL every caught on, the mail room guys just got pissed so they quit.
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