Your rock of choice is this thing you mentioned called "AMD64." (No idea what that is. Never heard of it. I'm taking your word for it that it's a real thing.)
Never heard of AMD64? He's talking about the AMD chips (Athlon and Opteron) that are 100% compatible with x86 (think "Pentium") but are faster in just about every regard, no more expensive (sometimes cheaper), and also happen to run 64-bit code if you have any (think: more than 4 GB of RAM).
I'm sorry, but being excited about AMD64 is not a leet fanboy thing. They really are awesome processors, and they're beating the socks off of anything from Intel these days for the vast majority of high-end computing users.
No, Mac OS X 10.3 and below are strictly 32-bit. They run on a 64-big G5 processor by virtue of the fact that the 64-bit PowerPC is 100% compatible with 32-bit code.
That's mostly true. Applications are still limited to a 32-bit address space each. However the system can deal with 8 GB of RAM on a G5, so it's not like OS X 10.3 is completely ignoring the 64-bit registers...
I don't know if you'd noticed, but you can't buy anything BUT a 3D card new these days.
Unless you have a budget PC with integrated video, of course. Most integrated video has very limited 3D support these days, but probably not enough for Longhorn.
It's quite obvious the parent doesn't know anything about the topic and is just trolling.
Dude, if I made a factual error, go ahead and correct me. But calling me a troll just because I'm skeptical of Longhorn (based on the information in the article) is uncalled for.
Is this going to be another case of where Microsoft tries to copy Apple, but misses the point?
Mac OS X 10.2 introduced "Quartz Extreme", which uses your graphics card to composite your screen. This meant that dragging windows around now required almost no CPU power at all. In 10.3, they introduced several 3-D effects to enhance the interface - most notably a rotating cube when you switch users.
There are two key points that Microsoft seems to be missing, though:
* Mac OS X looks exactly the same if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card, and screen redrawing is not too slow. Having a graphics card just makes the system more responsive because the CPU is doing less of the work.
* The system degrades gracefully - if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card or run out of video RAM, certain 3D transitions may be skipped. But everything will still function, and everything will look the same.
It's too early to tell, but it is starting to sound like Microsoft may be creating a new interface that requires a super graphics card, leaving those with only cheap integrated video with a completely different interface. To me that sounds like a recipe for tech support hell - novice users won't understand why their screen doesn't look like someone else's.
Dude, contextual menus rock. I'm constantly anoyed by my Powerbook's lack of them. Without contextual menus I have to hunt around through all the different menus up top and try to find what I want. With contextual menus, I just right click and its there. What could be more simple?
Either click and hold, control-click, or use an external USB mouse or trackpad with a right button. That's what I do. No need to hunt through all of the menus!
I don't agree about his C thing either. If you really want to know how the machine works, why not learn directly assembly instead?
But which assembly language do you want to learn? You could learn x86, since it's the most popular, but that actually gives you a pretty bad idea of what the CPU is really doing, since x86 has very few registers, while all modern x86 CPUs actually have lots of registers and do on-the-fly register renaming. Or you could learn Alpha assembly, arguably the best-designed, but with little practical value. Or PowerPC assembly, which has one of the largest sets of extra instructions you can use to optimize. But in 5-10 years, any specific assembly skills you have will be out of date.
Programming in C shields you from processor-specific details 99% of the time, but is still close enough to the processor that you can understand what's really going on. It forces you to deal with memory management.
C is still the only language used for writing device drivers, operating system kernels, and other programming languages. There's a reason for this. C is the perfect balance between low-level and high-level. It's low-level enough that you can express anything a modern processor is capable of doing. It's high-level enough that you can write modular, readable code (unlike assembly). That's not to say you should use C for everything, but it is critical to know it.
And when you actually want to produce something, switch to Python
No argument there, I love Python. But I agree with Joel in the sense that I know how to write good Python code because I know what is going on "under the hood".
I was wondering if the university you attend matters in the long term? I'm a freshman right now at a university close to home with a scholorship. The university isnt known for computerscience and the cs classes are really easy. I was wondering if it is worth it to transfer to another (more expensive, well known) university.
Transfering to a school with a better C.S. department will give you several things. There will be more good professors, many of them experts in the field (certainly not all will be good teachers, but there will be several good ones). There will be more resources and opportunities (specialized hardware and software, research projects that hire undergrads). The biggest difference, though, is that the other students in your class will be better on average, and that will make a huge difference in your education.
Every time you have a group project, or have a question and the professor isn't handy, you'll be glad you're at a school with more smart and motivated C.S. students. And when you're looking for jobs, you'll have far more friends who are looking for similar challenging and interesting positions like you, so you won't be the only one.
In the long run, I don't think what university you attended will make a difference to the people hiring you. In the short run (your first job out of college) it will likely be an important factor. But studying with other bright and motivated students is still the best reason to try to go to a good school.
No more than running as a regular user on anything else is.
Clearly you've never used Mac OS X. Apple got it right. You always run as a normal user, it's impossible to log in as "root". However, every operation that requires root priveleges simply asks for your password. Want to drag a file to a folder that you don't have permissions in? A dialog box pops up: "The item 'X' could not be moved because 'StartupItems' cannot be modified" with two buttons: OK and Authenticate. Click Authenticate, type your password, and you're set.
Programs that require doing several operations in a row as root use a special "padlock" Mac OS X widget. Click it to authenticate once, then you can do a series of operations as root.
Even on Linux, this is also rarely a problem because people tend to either install programs on the command line (in which case it's easy to pop up a root terminal for that purpose), or else they use a package manager to install everything, which makes it easy.
But on Windows, installers are.exe files. When you double-click on an installer, the installer basically never checks to see if it has permissions. It just tries to install and then fails with a cryptic error message if you weren't logged in as an admin. Why the heck doesn't it just pop up a password dialog? I understand that "Run As..." isn't that much trouble, but try teaching your mom to install software that way; it's just not intuitive!
Don't forget the dozens of Windows programs that simply won't run unless you're logged in as admin.
Hell...I'm new to Mac..and I'm still trying to figure out how to get X to run on OSX...much less X applications. I've to OSX 10.2.8...Most everything I've seen says you need XCode Tools 1.2 or later, but, when I go to that Mac dev. site...it says you have to have Panther to run this version or higher of XCode.
The developer tools CD comes with every new Mac. I'm not sure where you could find a copy online, but just ask someone who bought a Mac with 10.2 if you can't find yours.
You'll be much happier if you upgrade to Panther, though - I'm having a hell of a time figuring out how to get open source stuff to run on the Mac..and I'm usually pretty decent at finding info...but, don't seem to have much luck for the mac...(G3 iBook, 800Mhz).
First install the latest developer tools you can, then almost everything will just compile and run.
Use Fink to get lots of common open-source software without compiling it.
Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done.
A hundred hard-working people could generate tens of thousands of lines of code a day to solve a difficult problem.
One smart person could realize that by modifying the problem slightly, it can be solved in a hundred lines of code.
Google gets a thousand resumes a day. There's no shortage of hard-working people in the world. They can afford to limit themselves to people who are very, very smart, and also hard-working enough to get things done. I think it's worked very well for them, don't you?
I work at JPL. I'm happy that JPL/Caltech is entering the parade, but I'm not thrilled about the design of the float. I would have preferred it look more like a NASA robot (e.g. Mars Exploration Rover) rather than a transformer toy from the 80's. But the floatcam is an excellent idea!
Isn't ford coming out with a hybrid SUV next year? Hybrid is just a way to get power, where as SUV is a body type.
Yes, the Ford Escape hybrid has already been announced, but note that the engine was made by Toyota! So far Toyota and Honda are the only ones to make a hybrid engine.
There is no reason to think that they won't be hybrid big hulking SUVs that get the same gas mileage as a mid-sized car.
No reason except the basic laws of physics. With the same technology, the mid-sized car will always get better mileage. For example, the Ford Escape Hybrid gets 30 mpg (if you're lucky) compared to 22 mpg for the non-hybrid version, while the Toyota Prius gets 50+ mpg (if you're lucky) and definitely 45 mpg for average driving. Oh, and the 2004+ Prius is technically a mid-sized.
The Prius gets about 45mpg in realistic useage (based on the independent reviews I've read). That's worse than most european diesel cars get - diesel cars that have decent performance and aren't made of plastic in an attempt to compensate for the weight of lugging two complete power sources about all the time. Oh yes, and they're a helluva lot cheaper to make for the same reason.
I have a Prius, and you're right, I do get about 45 mpg. Keep in mind, though, that diesel is currently a little bit better than hybrid technology in terms of efficiency, but it lags far behind in terms of emissions...the hybrid is far, far better for the environment.
Also, I fail to see how hybrid and diesel are mutually exclusive. Many of the technological breakthroughs that Toyota and Honda have pioneered in making their hybrid engines could be used with diesel engines, too, right? Regenerative braking, continuously variable transmission, fast-starting and stopping of the engine - there's no reason these can't be eventually used in virtually every automobile.
Intresting. Did it open instantly, like most PDFs do, or did it choke at first?
I just quit and tried it again. Took 15 seconds to display anything, but only seemed to use 150 MB of RAM or so.
I've G4/867 and 640 MB RAM, so a little less ram... but I don't think that's the problem; if I open the file in Acrobat, it's memory consumption stays at pretty normal level. But there is apparently something wrong in my system, if that's the only one that chokes.
Yeah, that's odd...
Well, I've got a brand new 1,8 GHz / 512 MB G5 box at work, which is not yet moved into production. I think I'll have to try open it on that, just to see what happens.
Should open much faster, I'd hope...rendering a large graphic like that is CPU-limited.
I think this is a pretty odd PDF, because normally Apple's PDF engine is much faster than the one in Acrobat.
I can't find my name...there's another Mazzoni, but not me. I just double-checked that I paid...I still have the PayPal receipt. Anyone else in this boat?
AFAIK Apple's Quartz PDF implementation is licensed from Adobe, but Apple's Preview.app still fails miserably to show the ad - it hangs swapping like hell, eating well over one gigabyte of virtual memory and never showing the ad. The only way to open it on OS X (10.3.7) I found was to fire up Adobe Acrobat.
I was able to open it. Powerbook G4/800, 1 GB RAM, OS X 10.3.6 (I know, I should upgrade 10.3.7...).
Ironically, though, I can't find my name! There's another Mazzoni there, but not me. I found my receipt, so I'm sure I paid for my name...
Take a look at the loss figures and explain to me, please, how the most successful military campaign in the history of warfare can be characterized by the phrase "not enough armor."
The initial invasion was the most successful military campaign in history. The current occupation is rapidly turning into a Vietnam-like quagmire. The number of new U.S. troops killed has been growing each month, and the number of seriously wounded has been growing even more, and there's no end in sight to the instability. Does that sound like a war we're winning?
Plus, even if the total numbers are low for a war, the fact is that troops are being sent on dangerous missions without enough armor, and that if they all had armor, fewer troops would have died. You can't contest those facts, and therefore the original statement that "we can't even supply our troops with enough armor" is true.
Re:I will help YOU get a JOB! (Programming puzzles
on
Programming Puzzles
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· Score: 1
Here's the thing. I can look at each example and see a solution. But how important is it to actually give the solution?
If you can't figure it out, how you reason through it is just as important to the interviewer.
Computer science has devolved into programming. Is the code that important, or the solution in regular syntax?
No, only 5% of C.S. jobs really require true C.S., the rest really are just programming jobs. And for the jobs that really do require C.S., I'm sure they'd far prefer a candidate who is not only good at the theory, but knows several programming languages inside out. (Good interviewers will let you choose one of several popular programming languages to use to answer most of your questions in.)
I think most people would find this difficult because they forget how to program in these languages, but that doesn't mean they can't see the answer
If the job involves mostly GUI programming, or server-side web app development, then this test is just nitpicky. But if the job involves writing device drivers in C, this test is totally fair. Someone who couldn't breeze their way through all of these questions would be exactly the type of person who would be likely to waste 2-3 days tracking down a silly bug involving idiosyncracies of the C language.
Nice try. While "food != databits" may be correct, the reality is that "effort == effort" and while duplication of data is easy, it's the developers' efforts that he's referring to.
I'm sorry, but that's simply not true at all. I don't care how long you spent on something; if it's great, it's great, but if it's crap, it's crap. The GPL makes it possible to write high-quality software with far less effort; so little effort in fact that many people are willing to donate their time.
I've written software that's taken months or even years of effort to complete, now I'm supposed to give it away for free? Why?
Nobody's forcing you to. But stop complaining when somebody else writes the same software in a fraction of the man-hours it took you and gives it away for free. Oh, and how were they able to do it so fast? Because they took existing GPL code as a starting point and built on it to do something else.
What about the Guy Who Wants to Make a Few Bucks Writing Useful Software So He Can Pay His Rent?
There are lots of options if you're pro-GPL but need to pay your rent:
Work as a consultant, modifying existing GPL programs
Write a really useful library and then dual-license it as GPL and commercial; that way the open-source world benefits for free, but commercial companies that want to use your library pay you
Write shareware programs, and GPL the previous version of the program every time you release a new version. Your biggest fans will gladly pay for the newest version, but everyone benefits by getting to see and modify your old code, once you've had a chance to make some money.
Build a website that provides a really useful or entertaining service. Release the source code that runs the site under the GPL, but use advertising or subscriptions to make money off of your site.
VXworks does not even offer memory protection and the ram can get fragmented. Not to sound trollish but I would pick something like Qnx or NetBSD for any critical app or embedded device.
I think QNX is a valid alternative. But is NetBSD hard-real-time?
For those who are wondering, JPL is very aware of the shortcomings of VxWorks and has seriously considered other alternatives for every mission. Keep in mind that the choice of OS has to be made years before launch, so at the time the OS for the 2004 Mars Rovers was decided on, many options that are possibilities today were not contenders. Also keep in mind that in spite of many shortcomings, VxWorks is a known quantity. JPL has been working with it for years and had a lot of in-house expertise with it.
There are a few groups at JPL that have been actively experimenting with other options, including RTLinux and a few different variants of hard-real-time Java (basically Java with explicit memory management and no garbage collection).
Now that this sense of ownership is gone (and has been replaced by a new breed of woman who have all the privileges and none of the responsiblites of marriage), men are leaving in droves. Hence the high devorice rate and number of fathers who won't support their children.
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Your rock of choice is this thing you mentioned called "AMD64." (No idea what that is. Never heard of it. I'm taking your word for it that it's a real thing.)
Never heard of AMD64? He's talking about the AMD chips (Athlon and Opteron) that are 100% compatible with x86 (think "Pentium") but are faster in just about every regard, no more expensive (sometimes cheaper), and also happen to run 64-bit code if you have any (think: more than 4 GB of RAM).
I'm sorry, but being excited about AMD64 is not a leet fanboy thing. They really are awesome processors, and they're beating the socks off of anything from Intel these days for the vast majority of high-end computing users.
No, Mac OS X 10.3 and below are strictly 32-bit. They run on a 64-big G5 processor by virtue of the fact that the 64-bit PowerPC is 100% compatible with 32-bit code.
That's mostly true. Applications are still limited to a 32-bit address space each. However the system can deal with 8 GB of RAM on a G5, so it's not like OS X 10.3 is completely ignoring the 64-bit registers...
I don't know if you'd noticed, but you can't buy anything BUT a 3D card new these days.
Unless you have a budget PC with integrated video, of course. Most integrated video has very limited 3D support these days, but probably not enough for Longhorn.
MOD TROLL DOWN
It's quite obvious the parent doesn't know anything about the topic and is just trolling.
Dude, if I made a factual error, go ahead and correct me. But calling me a troll just because I'm skeptical of Longhorn (based on the information in the article) is uncalled for.
Is this going to be another case of where Microsoft tries to copy Apple, but misses the point?
Mac OS X 10.2 introduced "Quartz Extreme", which uses your graphics card to composite your screen. This meant that dragging windows around now required almost no CPU power at all. In 10.3, they introduced several 3-D effects to enhance the interface - most notably a rotating cube when you switch users.
There are two key points that Microsoft seems to be missing, though:
* Mac OS X looks exactly the same if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card, and screen redrawing is not too slow. Having a graphics card just makes the system more responsive because the CPU is doing less of the work.
* The system degrades gracefully - if you don't have a powerful enough graphics card or run out of video RAM, certain 3D transitions may be skipped. But everything will still function, and everything will look the same.
It's too early to tell, but it is starting to sound like Microsoft may be creating a new interface that requires a super graphics card, leaving those with only cheap integrated video with a completely different interface. To me that sounds like a recipe for tech support hell - novice users won't understand why their screen doesn't look like someone else's.
Dude, contextual menus rock. I'm constantly anoyed by my Powerbook's lack of them. Without contextual menus I have to hunt around through all the different menus up top and try to find what I want. With contextual menus, I just right click and its there. What could be more simple?
Either click and hold, control-click, or use an external USB mouse or trackpad with a right button. That's what I do. No need to hunt through all of the menus!
I don't agree about his C thing either. If you really want to know how the machine works, why not learn directly assembly instead?
But which assembly language do you want to learn? You could learn x86, since it's the most popular, but that actually gives you a pretty bad idea of what the CPU is really doing, since x86 has very few registers, while all modern x86 CPUs actually have lots of registers and do on-the-fly register renaming. Or you could learn Alpha assembly, arguably the best-designed, but with little practical value. Or PowerPC assembly, which has one of the largest sets of extra instructions you can use to optimize. But in 5-10 years, any specific assembly skills you have will be out of date.
Programming in C shields you from processor-specific details 99% of the time, but is still close enough to the processor that you can understand what's really going on. It forces you to deal with memory management.
C is still the only language used for writing device drivers, operating system kernels, and other programming languages. There's a reason for this. C is the perfect balance between low-level and high-level. It's low-level enough that you can express anything a modern processor is capable of doing. It's high-level enough that you can write modular, readable code (unlike assembly). That's not to say you should use C for everything, but it is critical to know it.
And when you actually want to produce something, switch to Python
No argument there, I love Python. But I agree with Joel in the sense that I know how to write good Python code because I know what is going on "under the hood".
I was wondering if the university you attend matters in the long term? I'm a freshman right now at a university close to home with a scholorship. The university isnt known for computerscience and the cs classes are really easy. I was wondering if it is worth it to transfer to another (more expensive, well known) university.
Transfering to a school with a better C.S. department will give you several things. There will be more good professors, many of them experts in the field (certainly not all will be good teachers, but there will be several good ones). There will be more resources and opportunities (specialized hardware and software, research projects that hire undergrads). The biggest difference, though, is that the other students in your class will be better on average, and that will make a huge difference in your education.
Every time you have a group project, or have a question and the professor isn't handy, you'll be glad you're at a school with more smart and motivated C.S. students. And when you're looking for jobs, you'll have far more friends who are looking for similar challenging and interesting positions like you, so you won't be the only one.
In the long run, I don't think what university you attended will make a difference to the people hiring you. In the short run (your first job out of college) it will likely be an important factor. But studying with other bright and motivated students is still the best reason to try to go to a good school.
No more than running as a regular user on anything else is.
.exe files. When you double-click on an installer, the installer basically never checks to see if it has permissions. It just tries to install and then fails with a cryptic error message if you weren't logged in as an admin. Why the heck doesn't it just pop up a password dialog? I understand that "Run As..." isn't that much trouble, but try teaching your mom to install software that way; it's just not intuitive!
Clearly you've never used Mac OS X. Apple got it right. You always run as a normal user, it's impossible to log in as "root". However, every operation that requires root priveleges simply asks for your password. Want to drag a file to a folder that you don't have permissions in? A dialog box pops up: "The item 'X' could not be moved because 'StartupItems' cannot be modified" with two buttons: OK and Authenticate. Click Authenticate, type your password, and you're set.
Programs that require doing several operations in a row as root use a special "padlock" Mac OS X widget. Click it to authenticate once, then you can do a series of operations as root.
Even on Linux, this is also rarely a problem because people tend to either install programs on the command line (in which case it's easy to pop up a root terminal for that purpose), or else they use a package manager to install everything, which makes it easy.
But on Windows, installers are
Don't forget the dozens of Windows programs that simply won't run unless you're logged in as admin.
Hell...I'm new to Mac..and I'm still trying to figure out how to get X to run on OSX...much less X applications. I've to OSX 10.2.8...Most everything I've seen says you need XCode Tools 1.2 or later, but, when I go to that Mac dev. site...it says you have to have Panther to run this version or higher of XCode.
The developer tools CD comes with every new Mac. I'm not sure where you could find a copy online, but just ask someone who bought a Mac with 10.2 if you can't find yours.
You'll be much happier if you upgrade to Panther, though - I'm having a hell of a time figuring out how to get open source stuff to run on the Mac..and I'm usually pretty decent at finding info...but, don't seem to have much luck for the mac...(G3 iBook, 800Mhz).
First install the latest developer tools you can, then almost everything will just compile and run.
Use Fink to get lots of common open-source software without compiling it.
Smart people are smart, but hard working people get the job done.
A hundred hard-working people could generate tens of thousands of lines of code a day to solve a difficult problem.
One smart person could realize that by modifying the problem slightly, it can be solved in a hundred lines of code.
Google gets a thousand resumes a day. There's no shortage of hard-working people in the world. They can afford to limit themselves to people who are very, very smart, and also hard-working enough to get things done. I think it's worked very well for them, don't you?
I work at JPL. I'm happy that JPL/Caltech is entering the parade, but I'm not thrilled about the design of the float. I would have preferred it look more like a NASA robot (e.g. Mars Exploration Rover) rather than a transformer toy from the 80's. But the floatcam is an excellent idea!
Isn't ford coming out with a hybrid SUV next year? Hybrid is just a way to get power, where as SUV is a body type.
Yes, the Ford Escape hybrid has already been announced, but note that the engine was made by Toyota! So far Toyota and Honda are the only ones to make a hybrid engine.
There is no reason to think that they won't be hybrid big hulking SUVs that get the same gas mileage as a mid-sized car.
No reason except the basic laws of physics. With the same technology, the mid-sized car will always get better mileage. For example, the Ford Escape Hybrid gets 30 mpg (if you're lucky) compared to 22 mpg for the non-hybrid version, while the Toyota Prius gets 50+ mpg (if you're lucky) and definitely 45 mpg for average driving. Oh, and the 2004+ Prius is technically a mid-sized.
The Prius gets about 45mpg in realistic useage (based on the independent reviews I've read). That's worse than most european diesel cars get - diesel cars that have decent performance and aren't made of plastic in an attempt to compensate for the weight of lugging two complete power sources about all the time. Oh yes, and they're a helluva lot cheaper to make for the same reason.
I have a Prius, and you're right, I do get about 45 mpg. Keep in mind, though, that diesel is currently a little bit better than hybrid technology in terms of efficiency, but it lags far behind in terms of emissions...the hybrid is far, far better for the environment.
Also, I fail to see how hybrid and diesel are mutually exclusive. Many of the technological breakthroughs that Toyota and Honda have pioneered in making their hybrid engines could be used with diesel engines, too, right? Regenerative braking, continuously variable transmission, fast-starting and stopping of the engine - there's no reason these can't be eventually used in virtually every automobile.
Intresting. Did it open instantly, like most PDFs do, or did it choke at first?
I just quit and tried it again. Took 15 seconds to display anything, but only seemed to use 150 MB of RAM or so.
I've G4/867 and 640 MB RAM, so a little less ram... but I don't think that's the problem; if I open the file in Acrobat, it's memory consumption stays at pretty normal level. But there is apparently something wrong in my system, if that's the only one that chokes.
Yeah, that's odd...
Well, I've got a brand new 1,8 GHz / 512 MB G5 box at work, which is not yet moved into production. I think I'll have to try open it on that, just to see what happens.
Should open much faster, I'd hope...rendering a large graphic like that is CPU-limited.
I think this is a pretty odd PDF, because normally Apple's PDF engine is much faster than the one in Acrobat.
I can't find my name...there's another Mazzoni, but not me. I just double-checked that I paid...I still have the PayPal receipt. Anyone else in this boat?
I sent an email to their address for corrections.
AFAIK Apple's Quartz PDF implementation is licensed from Adobe, but Apple's Preview.app still fails miserably to show the ad - it hangs swapping like hell, eating well over one gigabyte of virtual memory and never showing the ad. The only way to open it on OS X (10.3.7) I found was to fire up Adobe Acrobat.
I was able to open it. Powerbook G4/800, 1 GB RAM, OS X 10.3.6 (I know, I should upgrade 10.3.7...).
Ironically, though, I can't find my name! There's another Mazzoni there, but not me. I found my receipt, so I'm sure I paid for my name...
You had some great points, up until here:
Take a look at the loss figures and explain to me, please, how the most successful military campaign in the history of warfare can be characterized by the phrase "not enough armor."
The initial invasion was the most successful military campaign in history. The current occupation is rapidly turning into a Vietnam-like quagmire. The number of new U.S. troops killed has been growing each month, and the number of seriously wounded has been growing even more, and there's no end in sight to the instability. Does that sound like a war we're winning?
Plus, even if the total numbers are low for a war, the fact is that troops are being sent on dangerous missions without enough armor, and that if they all had armor, fewer troops would have died. You can't contest those facts, and therefore the original statement that "we can't even supply our troops with enough armor" is true.
Here's the thing. I can look at each example and see a solution. But how important is it to actually give the solution?
If you can't figure it out, how you reason through it is just as important to the interviewer.
Computer science has devolved into programming. Is the code that important, or the solution in regular syntax?
No, only 5% of C.S. jobs really require true C.S., the rest really are just programming jobs. And for the jobs that really do require C.S., I'm sure they'd far prefer a candidate who is not only good at the theory, but knows several programming languages inside out. (Good interviewers will let you choose one of several popular programming languages to use to answer most of your questions in.)
I think most people would find this difficult because they forget how to program in these languages, but that doesn't mean they can't see the answer
If the job involves mostly GUI programming, or server-side web app development, then this test is just nitpicky. But if the job involves writing device drivers in C, this test is totally fair. Someone who couldn't breeze their way through all of these questions would be exactly the type of person who would be likely to waste 2-3 days tracking down a silly bug involving idiosyncracies of the C language.
Nice try. While "food != databits" may be correct, the reality is that "effort == effort" and while duplication of data is easy, it's the developers' efforts that he's referring to.
I'm sorry, but that's simply not true at all. I don't care how long you spent on something; if it's great, it's great, but if it's crap, it's crap. The GPL makes it possible to write high-quality software with far less effort; so little effort in fact that many people are willing to donate their time.
I've written software that's taken months or even years of effort to complete, now I'm supposed to give it away for free? Why?
Nobody's forcing you to. But stop complaining when somebody else writes the same software in a fraction of the man-hours it took you and gives it away for free. Oh, and how were they able to do it so fast? Because they took existing GPL code as a starting point and built on it to do something else.
There are lots of options if you're pro-GPL but need to pay your rent:
NetBSD is not Hard Real Time. But most applications don't need true Real Time behavior.
Um, yeah, but we're talking about spacecraft here. I think that qualifies as an application that needs true Real Time behavior.
VXworks does not even offer memory protection and the ram can get fragmented. Not to sound trollish but I would pick something like Qnx or NetBSD for any critical app or embedded device.
I think QNX is a valid alternative. But is NetBSD hard-real-time?
For those who are wondering, JPL is very aware of the shortcomings of VxWorks and has seriously considered other alternatives for every mission. Keep in mind that the choice of OS has to be made years before launch, so at the time the OS for the 2004 Mars Rovers was decided on, many options that are possibilities today were not contenders. Also keep in mind that in spite of many shortcomings, VxWorks is a known quantity. JPL has been working with it for years and had a lot of in-house expertise with it.
There are a few groups at JPL that have been actively experimenting with other options, including RTLinux and a few different variants of hard-real-time Java (basically Java with explicit memory management and no garbage collection).
Now that this sense of ownership is gone (and has been replaced by a new breed of woman who have all the privileges and none of the responsiblites of marriage), men are leaving in droves. Hence the high devorice rate and number of fathers who won't support their children.
I call bullshit, since most divorces are initiated by women