Guy 2: Hey! You got political viewpoints in my video game!
Guy 1: You got video games in my political viewpoint!
Both: Eeew.
Really, who cares? Area 51 was about shooting aliens. So the new one is shooting rogue agents. It doesn't matter if it's that or terrorists or what. How many people do you REALLY think this game is going to make stop and think "Wow, our government's actions could have serious implications in the future." It's a simple shoot-em-up. It's not going to happen.
Get over yourself. A shoot-em-up is not a genre that makes getting a viewpoint across easy or natural (like an RPG or even FPS might).
Can someone explain the 90/65nm thing to me? I don't ever remember hearing about a chip that was manufactured on two scales on one chip. Does this refer to some chips are current fabbed at 90nm and some at 65nm, or are they really hybrid where some of the circuits are at 90nm and some are at 65nm on the same die?
The article doesn't contain much more than the summary, and does not explain this point.
Maybe we should teach the basics. I don't remember my CS program (this was '01-'05 or so) teaching anything about working with threads. Everything I know about threads and threaded programming has been picked up by reading books on threading, experimenting with threading, and what I've learned on my job from others who know threading. I'm not going to claim I'm that competent through.
What do I know about NUMA and other complex issues of thread handling and modern computers? What I know in that category came from reading about the Linux Kernel and following it's development. Articles explaining what they were doing and why (especially on LWN.net) have taught me a TON.
But the interfaces to program threads in C/C++ are external libraries or fork. Java has threads built in but it still feels like quite a bit of work for something that should be simpler. People talk about Erlang, but I don't know how much better it is (I've never used it).
The debugging instruction I was taught in school was basically what was necessary to help us get our programs done. I've learned quite a bit more since getting my job. And god forbid they teach us profiling or something. Let alone would they try to teach us about mutli-threaded programming or ESPECIALLY debugging it.
Maybe one of the reasons we so few multi-threaded programs (besides making algorithms parallel isn't easy) is how many people are actually trained how to do it.
You don't even how to teach students how to do all this stuff, just give them a basic knowledge so they can keep an eye towards it in the future when they need to learn more, instead of the sink-or-swim learning situation they may get stuck in.
I had Cygwin installed on my old Windows box. Someone always mentions it (I was just waiting for a comment like yours). It does help a lot, but it's not integrated well (as you would expect). Installing it and software is weird. It just doesn't always feel "right". OS X doesn't have that problem since it's based on UNIX.
The shell in Linux and on OS X is like a big powerful truck. The Windows shell is a bit like a Ford Taurus... you can use it to move things around, and if they are big you could always strap them to the roof with duct-tape... but it's no truck. Cygwin in a serious step up, but it's an El Camino. It's a truck... but it's not the same thing.
I'm glad Cygwin exists, but it's no substitute for the real thing.
I agree. I've used all three for large periods, but my current computer is a Mac and when I replace it I intend to get another Mac. In general, I find it better than Windows. There are tons of little annoyances that I run into almost daily using my PC at work that I don't have when using my Mac. But I also like it for it's "best of both worlds" that it provides me. Commercial applications and an extremely polished UI in all places (where parts of Linux can get hairy, although it's gotten better), but the UNIX command line and GCC and all that for when I feel like fiddling low level/programming/etc. A real CLI that I can use (let's face it, the windows shell is ancient and pales compared to Bash. Maybe when Monad comes out).
These facts have provided me with great benefits besides my basic preference for the Mac. When I worked on my senior project (LAMP site) while my friends were testing on the test box the school was letting us use, I was able to run the whole thing on my laptop easily because all the components were already there and easily setup (where with Windows I would have had to download/install/configure each part). When I changed code I could test it instantly, no "copy to server, test, edit, copy" over the slow connection. I could work on it without an internet connection, or worrying about interfering with what my partners were working on (overwriting them).
The only "long-standing" problem I have with my Mac is the lack of big games, but I don't have a ton of time for them anymore anyway so my consoles work fine for that (although I miss a good game of CounterStrike, I'm on PPC so I can't run BootCamp).
The understanding I had was that new SD channels (at some point within the next two years or so) would be MPEG4 as well to save bandwidth on the satellite. I realize HD was doing that first (which is a big deal if you have a HD DirecTiVo), but I was under the impression it was happening with SD as well.
However, I moved to a Series 3 when I got a HDTV because I knew about the HDTV situation with the HD DirecTiVos, and that they aren't sold any more (only the replacements which I haven't heard kind things about). Oddly enough, DirecTV got me hooked on TiVo, and their policy towards them drove me away.
Sorry. It's obsoleted. I had a DirecTiVo (non-HD) which I loved, but I replaced it with a Series 3. The fact is, not only does DirecTV hold back updates (I can understand MRV, but why not let us use Ethernet instead of a phone line?), but DirecTV is moving to MPEG4 with their new satellites. All the boxes they sell now support it (I believe). As they bring new channels on in MPEG4, you won't be able to view them. As they switch old channels over, you will lose them.
They are nice DVRs, and can be hacked to do all sorts of stuff. But they are obsolete. It may not be a problem now, but it will be within the next two years.
I've got to say, I've got a Series 3 and I love it. That said, it's great that they are doing this on Series 3 as well as the Series 2 machines. It's no secret (if you follow TiVos) that some of the Series 2 features (like multi-room-viewing) aren't available on the Series 3 (stupid Cable Labs). Series 3 is also a little behind of some features (Series 2 has folders/recently deleted and such, Series 3 doesn't yet but they showed it at CES). It's nice to see a feature available for both.
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of HD content, but I completely understand why.
I wish I got to test this. I'd love to.
I especially like that once you've purchased something you can download it again for free. It would be untenable if you couldn't.
Perhaps Ogg for all internal sounds to a device, and the MP3 capability for sounds the user wants to add so they don't have to use a "weird custom proprietary" format (despite the the fact it's not).
I think this is the whole reason. If someone is looking for a chip that does Ogg, they can choose this one. If they are looking for a chip that does MP3, they can choose this one.
Business wise, which is better? Selling an MP3 decoder chip for $0.10 each (just a guess), or selling an MP3/Ogg decoder chip for $0.10 each? Since there are no patents, adding Ogg support is free, but adds value. Lots of people may want chips that can play MP3s (GPS, Cell Phones, MP3 players, calculators, EVERYTHING plays MP3s), but how many would buy a chip that only did Ogg? I doubt that market is nearly as large. Added value.
That's my guess. Your product (possibly with a little bit of extra programming) could even use both. MP3 for things you want at a higher quality, Ogg for things less important. Maybe you are upgrading your old product. You can keep all the old samples MP3 and just add the new samples as Ogg. Who knows.
I had forgotten about XNA. As for the filesystem, it's a good thing users don't need to know all about it. But I run into people who don't even seem to know that it's a hierarchy but use computers quite a bit. That's the kind of thing that I expect they should know. These people are easy to spot, they save everything in My Documents and can't find it if it's not there or someone opens a file somewhere else on their computer so the Open/Save dialogs present a different location by default.
I'm doing just fine. I'm working for a small company which I liked (that's a small sacrifice compared to a larger company that could afford more), but I think most of it was just the market I'm in (low cost of living). But I also didn't have internships to prove my experience, just my senior project and what I could prove in interviews and through my work as a teacher's assistant. There are also a lot of CS people here because of both enrollment during the bubble, and one of the major tech employers here that hired TONS of programmers downsizing numerous times in recent years, putting experienced people in the market willing to take less to get a job to pay the bills for their families.
That's true. I can see why they think like that. They is a ton more information available today online about programming than just a few years ago. I mostly went to school so I could get my programming skills rubber stamped so I could get a job instead of trying to prove my worth on my own. The benefit to it was not only that I have that proof, but that I learned a ton more and got humbled about how good of a programmer I was and how much I knew/didn't know.
They may think like that (which may actually be quite true if they just want to design web sites that look nice, or something like that), but there is a lot they would learn whether they know it or not.
That said, if they are passonite in the field, one of the reasons to go to school is to learn more even if they think they already know enough. That was another of the resons I went, because I knew there would was more for me to learn.
PS: Yes, I realize the cognitive dissonance of knowing enough to program and being very good so I could get a job while not knowing enough about programming to be good and get a job.
They might be in that group. They may be someone like me who likes to mess with computers but decided to go with something that interests them more (knowing myself now, I would have loved a degree in psychology or to have studied photography). But that wouldn't have taken away what I learned myself about programming. Many people get degrees in one thing before finding they are very good at something else. The kind of people you are talking about are in that group. And that group can often provide an interesting new prospective that can be valuable (in programming, this can often best be seen in UI and functionality issues, since a degree in history probably won't give you a different perspective on how to write a loop).
It's famous that Einstein didn't do well at Math as a kid. KFC's Sanders didn't start a restaurant chain until he was in his 60s. You may not even realize you like/are good at computers until you are much older than college age, so you already have a degree in something else.
That depends. Are you talking about history, which doesn't help you with programming but makes you a more well rounded person; or are you talking about some kind of complex math which you may not see the value of but really does have a ton to do with programming?
If it's the former, I understand your grief but we all have to go though with it, and you just may discover other subjects you're interested in during the course of taking those courses.
If it's the later, maybe this isn't the field for you. Maybe you want to do something else related that doesn't require that kind of knowledge, like light system administration, computer repair, or maybe another field entirely. But even if you specialize yourself in computers (like DB training only), you will still need that stuff if you want to be really good at your job.
Computers, and especially computer science, are NOT for people who don't like Math.
The foreigners thing might change. I know companies where I am are looking all over. But part of the reason for that is that there are TONS of people in the local market, and many of them are idiots. They are the people who rushed into the field when it was supposed to make you rich. They may have made it through school, but they are just not good at it. So you have to weed all of them out, and then you're left with the usual bell curve of people. It makes finding people very tough.
But if you can pay less for the same quality of programmer, which just might turn out to be great, you have a decent reason to look overseas for a programmer if you are running a business. Less of a gamble.
As the oversupply of get-rich-quick people slowly disappears as they go onto other careers and manage to find jobs, things will get better and salaries will rise.
We've talked about this on/. before. Many of the things I'm about to say will probably be in other comments, or you've seen in the past. I'll try to give a whole picture though. I should also mention where I'm coming from. The article is from the UK, but I'm in the US (almost dead center). I graduated with a degree in CIS (Computer Information Services) around June, and I've had a job as a software engineer for about 6 months now with a great little company.
Now I'm the kind of person who has always been interested in computers. Like many/.ers, I would probably have pursued this field if it paid next to nothing. While my salary is nothing to sneeze at, it's nothing compared to the 60-70k number people seemed to like to throw around during the bubble.
When I entered college in 2001, there were TONS of people who were in it for the money. That was clear by what they knew, how hard they tried, etc. There were more who seemed to think it would be interesting but weren't sure they wanted to do computers. There were others like me who breezed through the early programming courses because we were self-taught already in such simple things (basic loops, etc).
As I went through school, the bubble burst and the idea of instant riches from computers disappeared. Biomed seems to be the new instant riches career.
The biggest attraction to the field I see now for the average person is games. Everyone wants to make games. You like video games? Why not make them! You can get a CS degree or go to one of the many colleges offering game focused degrees (both accredited and fly-by-night). If you're on Windows, you have no chance at being exposed to programming. When I was younger we had HyperCard on the Mac (fantastic), BASIC on DOS/Windows, and you could learn. Today, Windows doesn't come with anything to learn programming. There is free stuff out there, but it doesn't come on the computer. Combine this with the fact that in the DOS days you could make something decent looking with BASIC or Hypercard that looked somewhat comparable with "real" software. Try that with today with anything. GUIs aren't easy. Even VB requires some rather abstract concepts (like events).
Some schools are not much better. The school I attended (DeVry) has scraped their computer program (which wasn't bad) and has replaced it with the "tracks" system. Now you don't get a CS degree, you can get a degree that focuses on database programming, or computer forensics ("It's computers, combined with CSI! Fight crime!"), or something else. It is nowhere near as general and well rounded as it was.
CS degrees seem to be being dumbed down (which seems at least due to trying to attract more people during the bubble). My local state school (which I attended for a while) had a pretty good CS program, but they've were dumbing it down as I left (putting off harder classes, using "easier"/trendier languages, etc.)
But like the article said. Computers aren't magic boxes any more. They are a normal part of life. They are like cars. Most people don't care how to make a car, only some people will try to do that for a living. We may be near that point with computers. Most of the children I've met in the last few years may use computers a ton, but don't care much about learning how to make stuff for them. They don't even have a passing interest in trying to find out the beginning. I may not know enough to make a car (far from it), but I understand some of the principles behind it. I know about the internal combustion engine.
I don't expect them to want to know about RCU, radix-trees, elevator schedulers, memory mapping, and other relatively esoteric things. But many don't even know about programs/operating systems/processes, or even really understand the filesystem hierarchy. They can get around quite well, and they've been trained in how to make flashy Powerpoint presentations about pointless things (I can't tell you how great a skill I think that is that the public school taught my 13 year
What is the purpose of being relocatable on x86? I don't remember reading anything about that so what is the point? Is that already possible on other architectures or is x86 the first (as it often is)? I realize the point of making user programs relocatable, but the kernel? The only thing I can think of is that this either has to do with paravirtualization (to speed it up when the kernel isn't at the base of address space), or for replacing the kernel on a running system (can't remember the name, but the idea would be to load the new kernel, transfer into it, then copy it down to the base of memory as you're executing).
I have mod points and I figured this would be a good discussion, but I'll reply to you instead.
First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war. They are not a format. Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Dual format PLAYERS may win the PLAYER WAR, but the disc format war has no real hybrids right now.
Second, these discussions constantly suppose that someone will win. I've seen one comment so far that I agree with: by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close. These things may just be failed. Too early for cheap prices and large HDTV adoption, too late to enjoy a long advantage over internet distribution.
This country has over a 50% divorce rate. People don't treat marriages like they used to. That's why there are books like Dr. Laura's last two, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, and The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage. Ignoring what people think of Dr. Laura, there are tons of other similar books on the market. Look at the influences most people have for how a good marriage is and you find divorced parents, sitcoms with snotty wives and husbands who act like 12 year olds, and movies and other popular culture that say similar things ("Men don't have feelings" and such).
I wonder what the percentage time is of happily married couples?
And does this spend include time at work? Because I work at a computer all day, so without staying up at night there would be no way for my wife to compete on a time basis (if I was married).
"The researchers hope is that by finding a way to cure the condition in cats, they will be one step closer to getting regulatory approval to cause the disease for fun since it would them be curable. PETA was unavailable for comment, but the message on their answering machine hinted that they would not look favorably on this idea.:
This problem that's been used to crack both BR and HD is basically unfixable the way things are isn't it? It's an interesting read on the forum how he did it (page 2, I think). The problem is that the key is in plaintext in memory. But it HAS TO BE doesn't it? You couldn't use it if it was still encrypted, and so you'll have to decode it and put it in memory at some point. The only fix to this would be what a poster on that forum mentioned wouldn't it? You rely on a piece of silicon you control to do all the decoding and such, which would require a BluRay player card or something. You'd have to basically get rid of software players.
Bad Activision. Bad. Take a game from a great developer who basically IS music games that aren't DDR (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II) on the main consoles, and give it to... Neversoft. Who hasn't made a music game. Who took their successful and great Tony Hawk games and kept grinding out sequels as the series went into the ground, adding in features to make it "extreme" like THUG, THUG2, etc. The games are getting closer and closer to being BMX: XXX.
Bye bye Guitar Hero. You were a great series. I was hoping you'd bring on more music games. Now you'll just be a "what went so wrong" post somewhere by this time next year.
I've heard good arguments for this (more people hacking, less incentive for a gray/black market, buy one for the price of two so the second goes to a kid), but could they be taking this position because of production? After all if they want to give a million of these away and people like/.ers buy 100,000... while that would mean money to give 100,000 laptops away to kids we just bit 10% of their production away. I seem to remember reading somewhere that based on the number they will be giving out it will be one of the top 4 laptop "brands" in the world almost immediately. Perhaps they simply can't spare the production at this time?
Slashdot Mirror
Guy 1: What a crash.
Guy 2: Hey! You got political viewpoints in my video game!
Guy 1: You got video games in my political viewpoint!
Both: Eeew.
Really, who cares? Area 51 was about shooting aliens. So the new one is shooting rogue agents. It doesn't matter if it's that or terrorists or what. How many people do you REALLY think this game is going to make stop and think "Wow, our government's actions could have serious implications in the future." It's a simple shoot-em-up. It's not going to happen.
Get over yourself. A shoot-em-up is not a genre that makes getting a viewpoint across easy or natural (like an RPG or even FPS might).
Can someone explain the 90/65nm thing to me? I don't ever remember hearing about a chip that was manufactured on two scales on one chip. Does this refer to some chips are current fabbed at 90nm and some at 65nm, or are they really hybrid where some of the circuits are at 90nm and some are at 65nm on the same die?
The article doesn't contain much more than the summary, and does not explain this point.
Maybe we should teach the basics. I don't remember my CS program (this was '01-'05 or so) teaching anything about working with threads. Everything I know about threads and threaded programming has been picked up by reading books on threading, experimenting with threading, and what I've learned on my job from others who know threading. I'm not going to claim I'm that competent through.
What do I know about NUMA and other complex issues of thread handling and modern computers? What I know in that category came from reading about the Linux Kernel and following it's development. Articles explaining what they were doing and why (especially on LWN.net) have taught me a TON.
But the interfaces to program threads in C/C++ are external libraries or fork. Java has threads built in but it still feels like quite a bit of work for something that should be simpler. People talk about Erlang, but I don't know how much better it is (I've never used it).
The debugging instruction I was taught in school was basically what was necessary to help us get our programs done. I've learned quite a bit more since getting my job. And god forbid they teach us profiling or something. Let alone would they try to teach us about mutli-threaded programming or ESPECIALLY debugging it.
Maybe one of the reasons we so few multi-threaded programs (besides making algorithms parallel isn't easy) is how many people are actually trained how to do it.
You don't even how to teach students how to do all this stuff, just give them a basic knowledge so they can keep an eye towards it in the future when they need to learn more, instead of the sink-or-swim learning situation they may get stuck in.
I had Cygwin installed on my old Windows box. Someone always mentions it (I was just waiting for a comment like yours). It does help a lot, but it's not integrated well (as you would expect). Installing it and software is weird. It just doesn't always feel "right". OS X doesn't have that problem since it's based on UNIX.
The shell in Linux and on OS X is like a big powerful truck. The Windows shell is a bit like a Ford Taurus... you can use it to move things around, and if they are big you could always strap them to the roof with duct-tape... but it's no truck. Cygwin in a serious step up, but it's an El Camino. It's a truck... but it's not the same thing.
I'm glad Cygwin exists, but it's no substitute for the real thing.
I agree. I've used all three for large periods, but my current computer is a Mac and when I replace it I intend to get another Mac. In general, I find it better than Windows. There are tons of little annoyances that I run into almost daily using my PC at work that I don't have when using my Mac. But I also like it for it's "best of both worlds" that it provides me. Commercial applications and an extremely polished UI in all places (where parts of Linux can get hairy, although it's gotten better), but the UNIX command line and GCC and all that for when I feel like fiddling low level/programming/etc. A real CLI that I can use (let's face it, the windows shell is ancient and pales compared to Bash. Maybe when Monad comes out).
These facts have provided me with great benefits besides my basic preference for the Mac. When I worked on my senior project (LAMP site) while my friends were testing on the test box the school was letting us use, I was able to run the whole thing on my laptop easily because all the components were already there and easily setup (where with Windows I would have had to download/install/configure each part). When I changed code I could test it instantly, no "copy to server, test, edit, copy" over the slow connection. I could work on it without an internet connection, or worrying about interfering with what my partners were working on (overwriting them).
The only "long-standing" problem I have with my Mac is the lack of big games, but I don't have a ton of time for them anymore anyway so my consoles work fine for that (although I miss a good game of CounterStrike, I'm on PPC so I can't run BootCamp).
The understanding I had was that new SD channels (at some point within the next two years or so) would be MPEG4 as well to save bandwidth on the satellite. I realize HD was doing that first (which is a big deal if you have a HD DirecTiVo), but I was under the impression it was happening with SD as well.
However, I moved to a Series 3 when I got a HDTV because I knew about the HDTV situation with the HD DirecTiVos, and that they aren't sold any more (only the replacements which I haven't heard kind things about). Oddly enough, DirecTV got me hooked on TiVo, and their policy towards them drove me away.
Sorry. It's obsoleted. I had a DirecTiVo (non-HD) which I loved, but I replaced it with a Series 3. The fact is, not only does DirecTV hold back updates (I can understand MRV, but why not let us use Ethernet instead of a phone line?), but DirecTV is moving to MPEG4 with their new satellites. All the boxes they sell now support it (I believe). As they bring new channels on in MPEG4, you won't be able to view them. As they switch old channels over, you will lose them.
They are nice DVRs, and can be hacked to do all sorts of stuff. But they are obsolete. It may not be a problem now, but it will be within the next two years.
I've got to say, I've got a Series 3 and I love it. That said, it's great that they are doing this on Series 3 as well as the Series 2 machines. It's no secret (if you follow TiVos) that some of the Series 2 features (like multi-room-viewing) aren't available on the Series 3 (stupid Cable Labs). Series 3 is also a little behind of some features (Series 2 has folders/recently deleted and such, Series 3 doesn't yet but they showed it at CES). It's nice to see a feature available for both.
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of HD content, but I completely understand why.
I wish I got to test this. I'd love to.
I especially like that once you've purchased something you can download it again for free. It would be untenable if you couldn't.
I was wondering about that. I've never used it.
Perhaps Ogg for all internal sounds to a device, and the MP3 capability for sounds the user wants to add so they don't have to use a "weird custom proprietary" format (despite the the fact it's not).
I think this is the whole reason. If someone is looking for a chip that does Ogg, they can choose this one. If they are looking for a chip that does MP3, they can choose this one.
Business wise, which is better? Selling an MP3 decoder chip for $0.10 each (just a guess), or selling an MP3/Ogg decoder chip for $0.10 each? Since there are no patents, adding Ogg support is free, but adds value. Lots of people may want chips that can play MP3s (GPS, Cell Phones, MP3 players, calculators, EVERYTHING plays MP3s), but how many would buy a chip that only did Ogg? I doubt that market is nearly as large. Added value.
That's my guess. Your product (possibly with a little bit of extra programming) could even use both. MP3 for things you want at a higher quality, Ogg for things less important. Maybe you are upgrading your old product. You can keep all the old samples MP3 and just add the new samples as Ogg. Who knows.
There once was a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud's index...
'Cause he.. loved his mother
From "Oedipus Rex" by Tom Lehrer. Check out his work, he's fantastic.
I had forgotten about XNA. As for the filesystem, it's a good thing users don't need to know all about it. But I run into people who don't even seem to know that it's a hierarchy but use computers quite a bit. That's the kind of thing that I expect they should know. These people are easy to spot, they save everything in My Documents and can't find it if it's not there or someone opens a file somewhere else on their computer so the Open/Save dialogs present a different location by default.
I'm doing just fine. I'm working for a small company which I liked (that's a small sacrifice compared to a larger company that could afford more), but I think most of it was just the market I'm in (low cost of living). But I also didn't have internships to prove my experience, just my senior project and what I could prove in interviews and through my work as a teacher's assistant. There are also a lot of CS people here because of both enrollment during the bubble, and one of the major tech employers here that hired TONS of programmers downsizing numerous times in recent years, putting experienced people in the market willing to take less to get a job to pay the bills for their families.
That's true. I can see why they think like that. They is a ton more information available today online about programming than just a few years ago. I mostly went to school so I could get my programming skills rubber stamped so I could get a job instead of trying to prove my worth on my own. The benefit to it was not only that I have that proof, but that I learned a ton more and got humbled about how good of a programmer I was and how much I knew/didn't know.
They may think like that (which may actually be quite true if they just want to design web sites that look nice, or something like that), but there is a lot they would learn whether they know it or not.
That said, if they are passonite in the field, one of the reasons to go to school is to learn more even if they think they already know enough. That was another of the resons I went, because I knew there would was more for me to learn.
PS: Yes, I realize the cognitive dissonance of knowing enough to program and being very good so I could get a job while not knowing enough about programming to be good and get a job.
They might be in that group. They may be someone like me who likes to mess with computers but decided to go with something that interests them more (knowing myself now, I would have loved a degree in psychology or to have studied photography). But that wouldn't have taken away what I learned myself about programming. Many people get degrees in one thing before finding they are very good at something else. The kind of people you are talking about are in that group. And that group can often provide an interesting new prospective that can be valuable (in programming, this can often best be seen in UI and functionality issues, since a degree in history probably won't give you a different perspective on how to write a loop).
It's famous that Einstein didn't do well at Math as a kid. KFC's Sanders didn't start a restaurant chain until he was in his 60s. You may not even realize you like/are good at computers until you are much older than college age, so you already have a degree in something else.
That depends. Are you talking about history, which doesn't help you with programming but makes you a more well rounded person; or are you talking about some kind of complex math which you may not see the value of but really does have a ton to do with programming?
If it's the former, I understand your grief but we all have to go though with it, and you just may discover other subjects you're interested in during the course of taking those courses.
If it's the later, maybe this isn't the field for you. Maybe you want to do something else related that doesn't require that kind of knowledge, like light system administration, computer repair, or maybe another field entirely. But even if you specialize yourself in computers (like DB training only), you will still need that stuff if you want to be really good at your job.
Computers, and especially computer science, are NOT for people who don't like Math.
The foreigners thing might change. I know companies where I am are looking all over. But part of the reason for that is that there are TONS of people in the local market, and many of them are idiots. They are the people who rushed into the field when it was supposed to make you rich. They may have made it through school, but they are just not good at it. So you have to weed all of them out, and then you're left with the usual bell curve of people. It makes finding people very tough.
But if you can pay less for the same quality of programmer, which just might turn out to be great, you have a decent reason to look overseas for a programmer if you are running a business. Less of a gamble.
As the oversupply of get-rich-quick people slowly disappears as they go onto other careers and manage to find jobs, things will get better and salaries will rise.
We've talked about this on /. before. Many of the things I'm about to say will probably be in other comments, or you've seen in the past. I'll try to give a whole picture though. I should also mention where I'm coming from. The article is from the UK, but I'm in the US (almost dead center). I graduated with a degree in CIS (Computer Information Services) around June, and I've had a job as a software engineer for about 6 months now with a great little company.
Now I'm the kind of person who has always been interested in computers. Like many /.ers, I would probably have pursued this field if it paid next to nothing. While my salary is nothing to sneeze at, it's nothing compared to the 60-70k number people seemed to like to throw around during the bubble.
When I entered college in 2001, there were TONS of people who were in it for the money. That was clear by what they knew, how hard they tried, etc. There were more who seemed to think it would be interesting but weren't sure they wanted to do computers. There were others like me who breezed through the early programming courses because we were self-taught already in such simple things (basic loops, etc).
As I went through school, the bubble burst and the idea of instant riches from computers disappeared. Biomed seems to be the new instant riches career.
The biggest attraction to the field I see now for the average person is games. Everyone wants to make games. You like video games? Why not make them! You can get a CS degree or go to one of the many colleges offering game focused degrees (both accredited and fly-by-night). If you're on Windows, you have no chance at being exposed to programming. When I was younger we had HyperCard on the Mac (fantastic), BASIC on DOS/Windows, and you could learn. Today, Windows doesn't come with anything to learn programming. There is free stuff out there, but it doesn't come on the computer. Combine this with the fact that in the DOS days you could make something decent looking with BASIC or Hypercard that looked somewhat comparable with "real" software. Try that with today with anything. GUIs aren't easy. Even VB requires some rather abstract concepts (like events).
Some schools are not much better. The school I attended (DeVry) has scraped their computer program (which wasn't bad) and has replaced it with the "tracks" system. Now you don't get a CS degree, you can get a degree that focuses on database programming, or computer forensics ("It's computers, combined with CSI! Fight crime!"), or something else. It is nowhere near as general and well rounded as it was.
CS degrees seem to be being dumbed down (which seems at least due to trying to attract more people during the bubble). My local state school (which I attended for a while) had a pretty good CS program, but they've were dumbing it down as I left (putting off harder classes, using "easier"/trendier languages, etc.)
But like the article said. Computers aren't magic boxes any more. They are a normal part of life. They are like cars. Most people don't care how to make a car, only some people will try to do that for a living. We may be near that point with computers. Most of the children I've met in the last few years may use computers a ton, but don't care much about learning how to make stuff for them. They don't even have a passing interest in trying to find out the beginning. I may not know enough to make a car (far from it), but I understand some of the principles behind it. I know about the internal combustion engine.
I don't expect them to want to know about RCU, radix-trees, elevator schedulers, memory mapping, and other relatively esoteric things. But many don't even know about programs/operating systems/processes, or even really understand the filesystem hierarchy. They can get around quite well, and they've been trained in how to make flashy Powerpoint presentations about pointless things (I can't tell you how great a skill I think that is that the public school taught my 13 year
What is the purpose of being relocatable on x86? I don't remember reading anything about that so what is the point? Is that already possible on other architectures or is x86 the first (as it often is)? I realize the point of making user programs relocatable, but the kernel? The only thing I can think of is that this either has to do with paravirtualization (to speed it up when the kernel isn't at the base of address space), or for replacing the kernel on a running system (can't remember the name, but the idea would be to load the new kernel, transfer into it, then copy it down to the base of memory as you're executing).
Can any explain this one to me?
I have mod points and I figured this would be a good discussion, but I'll reply to you instead.
First, dual format players CAN'T WIN the war. They are not a format. Even if everyone gets a dual format player for free from the government tomorrow, consumers will still buy more of one format than the other until people stop making one format. Dual format PLAYERS may win the PLAYER WAR, but the disc format war has no real hybrids right now.
Second, these discussions constantly suppose that someone will win. I've seen one comment so far that I agree with: by the time these things reach something akin to a critical mass or become big successes, I think Internet distribution will have won the war or come very close. These things may just be failed. Too early for cheap prices and large HDTV adoption, too late to enjoy a long advantage over internet distribution.
This country has over a 50% divorce rate. People don't treat marriages like they used to. That's why there are books like Dr. Laura's last two, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, and The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage. Ignoring what people think of Dr. Laura, there are tons of other similar books on the market. Look at the influences most people have for how a good marriage is and you find divorced parents, sitcoms with snotty wives and husbands who act like 12 year olds, and movies and other popular culture that say similar things ("Men don't have feelings" and such).
I wonder what the percentage time is of happily married couples?
And does this spend include time at work? Because I work at a computer all day, so without staying up at night there would be no way for my wife to compete on a time basis (if I was married).
From the article:
Okay, so maybe that's not in the article.
This problem that's been used to crack both BR and HD is basically unfixable the way things are isn't it? It's an interesting read on the forum how he did it (page 2, I think). The problem is that the key is in plaintext in memory. But it HAS TO BE doesn't it? You couldn't use it if it was still encrypted, and so you'll have to decode it and put it in memory at some point. The only fix to this would be what a poster on that forum mentioned wouldn't it? You rely on a piece of silicon you control to do all the decoding and such, which would require a BluRay player card or something. You'd have to basically get rid of software players.
BOOOOOOOOOO
*hiss*
Bad Activision. Bad. Take a game from a great developer who basically IS music games that aren't DDR (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II) on the main consoles, and give it to... Neversoft. Who hasn't made a music game. Who took their successful and great Tony Hawk games and kept grinding out sequels as the series went into the ground, adding in features to make it "extreme" like THUG, THUG2, etc. The games are getting closer and closer to being BMX: XXX.
Bye bye Guitar Hero. You were a great series. I was hoping you'd bring on more music games. Now you'll just be a "what went so wrong" post somewhere by this time next year.
I've heard good arguments for this (more people hacking, less incentive for a gray/black market, buy one for the price of two so the second goes to a kid), but could they be taking this position because of production? After all if they want to give a million of these away and people like /.ers buy 100,000... while that would mean money to give 100,000 laptops away to kids we just bit 10% of their production away. I seem to remember reading somewhere that based on the number they will be giving out it will be one of the top 4 laptop "brands" in the world almost immediately. Perhaps they simply can't spare the production at this time?