It's amazing to me, but true leaders are very rare. After all these years, we still depend on Dr. Stroustrup, even though he has been less than a complete leader in the more social aspects of developing the C++ language, in my opinion.
I think you underestimate how much effort all of this centralization and standardization would require. A few dozen people working full time, at a minimum I would think.
And besides, Stroustroup is an employee of a big corporation, they're only going to do something like that if there's profit in it. Clearly there isn't. He's also more of a researcher, why would he want to become an administrator of a giant mundane programmer certification organization?
I guess my point is, the reason there are so few leaders out there is because there isn't money or fun or stature to be gained so why would anyone be interested in it?
I got my degree in engineering from U of Michigan, and I didn't take any calculus in High School. You don't really need it for the first year at least.
Every mac is always stupidly low on memory. Of course you can upgrade, for absolutely outrageous costs. For example, lets say I want a Mac Pro. This is a high end workstation with 2 CPUs. Its like $2500 and each socket has only 512MB of memory! 512MB, what??
The Apple Store is down right now but as I recall upgrading to 1GB per socket was like $300. I sometimes wonder how many people balk at the huge upgrade costs for memory and are then unhappy with the performance of their machines with a tiny bit of memory in them. Upgrading after purchase is a pain, and many Apple customers aren't interested in hassles with their computer.
Practice not being a douchebag. They also send out additional free months to people who have bought the game. I'm not sure that those free months would put them in category A though.
What I can't figure out is the distinction between an individual who is within their free month of access and one who is playing under a free promotional subscription. What are these free promotional subscriptions? A lot of people are interpreting it to mean any trial but that is obviously not the case. I guess it means the temporary CD-Keys you can give to friends.
At any rate, one reason it seems there are so many people playing is that in Asia (and probably other areas of the world) you pay by the hour. So anyone that has played for 1 minute in the last month under these payment schemes is an active subscriber. I do wonder how many unlimited subscriptions there are.
Also, in case anyone is curious Vivendi Games had revenue of 1.23 billion USD, which includes all revenue from Blizzard and Sierra. That would be $11.39 per subscriber if we assume that every cent of that revenue came from Warcraft. And we know that they sold a lot of copies of the burning crusade. I would love to know how much the average monthly revenue per subscriber is.
I've only flown on Quantas once (in coach), but they provided an eyeshade to every passenger. In fact they provided a nice little kit to everyone with eyeshade, headphones, snacks, bottled watter, blanket/pillow, and toothbrush and toothpaste.
Another common route for funding this type of projects is bonds that will be paid back with tolls. If you can't afford to pay back your bridge over an extended period of time with toll revenue then you don't really need a bridge.
A town of 7000 people can use the fucking ferry! A ferry is not such an oppresive burden for the occasional trip via air that they need to drop $350m on a bridge. Its a farce that anyone seriously thinks there should be a bridge there.
Process technology, die size, blah blah blah....you're all right but also getting way over complicated.
Its on a PCB with discrete parts because its cheaper to buy mass producted commoditized parts than to design everything from scratch. Why would apple want to design a bluetooth IC? Or figure out how to manufacture it with acceptable yields? And test it? Now multiply that by all the other stuff needed for a phone and you get it. Same reason when you buy a computer motherboard it uses lots of ICs on a PCB.
Its cheap. And more reliable. And easier to change a small part of the design without throwing away the rest. Etc. There's no advantage to putting everything on one chip unless you're going to make a ton of them and rarely change it. It would be a dreadful way to design something like the iPhone which has relatively minimal sales (maybe 10 million per generation?) and frequent refreshes on the features and design.
For me, the issue of "How the hell do you misplace $5 million worth of computers???" is central to deciding if IBM should do this. No details were given on that little snafu. I'm not sure they should get a free pass for such incompetence, maybe the state should bail them out if they screwed up.
Besides...lets say they were using the computers. How does the fact that they're missing affect whether they can pay for them? Surely the district didn't place a $5 million order with no means to pay for it?
The entire review was focused on how Safari lacks usability compared to Firefox, from not being able to read the text on the screen to a terrible bookmark manager and beyond. Thats not elegant, simply, straightforward, or easy for the average user.
Re:I disagree with Smart Appliances being listed
on
The Top 21 Tech Flops
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· Score: 1
"until RFID arrives"
Well, thats a pretty damn big caveat IMO. RFID has been hyped like mad for YEARS and you still barely see it. I can't see everything in a grocery store, which already operates on razor thin margins, having an RFID tag within the next 5 years. Smart appliances belong on the list.
You don't have privacy at any company. Simple fact, regardless of what they say they can invade your privacy at will. I'm not aware of any specific lawsuit against us, though I'm sure there are some. Find me a large company not involved in any lawsuit and I'll give you a cookie. I don't know how you determined they "mistreat customers". Or investors. And in the career world when a product launch deadline approaches, you do what is necessary to get your piece of the puzzle done.
They've blocked both webmail and instant messaging, but the reasoning is "document retention." ie, in case there's a lawsuit they want to guarantee they have all our communications archived. And since I work at a fortune 500 there's always a lawsuit.
I guess I understand that, but the bummer is that for a lot of us we don't work just your basic 9-5. If you work a lot its nice to be able to take care of a little personal business, in fact I think it probably increases productivity by making people more willing to hang around at work a little longer. So in that regard these bans are counterproductive.
I don't think IT people really think about stuff like that much...the ideal situation for IT isn't necessarily whats best for the enterprise. That said I can see how security and document retention are valuable goals...maybe webmail could provide some kind of mechanism to allow companies to hook into it and archive messages read or sent using corporate machines. Same for instant messengers. Then everyone's happy (except privacy advocates...)
Cisco purchased InfoGear, they're the same company. And I highly doubt that Cisco was supporting this stuff for free, in which case its a service is it not?
Expect a ton of "My ugly old phone does everything the iPhone does! Sure, it actually doesn't have a full web browser, touchscreen, random access voicemail, virtual keyboard, iPod functionality with dock connector, etc. etc. etc. But it still does everything!"
For some of us that is the feature. I think the iPhone will do just fine, but there are a lot of people like me who have a minimal featureset they use. For me, its the actual phone, text messaging, and the phonebook. So for a lot of people the iPhone is expensive, locks you into Cingular for 2 years, is kinda big (on an absolute scale) and does a lot of stuff you don't need.
My guess is the real market for this will be frequent business travelers and teenagers from wealthy families, plus the usual Apple and gadget fans. Still potentially very profitable but the point is that I don't see it as being as mass market a device as the iPod is. Then again, this is first gen...let me know when the iPhone Nano comes out and maybe it will look more attractive. Smaller, cheaper, and with more features:)
Nicest thing about them is to use where you have a bulb that goes somewhere inconvenient to change, such as any fixture which has a glass or plastic cover that has to be screwed on, etc. Nothing used to irritate me more than a ceiling fan I once had which had 4 bulbs covered in glass. It seemed like I had to haul out a ladder every day to change once of those stupid bulbs and getting the covers off was a pain.
So if I understand this correctly, this guy bought a bunch of stuff he didn't want to earn reward points in a system he knew nothing about, and is now upset about it.
Seems pretty stupid to pay cash for the cards without having any idea how many points are needed for the rewards.
That article was way too complicated for the "non-technical public." It was great for tech savvy people, but if he wants to convince the average joe he needs to simplify. We don't need to see 10 different ways the machines can be hacked, just ONE way that is simple, understandable, and presented clearly to the user. Preferably on 1, maybe 2 pages max (before they lose interest).
Ideally, for the layperson you would simply explain that each pricinct's votes are stored in a small database, and that it can simply be edited with a piece of software commonly included in Microsoft's popular Office suite. Then, show a screenshot of access with the GEMS database opened, highlight the vote tally for some candidate, and explain that you simply click in the box and change the number. Then explain how it would be impossible to know what the vote count could be due to the lack of paper...relate it back to punched ballots (just save the ballots and recount em if necessary), optical scanners (again you have the ballots and usually there is a paper log that prints each vote as it is scanned), etc.
All of that is understandable to even the layperson. Most people understand what Microsoft Office is. Most people have heard of a database and understand thats how businesses store all their information. Most people have seen a spreadsheet and a screenshot of someone editing an access database looks almost the same.
Wireless video/speakers?
on
USB To Go Wireless
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· Score: 4, Interesting
One thing I've always wanted is to get rid of the cables for my LCD displays and my speakers. That would be 4 fewer cables cluttering my desk (2 LCDs, 1 cable between left and right speakers, 1 cable to speaker out jack). I'm not sure what the real time and data throughput requirements would be. This looks like its primarily intended to replace wired USB devices but what additional complexity would there be in getting rid of some of the other wires?
It would be nice if the only cables on my desk were power cables.
I guess you never got the memo that Congress never funded the agreement, so he wasn't given the money or lightwater reactors. They ought to all resign due to incompetence.
Its already 8, assuming you buy an 800-series chip. For opeterons, the two different factors you pay for are price and number of HT links. 8-way has been available from the beginning with this architecture.
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I think you underestimate how much effort all of this centralization and standardization would require. A few dozen people working full time, at a minimum I would think.
And besides, Stroustroup is an employee of a big corporation, they're only going to do something like that if there's profit in it. Clearly there isn't. He's also more of a researcher, why would he want to become an administrator of a giant mundane programmer certification organization?
I guess my point is, the reason there are so few leaders out there is because there isn't money or fun or stature to be gained so why would anyone be interested in it?
I got my degree in engineering from U of Michigan, and I didn't take any calculus in High School. You don't really need it for the first year at least.
The Apple Store is down right now but as I recall upgrading to 1GB per socket was like $300. I sometimes wonder how many people balk at the huge upgrade costs for memory and are then unhappy with the performance of their machines with a tiny bit of memory in them. Upgrading after purchase is a pain, and many Apple customers aren't interested in hassles with their computer.
Practice not being a douchebag. They also send out additional free months to people who have bought the game. I'm not sure that those free months would put them in category A though.
At any rate, one reason it seems there are so many people playing is that in Asia (and probably other areas of the world) you pay by the hour. So anyone that has played for 1 minute in the last month under these payment schemes is an active subscriber. I do wonder how many unlimited subscriptions there are.
Also, in case anyone is curious Vivendi Games had revenue of 1.23 billion USD, which includes all revenue from Blizzard and Sierra. That would be $11.39 per subscriber if we assume that every cent of that revenue came from Warcraft. And we know that they sold a lot of copies of the burning crusade. I would love to know how much the average monthly revenue per subscriber is.
I've only flown on Quantas once (in coach), but they provided an eyeshade to every passenger. In fact they provided a nice little kit to everyone with eyeshade, headphones, snacks, bottled watter, blanket/pillow, and toothbrush and toothpaste.
Another common route for funding this type of projects is bonds that will be paid back with tolls. If you can't afford to pay back your bridge over an extended period of time with toll revenue then you don't really need a bridge.
A town of 7000 people can use the fucking ferry! A ferry is not such an oppresive burden for the occasional trip via air that they need to drop $350m on a bridge. Its a farce that anyone seriously thinks there should be a bridge there.
Process technology, die size, blah blah blah....you're all right but also getting way over complicated.
Its on a PCB with discrete parts because its cheaper to buy mass producted commoditized parts than to design everything from scratch. Why would apple want to design a bluetooth IC? Or figure out how to manufacture it with acceptable yields? And test it? Now multiply that by all the other stuff needed for a phone and you get it. Same reason when you buy a computer motherboard it uses lots of ICs on a PCB.
Its cheap. And more reliable. And easier to change a small part of the design without throwing away the rest. Etc. There's no advantage to putting everything on one chip unless you're going to make a ton of them and rarely change it. It would be a dreadful way to design something like the iPhone which has relatively minimal sales (maybe 10 million per generation?) and frequent refreshes on the features and design.
Besides...lets say they were using the computers. How does the fact that they're missing affect whether they can pay for them? Surely the district didn't place a $5 million order with no means to pay for it?
The entire review was focused on how Safari lacks usability compared to Firefox, from not being able to read the text on the screen to a terrible bookmark manager and beyond. Thats not elegant, simply, straightforward, or easy for the average user.
Well, thats a pretty damn big caveat IMO. RFID has been hyped like mad for YEARS and you still barely see it. I can't see everything in a grocery store, which already operates on razor thin margins, having an RFID tag within the next 5 years. Smart appliances belong on the list.
You don't have privacy at any company. Simple fact, regardless of what they say they can invade your privacy at will. I'm not aware of any specific lawsuit against us, though I'm sure there are some. Find me a large company not involved in any lawsuit and I'll give you a cookie. I don't know how you determined they "mistreat customers". Or investors. And in the career world when a product launch deadline approaches, you do what is necessary to get your piece of the puzzle done.
I'm sure they're blocking the corresponding pop servers for free email services as well.
I guess I understand that, but the bummer is that for a lot of us we don't work just your basic 9-5. If you work a lot its nice to be able to take care of a little personal business, in fact I think it probably increases productivity by making people more willing to hang around at work a little longer. So in that regard these bans are counterproductive.
I don't think IT people really think about stuff like that much...the ideal situation for IT isn't necessarily whats best for the enterprise. That said I can see how security and document retention are valuable goals...maybe webmail could provide some kind of mechanism to allow companies to hook into it and archive messages read or sent using corporate machines. Same for instant messengers. Then everyone's happy (except privacy advocates...)
The least evil option would have been to license the DRM to others, preferably for free...
Cisco purchased InfoGear, they're the same company. And I highly doubt that Cisco was supporting this stuff for free, in which case its a service is it not?
For some of us that is the feature. I think the iPhone will do just fine, but there are a lot of people like me who have a minimal featureset they use. For me, its the actual phone, text messaging, and the phonebook. So for a lot of people the iPhone is expensive, locks you into Cingular for 2 years, is kinda big (on an absolute scale) and does a lot of stuff you don't need.
My guess is the real market for this will be frequent business travelers and teenagers from wealthy families, plus the usual Apple and gadget fans. Still potentially very profitable but the point is that I don't see it as being as mass market a device as the iPod is. Then again, this is first gen...let me know when the iPhone Nano comes out and maybe it will look more attractive. Smaller, cheaper, and with more features
Nicest thing about them is to use where you have a bulb that goes somewhere inconvenient to change, such as any fixture which has a glass or plastic cover that has to be screwed on, etc. Nothing used to irritate me more than a ceiling fan I once had which had 4 bulbs covered in glass. It seemed like I had to haul out a ladder every day to change once of those stupid bulbs and getting the covers off was a pain.
Did you just call Larry King a journalist? ;-)
Seems pretty stupid to pay cash for the cards without having any idea how many points are needed for the rewards.
Ideally, for the layperson you would simply explain that each pricinct's votes are stored in a small database, and that it can simply be edited with a piece of software commonly included in Microsoft's popular Office suite. Then, show a screenshot of access with the GEMS database opened, highlight the vote tally for some candidate, and explain that you simply click in the box and change the number. Then explain how it would be impossible to know what the vote count could be due to the lack of paper...relate it back to punched ballots (just save the ballots and recount em if necessary), optical scanners (again you have the ballots and usually there is a paper log that prints each vote as it is scanned), etc.
All of that is understandable to even the layperson. Most people understand what Microsoft Office is. Most people have heard of a database and understand thats how businesses store all their information. Most people have seen a spreadsheet and a screenshot of someone editing an access database looks almost the same.
It would be nice if the only cables on my desk were power cables.
I guess you never got the memo that Congress never funded the agreement, so he wasn't given the money or lightwater reactors. They ought to all resign due to incompetence.
Its already 8, assuming you buy an 800-series chip. For opeterons, the two different factors you pay for are price and number of HT links. 8-way has been available from the beginning with this architecture.