I've had jobs where I didn't integrate into the local culture. I'd always go read a book during lunch, and didn't go out afterwork with my coworkers. Ended up leaving in about 2 months. Starving for human interaction is a problem not just from working home.
My next job was ultra moronic, but I made an effort to meet and great everybody around me. I grew quite attached to them, and I even looked forward to going to work. People spend 1/3 of our time working, 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 recreating;), so its important to develop a strong relationship with your office family.
I also find computers to be a giant vacuum for my social skills(and my libido too) When I have to code heavy for weeks, I find myself uninterested in socializing, which in turn leadsd to me having boring conversations, which leads me to be even more uninterested in socializing. A cycle that feedbacks very quickly.(and my gf gets grumpy with me)
I guess what I'm trying to say is working in front of a computer is very destructive towards you social life, and working at home is also harmful there(Never doing it again) And the less human interaction I have, the less happy I am. Even though I hate talking to morons!, the simple action of talking about the weather, lunch and football in the end makes me much happier.
And googling really is a skill, that you learn to perfect with time. I've refined my skills with tons of time searching for obscure technical information, that I've gotten pretty good at it. And having helped others track down old acquaitances, and find great deals on apartments and pet care, I have been labeled "Google Master".
I HAVE THE POWER!
An entity like a corporation is obviously far more powerful, but I'm much more motivated to look up information on them, then they are on me. And matched 1 v 1 versus some corporate slave working without passion, I'm sure I can outduel them. Besides to them, I am just a piece of paper in a stack of resumes, an email in a flooded inbox, or the interuption between somebody's smoking break but if I am preparing for an interview, they are the focus on my current energies.
Like you, I have a very unique name. But I just don't care to put in slashdot.
for prospective employers to beat you with. When a cv comes in, do a Google for the person's name, check them out, their hobbies, their faith, their habits..... Result: Interviewer knows more about the interviewee than the interviewee knows about the company.
Oh C'mon! I do the same thing back with my interviewer. I put his name into Google, and often get his work history. And then I put the companies name into Google and research as much as I can. Usually, I can learn more about the company then they can learn about me. I even try to find out what type of web server software they are running.
I have no reason to hide the things they can learn about me through google. Some of the things I've found about my girlfriends through google, are not very flattering.
But the article describes it as a $99 camera that will requires a decent amount of time, skill and some materials to crack, so not that many people will do it. Its about the cool factor more than anything. Its not that type of product that somebody will buy for 10.99, modify and then try reselling for a profit. The margin there would just be too slim, except for high school kids with too much time on their hands. Maybe you could sell em raw on ebay for $20.
And if the masses do decide are able crack it? Do you think they will pull the camera off the shelves, or just unload the failed product and cut their losses. Since digital cameras are advancing so quickly, I wonder what the intended lifespan for this product was. It couldn't have been more than 2 years. Obviously the next generation of cameras will be much more secure.
I think these suckers will sell out quickly, but I doubt they will pull them off the shelf.
I've become addicted to it. I can't make it through the day without hearing about SCO.
I though maybe the SCO case is listed as one of the inventions... and so I went through the web page over and over again thinking it might be buried inside. Sort of a "where's waldo" kind of thing. But nothing. Dammit!!!!! I need my SCO story.
I want to be a CEO on the berkleynet. Hmm... what would be a good company, something like DewFetch.com: order MountainDew without the inconvience of leaving your terminal and have it develivered to your door within 30 minutes.
Opening the bag of marshmellows now, for when I begin to crash and burn.
If you look outside the jaded slashdot somebody is investing a lot of faith in SCOX.
Looking at the 3 month chart for SCOX it seems to coincide with the news releases for and against SCO, so why has the stock price been steadily increasing?
Despite my linux allegiance, I tend to trust people spending the cash more than those trolling the message boards.
How does the atmosphere effect how sound travels. I know sound travels differently underwater, so I was wondering what happens in a vacuum, or in different atmospheres.
How come radio waves can travel in a vacuum(In Space) but sound waves can't? Or am I wrong?
And yes, I know, nobody can hear you scream in space. But it seems, nobody can hear me scream on Earth(or least nobody reacts to me).
Who thinks that future extension part is a load of crap? A huge stretch of it covers nothing but elvis chapels and hotels rented by the hour, until you reach the freedmont experiece(old skool vegas, think the cowboy) and the bus station. Amazingly, there are no traffic problems in this area.
Yeah, I was at vegas a month ago, and it is coming along nicely. I wonder if the casino's intentionally make it a bitch to get down the strip during most of the day. I ended up walking most of the time, buses were comically terrible, and I'm too cheap for a cab.
I got to share my favorite anecdote about rugged pcs. Some guy was having problems doing live shows, and his labtop was completely crashing. Apparently, the massive bass from the sound system was knocking the heads of the hard disk around, causing the computer to act all goofy. That's a pretty difficult problem to resolve.
Anyways, my friend described it as an up to date version of a Godel Escher Bach tale where the tortoise is trying to build a record player that can't be broken. But no matter how complicated a machine he makes, there is always a record that will destroy his system.
That wasn't all the clear, but if you know the book, you'll get the gist of whatIsayin.
It doesn't seem to crazy to predict people having to pay for bandwith. Isn't this how the palm VII charges for its service, a certain amount for each byte transferred. Its certainly better than charging for time connected to the internet.
Since many web sites are charged depending on how much data they send out, it doesn't seem like it'll be long before ISPs start charging for how much data users take in. DSL is collapsing which could lead to people saturating the(currently fast) cable modems. Lets maintain high speed and increase revenue by charging for data transferred.
And it'll cut down on all the clutter in web pages too!! Everything in lite mode.
I hate this idea, but I don't see how it won't happen.
Why not give them access to music programs. What better way to fuel their creativity then exploring delicious beats and slamin basslines. There are many cheap and good programs that will allow students to express and explore music. It enables them to feel good about themselves, develop skills, and even get interested in an profession!!
As for learning...
If they get excited, they will naturally want to learn more. First, they will learn what all the knobs do on an external level. (This will turn a bleep into a bloop) But eventually, they may want a deeper understadning ( The square -wave is getting sent through a filter having its harmonics cut off) And a rare few may want even deeper understanding( lets hack the source code)
The music programs have a learning curve. But something simple like ReBirth, gives them enough of an initial satisfaction to keep playing. Well, providing enough flexibility for continued exploration.
I have read the GPL described as a cancer months ago, and I have to agree. It really is designed to take over projects, and spread throughout the internet. The GPL is designed to destroy the concept of intellectual property. If you use a piece of GPL code, it takes over, and now your whole project is GPL'd and open to the public. Its a very good idea, but its designed to force itself onto others.
I release open source code under the LGPL (library or lesser, it was changed) which allows people to use my source code in a program, provided that they provide access to source of just my part of it. This enables me to provide open source libraries which can be used in commercial products, but mainly because I don't want to force people to have to relase their code under GPL. They may still GPL their code, but I think they should be able to decide.
after which is will plunge into the ocean and not be recovered.
Manager: What do you mean it can't land?
Developer: Land? That was not included in the spec.
Manager: So we have a jet that can take off, but can't land.
Developer: Correct. Should we add a landing feature?
Manager: No, we are already over budget and behind schedule even by NASA standards. Any ideas?
Developer: Our team recently discovered a new "feature." Ocean-floor data repository.
Manager: Great. Forward that to marketing and lets start shipping it. It doesn't matter if it crashes, it only has to start running.
They also run
arfdigita a non-profit animal rights group.
But unfortunately something went wrong somewhere.
There open-acs platform is awesome. It provides all kind great functionality: bulletin boards, user permissions, site and ad tracking. But arsdigita changed their buisness plan to sell closed-source modules for the platform. It seems like a bit of a scam.
First off Kawa exists for java. (I'm too lazy to track down the link.)
Secondly, Smalltalk has the portability of java explained in the following post. Moderate it up!
Go to computerjobs.com or whatever and do a search for smalltalk you will see that smalltalk is still used as a programming language.
Refactoring is a large part of the (deservedly) hyped Extreme Programming. Squeak(smalltalk) comes in with a built in refactoring browser. It can *automatically* refactor code. I believe it finds dupblicated code, and makes large methods smaller. Incredible.
Go to www.squeak.org and download smalltalk today.
Now to go offtopic a bit...
Finally, I'm a bit sick of the omnipresence of Java. ( flamearmor.setON() ) I know and have enjoyed the benefits of java. But I'm a little bit tired of people convincing me how great jsp pages are, javabeans, ejb etc... without knowing much about any of the alternatives. It seems like there are some great platforms out there zope/php, open-acs/tcl which allow people to build powerful flexible websites much cheaper then the java solution. Unfortunately those other ones get no coverage as Java's marketing is incredible.
Don't forget about LBX - low bandwith X, a timmed down version of X. So you can run yer yopy wirelessly.
Coicidence that ybos and yopi are somewhat similar. (At least to my glazed eyes.) I think not.
First off, I just to need to reiterated that RISC stands for
(Reduced Instruction) set
not (Reduced Instruction set). The instructions are quick to execute. With CISC complex instruction, often 1 long to execute instructive can get into the chip, and halt everything until it finishes. I believe this is why overclockers get burned. But with RISC commands, the chip is able to quickly handle each one, and on most modern achitectures it is able to handle 3-4 RISC commands at the same time. It is able to re-order some of the assembly commands during runtime to maximize the number of things going on at once. Additionally, it is also able to optimize register allocation.
I was recently told that the PII chip has 40 registers not 8. I believe the chip dymanically assumes and tries to optimize the best use of those 40 from 8 by looking ahead, but it *might* occur in the compiler, but that seems less likely. Either way, the coder is only able to access the 8(AIX, BIX... etc...)
If the same register is being used for many commands, but the output of one command is not needed for a future command that uses the same register, the chip will switch the future command to use a different register.
So mastery of assembly does not guarentee more faster programs, one also needs to know what chip they are working on, and how it will attempt to optimize the code.
Yes, I'm offtopic but compilers are cool. Now for a lil on topic stuff. I come from the school that when hitting web pages the database hit tends to be the thing that slows things down. The solution I have used to solve this problem is to load the database in memory as much as possible. Max max max out the ram on yer server cluster, and fill up those javabeans. Naturally, with a large game you can't keep everything in memory, but just by keeping the most frequently used things in memory you should be able to increase performs. Once somebody logs in, store their relevant info in a Bean. I have been brainwashed into using Java as the solution, but I'm sure you could do it in another language like C++ or Perl. But I don't think it can be done in a scripting language such as PHP, ASP or Python.
Its interesting that you mention how to format comments but not what you put in them. Excessive and useless commenting is almost as bad as having no comments at all. Its frustrating to have the code so chopped up with crap, that I can't even fit 15 lines of code on the screen. Good variable names can greatly reduce the need for comments.
Its interesting too that everybody is looking for "beautiful" code. Are we talking about algorithms, design or style? But whatever the focus, I greatly prefer simple code that can be easily read with minimal comments. You mention the nightmare of working with 10,000 lines of code, and the importance of comments there. I agree, but I think the design is much much more important there. I shouldn't have to know all 10,000 lines of code in order to make some patches. I should be able to determing which sections are relevant, get an overview of those sections, and be able to easily make changes in one place that don't mess up everything elsewhere.
Despite all the hype around Extreme Programming(XP), it promotes some great ideas that lead to more simple(ok, even beautiful code.) It suggests trying to keep all methods so they fit onto 1 screen, avoid any duplication of code in classes, have everybody on your team work with a consistent style! and try to limit class sizes to under 1000 lines. But most importantly of all, one must refactor to make things simpler whenever possible. Constant refactoring!
Before I get flamed, I should include the disclaimer that simpler is not always better. There are times when you did need to use a clever chunk in order to improve performance, then it might be worthwhile to explain in greater detail as to whats going on. But for the most part, keep it simple.
It'd be even cooler, if you didn't need to enter a credit card number. You could just dial the number, and automatically have it put on your PCS phone bill, and have it sent to your mailing address.
Man this song on the radio is awful... ... can I borrow your phone to call a friend...
Slashdot Mirror
I've had jobs where I didn't integrate into the local culture. I'd always go read a book during lunch, and didn't go out afterwork with my coworkers. Ended up leaving in about 2 months.
;), so its important to develop a strong relationship with your office family.
Starving for human interaction is a problem not just from working home.
My next job was ultra moronic, but I made an effort to meet and great everybody around me. I grew quite attached to them, and I even looked forward to going to work. People spend 1/3 of our time working, 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 recreating
I also find computers to be a giant vacuum for my social skills(and my libido too) When I have to code heavy for weeks, I find myself uninterested in socializing, which in turn leadsd to me having boring conversations, which leads me to be even more uninterested in socializing. A cycle that feedbacks very quickly.(and my gf gets grumpy with me)
I guess what I'm trying to say is working in front of a computer is very destructive towards you social life, and working at home is also harmful there(Never doing it again) And the less human interaction I have, the less happy I am. Even though I hate talking to morons!, the simple action of talking about the weather, lunch and football in the end makes me much happier.
Besides, isn't Cracker a racial slur anways?
How about we all agree to use Honkey(sp?) instead.
And googling really is a skill, that you learn to perfect with time. I've refined my skills with tons of time searching for obscure technical information, that I've gotten pretty good at it. And having helped others track down old acquaitances, and find great deals on apartments and pet care, I have been labeled "Google Master".
I HAVE THE POWER!
An entity like a corporation is obviously far more powerful, but I'm much more motivated to look up information on them, then they are on me. And matched 1 v 1 versus some corporate slave working without passion, I'm sure I can outduel them.
Besides to them, I am just a piece of paper in a stack of resumes, an email in a flooded inbox, or the interuption between somebody's smoking break but if I am preparing for an interview, they are the focus on my current energies.
Like you, I have a very unique name. But I just don't care to put in slashdot.
But the article describes it as a $99 camera that will requires a decent amount of time, skill and some materials to crack, so not that many people will do it. Its about the cool factor more than anything. Its not that type of product that somebody will buy for 10.99, modify and then try reselling for a profit. The margin there would just be too slim, except for high school kids with too much time on their hands. Maybe you could sell em raw on ebay for $20.
And if the masses do decide are able crack it? Do you think they will pull the camera off the shelves, or just unload the failed product and cut their losses. Since digital cameras are advancing so quickly, I wonder what the intended lifespan for this product was. It couldn't have been more than 2 years. Obviously the next generation of cameras will be much more secure.
I think these suckers will sell out quickly, but I doubt they will pull them off the shelf.
An increase to the Average american income != increase of your income
Just like...
A substantial reduction in the taxes of the average american income != a reduction of taxes for most americans
Read about Republican Government policy for further clarification.
I've become addicted to it. I can't make it through the day without hearing about SCO.
I though maybe the SCO case is listed as one of the inventions... and so I went through the web page over and over again thinking it might be buried inside. Sort of a "where's waldo" kind of thing. But nothing. Dammit!!!!! I need my SCO story.
I want my...
I want my...
S C O
I want to be a CEO on the berkleynet. Hmm... what would be a good company, something like DewFetch.com: order MountainDew without the inconvience of leaving your terminal and have it develivered to your door within 30 minutes.
Opening the bag of marshmellows now, for when I begin to crash and burn.
Why not have text books be electronic, and have a few profressors be in control of them?
Again, once the inital copies are written, it wouldn't take too much over to update them over the years.
If you look outside the jaded slashdot somebody is investing a lot of faith in SCOX.
Looking at the 3 month chart for SCOX it seems to coincide with the news releases for and against SCO, so why has the stock price been steadily increasing?
Despite my linux allegiance, I tend to trust people spending the cash more than those trolling the message boards.
As the quality of the president decreases the amount of money it costs to get face time with him increases.
How does the atmosphere effect how sound travels. I know sound travels differently underwater, so I was wondering what happens in a vacuum, or in different atmospheres.
How come radio waves can travel in a vacuum(In Space) but sound waves can't? Or am I wrong?
And yes, I know, nobody can hear you scream in space. But it seems, nobody can hear me scream on Earth(or least nobody reacts to me).
I've heard the postings at Hotjobs can often recieve more than 1000 replies.
;)
Posting for a video game development position on slashdot? Geez... the sky is the limit.
Perhaps this is a scam for a recruitment firm to gather resumes.
Who thinks that future extension part is a load of crap? A huge stretch of it covers nothing but elvis chapels and hotels rented by the hour, until you reach the freedmont experiece(old skool vegas, think the cowboy) and the bus station. Amazingly, there are no traffic problems in this area.
Yeah, I was at vegas a month ago, and it is coming along nicely. I wonder if the casino's intentionally make it a bitch to get down the strip during most of the day. I ended up walking most of the time, buses were comically terrible, and I'm too cheap for a cab.
I wonder why this story is being covered now?
I got to share my favorite anecdote about rugged pcs. Some guy was having problems doing live shows, and his labtop was completely crashing. Apparently, the massive bass from the sound system was knocking the heads of the hard disk around, causing the computer to act all goofy. That's a pretty difficult problem to resolve.
Anyways, my friend described it as an up to date version of a Godel Escher Bach tale where the tortoise is trying to build a record player that can't be broken. But no matter how complicated a machine he makes, there is always a record that will destroy his system.
That wasn't all the clear, but if you know the book, you'll get the gist of whatIsayin.
It doesn't seem to crazy to predict people having to pay for bandwith. Isn't this how the palm VII charges for its service, a certain amount for each byte transferred. Its certainly better than charging for time connected to the internet.
Since many web sites are charged depending on how much data they send out, it doesn't seem like it'll be long before ISPs start charging for how much data users take in. DSL is collapsing which could lead to people saturating the(currently fast) cable modems. Lets maintain high speed and increase revenue by charging for data transferred.
And it'll cut down on all the clutter in web pages too!! Everything in lite mode.
I hate this idea, but I don't see how it won't happen.
Why not give them access to music programs. What better way to fuel their creativity then exploring delicious beats and slamin basslines. There are many cheap and good programs that will allow students to express and explore music. It enables them to feel good about themselves, develop skills, and even get interested in an profession!!
As for learning...
If they get excited, they will naturally want to learn more. First, they will learn what all the knobs do on an external level. (This will turn a bleep into a bloop) But eventually, they may want a deeper understadning ( The square -wave is getting sent through a filter having its harmonics cut off) And a rare few may want even deeper understanding( lets hack the source code)
The music programs have a learning curve. But something simple like ReBirth, gives them enough of an initial satisfaction to keep playing. Well, providing enough flexibility for continued exploration.
Online beatboxes at:
http://www.postmodemist.com
I have read the GPL described as a cancer months ago, and I have to agree. It really is designed to take over projects, and spread throughout the internet. The GPL is designed to destroy the concept of intellectual property. If you use a piece of GPL code, it takes over, and now your whole project is GPL'd and open to the public. Its a very good idea, but its designed to force itself onto others.
I release open source code under the LGPL (library or lesser, it was changed) which allows people to use my source code in a program, provided that they provide access to source of just my part of it. This enables me to provide open source libraries which can be used in commercial products, but mainly because I don't want to force people to have to relase their code under GPL. They may still GPL their code, but I think they should be able to decide.
after which is will plunge into the ocean and not be recovered.
Manager: What do you mean it can't land?
Developer: Land? That was not included in the spec.
Manager: So we have a jet that can take off, but can't land.
Developer: Correct. Should we add a landing feature?
Manager: No, we are already over budget and behind schedule even by NASA standards. Any ideas?
Developer: Our team recently discovered a new "feature." Ocean-floor data repository.
Manager: Great. Forward that to marketing and lets start shipping it. It doesn't matter if it crashes, it only has to start running.
Greenspun is a very cool guy. His book Philip and Alex's guide to web publishing is awesome and can be read online for free.
He was once quoted as saying something like,
-- Who needs funding, we have profits --
They also run arfdigita a non-profit animal rights group. But unfortunately something went wrong somewhere.
There open-acs platform is awesome. It provides all kind great functionality: bulletin boards, user permissions, site and ad tracking. But arsdigita changed their buisness plan to sell closed-source modules for the platform. It seems like a bit of a scam.
First off Kawa exists for java. (I'm too lazy to track down the link.)
Secondly, Smalltalk has the portability of java explained in the following post. Moderate it up!
Go to computerjobs.com or whatever and do a search for smalltalk you will see that smalltalk is still used as a programming language.
Refactoring is a large part of the (deservedly) hyped Extreme Programming. Squeak(smalltalk) comes in with a built in refactoring browser. It can *automatically* refactor code. I believe it finds dupblicated code, and makes large methods smaller. Incredible.
Go to www.squeak.org and download smalltalk today.
Now to go offtopic a bit...
Finally, I'm a bit sick of the omnipresence of Java. ( flamearmor.setON() ) I know and have enjoyed the benefits of java. But I'm a little bit tired of people convincing me how great jsp pages are, javabeans, ejb etc... without knowing much about any of the alternatives. It seems like there are some great platforms out there zope/php, open-acs/tcl which allow people to build powerful flexible websites much cheaper then the java solution. Unfortunately those other ones get no coverage as Java's marketing is incredible.
Don't forget about LBX - low bandwith X, a timmed down version of X. So you can run yer yopy wirelessly. Coicidence that ybos and yopi are somewhat similar. (At least to my glazed eyes.) I think not.
First off, I just to need to reiterated that RISC stands for (Reduced Instruction) set not (Reduced Instruction set). The instructions are quick to execute. With CISC complex instruction, often 1 long to execute instructive can get into the chip, and halt everything until it finishes. I believe this is why overclockers get burned. But with RISC commands, the chip is able to quickly handle each one, and on most modern achitectures it is able to handle 3-4 RISC commands at the same time. It is able to re-order some of the assembly commands during runtime to maximize the number of things going on at once. Additionally, it is also able to optimize register allocation.
I was recently told that the PII chip has 40 registers not 8. I believe the chip dymanically assumes and tries to optimize the best use of those 40 from 8 by looking ahead, but it *might* occur in the compiler, but that seems less likely. Either way, the coder is only able to access the 8(AIX, BIX... etc...)
If the same register is being used for many commands, but the output of one command is not needed for a future command that uses the same register, the chip will switch the future command to use a different register. So mastery of assembly does not guarentee more faster programs, one also needs to know what chip they are working on, and how it will attempt to optimize the code.
Yes, I'm offtopic but compilers are cool. Now for a lil on topic stuff. I come from the school that when hitting web pages the database hit tends to be the thing that slows things down. The solution I have used to solve this problem is to load the database in memory as much as possible. Max max max out the ram on yer server cluster, and fill up those javabeans. Naturally, with a large game you can't keep everything in memory, but just by keeping the most frequently used things in memory you should be able to increase performs. Once somebody logs in, store their relevant info in a Bean. I have been brainwashed into using Java as the solution, but I'm sure you could do it in another language like C++ or Perl. But I don't think it can be done in a scripting language such as PHP, ASP or Python.
Worst episode ever.
Its interesting that you mention how to format comments but not what you put in them. Excessive and useless commenting is almost as bad as having no comments at all. Its frustrating to have the code so chopped up with crap, that I can't even fit 15 lines of code on the screen. Good variable names can greatly reduce the need for comments.
Its interesting too that everybody is looking for "beautiful" code. Are we talking about algorithms, design or style? But whatever the focus, I greatly prefer simple code that can be easily read with minimal comments. You mention the nightmare of working with 10,000 lines of code, and the importance of comments there. I agree, but I think the design is much much more important there. I shouldn't have to know all 10,000 lines of code in order to make some patches. I should be able to determing which sections are relevant, get an overview of those sections, and be able to easily make changes in one place that don't mess up everything elsewhere.
Despite all the hype around Extreme Programming(XP), it promotes some great ideas that lead to more simple(ok, even beautiful code.) It suggests trying to keep all methods so they fit onto 1 screen, avoid any duplication of code in classes, have everybody on your team work with a consistent style! and try to limit class sizes to under 1000 lines. But most importantly of all, one must refactor to make things simpler whenever possible. Constant refactoring!
Before I get flamed, I should include the disclaimer that simpler is not always better. There are times when you did need to use a clever chunk in order to improve performance, then it might be worthwhile to explain in greater detail as to whats going on. But for the most part, keep it simple.
It'd be even cooler, if you didn't need to enter a credit card number. You could just dial the number, and automatically have it put on your PCS phone bill, and have it sent to your mailing address.
... can I borrow your phone to call a friend...
Man this song on the radio is awful...