After several years as a developer, I found a job in tech support. Now, years later, I still love it. This is not your typical call center stuff: my customers are engineers. I am respected, the pay is good, the customers are fun, and the challenges change frequently. Many tech support engineers use their position to get their foot in the door and skill up and move on to development, but I'm pretty happy in support.
Just because a language is not widely used outside academia does not mean it isn't a good teaching tool. You can pick up a new language in a few weeks, but a strong understanding of the fundamentals lasts forever. In a teaching setting, you want a language and dev tools that do not get in the way of illustrating the concepts.
At my university, a professor chose C++ to teach computational linguistics to non-programmers. HUGE mistake! We spent about 80% of the course learning C++ badly, rather than linguistics well. The CS department, wisely I think, taught its newbies in LISP.
Mainly Fix32. This was the solution requested by the customer, but after the training class it was clear that Fix lacked the oomph to satisfy the customer's requirements. In hindsight, I should have pushed back on the customer and told them they had unreasonable expectations. But that's water under the bridge, and I still believe Citect was the better tool.
We also had a totally redundant back-up SCADA system that I think was implemented using Genie.
Guilty as charged. Blatant plug, I know. I never worked for Citect or one of their distributors, although someone who did gifted me a copy of Snow Crash. Does that count as full disclosure?
I developed an HMI using Citect, and for my needs it was significantly better than the alternatives. Actually, it was pretty excellent. But you wouldn't use it to control dangerous machines: it runs on Windows.:-) Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition is high-level: the user-friendly end of process control. We used Citect to control the machines that control the machines.
You could poke a button on Citect that said, "open this valve," but all Citect did was message an industrial PLC that performed all the safety calculations and bounds checks and actuated the relay, then sent the result back for Citect to display. Actually, a better example would be to poke a button to start the next phase of a run. You wouldn't use SCADA to open or close an individual valve much more than you'd invoke a single C function from a CLI.
I would argue that in fact the traditional rules of IT do not all apply to these SCADA systems. They are quite often single-purpose PCs that have little or no connection outside the plant floor. If they worked on commissioning day, they'll probably still work today. They don't need a lot of management. Not that machines don't get taken down for maintenance, but you don't want a surprise incompatibility in your software update keeping the system down longer than anticipated. Wreaks havoc on the supply chain. Actually, Citect can clone control stations (legitimately, not just 0wn3d), so you could do a phased deployment of patches without losing any capability; I was speaking more generally.
It is true, though, that process engineers I've known don't think much about network security. They're concerned about guarding against a china syndrome, so the important stuff is off the net and often talks to SCADA via RS-232. A hacker might steal data or stop the run, but probably couldn't make things go boom.
Looks to me like about 9 out of 10 current national polls have Obama in the lead with an average advantage of 3.6%. I wouldn't call that a virtual dead heat. It might be within the statistical margin of error, but if I were McC, I'd still be sweating.
That's very interesting, because I do have 20/15 eyesight (corrected; naturally I'm blind like the rest of y'all) and I do love BluRay. I especially enjoy taking the same movie in BD and DVD and flipping back and forth and seeing how much finer detail the BD shows. Clothing textures, leaves on trees, or the iris of an eye, stuff like that.
My friend, OTOH, hates BluRay because it makes blemishes and visual artifacts in the original much more apparent.
"Will the pearly gates of acceptance open up for them once they reach the magic 10%, and will that have a positive effect on desktop Linux adoption?"
Absolutely not.
Some of you may recall that, back in the late 1980s, the Mac's market share was about 18%. For a period of time lasting into the mid-1990s, Apple was the #1 maker of PCs (IBM, Compaq and Dell rounded out the top 4; HP, Packard Bell, Gateway and a few others fought over the scraps).
If you take into consideration the fact that Macs lasted longer than PCs in those days and Mac users tended to buy more software (claims supported by numerous published Gartner studies), you could make a fair argument that Macs represented as much as perhaps a third of the total installed base and of the potential software market.
This was not seen as sufficient. Throughout the entire mid-80s through late-90s, the PC press maintained a steady drum-beat of, "Apple doesn't have enough market share to survive." Of course Apple's not going to make it if the press keeps telling everyone they can't! Combine this with some of Apple's strategic management blunders, and you have a perfect recipe for also-ran status.
Not that any of this is necessary to ensure Windows' continued market dominance. Most businesses are going to use what other businesses in their industry use. Most people are going to buy for home use what they are comfortable with at work. Windows' prevalence is its own best selling feature. This is why Microsoft enjoys a "natural monopoly", and why it will take a bigger disruptive market force than anything we've seen so far in the past 20+ years to change it.
I don't think I'm doing it wrong. If you wanted to make sure that one of your (n) Netflix movies was always an adventure title, how better would you do it than assign one slot to another profile and populate its queue with all your adventure picks?
I have Netflix and I use a second profile to partition my queue by movie genre. I have to say, I cheered when the feature was introduced, but it was never well implemented. Switching from the alt back to the main account, I have to reenter my password. There's no way to send movies from one queue to the other. It's basically a whole second account that is loosely tied to my main account.
If killing off this half-baked feature makes it possible for Netflix to come back in 6 or 9 months with a replacement DONE RIGHT, then I'd call it a big win for all concerned.
I work as a tech support engineer, and if I could mod the parent to +5 (Insightful), I would.
Most of my cases are resolved by explaining to the customer things that are unclear in the documentation, so it's unusual to decide within 48 hours that the customer is reporting a real bug. Once we agree that they are, then I can usually reproduce the behavior in a day. Once reproduced, then we do not consider 2 to 5 days for a fix to be delivered to be out of line.
Questions I can answer same day. Fixing bugs takes time.
I've always felt that the main reason Be didn't make it was that there's only room for one significant competitor to Windows, and the market had already chosen Linux. (MacOS was a special case, due to inhabiting a space where Windows couldn't go. It'll be interesting to see if MacOS can survive moving to Intel.)
It seems clear to me that there is competitive advantage to be gained, lost, or possibly abused simply by allowing people to know or believe that Party A has been talking to Party B. Google is trying to protect its interests by keeping a lid on this information until they're ready to make a public announcement, and they don't want other companies pumping themselves by unilaterally trading on Google's name. What's the big deal?
For most brackets, it's very simple. You can look at the QWERTY key caps, because the two symbols on the same key generally remain the same. You just have to know where it moved. The []/{} keys move to the top row, next to ().
I understand your attachment to your keyboard. I'd probably sell my soul for a good IBM Model M. You could die of old age trying to find a Dvorak keyboard. Fortunately, you don't have to. Mac OS, Windows and better Linuxen all include a Dvorak keymap that simply reads your standard QWERTY (off topic: it is weird typing 'qwerty' on Dvorak) keyboard as though it were Dvorak. [Side note: Windows, in its retarded glory, assigns the keyboard map per window, not GUI-wide. If you change the active key map, existing windows will continue in their original mode.]
Some keyboards let you swap around the key caps, but you can also just print out a template. If you ever get disoriented, use the nubs to place your hands on the home keys, look away from the keyboard (at the screen or at your key template), and start typing. After a few days of Dvorak, you will learn to associate QWERTY key caps with Dvorak characters.
It took me about six weeks to become comfortable with Dvorak using a template. (If I ever saw a real Dvorak keyboard, I'd probably turn into a quivering blob of jello.) After a year, I was equally fast with QWERTY and Dvorak, about 85% of my former QWERTY speed due to keyboard confusion. Now, I'm back to my former peak or better on both methods. But it really doesn't matter because my gating factor is thinking time, not typing speed.
The main reason I switched to Dvorak is not speed, but comfort. I got some painful RSI once from using a crappy PC mouse for only a couple of hours (yes, it was that bad, Compaq if you must know, and took weeks to heal). In response, I switched hardware (to IBM KB+mouse) and started typing Dvorak exclusively in the office and QWERTY at home. The different hand motions gave the aching tissues a chance to recover.
Funny thing is, like so many other mental activities, keyboard use appears to have modal qualities. I basically can't program on a QWERTY keyboard. But I can't play an MMO on Dvorak. Go figure. And VI (or NetHack) navigation on Dvorak is just plain bent. Use the arrow keys. Which reminds me of a third, and possibly the best, reason to use Dvorak: security. Most people cannot mess around with your computer. You will never again have impatient coworkers push you aside, saying, "Here, it'll be faster if I just type this for you."
Slashdot Mirror
Ya, what you said.
After several years as a developer, I found a job in tech support. Now, years later, I still love it. This is not your typical call center stuff: my customers are engineers. I am respected, the pay is good, the customers are fun, and the challenges change frequently. Many tech support engineers use their position to get their foot in the door and skill up and move on to development, but I'm pretty happy in support.
Just because a language is not widely used outside academia does not mean it isn't a good teaching tool. You can pick up a new language in a few weeks, but a strong understanding of the fundamentals lasts forever. In a teaching setting, you want a language and dev tools that do not get in the way of illustrating the concepts.
At my university, a professor chose C++ to teach computational linguistics to non-programmers. HUGE mistake! We spent about 80% of the course learning C++ badly, rather than linguistics well. The CS department, wisely I think, taught its newbies in LISP.
Mainly Fix32. This was the solution requested by the customer, but after the training class it was clear that Fix lacked the oomph to satisfy the customer's requirements. In hindsight, I should have pushed back on the customer and told them they had unreasonable expectations. But that's water under the bridge, and I still believe Citect was the better tool.
We also had a totally redundant back-up SCADA system that I think was implemented using Genie.
Guilty as charged. Blatant plug, I know. I never worked for Citect or one of their distributors, although someone who did gifted me a copy of Snow Crash. Does that count as full disclosure?
I developed an HMI using Citect, and for my needs it was significantly better than the alternatives. Actually, it was pretty excellent. But you wouldn't use it to control dangerous machines: it runs on Windows. :-) Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition is high-level: the user-friendly end of process control. We used Citect to control the machines that control the machines.
You could poke a button on Citect that said, "open this valve," but all Citect did was message an industrial PLC that performed all the safety calculations and bounds checks and actuated the relay, then sent the result back for Citect to display. Actually, a better example would be to poke a button to start the next phase of a run. You wouldn't use SCADA to open or close an individual valve much more than you'd invoke a single C function from a CLI.
I would argue that in fact the traditional rules of IT do not all apply to these SCADA systems. They are quite often single-purpose PCs that have little or no connection outside the plant floor. If they worked on commissioning day, they'll probably still work today. They don't need a lot of management. Not that machines don't get taken down for maintenance, but you don't want a surprise incompatibility in your software update keeping the system down longer than anticipated. Wreaks havoc on the supply chain. Actually, Citect can clone control stations (legitimately, not just 0wn3d), so you could do a phased deployment of patches without losing any capability; I was speaking more generally.
It is true, though, that process engineers I've known don't think much about network security. They're concerned about guarding against a china syndrome, so the important stuff is off the net and often talks to SCADA via RS-232. A hacker might steal data or stop the run, but probably couldn't make things go boom.
My company might. Send a note to rrydx64-slashdot@yahoo.com and we'll talk.
At the schools you name, I wouldn't apply with a GPA less than 3.5, and that's being optimistic.
Looks to me like about 9 out of 10 current national polls have Obama in the lead with an average advantage of 3.6%. I wouldn't call that a virtual dead heat. It might be within the statistical margin of error, but if I were McC, I'd still be sweating.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.html
... it's that Democrats have more to be enthusiastic about right now.
If I were a Republican, I'd be keeping a pretty low profile this election cycle too.
All other factors being equal, I'll take HD.
That's very interesting, because I do have 20/15 eyesight (corrected; naturally I'm blind like the rest of y'all) and I do love BluRay. I especially enjoy taking the same movie in BD and DVD and flipping back and forth and seeing how much finer detail the BD shows. Clothing textures, leaves on trees, or the iris of an eye, stuff like that.
My friend, OTOH, hates BluRay because it makes blemishes and visual artifacts in the original much more apparent.
See, you can't please everyone.
Suggest he learn Lua and make a World of Warcraft plugin.
"Will the pearly gates of acceptance open up for them once they reach the magic 10%, and will that have a positive effect on desktop Linux adoption?"
Absolutely not.
Some of you may recall that, back in the late 1980s, the Mac's market share was about 18%. For a period of time lasting into the mid-1990s, Apple was the #1 maker of PCs (IBM, Compaq and Dell rounded out the top 4; HP, Packard Bell, Gateway and a few others fought over the scraps).
If you take into consideration the fact that Macs lasted longer than PCs in those days and Mac users tended to buy more software (claims supported by numerous published Gartner studies), you could make a fair argument that Macs represented as much as perhaps a third of the total installed base and of the potential software market.
This was not seen as sufficient. Throughout the entire mid-80s through late-90s, the PC press maintained a steady drum-beat of, "Apple doesn't have enough market share to survive." Of course Apple's not going to make it if the press keeps telling everyone they can't! Combine this with some of Apple's strategic management blunders, and you have a perfect recipe for also-ran status.
Not that any of this is necessary to ensure Windows' continued market dominance. Most businesses are going to use what other businesses in their industry use. Most people are going to buy for home use what they are comfortable with at work. Windows' prevalence is its own best selling feature. This is why Microsoft enjoys a "natural monopoly", and why it will take a bigger disruptive market force than anything we've seen so far in the past 20+ years to change it.
I don't think I'm doing it wrong. If you wanted to make sure that one of your (n) Netflix movies was always an adventure title, how better would you do it than assign one slot to another profile and populate its queue with all your adventure picks?
I have Netflix and I use a second profile to partition my queue by movie genre. I have to say, I cheered when the feature was introduced, but it was never well implemented. Switching from the alt back to the main account, I have to reenter my password. There's no way to send movies from one queue to the other. It's basically a whole second account that is loosely tied to my main account.
If killing off this half-baked feature makes it possible for Netflix to come back in 6 or 9 months with a replacement DONE RIGHT, then I'd call it a big win for all concerned.
Most comfortable office chair I have ever sat in. Way more comfortable than Aeron. Cheaper too. I have one at home.
http://www.cookingmamacookoff.com/
Our house (ages 1 to 39) loves this game.
I work as a tech support engineer, and if I could mod the parent to +5 (Insightful), I would.
Most of my cases are resolved by explaining to the customer things that are unclear in the documentation, so it's unusual to decide within 48 hours that the customer is reporting a real bug. Once we agree that they are, then I can usually reproduce the behavior in a day. Once reproduced, then we do not consider 2 to 5 days for a fix to be delivered to be out of line.
Questions I can answer same day. Fixing bugs takes time.
I've always felt that the main reason Be didn't make it was that there's only room for one significant competitor to Windows, and the market had already chosen Linux. (MacOS was a special case, due to inhabiting a space where Windows couldn't go. It'll be interesting to see if MacOS can survive moving to Intel.)
It seems clear to me that there is competitive advantage to be gained, lost, or possibly abused simply by allowing people to know or believe that Party A has been talking to Party B. Google is trying to protect its interests by keeping a lid on this information until they're ready to make a public announcement, and they don't want other companies pumping themselves by unilaterally trading on Google's name. What's the big deal?
For most brackets, it's very simple. You can look at the QWERTY key caps, because the two symbols on the same key generally remain the same. You just have to know where it moved. The []/{} keys move to the top row, next to ().
I understand your attachment to your keyboard. I'd probably sell my soul for a good IBM Model M. You could die of old age trying to find a Dvorak keyboard. Fortunately, you don't have to. Mac OS, Windows and better Linuxen all include a Dvorak keymap that simply reads your standard QWERTY (off topic: it is weird typing 'qwerty' on Dvorak) keyboard as though it were Dvorak. [Side note: Windows, in its retarded glory, assigns the keyboard map per window, not GUI-wide. If you change the active key map, existing windows will continue in their original mode.]
Some keyboards let you swap around the key caps, but you can also just print out a template. If you ever get disoriented, use the nubs to place your hands on the home keys, look away from the keyboard (at the screen or at your key template), and start typing. After a few days of Dvorak, you will learn to associate QWERTY key caps with Dvorak characters.
It took me about six weeks to become comfortable with Dvorak using a template. (If I ever saw a real Dvorak keyboard, I'd probably turn into a quivering blob of jello.) After a year, I was equally fast with QWERTY and Dvorak, about 85% of my former QWERTY speed due to keyboard confusion. Now, I'm back to my former peak or better on both methods. But it really doesn't matter because my gating factor is thinking time, not typing speed.
The main reason I switched to Dvorak is not speed, but comfort. I got some painful RSI once from using a crappy PC mouse for only a couple of hours (yes, it was that bad, Compaq if you must know, and took weeks to heal). In response, I switched hardware (to IBM KB+mouse) and started typing Dvorak exclusively in the office and QWERTY at home. The different hand motions gave the aching tissues a chance to recover.
Funny thing is, like so many other mental activities, keyboard use appears to have modal qualities. I basically can't program on a QWERTY keyboard. But I can't play an MMO on Dvorak. Go figure. And VI (or NetHack) navigation on Dvorak is just plain bent. Use the arrow keys. Which reminds me of a third, and possibly the best, reason to use Dvorak: security. Most people cannot mess around with your computer. You will never again have impatient coworkers push you aside, saying, "Here, it'll be faster if I just type this for you."
My Windows machines tend to need increasing amount of tweaking as time goes on, to deal with the cumulative effects of system rot.
:-)
Linux machines get every update and upgrade, because I can.
And Macs just work, for the most part.
Put VOIP on your laptop and you're there today. :-)