Whatever operating system is best at running games will dominate the future of the "desktop" in the home. For all it's faults, right now that is Windows, but that can change.
Should we teach everyone to write? I mean, only a few of us ever become poets. Or authors. Or even journalists. Why? To write crappy comments on Slashdot, that's why.
I mean, them young whippersnappers seem like drooling retards when I break out my trusty old soldering iron. You know, for debugging like back when bugs actually stung...
The fossils were NOT found i Asia, but in Libya, which was and is a part of Africa. The point of the paper is, that the variety of fossils indicate a much deeper evolutionary history than the African fossil record accounts for, and that Asia is the likely candidate for the earliest primates.
The "universal" desktop is a dead end, as people are moving towards a combination of online services, very smart gadgets and virtualized personal appliances. The Linux kernel, though, will probably play a significant, if not preeminent, part in this future.
I must concur with this point, and also rejoice with the "mashup" trend. Such Excel über-users were responsible for just about half the customer specific applications I did in the 90's...
Mashups such as described is simply another way for intelligent superusers to get out of their depth and, subsequently, call in the cavalry (that would be you and me, hehehe) when the real world hits their application.
Mind you, this is not a bad thing, just another variation of an age-old trend... ask any carpenter or plumber out there and you will get the point.
I wager you stand a pretty good chance just about anywhere in continental Europe. The fact that you're American will probably tally in your favor, especially if you have some sort higher education in computer science and/or software engineering.
*NIX and Java gigs are as common as in North America, if not more so.
I have no specific knowledge on the current situation in Switzerland, but in most respects the country is comparable to my own (Denmark), where such skills are in fairly high demand and the overall financial compensation is almost on par with the U.S.
Social and professional networking is always important in jobhunting, so don't just surf the usual sites. Contact the local relevant SIG's in the area, maybe work an angle at the IT department of your fiancees potential employer, something like that.
Obviously we are well past the happy days of the Y2K-bonanza and the dot-com klondyke, but there are plenty of work to be done, even if it isn't childhood-dream careerstuff.
Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but the current limits of the radio spectrum are transient and purely technical. By definition, so is the need for government regulation.
I am no specialist in the area, but for all practical purposes signal-transmission "on the air" are limited only by the technology we use for transmission and reception. The need for regulation is strictly derived from the practically available technology at any given time.
Currently, transception(?) capacity at any given frequency range is dictated by the frequency bell-curve nature of any radiosignal (i.e. "channels" per range), and data density over time (i.e. bits per second per channel).
In theory we could cram an almost infinite number of bits into an almost infinitely small timeframe into an almost infinitely small frequency-range.
But not today... hence all this clueless babble.
The limits has changed in the past, and they will change again in the future. A lot! Take heed of this, Powers That Be.
We could play "The World" in real-time on a huge, distributed network of some kind, something like a mix of E-Bay, Everquest and IRC only much, much greater. Add some CNN Online for thrills and feed/. streams at random. Something like that. Make it browserbased.
We could "simulate" all sorts of events, you know, terrorist attacks, meteor impacts or natural disasters. Anything. The winners would sweep the stakes according to some sort of victory resolution scheme. Maybe THAT could be coded in Perl.
All players could "initiate" actions at any time that would, eventually, over many turns, determine the final outcome. Players could interact with one another according to some proximity scheme. Players could coorperate toward common goals.
At intervals we could make tournaments, where the winners of the local series would compete in the World Series. The World Champion would collect a huge prize and maybe move into The White House.
When finding stuff, we basically use one or both of two basic methods: Directories and indices.
DNS is, basically, a directory. So was the original Yahoo. Google is an index.
The difference is, that with a directory, an external categorization is applied to predefined entities (such as websites). With an index, the "categorization" is derived from the content itself.
Of course, deep down below, at the core of "finding stuff"-logic, directories and indices are the same. Google, too, operates with externally defined entities: words and pages.
The ultimate searchengine, one that would REALLY kill the need for DNS in day-to-day surfing, would somehow combine these two notions, and possibly include many more.
Any formal estimation method, if possible, even if only partial, would still require a formal description of the task, which is, in my experience, the first and foremost problem/art/craft in software engineering. Once the task is adequately defined, the remaining work is, by and large, downhill.
Ok, the definition of "adequate" may kick off a few debates, especially with management... which, in my experience, is the central "problem" in software engineering. Management, that is.
System administration is arguably one of the most demanding jobs around, spanning from hardware tinkering over hardcore programming, webmastering, database administration and even well into actual business decisionmaking. And then we havn't even touched upon anything *nix/nux, networking and weird driver configurations. A good SysAdm is the quintessential Jack-of-all-trades.
I do not believe it is possible to draw up a comprehensive list of specific qualifications for a job like that, but raw intelligence, contempt for the concept of "impossible" and total sleep-cycle control would rank high.
BTW, whenever I get into actual makework with a customer, I take considerable steps to befriend the local SysAdm, as this person knows EVERYBODY in the organisation, and everybody (who knows what's good for them) wants to be on friendly terms with the SysAdm. It just makes everything run smoother.
Yeah, well... programming methodologies *sigh*
As far as I am concerned XP is yet another take at the cesspool of murky monstrosities that is the mind of the programmer. As such, it places itself in the tradition of Fred Brooks' seminal "The Mythical Man Month".
The central 'tenets' of XP are primarily instruments with which to tackle the almost mythological ideosyncrasies of The Programmer: megalomania, vanity and hysterical perfectionism.
So, while XP isn't all thing to all people (and, most definitely, not The Silver Bullet), it is certainly a worthy contribution to the ongoing development of the art and craft of programming.
Okay, XP is also about project management and customer relations, but, um, I skipped those chapters.
Slashdot Mirror
The general election in India is scheduled to start in a couple of weeks, and they recently had yet another big row with Pakistan. Just saying.
Whatever operating system is best at running games will dominate the future of the "desktop" in the home. For all it's faults, right now that is Windows, but that can change.
Should we teach everyone to write? I mean, only a few of us ever become poets. Or authors. Or even journalists. Why? To write crappy comments on Slashdot, that's why.
I mean, them young whippersnappers seem like drooling retards when I break out my trusty old soldering iron. You know, for debugging like back when bugs actually stung ...
If it won't facilitate flying cars by the year 2020, I'm not interested.
The fossils were NOT found i Asia, but in Libya, which was and is a part of Africa. The point of the paper is, that the variety of fossils indicate a much deeper evolutionary history than the African fossil record accounts for, and that Asia is the likely candidate for the earliest primates.
The "universal" desktop is a dead end, as people are moving towards a combination of online services, very smart gadgets and virtualized personal appliances. The Linux kernel, though, will probably play a significant, if not preeminent, part in this future.
See http://idling.atadon.dk/2007/12/vista-blessing.html for some elaborations on this subject (my own blog).
I must concur with this point, and also rejoice with the "mashup" trend. Such Excel über-users were responsible for just about half the customer specific applications I did in the 90's ...
... ask any carpenter or plumber out there and you will get the point.
Mashups such as described is simply another way for intelligent superusers to get out of their depth and, subsequently, call in the cavalry (that would be you and me, hehehe) when the real world hits their application.
Mind you, this is not a bad thing, just another variation of an age-old trend
I wager you stand a pretty good chance just about anywhere in continental Europe. The fact that you're American will probably tally in your favor, especially if you have some sort higher education in computer science and/or software engineering.
*NIX and Java gigs are as common as in North America, if not more so.
I have no specific knowledge on the current situation in Switzerland, but in most respects the country is comparable to my own (Denmark), where such skills are in fairly high demand and the overall financial compensation is almost on par with the U.S.
Social and professional networking is always important in jobhunting, so don't just surf the usual sites. Contact the local relevant SIG's in the area, maybe work an angle at the IT department of your fiancees potential employer, something like that.
Obviously we are well past the happy days of the Y2K-bonanza and the dot-com klondyke, but there are plenty of work to be done, even if it isn't childhood-dream careerstuff.
---
Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but the current limits of the radio spectrum are transient and purely technical. By definition, so is the need for government regulation.
I am no specialist in the area, but for all practical purposes signal-transmission "on the air" are limited only by the technology we use for transmission and reception. The need for regulation is strictly derived from the practically available technology at any given time.
Currently, transception(?) capacity at any given frequency range is dictated by the frequency bell-curve nature of any radiosignal (i.e. "channels" per range), and data density over time (i.e. bits per second per channel).
In theory we could cram an almost infinite number of bits into an almost infinitely small timeframe into an almost infinitely small frequency-range.
But not today... hence all this clueless babble.
The limits has changed in the past, and they will change again in the future. A lot! Take heed of this, Powers That Be.
We could play "The World" in real-time on a huge, distributed network of some kind, something like a mix of E-Bay, Everquest and IRC only much, much greater. Add some CNN Online for thrills and feed /. streams at random. Something like that. Make it browserbased.
We could "simulate" all sorts of events, you know, terrorist attacks, meteor impacts or natural disasters. Anything. The winners would sweep the stakes according to some sort of victory resolution scheme. Maybe THAT could be coded in Perl.
All players could "initiate" actions at any time that would, eventually, over many turns, determine the final outcome. Players could interact with one another according to some proximity scheme. Players could coorperate toward common goals.
At intervals we could make tournaments, where the winners of the local series would compete in the World Series. The World Champion would collect a huge prize and maybe move into The White House.
Hmmm. I think I'll go to the pub...
When finding stuff, we basically use one or both of two basic methods: Directories and indices.
DNS is, basically, a directory. So was the original Yahoo. Google is an index.
The difference is, that with a directory, an external categorization is applied to predefined entities (such as websites). With an index, the "categorization" is derived from the content itself.
Of course, deep down below, at the core of "finding stuff"-logic, directories and indices are the same. Google, too, operates with externally defined entities: words and pages.
The ultimate searchengine, one that would REALLY kill the need for DNS in day-to-day surfing, would somehow combine these two notions, and possibly include many more.
Any formal estimation method, if possible, even if only partial, would still require a formal description of the task, which is, in my experience, the first and foremost problem/art/craft in software engineering. Once the task is adequately defined, the remaining work is, by and large, downhill.
Ok, the definition of "adequate" may kick off a few debates, especially with management... which, in my experience, is the central "problem" in software engineering. Management, that is.
Hmmm...
System administration is arguably one of the most demanding jobs around, spanning from hardware tinkering over hardcore programming, webmastering, database administration and even well into actual business decisionmaking. And then we havn't even touched upon anything *nix/nux, networking and weird driver configurations. A good SysAdm is the quintessential Jack-of-all-trades.
I do not believe it is possible to draw up a comprehensive list of specific qualifications for a job like that, but raw intelligence, contempt for the concept of "impossible" and total sleep-cycle control would rank high.
BTW, whenever I get into actual makework with a customer, I take considerable steps to befriend the local SysAdm, as this person knows EVERYBODY in the organisation, and everybody (who knows what's good for them) wants to be on friendly terms with the SysAdm. It just makes everything run smoother.
Yeah! Why are all the bad guys using four letter acronyms, anyway?
Yeah, well... programming methodologies *sigh* As far as I am concerned XP is yet another take at the cesspool of murky monstrosities that is the mind of the programmer. As such, it places itself in the tradition of Fred Brooks' seminal "The Mythical Man Month". The central 'tenets' of XP are primarily instruments with which to tackle the almost mythological ideosyncrasies of The Programmer: megalomania, vanity and hysterical perfectionism. So, while XP isn't all thing to all people (and, most definitely, not The Silver Bullet), it is certainly a worthy contribution to the ongoing development of the art and craft of programming. Okay, XP is also about project management and customer relations, but, um, I skipped those chapters.