The Oracle ECLIPSED The SUN! He he... "Oracle bought Sun for the hardware." Good news, Java is likely doomed as a result! Bye bye Java. Now on the Blackberry front with RIM buying QNX to battle Apple Java OS will be doomed too. Opportunity rising for other cutting edge languages. [:)]
RIM has finally stepped up to the plate to FIGHT the GOOD against APPLE! YES!
Although I hate to see QNX be owned by RIM, the people who brought us Blackberry (recently completed a blackberry app - icky sticky java with types getting stuck all over the place for no good reason), this is a major massive move by RIM that sets them on the board to fight Apple. Before now it was not even a fair match. Now at least RIM has a chance again.
IBM (NOW Instantiations) Visual Age Smalltalk has run the garbage collector in a separate native thread for eons now, as has Smalltalk/MT (Multi-Threaded).
IBM (not Instantiations) Visual Age Smalltalk has run the garbage collector in a separate native thread for eons now, as has Smalltalk/MT (Multi-Threaded).
One problem is that when you run out of memory space the application native threads (many in Smalltalk/MT) are blocked waiting for the one garbage collection thread to catch up. It all depends upon how much new memory is allocated depending on how much is freed up. They have a solution and are working to implement it. It's likely to use multiple native threads for the gc balancing out the freeing with the consumption. Another solution is to have each worker thread also switch into a gc thread in cases when it's starved for memory.
Another solution is to use memory structures that don't require garbage collection. In other words, REUSE rather than RECYCLE.
http://www.pathstoknowledge.net/ has a large collection of links to math and other science videos available from universities. Look down the right side and you'll find the links way down under "Science Info Educational Videos". A lot of great courses all free, with many from major universities.
Actually I wasn't joking at all. I write lossy and lossless video compressors for a living. I can tell you that there is nothing like the original lossless video feed. Lossy video compression is just junk no matter how good they are. Lossy is lossy is lossy no matter how you slice it up.
When people get fiber into the home slipping terabytes over for a video will be nothing of note.
Yes, the camera chips are lossless when they record the frame dude. Then they usually apply some horrific resolution losing algorithm. For example, the awesome Red Cameras (http://www.Red.com) apply a horrific Wavelet compression algorithm just to transmit the data to the computer storage unit. So by the time it's at the desktop RedCine it's already lost detail. Then it goes through all kinds of hellish algorithms and ad hoc magic to make a movie. By then it's lost, lost, and lost more detils. Then it gets put into the really horrifly low resolution of BlueRay HD 1080p which is sold as the best thing there is. So yes. I don't want a DCT encoded piece of crap that loses detail, give me RAW Uncompressed video! I demand it!
By the way I write video compression algorithms, so I know of what I speak.
Nonsense. It depends on the job at hand. If the program requires heavy math problems to be solved then possibly the one with more math... but math geeks often make terrible programmers since they focus too much on the math and not enough on the quality of the rest of the program.
I've written engineering programs for bridges and buildings and I'm not a civil engineer and only have high school math plus what I've studied on my own. No calculus, but I've written bezier curve objects that make awesome curves. I worked with a civil engineer who had epic math skills, actually epic practical math skills. In fact I taught him how to use object oriented languages to upgrade his programming skills which were cut on early Fortran systems of long ago lore. The parts that needed math he did but I checked his programming work.
Some of the best programmers I know don't have any advanced math skills at all. Most of the best mathematicians I know don't have any good programming skills. Some do. It's hit and miss.
When working on a project or product it's important to get to know the skill sets of the others on the team and for the team members to leverage each others skills. Thus the entire premise of this article posting is bogus since it asks the wrong question. It depends on what the programmer will be doing and if they have the rest of the range of skills that you need for that person to be doing for the tasks at hand.
It's nonsense. All it tells you is the timing of the character strokes (no pun intended, seriously). Any meaning added other than the meaning of the characters strung into cogent words is meaningless, well unless you're programming in Perl well known for meaningless symbols having substantial meaning. That's it all perl programmers had better stop using keyboards!
"If someone pays you to perform work, they own all rights to that work."
No, it's not so cut and dry.
If you are an independent contractor or have a company that has a contract with the client it depends upon your contact terms with the default being that the person who does the work owning it.
If you're an employee working for the company you do the work for then they own the work.
If you're an employee of company X and do work on your own time for company Y then it could go either way. Again it depends on either your employment contract or if company X and company Y are in the same line of business or not. If they are then company X owns the work and you might get in trouble moonlighting and profiting without them knowing. If they are not in the same business and your employment agreement allows you to own your own work off hours then you own the work and company Y doesn't nor does company X.
It all depends. Consult a lawyer.
Whenever I'm an employee (which I haven't been in more than two decades) I always have a clause and an appendix that excludes all my previous works and their derivatives and certain areas of projects that I'm working on. As long as you're not working on stuff that is the same line of business as your employer then it's likely that they'll likely have no problem with such clauses. If they do then maybe reconsider them as an employer if you have that financial option. Or put your project on hold till the non-compete clauses expire (non-compete clauses are not valid in all jurisdictions).
Yeah, any court that enforces that city bylaw in this case deserves our contempt as the court will be in Contempt of Citizen. Ha should sue the city for wasting water and attempting to enforce a pernicious law.
Craig Mundie, what a total raving idiot that wants to take away our freedom. Put him in jail just for suggesting this and see how he likes his freedoms restricted. That's being polite about it.
"The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity By Alan Cooper, Foreword by Paul Saffo
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste huge amounts of money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. They have let the inmates run the asylum. Alan Cooper offers a provocative, insightful, and entertaining explanation of how talented people repeatedly design bad software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work with companies big and small to show how to create products that will both thrill users and improve the bottom line.
Reviews
"Frightening but true. Personal computers have engendered another New Age codependency. They shame us, they frustrate us and yet we keep spending money on them. Alan Cooper's book explains why it shouldn't be so and what we can do about it. A humbling and enjoyable read." --Jean-Louis Gassée, Founder, Be, Inc. and Apple Computer France
"Once again, Alan Cooper shows the way. His books should be required reading for all those technology companies who think they are serving their customers: think again. We need more books like this one, and more people like Alan Cooper." --Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of The Invisible Computer
"This clear-headed book teaches leaders what they need to know to create systems that win in the marketplace... you will find this one of the most thoughtful, practical, and helpful books you can read." --Larry Keeley, President, Doblin Group
On a scale of 1 to 10 rating the success of his attempt he achieved a 1 out of 10. Sure a wee bit of terror... however if he'd succeeded for real the plane would have crashed killing hundreds of people on board and even people on the ground as it smacked into and destroyed homes or buildings. So, sure he had a 1 of of 10 but really it fizzled.
And there was a great big fizzing sound as his device failed to accomplish it's task with was either a detonation or an incendiary intended to burn the plane out of the sky.
Since it was in his, ahem, pants or pocket he burned himself where it hurts effectively removing himself from the gene pool either by a lifetime of incarceration or more directly by incineration.
You'd like to think, ouch that's gotta hurt but then who has sympathy for someone attempting to kill other people with explosives or flames?
In a way you want the lone wolf jihadies to come out of the woodwork and fail since they illuminate their otherwise low key network connections. It's sorta like a flash light in the darkness of terror plots by individuals or states.
Fire your boss for overstepping his authority
on
Music While Programming?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Your boss has zero rights to tell you what you can listen to at work. Assert your human rights.
As long as the material isn't disturbing anyone else or offensive to anyone in the work environment, and how could it be if you listen with headphones, you are within your rights to listen to music as you choose.
If they are not satisfied with the quality of the work from the programmers they can address that as an orthogonal issue.
Claw back your rights from your totalitarian fuddy duddy boss. Take no guff from that kind of fool.
Of course, always make sure your professional. For example, when someone approaches your desk to speak to you make sure you pay attention setting aside your music.
You are there to get work done, not be controlled in every aspect of your life.
Slashdot Mirror
"You could become a Horta-culturalist!" - A.L..
"Was found to inhabit a naturally occurring asphalt lake!"
Cool. We have [three naturally occurring] asphalt lakes, other than our highways and roads!
"Metal Respiration."
Very cool. It's a metal breathing based life form Jim!
The Horta's ancestors! It must be! [:)]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_Dark
"You could beome a Horta-culturalist." - Alan L.
YUM ASPHALT! [:)] Titanic discovery!
Microbial Life in a Liquid Asphalt Desert
http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.2047
PDF of paper.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.2047v1
Go out and shovel the asphalt driveway!
I can't, it got up and crawled away! [:)]
I don't know why we ever hired a Horta to be our driveway anyway? Concrete would have been friendlier.
Yeah, but the Horta purrs.
Oh yeah, right.
Not a troll, just a valid opinion that some slashdotters didn't like!
The Oracle ECLIPSED The SUN! He he... "Oracle bought Sun for the hardware." Good news, Java is likely doomed as a result! Bye bye Java. Now on the Blackberry front with RIM buying QNX to battle Apple Java OS will be doomed too. Opportunity rising for other cutting edge languages. [:)]
RIM has finally stepped up to the plate to FIGHT the GOOD against APPLE! YES!
Although I hate to see QNX be owned by RIM, the people who brought us Blackberry (recently completed a blackberry app - icky sticky java with types getting stuck all over the place for no good reason), this is a major massive move by RIM that sets them on the board to fight Apple. Before now it was not even a fair match. Now at least RIM has a chance again.
OOPS, that should be:
IBM (NOW Instantiations) Visual Age Smalltalk has run the garbage collector in a separate native thread for eons now, as has Smalltalk/MT (Multi-Threaded).
Not much to see in the article. Move along.
IBM (not Instantiations) Visual Age Smalltalk has run the garbage collector in a separate native thread for eons now, as has Smalltalk/MT (Multi-Threaded).
One problem is that when you run out of memory space the application native threads (many in Smalltalk/MT) are blocked waiting for the one garbage collection thread to catch up. It all depends upon how much new memory is allocated depending on how much is freed up. They have a solution and are working to implement it. It's likely to use multiple native threads for the gc balancing out the freeing with the consumption. Another solution is to have each worker thread also switch into a gc thread in cases when it's starved for memory.
Another solution is to use memory structures that don't require garbage collection. In other words, REUSE rather than RECYCLE.
http://www.pathstoknowledge.net/ has a large collection of links to math and other science videos available from universities. Look down the right side and you'll find the links way down under "Science Info Educational Videos". A lot of great courses all free, with many from major universities.
Actually I wasn't joking at all. I write lossy and lossless video compressors for a living. I can tell you that there is nothing like the original lossless video feed. Lossy video compression is just junk no matter how good they are. Lossy is lossy is lossy no matter how you slice it up.
When people get fiber into the home slipping terabytes over for a video will be nothing of note.
"Why do you write compression algorithms when all you want is uncompressed video?"
money. dah.
Yes, the camera chips are lossless when they record the frame dude. Then they usually apply some horrific resolution losing algorithm. For example, the awesome Red Cameras (http://www.Red.com) apply a horrific Wavelet compression algorithm just to transmit the data to the computer storage unit. So by the time it's at the desktop RedCine it's already lost detail. Then it goes through all kinds of hellish algorithms and ad hoc magic to make a movie. By then it's lost, lost, and lost more detils. Then it gets put into the really horrifly low resolution of BlueRay HD 1080p which is sold as the best thing there is. So yes. I don't want a DCT encoded piece of crap that loses detail, give me RAW Uncompressed video! I demand it!
By the way I write video compression algorithms, so I know of what I speak.
Soon lossy compression will be irrelevant.
I demand full resolution video without lossy compression. Screw the compressors.
Bandwidth and storage capacity will soon make lossy irrelevant even at HD * N scales.
I want the FULL resolution that the cameras recorded.
If you don't then enjoy your pixalated movies.
Nonsense. It depends on the job at hand. If the program requires heavy math problems to be solved then possibly the one with more math... but math geeks often make terrible programmers since they focus too much on the math and not enough on the quality of the rest of the program.
I've written engineering programs for bridges and buildings and I'm not a civil engineer and only have high school math plus what I've studied on my own. No calculus, but I've written bezier curve objects that make awesome curves. I worked with a civil engineer who had epic math skills, actually epic practical math skills. In fact I taught him how to use object oriented languages to upgrade his programming skills which were cut on early Fortran systems of long ago lore. The parts that needed math he did but I checked his programming work.
Some of the best programmers I know don't have any advanced math skills at all. Most of the best mathematicians I know don't have any good programming skills. Some do. It's hit and miss.
When working on a project or product it's important to get to know the skill sets of the others on the team and for the team members to leverage each others skills. Thus the entire premise of this article posting is bogus since it asks the wrong question. It depends on what the programmer will be doing and if they have the rest of the range of skills that you need for that person to be doing for the tasks at hand.
It's nonsense. All it tells you is the timing of the character strokes (no pun intended, seriously). Any meaning added other than the meaning of the characters strung into cogent words is meaningless, well unless you're programming in Perl well known for meaningless symbols having substantial meaning. That's it all perl programmers had better stop using keyboards!
"If someone pays you to perform work, they own all rights to that work."
No, it's not so cut and dry.
If you are an independent contractor or have a company that has a contract with the client it depends upon your contact terms with the default being that the person who does the work owning it.
If you're an employee working for the company you do the work for then they own the work.
If you're an employee of company X and do work on your own time for company Y then it could go either way. Again it depends on either your employment contract or if company X and company Y are in the same line of business or not. If they are then company X owns the work and you might get in trouble moonlighting and profiting without them knowing. If they are not in the same business and your employment agreement allows you to own your own work off hours then you own the work and company Y doesn't nor does company X.
It all depends. Consult a lawyer.
Whenever I'm an employee (which I haven't been in more than two decades) I always have a clause and an appendix that excludes all my previous works and their derivatives and certain areas of projects that I'm working on. As long as you're not working on stuff that is the same line of business as your employer then it's likely that they'll likely have no problem with such clauses. If they do then maybe reconsider them as an employer if you have that financial option. Or put your project on hold till the non-compete clauses expire (non-compete clauses are not valid in all jurisdictions).
Again, see a lawyer.
Yeah, any court that enforces that city bylaw in this case deserves our contempt as the court will be in Contempt of Citizen. Ha should sue the city for wasting water and attempting to enforce a pernicious law.
Craig Mundie, what a total raving idiot that wants to take away our freedom. Put him in jail just for suggesting this and see how he likes his freedoms restricted. That's being polite about it.
This book says it all.
"The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
By Alan Cooper, Foreword by Paul Saffo
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste huge amounts of money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. They have let the inmates run the asylum. Alan Cooper offers a provocative, insightful, and entertaining explanation of how talented people repeatedly design bad software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work with companies big and small to show how to create products that will both thrill users and improve the bottom line.
Reviews
"Frightening but true. Personal computers have engendered another New Age codependency. They shame us, they frustrate us and yet we keep spending money on them. Alan Cooper's book explains why it shouldn't be so and what we can do about it. A humbling and enjoyable read."
--Jean-Louis Gassée, Founder, Be, Inc. and Apple Computer France
"Once again, Alan Cooper shows the way. His books should be required reading for all those technology companies who think they are serving their customers: think again. We need more books like this one, and more people like Alan Cooper."
--Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of The Invisible Computer
"This clear-headed book teaches leaders what they need to know to create systems that win in the marketplace... you will find this one of the most thoughtful, practical, and helpful books you can read."
--Larry Keeley, President, Doblin Group
http://www.cooper.com/insights/books/
So they admit to stealing a now impressive collection of cones from various places? Not cool. Stealing cones that is.
So the old fuddy duddy guy was right after all! John Stewart, eat your words!
Avoid termites at all costs.
That's quite a load you're carrying my young sapling.
Drown him... if he floats he's a witch... burn him... if he burns he's a witch...
You are correct he would have removed himself from the gene pool had he succeeded in obliteration of the plane.
Had he not burned his pecker off (well we don't know for sure) he'd still be able to contribute to the gene pool. However that's now not likely.
Yes, in any case he'd be contributing to the meme pool regardless of the outcome. That's a given.
On a scale of 1 to 10 rating the success of his attempt he achieved a 1 out of 10. Sure a wee bit of terror... however if he'd succeeded for real the plane would have crashed killing hundreds of people on board and even people on the ground as it smacked into and destroyed homes or buildings. So, sure he had a 1 of of 10 but really it fizzled.
And there was a great big fizzing sound as his device failed to accomplish it's task with was either a detonation or an incendiary intended to burn the plane out of the sky.
Since it was in his, ahem, pants or pocket he burned himself where it hurts effectively removing himself from the gene pool either by a lifetime of incarceration or more directly by incineration.
You'd like to think, ouch that's gotta hurt but then who has sympathy for someone attempting to kill other people with explosives or flames?
In a way you want the lone wolf jihadies to come out of the woodwork and fail since they illuminate their otherwise low key network connections. It's sorta like a flash light in the darkness of terror plots by individuals or states.
Your boss has zero rights to tell you what you can listen to at work. Assert your human rights.
As long as the material isn't disturbing anyone else or offensive to anyone in the work environment, and how could it be if you listen with headphones, you are within your rights to listen to music as you choose.
If they are not satisfied with the quality of the work from the programmers they can address that as an orthogonal issue.
Claw back your rights from your totalitarian fuddy duddy boss. Take no guff from that kind of fool.
Of course, always make sure your professional. For example, when someone approaches your desk to speak to you make sure you pay attention setting aside your music.
You are there to get work done, not be controlled in every aspect of your life.
"Rather than illegally assaulting people who ask him questions Al Gore could actually engage people respectfully and answer questions on AGW and Climategate that people have. Why are you so afraid Al Gore? The vast majority of people aren't evil Al Gore, they just want answers to questions you're avoiding."
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/al-gore-illegally-assulting-harrasing-and-detaining-people-with-his-security-goons-with-guns-to-avoid-any-questions-on-climategate-and-agw