Compare the number of deaths at Waco to the number of deaths in the Serbian province of Kosovo at government hands, and then compare the two as a fraction of the size of the respective countries.
The chance of dying by violence in Kosovo is orders of magnitude higher than it is in even the most violent parts of the United States. But then, we Americans find the death of one six year old here more shocking than the deaths of whole schools full of sex year olds in places like the Balkans, or Africa.
That depends on what you mean by "marginally safer". If you mean that Americans are in danger of having their privacy invaded or other liberties trampled, well, yeah. But to compare that to Kosovo is silly in that there is a difference between getting shot in the head and dumped in a mass grave and having thieves steal your credit info. Unfortunately, we tend to be so damn spoiled in this country that we equate the two.
While those companies do almost certainly sell info, you probably can't blame them for the deluge. The transfer of deeds is consider public information, as far as I know. I am willing to bet that most of those people got the info from your local city government. Similar things happen with marriages, births, etc.
Unfortunately, a lot of "public" information was first called "public", when that meant that you had to go down to the local office and riffle through files. There was little abuse because of this difficulty. Now, with hard disks and bandwidth, big corporations can download the whole mass in a few seconds. That has nothing to do with the original intent, which was to allow you to contact the owner of some land, or make sure a potential spouse was already married, etc, etc.
The way I understand this (IAANAL), it is a ruling on a law specifically targeted at credit reporting agencies. As long as Bob's Auto doesn't start reporting on your credit, Bob can sell whatever he wants.
While this is certainly a good thing, it only applies to credit agencies. It doesn't apply to the vast majority of corporations out there. This doesn't really do all that much to protect our privacy. It just means that 3 or 4 of the big corps won't get to join thousands of others at invading our privacy. And while it is true that the credit reporting agencies more information than anybody, most of the data they have can be aquired from other sources.
If my cycle time goes from 10 min to 5 because of a processor that compiles faster, I just doubled my productivity!
That's the theory, anyway. I've not found that to be all that true in practice. I had the "pleasure" of working on the same piece of software for almost ten years. When I started, it took 30 minutes to compile on a 286. When I finally got it off my back, my box compiled it in under a minute. Was I thirty times more productive? Not at all. Was I even twice as productive? Not really. Why? Because I didn't sit there watching the screen while it compiled. I worked on future enhancements. I did code walkthrus. I did design stuff. Also, when it takes thirty minutes to see your results, you tend to be more careful, and are more likely to get it right with fewer compiles. When you can compile in a few seconds, you tend to "try things out" without really thinking them through more often.
Not that I'd want to run that slower processor again, but the productivity boost is way overrated.
But anyway, the other thing to keep in mind is that all of the things you listed are not the sort of thing the "average user" would run.
Anyway, I'm definitely a coder. I've been one for fifteen years. And I sure as hell see no need to pay the price premium you pay for these high-end chips.
It all has to do with what you consider important as well. 10-15 fps gives a perfectly reasonable game, though you will definitely notice the speed. (Not surprising. Human reaction times are in the 100-300 millisecond range.) The closer you get to a minimum of 30 fps, the less of an improvement each change makes. (Speaking of worst case, not average rates.)
Though it may just be that my first game was Pong, and all of this is just so incredible compared to my youth that a stuttering screen doesn't seem like much.
I can show you a 200 Mhz Pentium that outperforms a 450 Mhz K6-2 at Quake. The only difference being that the Pentium has a better graphics card. Yeah, the Pentium gets slow when there is a lot of activity, but never as slow as the machine that is "twice as fast" but has a crappy graphics card.
You can always use a bigger hard drive. I don't see anyone saying "who needs the new 40 Gig drives". But personally, I didn't bother with a 100 Mhz Pentium until they'd been out for almost two years. Didn't need it. (Until I had to load "Microsoft Visual Studio".) Hell, that's why I'm moving to Linux, and refusing to upgrade things like Quicken, Word and the like.
At some point, before Moore's law dies, we are going to reach a point where CPU speed is no longer important to the home or business user. We are getting close to that point. The bloatware vendors are becoming harder pressed to cram features that people find actually useful and unbloated alternatives are popping up everywhere. Really, there are just so many things the average user (who are not any of us, BTW) need a computer for. We're nearing the point where a $1000 computer has the power to do all of those things. Probably in the next five years.
My Pentium 200Mhx MMX Windows machine with a good PCI graphics card gives me an acceptable game of Quake III, while my K6-2 3DNow 450 Mhx Linux box with a crappy video card is too slow to play. I suspect that a lot of money is spent on useless "upgrades" for new chips.
I've been building my own PCs since 1988, and I've found that it almost never pays to buy the hot new processor. Software (except, perhaps, for Windows OSes) is usually designed with last year's machines in mind, so you get perfectly acceptable performance at the mid to low range for a fraction of the cost. I remember a friend buying a 486 machine for $10 grand when they came out. 18 months later, I bought a slightly faster one for $1500. Is it really worth it to have "the fastest"? Not for me, at least.
The other thing I find interesting is that while Microsoft seems driven to drive Intel's stock up, making slower and slower software to require faster and faster chips, most other modern OSes make the CPU less important. X isn't getting any slower (thank god) so one can assume that the 2005 version will be as responsive on a given machine as the 1995 version. With that being the case, I think that CPU speed will just become less and less important to the average user. I think they are starting to figure this out, as more and more people refuse to ugrade just because the hot new OS/chip is out. I think they've realized that it's something of a suckers game in the Wintel world. You need to "upgrade" every year or two to continue to do what you've done all along. Really, if you are not a gamer, but just doing word processing, finances, e-mail, browsing, etc., a 1995 era machine would be perfectly adequate.
FYI: US Violence has steadily dropped since 1992. As we all know, first person shooters were pretty much invented around 1990. Obviously no link there.
But anyway, I thought the episode was just far too overblown because while the demographic gender differences are obvious in the FPS world, the whole "need to have a hot female character to compete with the men" plot was idiotic. It's not like female skins aren't available.
Yeah, but those words with multiple syllables are located half-way across the country, and for some reason I can't seem to get them here. It is almost as if the connection between here and there were being jammed with millions of requests and response. It is a very odd occurance that I am currently unable to explain.
As others have said, there is a lot more to a mainframe then raw processing power. A Beowulf cluster still has to use IDE or SCSI drives, ISA or PCI Lan cards and the like.
Sigh.... I knew I should have put a smiley in there....
(I learned Unix on Vaxen and used to run an old PDP-11. I thought for sure the reference to "old DEC boxes" at "universities" would clue people in to the joke. )
In short, Linux + Mainframe + Old technology = Marketing death.
Wrongo! Mainframe = "Serious Business Machine". Nothing will get an MIS director's attention like saying "See, Linux can run both on your PC and on that million dollar IBM mainframe that runs your core business. Windows can't."
Remember, what caused the PC to catch on was not the "home user", but the business world. The PC caught on because MIS directors saw it as a "Serious Business Machine" in contrast to competitors that were "game machines". To these guys, Microsoft is the "johnny-come-lately" that they are not all that comfortable with. For them, IBM is still king. Saying that Linux will run on their big iron while Windows won't says to that that Linux is a serious operating system while Windows is a toy.
The idea of "new" or "old" media may not hold too much longer, just Middle Media that combine elements of both, giving information-seekers many more options.
It never held in the first place. This whole "new media vs. old media" thing was just a way for a bunch of young journalists to maintain their sense of self-importance while ignoring "old fashioned" notions such as fact-checking and objectivity. It was a typical rush to the new by people didn't really even understand the old. Now we see the shakeout, where everyone realizes that things weren't all that different after all.
No, I don't! I specifically mean what I wrote! The point being that you don't have to do anythingnew if you don't want to. C++ is about added features. The standard namespace is another added feature. You can use it or not.
Besides, I'll nitpick your nitpick. To get that to compile, it should be:
#include <cstdio>
int main() { std::printf("Hello World!\n"); return 0; }
Though I know at least Visual C++ gets this wrong...
One thing that people seem not to really understand is that you don't have to use "all that complicated stuff" to get benefit out of C++. After all, here is "hello world" in C:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }
Here is the same program written in C++:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }
The key to understanding being that if your job is just to say "Hello, World", there is no point in using multiple inheritance.
Once you've done this, then you can pick and choose elements of c++ that are advantagous to you. To take a simple example, this C++ program:
I suspect that part of the reason is that a lot of the questions and criticisms, especially those that didn't make it into the interview, are answered at length in The Design and Evolution of C++
It can be annoying answering the same question over and over.
Why? Because I can use C++ to write a purely OO language, a purely structured language, or anything in between. The language doesn't constrain me to use a certain paradigm.
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That depends on what you mean by "marginally safer". If you mean that Americans are in danger of having their privacy invaded or other liberties trampled, well, yeah. But to compare that to Kosovo is silly in that there is a difference between getting shot in the head and dumped in a mass grave and having thieves steal your credit info. Unfortunately, we tend to be so damn spoiled in this country that we equate the two.
Unfortunately, a lot of "public" information was first called "public", when that meant that you had to go down to the local office and riffle through files. There was little abuse because of this difficulty. Now, with hard disks and bandwidth, big corporations can download the whole mass in a few seconds. That has nothing to do with the original intent, which was to allow you to contact the owner of some land, or make sure a potential spouse was already married, etc, etc.
The way I understand this (IAANAL), it is a ruling on a law specifically targeted at credit reporting agencies. As long as Bob's Auto doesn't start reporting on your credit, Bob can sell whatever he wants.
While this is certainly a good thing, it only applies to credit agencies. It doesn't apply to the vast majority of corporations out there. This doesn't really do all that much to protect our privacy. It just means that 3 or 4 of the big corps won't get to join thousands of others at invading our privacy. And while it is true that the credit reporting agencies more information than anybody, most of the data they have can be aquired from other sources.
Then stop staring at the screen and do something!
That is why we have multitasking systems. So we can get work done while the machine is busy doing something else.
That's the theory, anyway. I've not found that to be all that true in practice. I had the "pleasure" of working on the same piece of software for almost ten years. When I started, it took 30 minutes to compile on a 286. When I finally got it off my back, my box compiled it in under a minute. Was I thirty times more productive? Not at all. Was I even twice as productive? Not really. Why? Because I didn't sit there watching the screen while it compiled. I worked on future enhancements. I did code walkthrus. I did design stuff. Also, when it takes thirty minutes to see your results, you tend to be more careful, and are more likely to get it right with fewer compiles. When you can compile in a few seconds, you tend to "try things out" without really thinking them through more often.
Not that I'd want to run that slower processor again, but the productivity boost is way overrated.
But anyway, the other thing to keep in mind is that all of the things you listed are not the sort of thing the "average user" would run.
Anyway, I'm definitely a coder. I've been one for fifteen years. And I sure as hell see no need to pay the price premium you pay for these high-end chips.
Though it may just be that my first game was Pong, and all of this is just so incredible compared to my youth that a stuttering screen doesn't seem like much.
Keep in mind that the human eye can only perceive about 30 FPS.
You can always use a bigger hard drive. I don't see anyone saying "who needs the new 40 Gig drives". But personally, I didn't bother with a 100 Mhz Pentium until they'd been out for almost two years. Didn't need it. (Until I had to load "Microsoft Visual Studio".) Hell, that's why I'm moving to Linux, and refusing to upgrade things like Quicken, Word and the like.
At some point, before Moore's law dies, we are going to reach a point where CPU speed is no longer important to the home or business user. We are getting close to that point. The bloatware vendors are becoming harder pressed to cram features that people find actually useful and unbloated alternatives are popping up everywhere. Really, there are just so many things the average user (who are not any of us, BTW) need a computer for. We're nearing the point where a $1000 computer has the power to do all of those things. Probably in the next five years.
If it wasn't for games, we'd be there now.
I've been building my own PCs since 1988, and I've found that it almost never pays to buy the hot new processor. Software (except, perhaps, for Windows OSes) is usually designed with last year's machines in mind, so you get perfectly acceptable performance at the mid to low range for a fraction of the cost. I remember a friend buying a 486 machine for $10 grand when they came out. 18 months later, I bought a slightly faster one for $1500. Is it really worth it to have "the fastest"? Not for me, at least.
The other thing I find interesting is that while Microsoft seems driven to drive Intel's stock up, making slower and slower software to require faster and faster chips, most other modern OSes make the CPU less important. X isn't getting any slower (thank god) so one can assume that the 2005 version will be as responsive on a given machine as the 1995 version. With that being the case, I think that CPU speed will just become less and less important to the average user. I think they are starting to figure this out, as more and more people refuse to ugrade just because the hot new OS/chip is out. I think they've realized that it's something of a suckers game in the Wintel world. You need to "upgrade" every year or two to continue to do what you've done all along. Really, if you are not a gamer, but just doing word processing, finances, e-mail, browsing, etc., a 1995 era machine would be perfectly adequate.
Were I to make a purchase to speed up my home computing, a good AGP 3D graphics card would probably be a better purchase.
But cool in theory, I suppose.
But anyway, I thought the episode was just far too overblown because while the demographic gender differences are obvious in the FPS world, the whole "need to have a hot female character to compete with the men" plot was idiotic. It's not like female skins aren't available.
Yeah, but those words with multiple syllables are located half-way across the country, and for some reason I can't seem to get them here. It is almost as if the connection between here and there were being jammed with millions of requests and response. It is a very odd occurance that I am currently unable to explain.
(I learned Unix on Vaxen and used to run an old PDP-11. I thought for sure the reference to "old DEC boxes" at "universities" would clue people in to the joke. )
Wrongo! Mainframe = "Serious Business Machine". Nothing will get an MIS director's attention like saying "See, Linux can run both on your PC and on that million dollar IBM mainframe that runs your core business. Windows can't."
Remember, what caused the PC to catch on was not the "home user", but the business world. The PC caught on because MIS directors saw it as a "Serious Business Machine" in contrast to competitors that were "game machines". To these guys, Microsoft is the "johnny-come-lately" that they are not all that comfortable with. For them, IBM is still king. Saying that Linux will run on their big iron while Windows won't says to that that Linux is a serious operating system while Windows is a toy.
Next thing you know, they'll be porting it to those old DEC boxes that all the universities have laying around.
It never held in the first place. This whole "new media vs. old media" thing was just a way for a bunch of young journalists to maintain their sense of self-importance while ignoring "old fashioned" notions such as fact-checking and objectivity. It was a typical rush to the new by people didn't really even understand the old. Now we see the shakeout, where everyone realizes that things weren't all that different after all.
No, I don't! I specifically mean what I wrote! The point being that you don't have to do anythingnew if you don't want to. C++ is about added features. The standard namespace is another added feature. You can use it or not.
Besides, I'll nitpick your nitpick. To get that to compile, it should be:
#include <cstdio>
int main()
{
std::printf("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}
Though I know at least Visual C++ gets this wrong...
(But you're right, I did forget the return.)
One thing that people seem not to really understand is that you don't have to use "all that complicated stuff" to get benefit out of C++. After all, here is "hello world" in C:
// Crash, boom
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf("Hello, World!\n");
}
Here is the same program written in C++:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
printf("Hello, World!\n");
}
The key to understanding being that if your job is just to say "Hello, World", there is no point in using multiple inheritance.
Once you've done this, then you can pick and choose elements of c++ that are advantagous to you. To take a simple example, this C++ program:
#include <iostream>
int main(void)
{
char* Name="Steve";
cout << "Hi, " << Name << "!\n";
}
is much less error prone then this C program:
int main(void)
{
char* Name="Steve";
cout << "Hi, %d!\n", Name);
}
Thus, you gain benefit without dealing with "all that complex stuff".
It can be annoying answering the same question over and over.
Why? Because I can use C++ to write a purely OO language, a purely structured language, or anything in between. The language doesn't constrain me to use a certain paradigm.