So, it follows you out where ever you go, and finds its way back without running into anything. Good thing they used linux....I suppose they might have had to drop features otherwise.
On the other hand...we can all imagine a beowulf cluster of these. You know the army is.
From the review: He missed a trick, I think, in failing to discuss some of the specific data most valuable to people who have adopted a start-up lifestyle. Where's the table of startup filled neighborhoods in New York City, San Francisco, and Austin, cross referenced by nearby all-night restaurants and gyms?
That's all I care about, where to go eat after midnight. Whataburger and McDonalds just don't cut it. 24-hr breakfast is a big plus with me. Here's my additions (all local to me of course;)
Austin:
Magnolia Cafe, on Lake Austin Blvd. A bit out of the way for us North Austin techies but worth the drive and worth the wait. Kerby Lane Cafe, two locations, one on North Research. An Austin favorite, overrated in my opinion. I like vegetarian cooking but portabello mushrooms do not a meat substitute make. IHOP, to many locations to list. I used to like IHOP. They made a comeback. Now their quality is starting to slip again.
I agree about ageism. Sad fact is that most companies are on a strict budget and can hardly hire enough people to do the job, much less pay a premium for experienced workers. Some companies can though. Where I work we have a lot of embedded software engineers that make near or over
six figures. This is at a small start up that is not yet profitable. By contrast, my brother works at a very small web design shop. His direct supervisor is about 25 yrs old and makes less then
45K yearly.
The difference: some companies know or need the value of experience others try to get by with as little as possible and make up for it in hours worked.
That reminds me, most of the computer lectures I have sat in where everyone sat at a computer, the lecturer had to forbid everyone from using the computer while he/she was lecturing. The computer was too much of a distraction and most people could not leave it alone and concentrate.
Here's a link to the company that is using this patent. They actually have some products even. If you just want to try this stuff out. I would recommend checking out the RPKP Project
It is true that there are limits to what is computable. That said, these are not limit on what computers can do, these are limits on what computers can do algorithmically. Meaning that computers cannot solve every problem in bounded or reasonable space/time. However, computers can function in a heuristic fashion and solve many problems that are computationally intractable algorithmically. The limitation is now that we are not guaranteed a solution like we would be with an alogorithm. However, this is a limitation we should be prepared to live with...because we already are. In one example: medical diagnoses. Human doctors do not follow an algorithm to arrive at a medical diagnosis, there are parts of the process that may be algorithmic but there are many fuzzy areas where an expert practitioner has to make an educated guess.
I hear you there. It was about 7-8 years ago I took a box of 50 floppies into the CS computer lab at 3AM and downloaded the entire SLS linux distribution from sunsite. I was getting transfer rates of as much as 30 megabytes/s over the backbone. Just try it today:(
I just have to add the most egregious code I have ever worked on was the main processing loop in a touchscreen driven system. The main bulk of the code consised of one LARGE switch statement with approximately 200 cases. The labels on these cases were simply the decimal integer corresponding to the ascii character the original developer typed to test the software originally with additional codes added later as it grew. Many of the cases could have been fully functional modules in their own right. One case even had another nested switch statement with an additional 60 cases. As if this wasn't bad enough, this routine tended to re-invoke itself recursively. If I am ever going to engineer my job security I will always follow this example;)
I have to agree with you there. I got overtime "bonuses" at my last place of employment in Dallas (basically straight time for everything after the 48th hour each week. Hours 41-48 were uncompensated). Now I'm out of that sweatshop and in Austin. If I have worked a minute over 40 hours it was because I wasn't paying attention!
When I was working with broadband fiber self-healing meant the ability to dynamically reroute around a break...almost a necessity if you're going to lay it on the bottom of the ocean. If it meant that the fiber actually spliced itself back together, then that would really be something else.
Where do you suppose the RIAA thinks that people are getting the digital audio to encode as MP3s now? Even if they get their new standard off the ground there is nothing to stop people from ripping CDs to turn into MP3s. This whole scheme of theirs is doomed unless they quit distributing music on CDs...not a very likely possiblity!
I remember reading Pournelle's Chaos Manor when he started it. He always was getting fast new machines from the manufacturers (who wanted him to write about their machines) and writing about all the problems he had setting them up and just generally getting a big hard-on about how fast they were.
At the time I was envious because it seemed like every week somebody sent him a machine that was even faster. I quit reading byte and picked one up again several years later and Pournelle is still doing the same thing. He keeps getting new machines and pulling his hair out trying to get everything working the way he wants it to. I would have gotten tired of that after about one month.
But anyway, no matter how much trouble Pournelle has with anything, I am not sure if the manufacuterers will send him new stuff to "review" unless he heaps praise upon it.
Slashdot Mirror
So, it follows you out where ever you go, and finds its way back without running into anything. Good thing they used linux....I suppose they might have had to drop features otherwise.
On the other hand...we can all imagine a beowulf cluster of these. You know the army is.
I think SANdisk has come up with a crippled version of this old technology:
;)
Write Only Memory
Just think of the DRM possiblities!!! No copying out of this device, ever!
BTW if you want to convert any RAM you have into WOM... just scuff you feet on the carpet a few times and then touch your fingers to the chips.
Tivo lets you adjust this in the season pass manager. You can start recording a program early and let it run long if you keep missing parts of it.
From the review:
;)
He missed a trick, I think, in failing to discuss some of the specific data most valuable to people who have adopted a start-up lifestyle. Where's the table of startup filled neighborhoods in New York City, San Francisco, and Austin, cross referenced by nearby all-night restaurants and gyms?
That's all I care about, where to go eat after midnight. Whataburger and McDonalds just don't cut it. 24-hr breakfast is a big plus with me. Here's my additions (all local to me of course
Austin:
Magnolia Cafe, on Lake Austin Blvd. A bit out of the way for us North Austin techies but worth the drive and worth the wait.
Kerby Lane Cafe, two locations, one on North Research. An Austin favorite, overrated in my opinion. I like vegetarian cooking but portabello mushrooms do not a meat substitute make.
IHOP, to many locations to list. I used to like IHOP. They made a comeback. Now their quality is starting to slip again.
I agree about ageism. Sad fact is that most companies are on a strict budget and can hardly hire enough people to do the job, much less pay a premium for experienced workers. Some companies can though. Where I work we have a lot of embedded software engineers that make near or over six figures. This is at a small start up that is not yet profitable. By contrast, my brother works at a very small web design shop. His direct supervisor is about 25 yrs old and makes less then 45K yearly.
The difference: some companies know or need the value of experience others try to get by with as little as possible and make up for it in hours worked.
Peace.
That reminds me, most of the computer lectures I have sat in where everyone sat at a computer, the lecturer had to forbid everyone from using the computer while he/she was lecturing. The computer was too much of a distraction and most people could not leave it alone and concentrate.
Here's a link to the company that is using this patent. They actually have some products even. If you just want to try this stuff out. I would recommend checking out the RPKP Project
It is true that there are limits to what is computable. That said, these are not limit on what computers can do, these are limits on what computers can do algorithmically. Meaning that computers cannot solve every problem in bounded or reasonable space/time. However, computers can function in a heuristic fashion and solve many problems that are computationally intractable algorithmically. The limitation is now that we are not guaranteed a solution like we would be with an alogorithm. However, this is a limitation we should be prepared to live with...because we already are. In one example: medical diagnoses. Human doctors do not follow an algorithm to arrive at a medical diagnosis, there are parts of the process that may be algorithmic but there are many fuzzy areas where an expert practitioner has to make an educated guess.
I hear you there. It was about 7-8 years ago I took a box of 50 floppies into the CS computer lab at 3AM and downloaded the entire SLS linux distribution from sunsite. I was getting transfer rates of as much as 30 megabytes/s over the backbone. Just try it today :(
I just have to add the most egregious code I have ever worked on was the main processing loop in a touchscreen driven system. The main bulk of the code consised of one LARGE switch statement with approximately 200 cases. The labels on these cases were simply the decimal integer corresponding to the ascii character the original developer typed to test the software originally with additional codes added later as it grew. Many of the cases could have been fully functional modules in their own right. One case even had another nested switch statement with an additional 60 cases. As if this wasn't bad enough, this routine tended to re-invoke itself recursively. If I am ever going to engineer my job security I will always follow this example ;)
I have to agree with you there. I got overtime "bonuses" at my last place of employment in Dallas (basically straight time for everything after the 48th hour each week. Hours 41-48 were uncompensated). Now I'm out of that sweatshop and in Austin. If I have worked a minute over 40 hours it was because I wasn't paying attention!
better money too...
When I was working with broadband fiber self-healing meant the ability to dynamically reroute around a break...almost a necessity if you're going to lay it on the bottom of the ocean. If it meant that the fiber actually spliced itself back together, then that would really be something else.
Where do you suppose the RIAA thinks that people are getting the digital audio to encode as MP3s now? Even if they get their new standard off the ground there is nothing to stop people from ripping CDs to turn into MP3s. This whole scheme of theirs is doomed unless they quit distributing music on CDs...not a very likely possiblity!
I remember reading Pournelle's Chaos Manor when
he started it. He always was getting fast new
machines from the manufacturers (who wanted him
to write about their machines) and writing about
all the problems he had setting them up and just
generally getting a big hard-on about how fast they were.
At the time I was envious because it seemed like every week somebody sent him a machine that was even faster. I quit reading byte and picked one
up again several years later and Pournelle is still doing the same thing. He keeps getting new machines and pulling his hair out trying to get everything working the way he wants it to. I would have gotten tired of that after about one month.
But anyway, no matter how much trouble Pournelle has with anything, I am not sure if the manufacuterers will send him new stuff to "review" unless he heaps praise upon it.