It won't be long until your employer is on the hot seat, and you will still have you job since he/she won't know who did it.
Gawd, another Slashdot "expert" who's full of theory and short of experience. Either you've never been in this kind of situation, or you come from some alternate universe where labor law enforcement is properly staffed.
Which is ironic, given the brainless "government is not the solution" cliche in your sig.
And yes, your boss will know. Because you'll have been the only one complaining about the unpaid overtime.
Supercomputing and parallel computing are different than building regular apps and websites. Why would you want to get the wrong programmers for the job?
Because that's who's available.
Ever notice that more and more embedded systems are just headless PCs? Makes no sense from a hardware engineering POV, but it means that anybody who knows how to program in Visual Basic can write software for it. The result is often not very reliable, but it saves the vendor the expense and hassle of finding somebody who knows how to code for a proper embedded system.
The main reason Windows is such a bot magnet is its huge need for constant care and feeding. Joe Sixpack who just bought his new computer at Walmart is in no position to provide this. Presumably the PRC has more resources.
Also, if I were setting up a botnet, I'd avoid infecting computers that belonged to a government that was known to apply the death penalty frequently, both officially and privately.
Hmm, have you ever played Momentum Missile Mayhem? Good game, though you can't really play it inside a browser (too sluggish.) The thing is about 7 MB, which is tiny for a PC game, but pretty big for a Flash game. One wonder if it wouldn't benefit from a little re-coding in C.
If you have a complete C++ application that runs fine on native code, then obviously this would be silly. But if you bothered to RTFA, you know that this serves a simple and obvious purpose: reuse. If you need rendering code for your Flash game, and the best code available is in C or C++, it's a lot easier to just recompile the code than it is to hand-translate the code into ActionScript.
I'd be very curious to hear your comparison of Maple versus Mathematica.
Worth noting Maple 12 Pro is not a whole lot cheaper than Mathematica 7. And although the academic version of Maple isn't time limited, it's a lot more expensive than renting the student version of Mathematica for 4 years.
One thing that's always intrigued me about Mathematica is the programming language, which I mostly know from an article Wolfram published in a computer magazine a long time ago. This is actually my main source of interest in Mathematica, since my profession nor my hobbies really require heavy-duty math work. I'm guessing that most users don't care that much about the programming language, am I right?
If you're a student, you can get a copy that expires after a year for $150. Not cheap, but in the same range as your (overpriced) physics textbook.
Me, I have no professional or educational requirement for the thing, but I'd like to have a copy for self-education purposes. But $2K is a bit much. I suppose 5 or 6 would be adequate for that purpose. $150 on eBay.
It's interesting that Mathematica is still supported on MacOS, Linux (including Itanium!) and Solaris. Support for AIX only disappeared recently. Supporting all those platforms does drive up costs just a bit.
That would be nice, but doesn't solve the problem of Mathemitca's notorious copy protection. From what I hear, even legitimate owners often have trouble getting past it.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but it's a lot easier to be a critic than actually produce something.
It's really easy not to impose something like "Knight Rider" on an unsuspecting public.
If you like mindless entertainment, that's your privilege. But grownups don't get all bent out of shape because their favorite shows make other people nauseous.
...photography wasn't invented until early in the 19th century...
One amusing bit in David McCullough's biography of John Adams is the one where the Founding Father gets photographed for the first (and probably last) time. It took something like a 10-second exposure to take the picture, and Adams was astonished that his image could be registered in such a short period of time!
We all know that most Hollywood stuff is crap. But that doesn't explain their compulsive need to recycle that crap. It's especially mysterious when you get something like BSG, which is much better than the original, and achieves that by mostly throwing away the original.
So AIX and Windows are your only choices? No, there's Solaris, which probably has a lot more applications than AIX. And it runs on commodity hardware. Also SPARC workstations, though you can no longer buy those, for the same reason you can no longer buy PPC workstations or MIPS workstations.
Face it, the era of proprietary desktops is over. The writing's been on the wall for more than 25 years now. That was the period when I worked for Zilog and Convergent, only to see the early commodity systems destroy the desktop product lines of both companies. Since then, the trend has slowly spread up the price strata. Apple, SGI, HP, Sun: they all used to be big deals in the proprietary desktop market. SGI (what's left of it) has simply left the market, while the others have all switched to commodity hardware.
Which leads me to this quote from the poster:
I really wonder what's the problem there, warehouse costs?
Jeez, no matter how many times we have this discussion, there's always somebody who has no understanding at all of economics. Warehouse space? This is the JIT supply chain era, nobody spends much on warehouse space. It's manufacturing, support, distribution, engineering, marketing. There's a certain minimum amount you have to spend for all of these things, so there's a certain minimum number of units you have to sell to break even. Once that threshold is passed, or even approached, it stops being worth your while to continue the product.
I liked Unbreakable, at least when I saw it. Now that I'm no longer an M. Night fan, I'd probably view it more critically.
Many movies, especially big-budget things, are full of inconsistencies and bad logic. Their source is sloppy writing and the need to get a complex, expensive project out the door on time, not some artistic comment on "explanation". Movie critics love to claim otherwise, but it's all BS.
Hacks often find an audience. Doesn't make his work any less hackish. I only see one show on your list with any brains, and I didn't even know he was involved with that one until you told me. I suspect his role was helping with funding and horning in on the writing credits.
I pretty much hate most of Abrams work, but I happen to think that Lost is pretty good (excluding all those unnecessary episodes that were added just to fill out the schedule). I've often wondered how much Abrams actually has to do with Lost (beyond lending his name), since all the creative information, including the basic premise, seem to come from the show runners.
Abrams made his name with Alias, a show I found unwatchable because of all the logical gaps, but which was a major hit. So whether or not Abrams is "overrated" depends on what you mean. However bad his stories are, they draw a big audience, and nobody who does that is considered "overrated", not in the entertainment biz.
I think you're being unfair to M. Night. His stories may be dumb (I'll never forgive him for the ending to Signs) but he hasn't done the trick ending thing for a while now.
Never going to happen. Franchises are about branding. What kind of a brand is Section 31? Only the the hardest of hard-core trekkies would go to see such a movie.
Besides, what the big deal with a "Star Trek context"? It's the most worn-out imaginary universe in existence, with the possible exception of Springfield.
Slashdot Mirror
It won't be long until your employer is on the hot seat, and you will still have you job since he/she won't know who did it.
Gawd, another Slashdot "expert" who's full of theory and short of experience. Either you've never been in this kind of situation, or you come from some alternate universe where labor law enforcement is properly staffed.
Which is ironic, given the brainless "government is not the solution" cliche in your sig.
And yes, your boss will know. Because you'll have been the only one complaining about the unpaid overtime.
it's even more important to vote with your hours and just not work for assholes any longer than necessary.
Unfortunately, there's an endless supply of people who need the work badly enough to put up with assholic management.
Supercomputing and parallel computing are different than building regular apps and websites. Why would you want to get the wrong programmers for the job?
Because that's who's available.
Ever notice that more and more embedded systems are just headless PCs? Makes no sense from a hardware engineering POV, but it means that anybody who knows how to program in Visual Basic can write software for it. The result is often not very reliable, but it saves the vendor the expense and hassle of finding somebody who knows how to code for a proper embedded system.
The main reason Windows is such a bot magnet is its huge need for constant care and feeding. Joe Sixpack who just bought his new computer at Walmart is in no position to provide this. Presumably the PRC has more resources.
Also, if I were setting up a botnet, I'd avoid infecting computers that belonged to a government that was known to apply the death penalty frequently, both officially and privately.
Hmm, have you ever played Momentum Missile Mayhem? Good game, though you can't really play it inside a browser (too sluggish.) The thing is about 7 MB, which is tiny for a PC game, but pretty big for a Flash game. One wonder if it wouldn't benefit from a little re-coding in C.
If you have a complete C++ application that runs fine on native code, then obviously this would be silly. But if you bothered to RTFA, you know that this serves a simple and obvious purpose: reuse. If you need rendering code for your Flash game, and the best code available is in C or C++, it's a lot easier to just recompile the code than it is to hand-translate the code into ActionScript.
Pretty much covers the issues I was interested in. Thanks!
I'd be very curious to hear your comparison of Maple versus Mathematica.
Worth noting Maple 12 Pro is not a whole lot cheaper than Mathematica 7. And although the academic version of Maple isn't time limited, it's a lot more expensive than renting the student version of Mathematica for 4 years.
One thing that's always intrigued me about Mathematica is the programming language, which I mostly know from an article Wolfram published in a computer magazine a long time ago. This is actually my main source of interest in Mathematica, since my profession nor my hobbies really require heavy-duty math work. I'm guessing that most users don't care that much about the programming language, am I right?
Actually, it does. The Itanium-Linux version costs an extra K, though.
If you're a student, you can get a copy that expires after a year for $150. Not cheap, but in the same range as your (overpriced) physics textbook.
Me, I have no professional or educational requirement for the thing, but I'd like to have a copy for self-education purposes. But $2K is a bit much. I suppose 5 or 6 would be adequate for that purpose. $150 on eBay.
It's interesting that Mathematica is still supported on MacOS, Linux (including Itanium!) and Solaris. Support for AIX only disappeared recently. Supporting all those platforms does drive up costs just a bit.
That would be nice, but doesn't solve the problem of Mathemitca's notorious copy protection. From what I hear, even legitimate owners often have trouble getting past it.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but it's a lot easier to be a critic than actually produce something.
It's really easy not to impose something like "Knight Rider" on an unsuspecting public.
If you like mindless entertainment, that's your privilege. But grownups don't get all bent out of shape because their favorite shows make other people nauseous.
The 1929 crash had stocks falling 60% in less than a month. What we have now is more like the initial dive that precedes a crash.
...photography wasn't invented until early in the 19th century...
One amusing bit in David McCullough's biography of John Adams is the one where the Founding Father gets photographed for the first (and probably last) time. It took something like a 10-second exposure to take the picture, and Adams was astonished that his image could be registered in such a short period of time!
We all know that most Hollywood stuff is crap. But that doesn't explain their compulsive need to recycle that crap. It's especially mysterious when you get something like BSG, which is much better than the original, and achieves that by mostly throwing away the original.
So AIX and Windows are your only choices? No, there's Solaris, which probably has a lot more applications than AIX. And it runs on commodity hardware. Also SPARC workstations, though you can no longer buy those, for the same reason you can no longer buy PPC workstations or MIPS workstations.
Face it, the era of proprietary desktops is over. The writing's been on the wall for more than 25 years now. That was the period when I worked for Zilog and Convergent, only to see the early commodity systems destroy the desktop product lines of both companies. Since then, the trend has slowly spread up the price strata. Apple, SGI, HP, Sun: they all used to be big deals in the proprietary desktop market. SGI (what's left of it) has simply left the market, while the others have all switched to commodity hardware.
Which leads me to this quote from the poster:
I really wonder what's the problem there, warehouse costs?
Jeez, no matter how many times we have this discussion, there's always somebody who has no understanding at all of economics. Warehouse space? This is the JIT supply chain era, nobody spends much on warehouse space. It's manufacturing, support, distribution, engineering, marketing. There's a certain minimum amount you have to spend for all of these things, so there's a certain minimum number of units you have to sell to break even. Once that threshold is passed, or even approached, it stops being worth your while to continue the product.
Maybe so. But we get stuff done. Can you make the same claim? When was the last time you actually finished a software project?
"Seldom" is more honest then "never". But it would be even more honest to admit that you're not objective about your own shortcomings.
I liked Unbreakable, at least when I saw it. Now that I'm no longer an M. Night fan, I'd probably view it more critically.
Many movies, especially big-budget things, are full of inconsistencies and bad logic. Their source is sloppy writing and the need to get a complex, expensive project out the door on time, not some artistic comment on "explanation". Movie critics love to claim otherwise, but it's all BS.
If all you want is flash, play a video game. More entertainment value for the buck, and it improves your hand-eye coordination.
Hacks often find an audience. Doesn't make his work any less hackish. I only see one show on your list with any brains, and I didn't even know he was involved with that one until you told me. I suspect his role was helping with funding and horning in on the writing credits.
Same answer for a TV series.
You post would be funny if it weren't so damn true.
I pretty much hate most of Abrams work, but I happen to think that Lost is pretty good (excluding all those unnecessary episodes that were added just to fill out the schedule). I've often wondered how much Abrams actually has to do with Lost (beyond lending his name), since all the creative information, including the basic premise, seem to come from the show runners.
Abrams made his name with Alias, a show I found unwatchable because of all the logical gaps, but which was a major hit. So whether or not Abrams is "overrated" depends on what you mean. However bad his stories are, they draw a big audience, and nobody who does that is considered "overrated", not in the entertainment biz.
I think you're being unfair to M. Night. His stories may be dumb (I'll never forgive him for the ending to Signs) but he hasn't done the trick ending thing for a while now.
Never going to happen. Franchises are about branding. What kind of a brand is Section 31? Only the the hardest of hard-core trekkies would go to see such a movie.
Besides, what the big deal with a "Star Trek context"? It's the most worn-out imaginary universe in existence, with the possible exception of Springfield.