The one consistent thing I have observed in all my bosses who were good to work for, and all those who were dreadful, was that the good ones had children.
This means that they:
1. Have a life outside of work, and will understand that you do to. 2. They are used to dealing with illogical childish tantrums, and so will be well able to deal with upper management and the marketing department without it affecting you - and they will resist behaving that way themselves. 3. Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
I have always found that directly e-mailing the author of any paper buried like this always results in them getting a copy to me. Academics are great about stuff like that. Wonderful people. I'll never forget asking for a copy of one wavelet paper from a researcher at an Italian University and three days later this enormous box full of copies of every paper the author had written turned up on my doorstep - and I don't even live on the same continent as Italy.
Good engineers read up before tinkering
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 1
Protein diets
Atkins can be dangerous and can reduce your problem solving abilities.
The problem with the "lite" GF4 used in the laptop fixup is that it does not support pixel shaders.
As a games programmer this is a perennial problem for me: I need to work with the latest video cards.
What I want is a hack where any old card can be attached to the laptop (kind of like an external hard-drive). It can come with its own power supply and fan too if necessary.
Is this even possible? Has anyone done anything like this?
That sucks. If this is your first H1B1 you can get a renewal (of the H1B1) with another employer for 3 more years.
Get your own lawyer to work with the company to process the green card. You will probably spend about $5000 on it, but then the weasels at your company won't delay the application (I know people who have suffered exactly that problem). I gather that right now a good lawyer can get an employer based green card app through in under a year. This didn't used to be the case.
This is SO untrue. When you have an H1B you can easily hop jobs - all the new company needs to get is labor certification (that guarantees that there were no other suitable US national candidates).
I should know, I've done it three times already. The very fact that my first employers could not find a suitable candidate from US nationals means that I am desirable for other companies (I have a very rare skill set) - and that they too will find labor certification reasonably easy to get.
I feel really sorry for you. A few skilled workers being imported into the country can NOT be doing you out of a job. No doubt you also blame career women who should be at home looking after children instead of taking a job you should have had.
If you have the skills you will be employed. If you have spent a year looking for work you either lack the skills for the job or the inter-personal skills that almost all jobs require. Based on your post I would surmise the latter.
The power to turn your life around is in your hands. Don't blame others - it won't help.
OK, OK, I'm an unusual case. I'm a professional graphics programmer who writes computer games for a living. I would just love to have a laptop to work on; but I'm doing all my work on consoles and GF3 and up hardware (basically it needs pixel shader 1.0 and higher).
I'm almost resigned to never having a laptop - because no doubt by the time an integrated laptop solution with ps1.0 or higher comes out I'll have to be supporting DX9 based hardware:-(.
BUT, this also indicates that unless something changes, playing the latest greatest games on your laptop is just a fantasy.
What we need from laptop manufacturers is the ability to slot in a card just like a pluggable harddrive. Then they could supply some ridiculously bulky addon (complete with its own fan and maybe power supply:-)) - so that uber-geeks and gamers can upgrade their video.
Or is there some way to do this already? I build my own desktop systems and its trivial. Do any of the hardware guys reading slashdot have links to how I customise various laptops? Thanks.
"cannot change jobs for better conditions or higher pay "
This is completely untrue. On an H1B you just need to get worker certification from the company you wish to move to and then you can just jump ship. I have done this twice already.
Damned H1B workers, over-paid, over-sexed and over here.
This is a VERY bright move by Gateway. They wish to establish in the minds of the customer a direct association between their brand-name and a large amount of the usage that Joe Public has for PCs.
At the same time they are implying, "Buy us before it is too late."
The fact that they may actually prevent poor legislation being inacted is waaay down the list of benefits they get from this.
Ok, I'm a Brit who lives in the USA. I can tell you first hand that American TV sucks so badly that even reruns of the awful ITV series Bless Me Father on PBS stand hand and shoulders above everything else. I'm counting cable output in this as well.
I have been listening to streaming Radio 4 whenever it is available. I'm sorry I haven't a clue, the news quiz, intelligent news analysis and anthing with Andy Hamilton just aren't anywhere else. The US has no equivalent to R4. NPR doesn't cut it.
Where the BBC really fails is in its music radio though. I like rock music. Rock music (and I don't count endless replays of Oasis) is not present on UK airways. Endless DJ remix disco shit and Britney Spears poptastic blandness are.
Hey, and don't forget the 30 minute ambient tape loop (lift music) that was played all day when Diana hit French concrete. An all time broadcasting low...
In short R1 is for teeny-boppers, R2 is for people that like Duran Duran (ie teeny-boppers from the '80s), R3 is classical output, and R4 is a speech station that has moments of greatness among a sea of mediocre opinions (kind of like Slashdot:-)).
No one wants to pay for something they can POTENTIALLY get for free. Just apply all the thousands of arguments on Slashdot about people getting music for free.
The concern for any consortium is the risk involved. It is quite likely that consumers will just stop using them and move to a free alternative.
A colleague imported one from Japan with the 3 launch titles (Wave Race, Luigi's Mansion, Super Monkey Ball). He got Pikmin as well. He modded it two weeks ago (a simple switch) when US games (in particular Rogue Squadron) became available so he could play them as well.
All of these games are superb. Highly recommended.
The cube is suprisingly small as well. IMHO a lot nicer looking than the x-box. You could easily modify it to become a portable console.
I'm a game programming professional (have been for 15 years now). I have a range of equipment from p90 nastiness running win95 upto a hand-built top of the range Athlon 1.6GHz on a KG7-RAID with GF3 etc, etc. I pulled different sound cards and video cards and different versions of the drivers (across 3 operating systems and 6 machines) in an attempt to get a stable version of the game.
It crashed most often in the sound drivers, next in the video drivers, and a couple of times it got caught in code that looked like actual game logic.
The movie playback was particularly flaky.
The most stable platform was win98 on an old p133 with a Matrox Millenium video card and no sound support. My wife still got it to lock up inside the game logic after an hour and a half of play.
When it doesn't crash, the game is great.
BTW The person who modded down my original comment is an idiot. It is far more relevant than someone posting the system base requirements from the back of the box:-)
Infogrames test department should be ashamed (or more probably the product manager).
This game crashes, locks-up and fails to display on far too regular a basis.
The portions of the game I have been able to play have been great (once I got over units moving onto the defeated opponents square). I just wish it was more stable (or would even run on some of my machines). Having to save out every other turn, just in case, is hugely irritating.
I tried the game on machines running NT, 98 and 95, with Radeon, GF2, GFIII, Matrox Millenium, ATI Rage and Voodoo 3 cards. The game screws up on every one of them. (Oh, and with a variety of sound blaster cards and drivers and a couple of Philips cards).
It is also full of memory leaks (watch the swap file behaviour).
I could have waited an additional month for these bugs to be fixed. I really, really hope a decent patch comes out soon.
Of course, test probably listed all these bugs and management decided to release anyway. If you are going to have a test department you should actually listen to them!
I'm a Brit living and working in the US. I have been shocked at the lack of care that the power companies demnonstrate, not just to their customers, but to their shareholders.
In North Texas there are thousands of households that have been without power since an ice-storm on Christmas Eve - and there is no date for when they will have their power restored! In the UK there would have been lawsuits and government enquiries and sackings over such a state of affairs.
The California power situation is a direct result of DEREGULATION. Just as the British bus and train services have been totally screwed by deregulation, so has the California power industry. As can be seen in all three cases, these new private companies think very short term, and the investment in infrastructure is too large for them. Just as the train companies in the UK failed to invest in safe modern rolling stock and track maintenance and up-keep, so the new Californian power companies decided not to build any new power plants. 12 years later, all the chickens have come home to roost.
Short term selfishness by public officials wishing to make a buck in the private sector at the expense of the general populous is the root cause of all this pain. Deregulation and privatisation are words that you should directly associate with asset stripping at YOUR expense.
For some time now neuro-biologists (and worse, cognitive psychologists) have been misappropriating and misusing terms and experiments from cognitive computing to justify their often assinine guesses about mental processes. It lets them dress what is essentially bar-room speculation in the clothes of science. Mostly so they can get research grants.
This experiment is calling them out. If they actually get it right then they have some justification in the processes they use. Of course if they fail...
StrutterX
Voting Code a Symptom of All That is Wrong?
on
ICANN Voting Begins
·
· Score: 1
It took me SIX attempts to vote, and no doubt in the mess some of the lower down candidates (like those lawyers) got their priorities mixed up because of it.
My voting and logging in should NOT have to happen again because their server failed to handle a request. Was this site programmed by the 14 year old son of one of the ICANN officials? The level of incompetence is staggering.
Now I wonder whether my vote has been registered at all?
Is anyone doing an audit of this voting process? Please tell me it isn't as half-assed as it seems.
Man! You screwed up. I have been in the US on an H1B for a year. I was able to buy a house several months ago, and I have had no trouble with credit (although to be honest the only credit I use is on my mortgage, since like any sensible person I pay my cards off in full each month and I have no desire to keep up payments on a Porsche).
Before you move, get an AMEX and/or Mastercard in the country where you live. When you get to America and have an address, ring the companies up and get them to transfer your cards. They'll do it.
Next, get a credit reference agency in your country of origin to write you a report. It'll cost about $3 most places.
Then get letters from your bank, mortgage lender, car loan person, credit card companies etc saying that you have always kept up with your payments, and that you are a good person to lend to.
If your bank in the US won't let you overdraw, move. Banks want your custom.
The most awkward thing about the H1B is that my wife and kids can't work here until I've converted to immigrant status.
Previous posts on this list claim that there is a glut of programmers. This is NOT the case. If you are a programmer having a hard time finding a well paying job in the US, you are either looking in the wrong places, presenting yourself very badly, or, probably just obviously crap at what you do.
As a lead programmer it is my job to not only get past my own blocks, but to help my colleagues get past their blocks too. There are a number of simple strategies that can be used:
1. Talk to other programmers about the problem. They will help you think in different ways about what is happening. This is good for everyone - especially since it helps unify understanding of the code base. 2. Pair up and work with another programmer on the problem. Two programmers to one workstation. This can be highly productive and has numerous side benefits, such as shared architectural vision, greater speed in solving the problem and (I've always found) more stable and pleasing code. 3. Work on something else if there isn't a high importance to the blocked task. 4. Write out your problem in English.
As always, it helps to exercise for at least an hour at least 3 times a week.
Never feel embarrassed to ask another programmer for help. They are a resource you should be using like papers, on-line texts and reference books.
Slashdot Mirror
The one consistent thing I have observed in all my bosses who were good to work for, and all those who were dreadful, was that the good ones had children.
This means that they:
1. Have a life outside of work, and will understand that you do to.
2. They are used to dealing with illogical childish tantrums, and so will be well able to deal with upper management and the marketing department without it affecting you - and they will resist behaving that way themselves.
3. Will understand if you have to do occasionally weird hours if you have children of your own, without putting you on the no-promotions shit-list.
General 6000 and Sci-Fi 8000 are the libraries you want for the "Doom" door sound effect. They took it from the General 6000 I think.
The Doom II door sound is a stock library sound effect (I have it around here somewhere).
I have always found that directly e-mailing the author of any paper buried like this always results in them getting a copy to me. Academics are great about stuff like that. Wonderful people. I'll never forget asking for a copy of one wavelet paper from a researcher at an Italian University and three days later this enormous box full of copies of every paper the author had written turned up on my doorstep - and I don't even live on the same continent as Italy.
Protein diets Atkins can be dangerous and can reduce your problem solving abilities.
The problem with the "lite" GF4 used in the laptop fixup is that it does not support pixel shaders.
As a games programmer this is a perennial problem for me: I need to work with the latest video cards.
What I want is a hack where any old card can be attached to the laptop (kind of like an external hard-drive). It can come with its own power supply and fan too if necessary.
Is this even possible? Has anyone done anything like this?
StrutterX
That sucks. If this is your first H1B1 you can get a renewal (of the H1B1) with another employer for 3 more years.
Get your own lawyer to work with the company to process the green card. You will probably spend about $5000 on it, but then the weasels at your company won't delay the application (I know people who have suffered exactly that problem). I gather that right now a good lawyer can get an employer based green card app through in under a year. This didn't used to be the case.
StrutterX
This is SO untrue. When you have an H1B you can easily hop jobs - all the new company needs to get is labor certification (that guarantees that there were no other suitable US national candidates).
I should know, I've done it three times already. The very fact that my first employers could not find a suitable candidate from US nationals means that I am desirable for other companies (I have a very rare skill set) - and that they too will find labor certification reasonably easy to get.
StrutterX
I feel really sorry for you. A few skilled workers being imported into the country can NOT be doing you out of a job. No doubt you also blame career women who should be at home looking after children instead of taking a job you should have had.
If you have the skills you will be employed. If you have spent a year looking for work you either lack the skills for the job or the inter-personal skills that almost all jobs require. Based on your post I would surmise the latter.
The power to turn your life around is in your hands. Don't blame others - it won't help.
StrutterX
To get a lot of the jokes in Good Omens it helps if you have read any of Richmal Compton's Just William books.
Read them to your kids; but do read a little bit. Your appreciation of the satire in Good Omens will increase.
StrutterX
OK, OK, I'm an unusual case. I'm a professional graphics programmer who writes computer games for a living. I would just love to have a laptop to work on; but I'm doing all my work on consoles and GF3 and up hardware (basically it needs pixel shader 1.0 and higher).
:-(.
:-)) - so that uber-geeks and gamers can upgrade their video.
I'm almost resigned to never having a laptop - because no doubt by the time an integrated laptop solution with ps1.0 or higher comes out I'll have to be supporting DX9 based hardware
BUT, this also indicates that unless something changes, playing the latest greatest games on your laptop is just a fantasy.
What we need from laptop manufacturers is the ability to slot in a card just like a pluggable harddrive. Then they could supply some ridiculously bulky addon (complete with its own fan and maybe power supply
Or is there some way to do this already? I build my own desktop systems and its trivial. Do any of the hardware guys reading slashdot have links to how I customise various laptops? Thanks.
StrutterX
"cannot change jobs for better conditions or higher pay "
This is completely untrue. On an H1B you just need to get worker certification from the company you wish to move to and then you can just jump ship. I have done this twice already.
Damned H1B workers, over-paid, over-sexed and over here.
StrutterX
You can put together a full pc from parts in around 1 hour.
:-).
My wife did it (including adding a heatsink to the processor) without any prior knowledge, just following an instruction sheet I had left her.
It will take you that long to deal with a service representative.
edashofy appears to be slightly hardware phobic
It ain't hard - you will save money.
StrutterX
This is a VERY bright move by Gateway. They wish to establish in the minds of the customer a direct association between their brand-name and a large amount of the usage that Joe Public has for PCs.
At the same time they are implying, "Buy us before it is too late."
The fact that they may actually prevent poor legislation being inacted is waaay down the list of benefits they get from this.
StrutterX
Ok, I'm a Brit who lives in the USA. I can tell you first hand that American TV sucks so badly that even reruns of the awful ITV series Bless Me Father on PBS stand hand and shoulders above everything else. I'm counting cable output in this as well.
:-)).
I have been listening to streaming Radio 4 whenever it is available. I'm sorry I haven't a clue, the news quiz, intelligent news analysis and anthing with Andy Hamilton just aren't anywhere else. The US has no equivalent to R4. NPR doesn't cut it.
Where the BBC really fails is in its music radio though. I like rock music. Rock music (and I don't count endless replays of Oasis) is not present on UK airways. Endless DJ remix disco shit and Britney Spears poptastic blandness are.
Hey, and don't forget the 30 minute ambient tape loop (lift music) that was played all day when Diana hit French concrete. An all time broadcasting low...
In short R1 is for teeny-boppers, R2 is for people that like Duran Duran (ie teeny-boppers from the '80s), R3 is classical output, and R4 is a speech station that has moments of greatness among a sea of mediocre opinions (kind of like Slashdot
StrutterX
As informative as my ass!
Ion Austin still exists. Dallas is long gone. Romero was in Dallas.
Hah! Fanboys.
No one wants to pay for something they can POTENTIALLY get for free. Just apply all the thousands of arguments on Slashdot about people getting music for free.
The concern for any consortium is the risk involved. It is quite likely that consumers will just stop using them and move to a free alternative.
StrutterX
A colleague imported one from Japan with the 3 launch titles (Wave Race, Luigi's Mansion, Super Monkey Ball). He got Pikmin as well. He modded it two weeks ago (a simple switch) when US games (in particular Rogue Squadron) became available so he could play them as well.
All of these games are superb. Highly recommended.
The cube is suprisingly small as well. IMHO a lot nicer looking than the x-box. You could easily modify it to become a portable console.
StrutterX
I'm a game programming professional (have been for 15 years now). I have a range of equipment from p90 nastiness running win95 upto a hand-built top of the range Athlon 1.6GHz on a KG7-RAID with GF3 etc, etc. I pulled different sound cards and video cards and different versions of the drivers (across 3 operating systems and 6 machines) in an attempt to get a stable version of the game.
:-)
It crashed most often in the sound drivers, next in the video drivers, and a couple of times it got caught in code that looked like actual game logic.
The movie playback was particularly flaky.
The most stable platform was win98 on an old p133 with a Matrox Millenium video card and no sound support. My wife still got it to lock up inside the game logic after an hour and a half of play.
When it doesn't crash, the game is great.
BTW The person who modded down my original comment is an idiot. It is far more relevant than someone posting the system base requirements from the back of the box
Infogrames test department should be ashamed (or more probably the product manager).
This game crashes, locks-up and fails to display on far too regular a basis.
The portions of the game I have been able to play have been great (once I got over units moving onto the defeated opponents square). I just wish it was more stable (or would even run on some of my machines). Having to save out every other turn, just in case, is hugely irritating.
I tried the game on machines running NT, 98 and 95, with Radeon, GF2, GFIII, Matrox Millenium, ATI Rage and Voodoo 3 cards. The game screws up on every one of them. (Oh, and with a variety of sound blaster cards and drivers and a couple of Philips cards).
It is also full of memory leaks (watch the swap file behaviour).
I could have waited an additional month for these bugs to be fixed. I really, really hope a decent patch comes out soon.
Of course, test probably listed all these bugs and management decided to release anyway. If you are going to have a test department you should actually listen to them!
StrutterX
I'm a Brit living and working in the US. I have been shocked at the lack of care that the power companies demnonstrate, not just to their customers, but to their shareholders.
In North Texas there are thousands of households that have been without power since an ice-storm on Christmas Eve - and there is no date for when they will have their power restored! In the UK there would have been lawsuits and government enquiries and sackings over such a state of affairs.
The California power situation is a direct result of DEREGULATION. Just as the British bus and train services have been totally screwed by deregulation, so has the California power industry. As can be seen in all three cases, these new private companies think very short term, and the investment in infrastructure is too large for them. Just as the train companies in the UK failed to invest in safe modern rolling stock and track maintenance and up-keep, so the new Californian power companies decided not to build any new power plants. 12 years later, all the chickens have come home to roost.
Short term selfishness by public officials wishing to make a buck in the private sector at the expense of the general populous is the root cause of all this pain. Deregulation and privatisation are words that you should directly associate with asset stripping at YOUR expense.
StrutterX
For some time now neuro-biologists (and worse, cognitive psychologists) have been misappropriating and misusing terms and experiments from cognitive computing to justify their often assinine guesses about mental processes. It lets them dress what is essentially bar-room speculation in the clothes of science. Mostly so they can get research grants.
This experiment is calling them out. If they actually get it right then they have some justification in the processes they use. Of course if they fail...
StrutterX
It took me SIX attempts to vote, and no doubt in the mess some of the lower down candidates (like those lawyers) got their priorities mixed up because of it.
My voting and logging in should NOT have to happen again because their server failed to handle a request. Was this site programmed by the 14 year old son of one of the ICANN officials? The level of incompetence is staggering.
Now I wonder whether my vote has been registered at all?
Is anyone doing an audit of this voting process? Please tell me it isn't as half-assed as it seems.
StrutterX
Man! You screwed up. I have been in the US on an H1B for a year. I was able to buy a house several months ago, and I have had no trouble with credit (although to be honest the only credit I use is on my mortgage, since like any sensible person I pay my cards off in full each month and I have no desire to keep up payments on a Porsche).
Before you move, get an AMEX and/or Mastercard in the country where you live. When you get to America and have an address, ring the companies up and get them to transfer your cards. They'll do it.
Next, get a credit reference agency in your country of origin to write you a report. It'll cost about $3 most places.
Then get letters from your bank, mortgage lender, car loan person, credit card companies etc saying that you have always kept up with your payments, and that you are a good person to lend to.
If your bank in the US won't let you overdraw, move. Banks want your custom.
The most awkward thing about the H1B is that my wife and kids can't work here until I've converted to immigrant status.
Previous posts on this list claim that there is a glut of programmers. This is NOT the case. If you are a programmer having a hard time finding a well paying job in the US, you are either looking in the wrong places, presenting yourself very badly, or, probably just obviously crap at what you do.
StrutterX
As a lead programmer it is my job to not only get past my own blocks, but to help my colleagues get past their blocks too. There are a number of simple strategies that can be used:
1. Talk to other programmers about the problem. They will help you think in different ways about what is happening. This is good for everyone - especially since it helps unify understanding of the code base.
2. Pair up and work with another programmer on the problem. Two programmers to one workstation. This can be highly productive and has numerous side benefits, such as shared architectural vision, greater speed in solving the problem and (I've always found) more stable and pleasing code.
3. Work on something else if there isn't a high importance to the blocked task.
4. Write out your problem in English.
As always, it helps to exercise for at least an hour at least 3 times a week.
Never feel embarrassed to ask another programmer for help. They are a resource you should be using like papers, on-line texts and reference books.
StrutterX