Of course more time would be better. However, nearly everything important can be done in 15 seconds. The really critical things. Like getting the generators at the hospital up to keep the ICU running. Closing gas mains. Taking the scapel out of the guys brain during surgery.
You can't drive home from the grocery store and strap yourself into bed in 15 seconds, but you can do a lot of really really important things in that time.
Why do you think it's acceptable for an ordinary joe to be in that position? It's a position of extreme power and responsibility, and I should hope that out of the 300 or so odd million people we have living here that we could find someone that's a bit above average.
Liquid hydrogen is of relatively low density. That's why it has to be under pressure to even be liquid. Water, on the other hand, is solid and fairly dense at room temperature.
I don't know the math behind it, but by starting from something that's naturally denser it seems at least possible to have more hydrogen in it. It'll probably weigh more.
If it weren't for all the other people here saying 'enjoy the time off' I wouldn't say this, but: *no*, you're *not* making more than you need!
Ok, maybe you are. But I doubt it. First, a contracting career is not secure. That's why they pay you a premium: because you constantly take the risk of being fired without another gig lined up.
Secondly, how much are you saving? Emergency funds? Retirement nest egg? Do you have health insurance, 401/k, etc? Contractors usually don't.
Just because you're more than covering all your bills now doesn't mean you're making enough. If you don't have enough cash or readily liquidatable assets to cover 6 months expenses, I wouldn't be 'not worried', I'd be absolutely panicking.
My serious advice: see a financial planner, figure out how much you should be saving. Get a second contracting job to fill the other 20 hours of a full work week. You should be able to more easily focus when you have totally different projects.
And as far as motivation goes, shipping quality products to customers who appreciate it is more than enough motivation. I love seeing a hearing a customer tell me he's happy with the product, even though it cost him around $300k.
That's certainly true, but just because there's other dangers doesn't mean it's smart to ignore the ones in your control. You may not be able to stop birds and meteorites, but the foam we *can* stop, and it's irresponsible for us to not.
Yeah, but keep in mind the Challenger, as an example: they launched *knowing it was dangerous*. And guess what happened? It was!
The crew know what they signed up for, probably better than any other explorer ever has. But knowing the normal risks they run isn't the same as asking them to go up when they know the thing that brought the shuttle down last time hasn't been fixed!
I'm relatively certain that the school wasn't just arbitrarily chasing the site across every domain he owned, not unless they had reason. Why was he running a proxy? What material was he or his friends accessing from the school?
As far as legal rights to censor that, they can do just about whatever they want in loco parentis.
I don't want to sound like I'm saying global warming isn't happening, but I think it's fair to add some more data into the mix:
While CO2 emissions have increased in the last 50 years, what about much earlier? For instance, are we now putting out more CO2 than in the 1700s and 1800s? I don't know, I'm asking. Now, we have more cars and coal-fired power plants. Then, we were burning wood and coal and such in our houses for heat.
It is also plausable that emissions from then are effecting us now.
I think global warming is happening, and I think human behavior has an effect, but I think it's an incomplete picture to look only at the last 50 years.
There's lots of good suggestions for other areas, so I'll add the odd one:
If you haven't already, learn to cook. It's possible eat better, healthier, and cheaper than most of the restaurants you're probably eating at, if you know where to shop and what to make. Be willing to buy in bulk (things often cost half as much). Make a lot of meals based around rice (rice is cheap).
Just consider this: where I'm at, I can eat filet mignon for the same price as a sandwich from Subway. Now just imagine if you start eating cheap food!
Also, track your expenses in this area. Only when you know what you're spending can you optimize effectively.
While you're at it, learn to bake. Cakes impress the girls.
What do you mean, it's not their job to suggest action? Why not? That's just silly; who better is qualified to make a suggestion? Is it in any way illogical to say "Research indicates that CO2 is causing global warming. We should reduce emissions of CO2"?
An analogy: if I take my car to the mechanic and he says that my defrobinator is broken, but won't suggest a course of action, I'll never go to him again. I expect my mechanic to not only find the problem but also *fix* it.
I'd be concerned about the scientist's biases if he were suggesting a course of action counter to what the research indicated, but if his thoughts follow that research, what's the concern? That he's biased towards facts and away from myth?
Progress is the job of a scientist. Improving the human condition and furthering our knowledge of universe. 'Presenting research' is the method, not the goal.
First, consider how complex you want to make the system. The decoupling is a good idea, I think. However, I don't think that having modules automatically restart one another is a good idea; it introduces a whole slew of other problems. At most I'd say use a watchdog process (principle of single responsibility).
Furthermore, you're crunching large amounts of data, so I'm guessing batch processing. If you can have the application not be a server, then you simplify things a lot. Make it a utility that takes data on standard input and runs whatever analysis you need, and duct tape it together with cron or a simple program that watches for new input files.
Also, I'd like to suggest that you consider whether other languages could be efficient for the task. For example, Java is pretty good numerically, and as far as your libraries go, see if you can use SWIG to generate JNI wrappers. Also, then you get Java RMI.
Next, get them down to one platform. It's *way* easier to develop software with tight constraints on a single platform (versus multiple platforms). Investigate QNX: a reliable operating system (though admittedly quirky) with a beautiful IPC API. In any case, make sure you get a well-tested library with message queues, etc. You don't want to be using raw sockets; you could but that's just another pain in the ass on top of everything else.
Last, figure out what the cost of a failure is. Getting that last few percent of reliability is very very expensive. Unless you're a pacemaker or respirator, the cost of failure is probably not as high as the cost of five nines of uptime.
I'm guessing that you need it available via SSH because it's behind a firewall somewhere. Have you considered using a good web-based tool, and then using SSH to tunnel in?
Have you tried talking to your IT guys? Get a big picture view from all sides. If you have management on your side, it shouldn't be a battle.
Talk to the grunts, ask them about the process, why it takes so long. Be clear that you're not blaming them, so they don't get defensive. Talk to the CTO. Talk to some people in between. Why was the paperwork put into place? Can it be omitted?
It's hard to fight the policies until you understand why they are there. They are either out of date, or a legitimate attempt to solve a problem. Sure, they may be a hinderance now, but someone wrote that for a reason other than 'just to piss off everyone'.
Maybe they're just way overworked? Maybe they lost the request several times and the handful of paperwork needed to cancel the old one and enter a new one each time you bug them about it is what's delaying? Just theorizing.
You can't fix it until you know what's happening. Hang out around the IT water cooler for a bit and see what happens.
To the other excellent arguments posted in this thread, I'd like to add the fact that the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.
I am of the opinion that *if* we are willing (which I am) to give up liberties in exchange for security, that both sides in that bargain must be fulfilled. Checking IDs doesn't make us safer; it only restricts our liberties.
First, when is it a problem? True, this stuff is always a danger. However, until we have a large number of people in space regularly (which is likely to happen eventually), the risk will probably be fairly slim, because even with thousands of items up there, there's a lot of space and very few ships.
Now, when there's people up there regularly, then the problem of salvage is much different. It's no longer "I need to pay $10k/kg to get up there to get paint flecks" but "I could pay $10k/kg to drag up new solar shielding, or I could just leave my space station and pick some up from next door". When you've a large industrial complex up there, it's all of a sudden much more worthwhile.
Now this may not be exactly how it goes down, but consider that at $10,000/kg, the value of the stuff is in that it's already there, not in bringing it back.
For Gods sake people, what's wrong with you?! Write your Senators & Reps, and if they don't do anything, then vote these assholes out of office when the elections come! Donate money to the ACLU.
Seriously people, technologies won't help you hold on to your freedoms. There's no silver bullet. You have to do it for yourselves!
Your analogies aren't quite applicable. The difference is that this is for the IT department of the state. That is, this is policy affecting only the government, not the governed. It's a support department.
The FDA, for example, approves drugs for general use by all people and companies in the US. On the other hand, this CIO approves (for example) operating systems for use by the government itself.
For these to be comparable, it would have to be more like "FDA approves drugs for everyone, and this CIO decides what OS every computer in MA (owned by the government or in your basement) will use".
These are not the same thing. When the government builds a bridge, the choice of whether to use concrete or plastic or chicken femurs IS left to the professionals. That's more on par with what we're dealing with here.
Well, C++ doesn't have any metadata on its own, so you must be using something third-party to create it. Since any library that provides the functionality you need will read that data, we need to know what it is!
Of course, I don't know of any such libraries, but anyway. I am very interested in how you'd be doing reflection-type stuff in C++. I'd like to investigate doing that to do mock objects, like nmock does.
Mod parent up - more people need to know what happened.
First, the person burned was the *passenger*. Secondly, the car was stopped at the time for her to put some cream & sugar in it. Third, McDonald's coffee is served 40 degrees hotter than that of other fast food restaurants. The temperature that other restaurants serve it at *would not* cause third degree burns.
And the very large sum of money that she was awarded initially totalled less than a day's coffee sales for McDonalds. And that was reduced significantly, as well.
I don't like the comparison, because McDonald's did screw up, and this kid screwed up. Blizzard just made a kickass game.
Under the COBRA laws, you can continue your health care under your employer's group plan by covering the premiums yourself - that is, you have the right to pick up your employers portion of the bill, so that you can have continuing coverage.
I'd suggest that you get them to cover their end of things for a long period after the end, along with other benefits, in addition to whatever else you want. It may ease your transition somewhat.
Also, a personal appeal to your manager may be in order for help lining up jobs. Be polite and helpful, no matter what you decide, because they feel obligated to help, and you don't want to be the last one in line.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course more time would be better. However, nearly everything important can be done in 15 seconds. The really critical things. Like getting the generators at the hospital up to keep the ICU running. Closing gas mains. Taking the scapel out of the guys brain during surgery.
You can't drive home from the grocery store and strap yourself into bed in 15 seconds, but you can do a lot of really really important things in that time.
Why do you think it's acceptable for an ordinary joe to be in that position? It's a position of extreme power and responsibility, and I should hope that out of the 300 or so odd million people we have living here that we could find someone that's a bit above average.
Liquid hydrogen is of relatively low density. That's why it has to be under pressure to even be liquid. Water, on the other hand, is solid and fairly dense at room temperature.
I don't know the math behind it, but by starting from something that's naturally denser it seems at least possible to have more hydrogen in it. It'll probably weigh more.
Can anyone spot-check this for sanity?
Because it's possible to devise an experiment that could provide scientific evidence in its favor.
Such an experiment does not - even in theory - exist for ID.
If it weren't for all the other people here saying 'enjoy the time off' I wouldn't say this, but: *no*, you're *not* making more than you need!
Ok, maybe you are. But I doubt it. First, a contracting career is not secure. That's why they pay you a premium: because you constantly take the risk of being fired without another gig lined up.
Secondly, how much are you saving? Emergency funds? Retirement nest egg? Do you have health insurance, 401/k, etc? Contractors usually don't.
Just because you're more than covering all your bills now doesn't mean you're making enough. If you don't have enough cash or readily liquidatable assets to cover 6 months expenses, I wouldn't be 'not worried', I'd be absolutely panicking.
My serious advice: see a financial planner, figure out how much you should be saving. Get a second contracting job to fill the other 20 hours of a full work week. You should be able to more easily focus when you have totally different projects.
And as far as motivation goes, shipping quality products to customers who appreciate it is more than enough motivation. I love seeing a hearing a customer tell me he's happy with the product, even though it cost him around $300k.
You'd be right if that was what they said. But they didn't say that.
They said it was unprecedented within the last 400 years, at least. That's not the same thing.
That's certainly true, but just because there's other dangers doesn't mean it's smart to ignore the ones in your control. You may not be able to stop birds and meteorites, but the foam we *can* stop, and it's irresponsible for us to not.
Yeah, but keep in mind the Challenger, as an example: they launched *knowing it was dangerous*. And guess what happened? It was!
The crew know what they signed up for, probably better than any other explorer ever has. But knowing the normal risks they run isn't the same as asking them to go up when they know the thing that brought the shuttle down last time hasn't been fixed!
I'm relatively certain that the school wasn't just arbitrarily chasing the site across every domain he owned, not unless they had reason. Why was he running a proxy? What material was he or his friends accessing from the school?
As far as legal rights to censor that, they can do just about whatever they want in loco parentis.
There have been good names. Neo Geo, for instance.
I don't want to sound like I'm saying global warming isn't happening, but I think it's fair to add some more data into the mix:
While CO2 emissions have increased in the last 50 years, what about much earlier? For instance, are we now putting out more CO2 than in the 1700s and 1800s? I don't know, I'm asking. Now, we have more cars and coal-fired power plants. Then, we were burning wood and coal and such in our houses for heat.
It is also plausable that emissions from then are effecting us now.
I think global warming is happening, and I think human behavior has an effect, but I think it's an incomplete picture to look only at the last 50 years.
There's lots of good suggestions for other areas, so I'll add the odd one:
If you haven't already, learn to cook. It's possible eat better, healthier, and cheaper than most of the restaurants you're probably eating at, if you know where to shop and what to make. Be willing to buy in bulk (things often cost half as much). Make a lot of meals based around rice (rice is cheap).
Just consider this: where I'm at, I can eat filet mignon for the same price as a sandwich from Subway. Now just imagine if you start eating cheap food!
Also, track your expenses in this area. Only when you know what you're spending can you optimize effectively.
While you're at it, learn to bake. Cakes impress the girls.
What do you mean, it's not their job to suggest action? Why not? That's just silly; who better is qualified to make a suggestion? Is it in any way illogical to say "Research indicates that CO2 is causing global warming. We should reduce emissions of CO2"?
An analogy: if I take my car to the mechanic and he says that my defrobinator is broken, but won't suggest a course of action, I'll never go to him again. I expect my mechanic to not only find the problem but also *fix* it.
I'd be concerned about the scientist's biases if he were suggesting a course of action counter to what the research indicated, but if his thoughts follow that research, what's the concern? That he's biased towards facts and away from myth?
Progress is the job of a scientist. Improving the human condition and furthering our knowledge of universe. 'Presenting research' is the method, not the goal.
First, consider how complex you want to make the system. The decoupling is a good idea, I think. However, I don't think that having modules automatically restart one another is a good idea; it introduces a whole slew of other problems. At most I'd say use a watchdog process (principle of single responsibility).
Furthermore, you're crunching large amounts of data, so I'm guessing batch processing. If you can have the application not be a server, then you simplify things a lot. Make it a utility that takes data on standard input and runs whatever analysis you need, and duct tape it together with cron or a simple program that watches for new input files.
Also, I'd like to suggest that you consider whether other languages could be efficient for the task. For example, Java is pretty good numerically, and as far as your libraries go, see if you can use SWIG to generate JNI wrappers. Also, then you get Java RMI.
Next, get them down to one platform. It's *way* easier to develop software with tight constraints on a single platform (versus multiple platforms). Investigate QNX: a reliable operating system (though admittedly quirky) with a beautiful IPC API. In any case, make sure you get a well-tested library with message queues, etc. You don't want to be using raw sockets; you could but that's just another pain in the ass on top of everything else.
Last, figure out what the cost of a failure is. Getting that last few percent of reliability is very very expensive. Unless you're a pacemaker or respirator, the cost of failure is probably not as high as the cost of five nines of uptime.
Excellent thought; if not lynx, then try elinks, a similar terminal-based browser that supports tables and frames. I am using elinks as I write this.
I'm guessing that you need it available via SSH because it's behind a firewall somewhere. Have you considered using a good web-based tool, and then using SSH to tunnel in?
Have you tried talking to your IT guys? Get a big picture view from all sides. If you have management on your side, it shouldn't be a battle.
Talk to the grunts, ask them about the process, why it takes so long. Be clear that you're not blaming them, so they don't get defensive. Talk to the CTO. Talk to some people in between. Why was the paperwork put into place? Can it be omitted?
It's hard to fight the policies until you understand why they are there. They are either out of date, or a legitimate attempt to solve a problem. Sure, they may be a hinderance now, but someone wrote that for a reason other than 'just to piss off everyone'.
Maybe they're just way overworked? Maybe they lost the request several times and the handful of paperwork needed to cancel the old one and enter a new one each time you bug them about it is what's delaying? Just theorizing.
You can't fix it until you know what's happening. Hang out around the IT water cooler for a bit and see what happens.
-- Mike
To the other excellent arguments posted in this thread, I'd like to add the fact that the 9/11 hijackers had valid ID.
I am of the opinion that *if* we are willing (which I am) to give up liberties in exchange for security, that both sides in that bargain must be fulfilled. Checking IDs doesn't make us safer; it only restricts our liberties.
Come now, you're not thinking in the big picture.
First, when is it a problem? True, this stuff is always a danger. However, until we have a large number of people in space regularly (which is likely to happen eventually), the risk will probably be fairly slim, because even with thousands of items up there, there's a lot of space and very few ships.
Now, when there's people up there regularly, then the problem of salvage is much different. It's no longer "I need to pay $10k/kg to get up there to get paint flecks" but "I could pay $10k/kg to drag up new solar shielding, or I could just leave my space station and pick some up from next door". When you've a large industrial complex up there, it's all of a sudden much more worthwhile.
Now this may not be exactly how it goes down, but consider that at $10,000/kg, the value of the stuff is in that it's already there, not in bringing it back.
For Gods sake people, what's wrong with you?! Write your Senators & Reps, and if they don't do anything, then vote these assholes out of office when the elections come! Donate money to the ACLU.
Seriously people, technologies won't help you hold on to your freedoms. There's no silver bullet. You have to do it for yourselves!
Your analogies aren't quite applicable. The difference is that this is for the IT department of the state. That is, this is policy affecting only the government, not the governed. It's a support department.
The FDA, for example, approves drugs for general use by all people and companies in the US. On the other hand, this CIO approves (for example) operating systems for use by the government itself.
For these to be comparable, it would have to be more like "FDA approves drugs for everyone, and this CIO decides what OS every computer in MA (owned by the government or in your basement) will use".
These are not the same thing. When the government builds a bridge, the choice of whether to use concrete or plastic or chicken femurs IS left to the professionals. That's more on par with what we're dealing with here.
Well, C++ doesn't have any metadata on its own, so you must be using something third-party to create it. Since any library that provides the functionality you need will read that data, we need to know what it is!
Of course, I don't know of any such libraries, but anyway. I am very interested in how you'd be doing reflection-type stuff in C++. I'd like to investigate doing that to do mock objects, like nmock does.
Mod parent up - more people need to know what happened.
First, the person burned was the *passenger*. Secondly, the car was stopped at the time for her to put some cream & sugar in it. Third, McDonald's coffee is served 40 degrees hotter than that of other fast food restaurants. The temperature that other restaurants serve it at *would not* cause third degree burns.
And the very large sum of money that she was awarded initially totalled less than a day's coffee sales for McDonalds. And that was reduced significantly, as well.
I don't like the comparison, because McDonald's did screw up, and this kid screwed up. Blizzard just made a kickass game.
'But the trains are really too noisy (underground) to have an intelligent conversation.'
Uhh.... what makes him think that most of the people talking on cell phones are having an intelligent conversation?
Under the COBRA laws, you can continue your health care under your employer's group plan by covering the premiums yourself - that is, you have the right to pick up your employers portion of the bill, so that you can have continuing coverage.
I'd suggest that you get them to cover their end of things for a long period after the end, along with other benefits, in addition to whatever else you want. It may ease your transition somewhat.
Also, a personal appeal to your manager may be in order for help lining up jobs. Be polite and helpful, no matter what you decide, because they feel obligated to help, and you don't want to be the last one in line.