Yes, but if you can buy the full amplifier as a module (like the STK modules and TDA ic's) for your design, you'll be not only saving a ton of money, but also skipping all the R&D by using a tried-and-true solution. That may drive the cost down, but also slows down innovation.
If you play a CD on a 20 year old CD player and a modern one, it will sound different. Many older players only have a 12 or 14 bit DAC, so forget about getting the full range. Some expensive models may have some sort of interpolation (some brands advertised 20-bit players), but usually they'd have a ton of extra electronics instead of a true 20 bit DAC. On the other hand, those old players usually had excellent electrolytic capacitors.
Today 24 bit DAC are relatively cheap, but good electrolytic capacitors are somewhat difficult to find. Even if you go fully digital, with optical cable and a dedicated external DAC, you'll probably have some crappy capacitors handling the signal. You can find on the internet a ton of info about replacing electrolytic capacitors on cheap cd/dvd players so they give a better sound.
Not relevant for the point you're making, but PNG is not an alternative to TIFF, specially in professional graphics. >8 bit channels and multiple compression/encoding schemes aren't available on PNG format. Also, PNG is a RGB-only format, and pretty much useless in to-print graphic designs,
It depends on the kind of work you make. If you do mostly webgraphics, then shure, a VM is probably fine. If actually need to use the features of Photoshop and Illustrator, and/or work with hi-res graphics, it is an awful idea. SMP VM's are not that great, there is no OpenGL acceleration (Photoshop uses it if available), and usually the I/O is subpar. Not to mention, actual "professional" work often requires color management - which you can't do correctly on a VM.
Btw, also if you use a 10-bit monitor, forget those gazillion colors - your VM will only use 8 bit/channel color depth, even if you have a top of the line graphics card.
There has been some time since I've looked on to it, but I'm pretty shure I've seen buit-your-own/use what you can get vhf receiver hooked up with serial converters to use with PCs at a fraction of the cost. This isn't the eighties anymore.
So, the data is not flawed because you say so? And if the models have been peer reviewed (and assuming they are correct), why don't you have a consensus from the scientific community? And why everyone that asks questions is automatically labeled a "denialist"? So, if I believe that the world is warming up (and all the data suggests so), but I don't believe that 1) the models are accurate; 2) many scientists envolved aren't pulling their own agenda; 3) the problem is exclusively caused by human activity, I'm a denialist, and suddenly I read oil blogs? And if I swallow all the crap with blatant number manipulation, misinformation and hypotesis that pass as proof, I'm suddenly a "smart person"? Really? You kow, you can script that kind of argumentation, you don't need to type it yourself everytime you use it.
Meanwhile have a look at the origin of the LHC to understand the difference between model, hypotesis, proof, and reality. Think of the billions they could save hiring some climatologists and skipping the proof part altogether.
The problem is that the data was collected with different thermometers, and probably with different calibration methods. If all the readings at a location were made by the same thermometer, shure - even if the calibration of the device wasn't accurrate, the variation between successive readings would be. But that is not the case, and many data tables used as proof of the warming trend are mean monthly reads, with variations between the years of usually less than 0.5 degrees, measured since 1880.
Trusting someone's opinion just because they are considered "smart" is stupid. Most of the data I've seen provides from 2 sources - measurements made with different methodologies and different equipments across time, and extrapolations made from models based on wild life (plants/trees, etc). While I don't argue against the concept that the earth is indeed warming up, and that mankind activities do contribute to that effect, I don't see conclusive proof on the data collected, and the iminent catastrophe some scientists talk about. A model is just that - a somewhat simplistic mathematical approximation to what it is believed to be the accurate data. The accuracy of the model is bound by current scientific knowledge and precision of the data available, but part of that data was aquired with different precision and accuracy. Do you see the problem? And then we have a somewhat obscure field of science, that has received massive funding the last years because the conclusions drawn from the scientists that benefit from that funding.
What I've learned from recent history:
Smart people used radio and other radioactive products to treat all sorts of illnesses
Smart people used leeches and advocated ethnicity inferiority based on antropomorphic measurements
Smart people screamed about the next ice age "any day now" in the seventies. And screamed about overpopulation with numbers and solid data and models, "any day now" - 40 years ago. Smart people warned about the oil disappearing as soon as the beginning of the 90's, with models and solid data.
So yes, I won't trust blindly on conjectures and hipotesis formulated based on flawed data and non peer-reviewed models. That doesn't mean I'm a denialist.
The land needed to sustain a family today is a fraction of the land needed in 1816. Not only because of the breaktrough of the pesticides, but also because of targeted additives (not only chemical, but also natural), and in some areas, with transgenics. And today, that land can be anywhere in the world. Rice shortage? That's ok, you can still get beans, cereal grain, corn, sugar,etc. Wheat shortage? (last year in Europe) No problem, you can still get everything else.
The rice crisis was devastating to the producing countries, and not only financially, but because they still tied to age-old economics and agricultural habits. And yes, the argument they do it because we need it wears fast - look at Mozambique - a 3rd world country where, in some areas, you can get 3 crops of corn a year, without much effort. Imagine that in America or Europe.
I'd like to see data collected from several fixed weather stations across time (eg. a century) using the same equipment and the same method. As far as I know (and please prove me wrong if I am), the current data doesn't take into account the inaccuracy of older equipments, upgrades in methodologies (the distance from the ground and condensation factor of the surface of the equipment does influence the data collected) and/or bigger warming cycles of our planet. It is commonly accepted that the earh has gone trough several ice ages, but the idea that the warming we are experience is somehow natural and part of a cycle is dismissed as heresy, because we are totally killing the polar bears and the forests and whatnot. I'm not (totally) AGW, but the data available isn't reliable enough and most of the models and theories I've seen resumed are weak, considering they're the argument for a worldwide effort. I do agree that we should move away from oil and from coal, but I think it is funny how some companies are making billions from this "green frenzy" - from recycling companies to carbon credit traders.
I find funny the notion that generalists are allways the "jack of all trades, master of none", and that the specialists are the guys doing the heavy lifting on the subject.
There are a ton of specialists, ranging from clearly incompetent or mediocre to acceptable professionals that aren't that good or specialized. Or that smart. There are some "generalists" out there that can clearly dominate multiple fields and put a lot of specialists to shame, but the usual trend is to shun "generalists" because they usually know as much or more than you do of your field, and it has taken them a lot less time to learn the same as you. Smart specialists are the exception, not the norm.
Yes I could be called a sort of generalist, in the sense that I work in multiple fields, and can beat most average "specialists" on those fields. I like to work on different things, and I like to learn and experiment. I also can understand that, in some areas of expertise, you really need to dedicate your life to it to actually be an expert, but most fields arent that demanding. And yes, I know too well how this notion can upsets some "specialists".
From my personal experience, I think the problem starts with the education system, it lowers the bar so the people with most learning difficulties can keep up, and dumbing down those more capable. It would be beneficial if the most capable students could get advanced classes, because they usually grow up to being unable to process and retain relevant amounts of information.
As ceo of a small company, I probably wouldn't hire someone like me, but not because the lack of "career specialty".I think that good generalists are difficult to manage, and are allways looking for the next challenge and get somewhat bored easily when the novelty wears off. They would be a perfect fit for a company with a big R&D department, not only because they could bounce ideas with the actual specialists, but because the interdisciplinary knowledge could be an important asset to the department.
If you stick to drinking Space beer
Hangovers - headaches will be in the past
The Sci-Fi-booze makes you healthy and wise
Your dick and brain will grow in size
If you're bald, it'll make your hair grow
If you're not, drink it for fun
Your liver wants more and more of it
It keeps your stomach strong and fit
We love it - a beermaniac Utopia
We want it - oktobertest comucopia
(Taken from "Space Beer")
When you run a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit operating system, and the browser hits the 2GB wall (usually my Firefox crashes around 1.5GB), you have some pretty massive memory leaks. Either launch a fully supported 64 bit browser with the same leaks and some wrappers for the 32bit plugins (flash), or do it like chrome - for every 10 FF crashes, I have 1 from chrome.
I mean COBOL, FORTRAN, or working with ColdFusion... There aren't many developers around who still know it so they get paid in the 120-150k range. Its absolutely nuts.
Go get one of those high paying dinosaur jobs where you can sit on your antique skills for years making more than anyone else.
As a former cobol programmer (with strong experience in many other modern/somewhat modern languages) , I can tell you that you probably have a lot to learn from cobol. It is extremely difficult not to shoot yourself in the foot, and even after 500 lines if you're not skilled enough, your code will be a bug-filled big pile of crap. I've worked with big codebases (> 300Mb) and thousands of files, and it is quite easy to get lost. Also, all the bad decisions previous programmers did reflect on the code maintability and application lifecycle. But, once the code was up and running, and (mostly) rid of bugs, it keeps running. You would usually run it on a mainframe (for you young folks, its like a big computer), notably known not only for their stability, but also for not requiring updates every 5 seconds because they are connected to the internet and every bot on the planet targeting it. So yeah, can would run those apps for years, and without shiny things like garbage collection.
Also, the compilers are simple, the memory footprint is low, and those new.NET/JAVA targets make easy to rollback those "quick! lets migrate all of this legacy code to whatever is new now". That's why even today you have new applications being built in cobol - many of those institutions that rushed for the java-frenzy migration in the end of the nineties and the beginning of the century rolled back or cancelled completely their migration plans. I know of a couple of them that runs their shiny java gui application on their intranet, but is just a wrapper for the quarter-century old cobol application that actually does the work.
Now that google.pt is a façade of google.br (or whatever is called) please implement some localized version if bing that will get results from actual portuguese pages and not from servers an ocean away. If you're too busy, I'll need a rack of servers and some extra programming power you may have lying around - we're not a big country, but since google forgot that Portugal and Brazil are different countries, and that local engines are just proxies to google, I need this in a hurry. Pleeease?
C is by definition a general purpose programming language but PHP is not. If calling C a systems programming language makes you happy, go ahead - BASIC and JAVA are also system programming languages in some architectures. PHP is closer to a DSL than to general purpose language. And yes, PHP does suck, but not by not having some buzzword funcionality you think is important.
Funny how so many languages don't have unicode support, namespaces, have sometimes a quirky browser, ambiguous commands and people aren't claiming it sucks. Perhaps the best example is the C language - you probably used more code written in C to post your disliking of php than you will ever program in any language during your lifetime.
Yeah, Amazon is the best, Except when they're down (like at the 12th of this month), due to some "hardware problem". And EC2 has some not-so-infrequent downtime too. Google 4 it.
The seventies are long gone, and so are (most) languages with strict indentation rules. As a former cobol programmer, I can't stand it. As a basic/pascal/delphi/assembly/c#/php developer, I can't understand why a modern language would dabble with such archaic concept. That is the main reason I wouldn't touch python code with a ten foot pole.
Not much time ago, it passed at least a full year between rumours of an actual ssh exploit and the disclosure of the vulnerability and release of some poc code. Trusting OpenBSD just because is OpenBSD is nonsense. Crypto is nontrivial, and protocols itself are quite complex (and IPSEC is no walk in the park), so it may be possible that a developer had implemented some protocol in such a way that it woud be vulnerable to a specific kind of attack, without anybody noticing. It gives me some satisfaction that the OpenBSD team learned from past mistakes, and this time - even without evidence, and it may well be a hoax - Theo decided to make this public. And yes, I'm an OpenBSD user.
Auditing of outbound comunications is trivial and in use today in almost all kinds of businesses. Also, some business require that all email - inbound and outbound - be stored for archival, security, insurance and accountability purposes. Running non-authorized programs (and that includes loading objects from non-secure locations using a browser) is easily disabled in all modern operating systems I know of. Also, many non-privileged workstations don't have sound or even enabled sound devices. And printing accounting is common practice, and in some places a copy of the spool jobs is kept for some time, also for accountability and insurance purposes.
Disabling USB devices (including preventing driver loading/unloading, like when plugging out a keyboard and plugging it in again), prevent mounting of CD/DVD drives, and of course, preventing execution of stealth, unauthorized or privileged apps is trivial and has been for many years. I've seen workstations without user write support of any kind - the user cannot write anywhere on the system - and again, this is common practice in many businesses since the 80s.
The examples I gave are common in many businesses (from corner stores to multinational organizations), and usually covered in general by certifications such as ISO27001. Even if you can steal it, the probability is that "they" will trace it back to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but if you can buy the full amplifier as a module (like the STK modules and TDA ic's) for your design, you'll be not only saving a ton of money, but also skipping all the R&D by using a tried-and-true solution. That may drive the cost down, but also slows down innovation.
If you play a CD on a 20 year old CD player and a modern one, it will sound different. Many older players only have a 12 or 14 bit DAC, so forget about getting the full range. Some expensive models may have some sort of interpolation (some brands advertised 20-bit players), but usually they'd have a ton of extra electronics instead of a true 20 bit DAC. On the other hand, those old players usually had excellent electrolytic capacitors.
Today 24 bit DAC are relatively cheap, but good electrolytic capacitors are somewhat difficult to find. Even if you go fully digital, with optical cable and a dedicated external DAC, you'll probably have some crappy capacitors handling the signal. You can find on the internet a ton of info about replacing electrolytic capacitors on cheap cd/dvd players so they give a better sound.
Not relevant for the point you're making, but PNG is not an alternative to TIFF, specially in professional graphics. >8 bit channels and multiple compression/encoding schemes aren't available on PNG format. Also, PNG is a RGB-only format, and pretty much useless in to-print graphic designs,
It depends on the kind of work you make. If you do mostly webgraphics, then shure, a VM is probably fine. If actually need to use the features of Photoshop and Illustrator, and/or work with hi-res graphics, it is an awful idea. SMP VM's are not that great, there is no OpenGL acceleration (Photoshop uses it if available), and usually the I/O is subpar. Not to mention, actual "professional" work often requires color management - which you can't do correctly on a VM. Btw, also if you use a 10-bit monitor, forget those gazillion colors - your VM will only use 8 bit/channel color depth, even if you have a top of the line graphics card.
There has been some time since I've looked on to it, but I'm pretty shure I've seen buit-your-own/use what you can get vhf receiver hooked up with serial converters to use with PCs at a fraction of the cost. This isn't the eighties anymore.
So, the data is not flawed because you say so? And if the models have been peer reviewed (and assuming they are correct), why don't you have a consensus from the scientific community? And why everyone that asks questions is automatically labeled a "denialist"? So, if I believe that the world is warming up (and all the data suggests so), but I don't believe that 1) the models are accurate; 2) many scientists envolved aren't pulling their own agenda; 3) the problem is exclusively caused by human activity, I'm a denialist, and suddenly I read oil blogs? And if I swallow all the crap with blatant number manipulation, misinformation and hypotesis that pass as proof, I'm suddenly a "smart person"? Really? You kow, you can script that kind of argumentation, you don't need to type it yourself everytime you use it.
Meanwhile have a look at the origin of the LHC to understand the difference between model, hypotesis, proof, and reality. Think of the billions they could save hiring some climatologists and skipping the proof part altogether.
The problem is that the data was collected with different thermometers, and probably with different calibration methods. If all the readings at a location were made by the same thermometer, shure - even if the calibration of the device wasn't accurrate, the variation between successive readings would be. But that is not the case, and many data tables used as proof of the warming trend are mean monthly reads, with variations between the years of usually less than 0.5 degrees, measured since 1880.
Trusting someone's opinion just because they are considered "smart" is stupid. Most of the data I've seen provides from 2 sources - measurements made with different methodologies and different equipments across time, and extrapolations made from models based on wild life (plants/trees, etc). While I don't argue against the concept that the earth is indeed warming up, and that mankind activities do contribute to that effect, I don't see conclusive proof on the data collected, and the iminent catastrophe some scientists talk about. A model is just that - a somewhat simplistic mathematical approximation to what it is believed to be the accurate data. The accuracy of the model is bound by current scientific knowledge and precision of the data available, but part of that data was aquired with different precision and accuracy. Do you see the problem?
And then we have a somewhat obscure field of science, that has received massive funding the last years because the conclusions drawn from the scientists that benefit from that funding.
What I've learned from recent history:
Smart people used radio and other radioactive products to treat all sorts of illnesses
Smart people used leeches and advocated ethnicity inferiority based on antropomorphic measurements
Smart people screamed about the next ice age "any day now" in the seventies. And screamed about overpopulation with numbers and solid data and models, "any day now" - 40 years ago.
Smart people warned about the oil disappearing as soon as the beginning of the 90's, with models and solid data.
So yes, I won't trust blindly on conjectures and hipotesis formulated based on flawed data and non peer-reviewed models. That doesn't mean I'm a denialist.
The land needed to sustain a family today is a fraction of the land needed in 1816. Not only because of the breaktrough of the pesticides, but also because of targeted additives (not only chemical, but also natural), and in some areas, with transgenics. And today, that land can be anywhere in the world. Rice shortage? That's ok, you can still get beans, cereal grain, corn, sugar ,etc. Wheat shortage? (last year in Europe) No problem, you can still get everything else.
The rice crisis was devastating to the producing countries, and not only financially, but because they still tied to age-old economics and agricultural habits. And yes, the argument they do it because we need it wears fast - look at Mozambique - a 3rd world country where, in some areas, you can get 3 crops of corn a year, without much effort. Imagine that in America or Europe.
I'd like to see data collected from several fixed weather stations across time (eg. a century) using the same equipment and the same method. As far as I know (and please prove me wrong if I am), the current data doesn't take into account the inaccuracy of older equipments, upgrades in methodologies (the distance from the ground and condensation factor of the surface of the equipment does influence the data collected) and/or bigger warming cycles of our planet. It is commonly accepted that the earh has gone trough several ice ages, but the idea that the warming we are experience is somehow natural and part of a cycle is dismissed as heresy, because we are totally killing the polar bears and the forests and whatnot. I'm not (totally) AGW, but the data available isn't reliable enough and most of the models and theories I've seen resumed are weak, considering they're the argument for a worldwide effort. I do agree that we should move away from oil and from coal, but I think it is funny how some companies are making billions from this "green frenzy" - from recycling companies to carbon credit traders.
There are a ton of specialists, ranging from clearly incompetent or mediocre to acceptable professionals that aren't that good or specialized. Or that smart. There are some "generalists" out there that can clearly dominate multiple fields and put a lot of specialists to shame, but the usual trend is to shun "generalists" because they usually know as much or more than you do of your field, and it has taken them a lot less time to learn the same as you. Smart specialists are the exception, not the norm.
Yes I could be called a sort of generalist, in the sense that I work in multiple fields, and can beat most average "specialists" on those fields. I like to work on different things, and I like to learn and experiment. I also can understand that, in some areas of expertise, you really need to dedicate your life to it to actually be an expert, but most fields arent that demanding. And yes, I know too well how this notion can upsets some "specialists".
From my personal experience, I think the problem starts with the education system, it lowers the bar so the people with most learning difficulties can keep up, and dumbing down those more capable. It would be beneficial if the most capable students could get advanced classes, because they usually grow up to being unable to process and retain relevant amounts of information.
As ceo of a small company, I probably wouldn't hire someone like me, but not because the lack of "career specialty".I think that good generalists are difficult to manage, and are allways looking for the next challenge and get somewhat bored easily when the novelty wears off. They would be a perfect fit for a company with a big R&D department, not only because they could bounce ideas with the actual specialists, but because the interdisciplinary knowledge could be an important asset to the department.
If you stick to drinking Space beer Hangovers - headaches will be in the past The Sci-Fi-booze makes you healthy and wise Your dick and brain will grow in size If you're bald, it'll make your hair grow If you're not, drink it for fun Your liver wants more and more of it It keeps your stomach strong and fit We love it - a beermaniac Utopia We want it - oktobertest comucopia (Taken from "Space Beer")
When you run a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit operating system, and the browser hits the 2GB wall (usually my Firefox crashes around 1.5GB), you have some pretty massive memory leaks. Either launch a fully supported 64 bit browser with the same leaks and some wrappers for the 32bit plugins (flash), or do it like chrome - for every 10 FF crashes, I have 1 from chrome.
And you still have some bands or musicians that are still making conceptual albums... So maybe you argument is bogus.
I mean COBOL, FORTRAN, or working with ColdFusion... There aren't many developers around who still know it so they get paid in the 120-150k range. Its absolutely nuts.
Go get one of those high paying dinosaur jobs where you can sit on your antique skills for years making more than anyone else.
As a former cobol programmer (with strong experience in many other modern/somewhat modern languages) , I can tell you that you probably have a lot to learn from cobol. It is extremely difficult not to shoot yourself in the foot, and even after 500 lines if you're not skilled enough, your code will be a bug-filled big pile of crap. I've worked with big codebases (> 300Mb) and thousands of files, and it is quite easy to get lost. Also, all the bad decisions previous programmers did reflect on the code maintability and application lifecycle. But, once the code was up and running, and (mostly) rid of bugs, it keeps running. You would usually run it on a mainframe (for you young folks, its like a big computer), notably known not only for their stability, but also for not requiring updates every 5 seconds because they are connected to the internet and every bot on the planet targeting it. So yeah, can would run those apps for years, and without shiny things like garbage collection. .NET/JAVA targets make easy to rollback those "quick! lets migrate all of this legacy code to whatever is new now". That's why even today you have new applications being built in cobol - many of those institutions that rushed for the java-frenzy migration in the end of the nineties and the beginning of the century rolled back or cancelled completely their migration plans. I know of a couple of them that runs their shiny java gui application on their intranet, but is just a wrapper for the quarter-century old cobol application that actually does the work.
Also, the compilers are simple, the memory footprint is low, and those new
Now that google.pt is a façade of google.br (or whatever is called) please implement some localized version if bing that will get results from actual portuguese pages and not from servers an ocean away. If you're too busy, I'll need a rack of servers and some extra programming power you may have lying around - we're not a big country, but since google forgot that Portugal and Brazil are different countries, and that local engines are just proxies to google, I need this in a hurry. Pleeease?
C is by definition a general purpose programming language but PHP is not. If calling C a systems programming language makes you happy, go ahead - BASIC and JAVA are also system programming languages in some architectures. PHP is closer to a DSL than to general purpose language.
And yes, PHP does suck, but not by not having some buzzword funcionality you think is important.
s/browser/parser
Funny how so many languages don't have unicode support, namespaces, have sometimes a quirky browser, ambiguous commands and people aren't claiming it sucks. Perhaps the best example is the C language - you probably used more code written in C to post your disliking of php than you will ever program in any language during your lifetime.
Yeah, Amazon is the best, Except when they're down (like at the 12th of this month), due to some "hardware problem". And EC2 has some not-so-infrequent downtime too. Google 4 it.
The seventies are long gone, and so are (most) languages with strict indentation rules. As a former cobol programmer, I can't stand it. As a basic/pascal/delphi/assembly/c#/php developer, I can't understand why a modern language would dabble with such archaic concept. That is the main reason I wouldn't touch python code with a ten foot pole.
How did you get there? Can you look back with sobriety and see where you started? If not, please start again. More meaningful advice at 11.
The same thing it says when they sort out bugs in ancient blocks of code. That auditing is a continuous process, not a goal.
Not much time ago, it passed at least a full year between rumours of an actual ssh exploit and the disclosure of the vulnerability and release of some poc code. Trusting OpenBSD just because is OpenBSD is nonsense. Crypto is nontrivial, and protocols itself are quite complex (and IPSEC is no walk in the park), so it may be possible that a developer had implemented some protocol in such a way that it woud be vulnerable to a specific kind of attack, without anybody noticing. It gives me some satisfaction that the OpenBSD team learned from past mistakes, and this time - even without evidence, and it may well be a hoax - Theo decided to make this public. And yes, I'm an OpenBSD user.
Auditing of outbound comunications is trivial and in use today in almost all kinds of businesses. Also, some business require that all email - inbound and outbound - be stored for archival, security, insurance and accountability purposes. Running non-authorized programs (and that includes loading objects from non-secure locations using a browser) is easily disabled in all modern operating systems I know of. Also, many non-privileged workstations don't have sound or even enabled sound devices. And printing accounting is common practice, and in some places a copy of the spool jobs is kept for some time, also for accountability and insurance purposes.
Disabling USB devices (including preventing driver loading/unloading, like when plugging out a keyboard and plugging it in again), prevent mounting of CD/DVD drives, and of course, preventing execution of stealth, unauthorized or privileged apps is trivial and has been for many years. I've seen workstations without user write support of any kind - the user cannot write anywhere on the system - and again, this is common practice in many businesses since the 80s. The examples I gave are common in many businesses (from corner stores to multinational organizations), and usually covered in general by certifications such as ISO27001. Even if you can steal it, the probability is that "they" will trace it back to you.