Ok, so maybe this says something about me, but the first person shooters leave me kind of cold. I need something a little bit more challenging intellectually and that all started for me with Civ II. After my room mate gave me the CD-ROM, I installed and played was 14 hours straight - no drinking, eating, or bathroom breaks. I did not even know what time it was or how long I had been playing until he interrupted me to tell me he was going to work. I have had similar time distortions with Starcraft and Warcraft too so I guess I am some sort of strategy fan. Some people define these notions as a sympton of addiction (i.e. former girlfriends), but as long as I can keep my job this habit seems managable.
As a former mathematician I can state that I have used nearly all the packages listed in the question. Why did I use all of them? Because each one is better at doing one thing rather than another.
Want to make some pretty pictures or symbolic computations, use Mathematica. Want to take those pictures/graphs and rotate or manipulate them in real time (or Canada), use Maple (it originated in Canada and has an academic pentration there different from Mathematica). Want to do computationally intensive matrix work to arbitrary precision, use Matlab. Want more numerical control and flexibility to define adaptive grids or meshes, then write your own C++ or Fortran code and exploit the LAPACK libraries (hundreds of contributing mathematicians can't all be wrong!). Want to do complex polynomial manipulations over abritrary rings (you know who are) then use Singular.
It is just like fixing your car or doing any other chore: pick the tool that suits the job best. There is no universal tool that replace an entire tool box no matter what that lunatic Steve Wolfram says.
Wow, I had just made a list of comments to address the reviewer's weaker points and then I read ChimChim's post. Right on! You said everything I wanted to. As an experienced technology educator, it is very difficult to write code that highlights the core notions of an API without adding clutter even it migth be useful in a production environment. According to this review it sounds like the author did a great good of this and I will certainly check out the book.
The article you point to at OnJava is over 18 months old - that is ancient history in the enterprise computing world. BEA has consistently been one of the earliest adopters of new J2EE technologies providing EJB2.0 implementation before the spec was even final! You are right that SOAP is not a J2EE spec (and it won't be) but Java APIs for using SOAP already exist (JAX-RPC being the main one) and will be incorporated into J2EE 1.4. WebLogic server 7.0 provided JAX-RPC support before that specification went final and has been supporting SOAP and web services since WebLogic 6.1. If you want to be on the cutting edge of new technologies use WebLogic, if you are willing to sit around and wait for an app server to be built after the specs have been finalized (6-9 months for JBoss, 8-18 months for WebSphere) then use something else.
The Grinder (http://grinder.sourceforge.net) is an open source Java based load generating tool. It is multi-threaded, distributed, scriptable and has a central statistics reporting mechanism (console). It was used extensively by the authors of J2EE Performance Testing with BEA WebLogic Server and that book has excellent instructions and recommendations about its use.
Your general inclination about high energy particles is in line with current theoretical thinking. Today, most popular theories about physical nature are based on multiple higher dimensional universes (usually 10 or 11 dimensions including the three spatial and one temporal that we know about) that permit the existence of our current physical universe within them. The higher dimensions are generally thought to be collections of "super symmetric strings" which vibrate in various different modes. Occasional vibrations intrude into our classical four dimensions particuarly in high energy situations like the particle accelerators that permit us to see quarks. The difficulty is that there are many of these competing ten dimensional spaces that can give rise to our universe so it is tough to tell them apart and the energy to do so would be so prohibitive that we will not be able to do it for thousands of years. Thus these notions remain embedded purely in the theoretical world.
Of course, this is just my understanding from what I read a couple of years ago. I think that "strings" my be superceded by "M-theory" or something more esoteric these days.
Any additive game is a non-zero sum game. In other words, games that focus on development rather than acquisition. In the computer world you can think of Sim City and its clones, as well as some simple strategy games like Railroad Tycoon (available for Linux) with out competitors. Personally the more fun development games for me growing up where role-playing games. Yes, I am confessing to my sad youth of Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, et al. but these games made sure that players where cooperative, imaginative, resourceful and still allowed players to maintain their individuality. Of course, the game co-ordinator (or Dungeon Master) was critical to the success/fun factor of the game and luckily my brother was a good one (no magic lightning bolts from the sky just because you pissed off the DM!).
It absolutely has to be Starcraft!!! This game was fun to learn and play against the computer but gained a new dimension when played on line. My roommates banned me from playing before 11pm because I would tie up the phone line. This late start did nothing to quell my enthusiasm and I soon evolved into a nocturnal beast. I played 11pm to 5 am and then tried to function at school with obviously little sucess. I still find myself dreaming of strategies and I have been clean for about 6 months (I had to quit cold turkey when I started work - the first 2 weeks I could not sleep). Call me a loser, call me what you will, but the word addicted is a very accurate description.
When you surf the web, you cannot always tell how the pages are generated. Using a good application server you can map specific URLs to JSPs or serlvets to do the work. Thus pages with.html or.cgi or.pl or.anything may actually be generated using Java. Just because you don't have gay spinning graphics on your web page does not mean that Java is not doing some hard work for you. Besides this the application server will cache the servlet and make it invocation faster the next time it is called and allowing for scalability. Just try doing that with a perl cgi script (you have to add mod-perl to apache if you want to know).
If you are a foreign student studying in the US it can be a real challenge to stay in the US to work. Here are a couple of pieces of information that I assimilated during my application process.
J-1 visas: You are unlikely to get a work visa because the J-1 visa indicates that your support during your stay in the US came from a foreign source (usually government) and that you are expected to return to your home nation and repay this investment. Go home get an F-1 if you can and then come back.
F-1 visas Undergraduate: You are entitled to 12 month Optional Practical Training if you have been a full time student and are receiving your degree from your american institution. This means that students on an exchange program are not entitled to this program. You must submit an application at least 3 months before you hope to start work, pay the application fee (non refundable) and be sure that your work is in an area directly related to your studies. This may be the easiest part. Do not expect friendly treatment from american companies when they find out that you may only be able to work for them for a year.
F-1 Graduate: You are also entitled to an F-1 Optional Practical training (see previous) and you are more likely to get it if you are seeking employment related to your research and your advisor writes a good recommendation. However, you can expect a similar chilly reception from american companies. The best solution is go straight for the H1-B. To do this you must find an employer who is willing to sponsor you. This is best done by having either interned with them previously or by exploiting relationships you have with some one who is already working there (I know it sounds cynical but it is true). The H1-B process is still not simple but with an employer backing you they often shoulder the cost and provide legal help to smooth the process.
Once the H1-B has been given your next goal is to go for a green card. This is typically at least 3 year process although it can be shorter if you have an advanced degree and the demand for green cards for your country is not too high (i.e. you are not from India). Since the inital H1-B is only granted for 3 years with a possible extension for another 3, you should really get moving on the green card process. The whole thing is a little easier if you are not trying to get your whole family to move over here with you and it is certianly easier if you happen to marry an american.
You are misguided in your assumption that student visas are granted for such philanthropic reasons. Do you really think that only students who are unable to attend university in their own country are the ones admitted to American universities? I had my choice of universities to attend in England (yes including Oxford and Cambridge) yet I still came to America to study. US universities are eager to attract the best students regardless of national origin.
The truth is that America has a surplus of college-level institutions most of which operate like a business. It is in their best interests to admit foreign students who are guaranteed to pay full tuition and in general are likely to the best students from their respective nation. Then they can say that they admitted foreign students to increase diversity or grant disadvantaged foreigners an opportunity for education. If these were the goals shouldn't there be tuition breaks or a multitude of scholarships for foreign nationals (I assure you that this is not the case)? The reality is that the almighty dollar is the bottom line and you bought into the bullshit which your institution has been feeding you.
For your information, part of the H1-B visa process requires the employer to prove to INS that the compensation package for the employee is around the average for that position in the industry. This hardly means that the "huge influx" of foreign tech labor is having a negative effect on US salaries.
The people coming to the USA to take IT positions are not the same people who come to this country illegally to pick fruit, sweep streets or work in sweat shops. The images of foreign workers jammed into cramped living conditions, slaving away for all hours at low pay may be correct for illegal immigrants but the legal immigrants are guaranteed a much different lifestyle.
It is true that visa restictions do not give foreign workers the ability to switch jobs as frequently as seems fashionable in the tech industry these days, but changing jobs is not impossible. If one company has successfully petitioned the INS for a visa for someone then the chances are good that another company will be able to do the same. While it is a pain in the ass for the employee to change jobs it hardly makes him/her an indentured servant to the company. If a foreign worker is smart enough to be working in IT then he/she is smart enough to understand their visa and its restrictions.
Lastly, I find it curious to read the irate responses posted here. Are the posters concerned about the plight of the poor foreign worker who is being exploited by these monsterous american comapnies (sarcasm)? Or are they irate that they have to actually compete to find work?
Glad to see that Slashdot has seen a decline in productivity that parallels my own. Since getting the game yesterday lunchtime I have been trying to not get caught playing in my office (fast connection) whilst building my array of characters.
BTW CmdrTaco's choice of playing a female is not that unreasonable. If you want to use magic then there is not male magic user so a woman you must become. Of course, this only adds to the net history of men assuming women's identities, but that is another story.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so maybe this says something about me, but the first person shooters leave me kind of cold. I need something a little bit more challenging intellectually and that all started for me with Civ II. After my room mate gave me the CD-ROM, I installed and played was 14 hours straight - no drinking, eating, or bathroom breaks. I did not even know what time it was or how long I had been playing until he interrupted me to tell me he was going to work. I have had similar time distortions with Starcraft and Warcraft too so I guess I am some sort of strategy fan. Some people define these notions as a sympton of addiction (i.e. former girlfriends), but as long as I can keep my job this habit seems managable.
As a former mathematician I can state that I have used nearly all the packages listed in the question. Why did I use all of them? Because each one is better at doing one thing rather than another.
Want to make some pretty pictures or symbolic computations, use Mathematica. Want to take those pictures/graphs and rotate or manipulate them in real time (or Canada), use Maple (it originated in Canada and has an academic pentration there different from Mathematica). Want to do computationally intensive matrix work to arbitrary precision, use Matlab. Want more numerical control and flexibility to define adaptive grids or meshes, then write your own C++ or Fortran code and exploit the LAPACK libraries (hundreds of contributing mathematicians can't all be wrong!). Want to do complex polynomial manipulations over abritrary rings (you know who are) then use Singular.
It is just like fixing your car or doing any other chore: pick the tool that suits the job best. There is no universal tool that replace an entire tool box no matter what that lunatic Steve Wolfram says.
Wow, I had just made a list of comments to address the reviewer's weaker points and then I read ChimChim's post. Right on! You said everything I wanted to. As an experienced technology educator, it is very difficult to write code that highlights the core notions of an API without adding clutter even it migth be useful in a production environment. According to this review it sounds like the author did a great good of this and I will certainly check out the book.
The article you point to at OnJava is over 18 months old - that is ancient history in the enterprise computing world. BEA has consistently been one of the earliest adopters of new J2EE technologies providing EJB2.0 implementation before the spec was even final! You are right that SOAP is not a J2EE spec (and it won't be) but Java APIs for using SOAP already exist (JAX-RPC being the main one) and will be incorporated into J2EE 1.4. WebLogic server 7.0 provided JAX-RPC support before that specification went final and has been supporting SOAP and web services since WebLogic 6.1. If you want to be on the cutting edge of new technologies use WebLogic, if you are willing to sit around and wait for an app server to be built after the specs have been finalized (6-9 months for JBoss, 8-18 months for WebSphere) then use something else.
The Grinder (http://grinder.sourceforge.net) is an open source Java based load generating tool. It is multi-threaded, distributed, scriptable and has a central statistics reporting mechanism (console). It was used extensively by the authors of J2EE Performance Testing with BEA WebLogic Server and that book has excellent instructions and recommendations about its use.
I suggest you check it out.
Your general inclination about high energy particles is in line with current theoretical thinking. Today, most popular theories about physical nature are based on multiple higher dimensional universes (usually 10 or 11 dimensions including the three spatial and one temporal that we know about) that permit the existence of our current physical universe within them. The higher dimensions are generally thought to be collections of "super symmetric strings" which vibrate in various different modes. Occasional vibrations intrude into our classical four dimensions particuarly in high energy situations like the particle accelerators that permit us to see quarks. The difficulty is that there are many of these competing ten dimensional spaces that can give rise to our universe so it is tough to tell them apart and the energy to do so would be so prohibitive that we will not be able to do it for thousands of years. Thus these notions remain embedded purely in the theoretical world.
Of course, this is just my understanding from what I read a couple of years ago. I think that "strings" my be superceded by "M-theory" or something more esoteric these days.
Any additive game is a non-zero sum game. In other words, games that focus on development rather than acquisition. In the computer world you can think of Sim City and its clones, as well as some simple strategy games like Railroad Tycoon (available for Linux) with out competitors. Personally the more fun development games for me growing up where role-playing games. Yes, I am confessing to my sad youth of Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, et al. but these games made sure that players where cooperative, imaginative, resourceful and still allowed players to maintain their individuality. Of course, the game co-ordinator (or Dungeon Master) was critical to the success/fun factor of the game and luckily my brother was a good one (no magic lightning bolts from the sky just because you pissed off the DM!).
It absolutely has to be Starcraft!!! This game was fun to learn and play against the computer but gained a new dimension when played on line. My roommates banned me from playing before 11pm because I would tie up the phone line. This late start did nothing to quell my enthusiasm and I soon evolved into a nocturnal beast. I played 11pm to 5 am and then tried to function at school with obviously little sucess. I still find myself dreaming of strategies and I have been clean for about 6 months (I had to quit cold turkey when I started work - the first 2 weeks I could not sleep). Call me a loser, call me what you will, but the word addicted is a very accurate description.
When you surf the web, you cannot always tell how the pages are generated. Using a good application server you can map specific URLs to JSPs or serlvets to do the work. Thus pages with .html or .cgi or .pl or .anything may actually be generated using Java. Just because you don't have gay spinning graphics on your web page does not mean that Java is not doing some hard work for you. Besides this the application server will cache the servlet and make it invocation faster the next time it is called and allowing for scalability. Just try doing that with a perl cgi script (you have to add mod-perl to apache if you want to know).
If you are a foreign student studying in the US it can be a real challenge to stay in the US to work. Here are a couple of pieces of information that I assimilated during my application process.
Once the H1-B has been given your next goal is to go for a green card. This is typically at least 3 year process although it can be shorter if you have an advanced degree and the demand for green cards for your country is not too high (i.e. you are not from India). Since the inital H1-B is only granted for 3 years with a possible extension for another 3, you should really get moving on the green card process. The whole thing is a little easier if you are not trying to get your whole family to move over here with you and it is certianly easier if you happen to marry an american.
That is about all I know. Good luck
You are misguided in your assumption that student visas are granted for such philanthropic reasons. Do you really think that only students who are unable to attend university in their own country are the ones admitted to American universities? I had my choice of universities to attend in England (yes including Oxford and Cambridge) yet I still came to America to study. US universities are eager to attract the best students regardless of national origin.
The truth is that America has a surplus of college-level institutions most of which operate like a business. It is in their best interests to admit foreign students who are guaranteed to pay full tuition and in general are likely to the best students from their respective nation. Then they can say that they admitted foreign students to increase diversity or grant disadvantaged foreigners an opportunity for education. If these were the goals shouldn't there be tuition breaks or a multitude of scholarships for foreign nationals (I assure you that this is not the case)? The reality is that the almighty dollar is the bottom line and you bought into the bullshit which your institution has been feeding you.
For your information, part of the H1-B visa process requires the employer to prove to INS that the compensation package for the employee is around the average for that position in the industry. This hardly means that the "huge influx" of foreign tech labor is having a negative effect on US salaries.
The people coming to the USA to take IT positions are not the same people who come to this country illegally to pick fruit, sweep streets or work in sweat shops. The images of foreign workers jammed into cramped living conditions, slaving away for all hours at low pay may be correct for illegal immigrants but the legal immigrants are guaranteed a much different lifestyle.
It is true that visa restictions do not give foreign workers the ability to switch jobs as frequently as seems fashionable in the tech industry these days, but changing jobs is not impossible. If one company has successfully petitioned the INS for a visa for someone then the chances are good that another company will be able to do the same. While it is a pain in the ass for the employee to change jobs it hardly makes him/her an indentured servant to the company. If a foreign worker is smart enough to be working in IT then he/she is smart enough to understand their visa and its restrictions.
Lastly, I find it curious to read the irate responses posted here. Are the posters concerned about the plight of the poor foreign worker who is being exploited by these monsterous american comapnies (sarcasm)? Or are they irate that they have to actually compete to find work?
Glad to see that Slashdot has seen a decline in productivity that parallels my own. Since getting the game yesterday lunchtime I have been trying to not get caught playing in my office (fast connection) whilst building my array of characters.
BTW CmdrTaco's choice of playing a female is not that unreasonable. If you want to use magic then there is not male magic user so a woman you must become. Of course, this only adds to the net history of men assuming women's identities, but that is another story.
See you on Battle.net