I thought Sony had learned their lesson after losing completely and utterly to VHS. Most would agree Betamax was a superior product, technically speaking, but being the 'better' product is no guarantee of success - pricing and marketing are critical. They priced themselves out of existence.
Blu-ray was a much better roll-out. They enlisted major studios before the product hit the market. Licensed it to many other companies. And the pricing - while still not making most happy - is keeping them in the game. (And Toshiba's HD DVD died just like Betamax did before it)
I had a pair of the Sony eReaders. They were great - insane battery life, excellent controls. And no stupid touch-screen - like any sane person wants fingerprints on their reading surface? OTOH, the software, as you said, sucked big-time. And then, both readers died within a few months of each other. And my customer experience with Sony pretty much drove me to the competition. And while that is a technically inferior model, I don't suffer from the software pains that Sony caused.
My Sony library still exists - inaccessible - on my hard-drive, thanks to their !@#$ DRM insanity. Again, part of the friendly service from the Sony people - their advice began and ended with 'Buy a newer Sony eReader!'
I've had some odd interviews over the years. One in which the head of IT was a Luddite - and proud of it. One in which the phone and HR interviews went well, but the interview with the manager left me wondering if she had psychological problems... later, from my headhunter, I learned her sister was going though a very bad breakup, including stalking, and I was very similar to the ex.
And, of course, sometimes the interview is for show. They've got someone they want, but have to keep HR happy, and demonstrate they considered other candidates.
My best advice is a) research the company/position, b) be honest, and c) try and be positive. Note that 'being honest' doesn't preclude omitting horrendous things. e.g. "I made an internal transfer as soon as I realized my boss was a lying, backstabbing hypocritical s.o.b., and was much happier with my new position." can be reworded as "I made an internal transfer, after achieving some great things in my first position, because the new job offered more opportunities for professional development."
Here's something a little more upscale:
17.3"
core i7
8 Gb/500 Gb
For the same price
https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/bonx6
Personally, upgrading to the two 1Tb drives, at $1,660, makes this a !@#$ing phenomenal Ubuntu machine.
The first series (1996) was a PR scam. It is incorrect to say he was playing 'Deep Blue'. It is far, far more correct to say he was playing a team, comprising many of the top players, who used Deep Blue to test their moves before implementing them. The programming on the machine changed daily. In the second series, the program was - according to IBM - only changed between games... although there was a serious question of a mid-game change (Game 1) that led to the computer's loss.
That said, yeah, a lot of modern machines leave their predecessors in the dust, computationally. Chess algorithms... not so much. Deep Blue's 'innovation', such as it was, was simply to numerically rate a sequence of moves, discarding the lowest scoring, and then continuing its computation from that point. (...and it was a supercomputer) Contrasting with the previous 'Brute force, try all possibilities, select the best after _n_ moves.' As chess is, practically, a finite game, once computers reach the level of _n_ that is about the end point of all games, they aren't going to lose anymore. A lot of the modern chess programs that are free/cheap follow the brute force model, not the more analytical method pioneered by Deep Blue. The top machines do have better coding that Deep Blue... more importantly, the number of plies has improved, due to better weighting (far more situational / far less point oriented).
Yes and no. I've done so flashing-star, how-the-heck-did-you-get-that programming, mostly because of a unique position that straddled various corporate silos.
Two killers, i.e. 'making them so complex only...'
1/ Not having the time to clean stuff up. If it works, management generally wants you to move on to the next fire.
2/ Documentation oversights and assumptions. "Check the syslog for errors" doesn't cover what to do when errors arise. I'd reached the point of coding the automated sending of e-mails on errors - with the fix included - to the person running a job, on dozens of issues. Things that one just assumes after years of experience are complete show-stoppers to someone who doesn't have that same experience. And it only shows up when someone else does try and run something, per the documentation.
&, of course, 1.5, not having the time to do any documentation...
I like automating the heck out of stuff, handing it off to some poor schlub to run as needed/scheduled, and moving on to the next problem. But I also recognize that it's done me out of a job a couple of times. Which really, truly sucks.
The best advice I received from a friend was "Don't make yourself indispensible. You won't get vacations."
It's a trade-off. I think I prefer being viewed as a valuable asset, getting new challenges, rather than the only guy who knows how to fix something.
Rights are pretty much defined by society. No more, no less. There are no absolute 'Rights'. And let's not forget every 'right' also has a matching 'responsibility'.
That said, US law does support wrongful termination, in many states. Which, strangely enough, covers people quitting when their work is substantially changed... i.e. a $50K programmer gets transferred to a $11K washroom scrubber. Or telling someone that their salary has just been cut in half.
The legal fiction of firing, and then rehiring for the same position, at a lower wage, has been stomped on by the courts.
Although - and this is where things get interesting - I'm wondering if 10 weeks is long enough to get around the courts' interpretation of the prior precedent. That's slightly over two months, which far exceeds the previous cases.
The reason the courts originally jumped in was because this was used as a union busting tactic. A company's workforce goes union, the company lays them all off... changes hands on paper... and then offers to rehire previous employees (albeit with different titles and lower wages). Needless to say, the (US) courts take a very dim view of anyone trying legal trickery (that is, after all, reserved for themselves in their decisions).
But man, Circuit City? The company that even beats cable companies at the BBB for number of complaints? Buying there is idiotic enough (Go NewEgg!), working there about the same.
Those bastards make you study it in one of your college courses.
Not only that, they made me do Microcode! Every !@# gate on the system.
Which explains why I'm quite happy playing with SQL & Essbase.
More seriously, I don't think it helps anymore. Knowing how to program efficiently in Assembler doesn't help with coding efficiently in SQL. Knowing about optimizing indices, partitioning, minimizing joins, and database tuning in general doesn't rely on the same concepts at all.
And, to be honest, most modern compilers spit out code that runs nigh-on as fast as optimal Assembler... and, being honest again, a lot of Assembler I've seen professionally is less-than-optimal
Nope. In IT, it might have to do with the Special Libraries Association. Or, if you happened to be doing to AutoCAD out front, they might have an SLA system (computerized manufacturing toys from heck) out back.
Starfleet Command was a reasonable game - it was, however, based on Star Fleet Battles (SFB), a tactical board game.
Possibly the closest attempt at 'operating a real starship in combat' - while still remaining playable - is Attack Vector. Designed by one of the guys who was heavily involved in SFB (even worked for them for a while).
Although, it too is a board game:(
Based on Newtonian movement and real physics. Even got a favourable review from the editor of SciAm.
Plays pretty fast, though not on the level of SFC:)
First start with the fact wether or not the company needs the SSN or not. When in doubt, the answer is no.
In this day and age, the answer is Yes. Names change - people get married, divorced, decide to use Chuck or Charly instead of Charles. People move. Matching things up on these two - name and address - works 99.9% of the time (with a little effort) - but isn't absolute. SSN (and SIN for those in the Maple Leaf state) allows a match for that final 0.1% percent.
(Yes, SSN change occasionally too, but so far it hasn't been for one of the 0.1%, in my experience)
The best way not to loose the data or be tempted to sell it is not to have it.
Amen. Put together what is rapidly becoming a very popular database at the company, and simply did not include SSN (nor name, address) - these aren't necessary for most people's jobs.
That said, there is another alternative - complete data encryption. My corp uses PointSec - people lose (or have stolen) laptops on a regular basis. We're not worried about that anymore.
First and foremost, virtually every group develops its own language of obfuscation. It identifies who is in the group (and understands it), and who isn't. Which becomes a self-reinforcing form of validation. The unfortunate side-effect of that is the tendency of people in a given group to discount anyone who doesn't speak the lingo.
Second, corp-speak is intentionally vague and general. If something goes wrong, and the person who f*!@ed up points the finger at you, you can always say "I didn't tell him to do that! He misinterpreted my statement!"
I span a couple of groups with their own language - programmers, accountants, lawyers, and doctors. I still trip up on the occasional buzz-word/phrase that means completely different things to each. Band. Debug. Clamp. Sudden Death;). The first time a relative used the term MI in a description of her day, I made the connection. However, unless one is familiar with terms like Myocardial Infarction, you'd be left in the dark... which is one way doctors use to justify rather high salaries ("You don't understand. I'm a doctor, and went to school for many years to learn this stuff!")
The original question was whether one needed to learn it. God yes! If you don't understand it, you will be treated as an outsider; get blind-sided by things you should have known ("But no-one said anything!" "What do you mean? We've been elevating the risk assessment of that challenge for weeks!"); and all sorts of other issues.
Learn to swim with the other sharks, or they'll turn on you. It's that simple.
One of the database I play with (and they pay me, too!) is Essbase... in one sense, the most highly normalized form possible. And yes, accounting data goes in it.
Think star schema, with the central table containing just numerical 'facts'. Each record's key links to every other table, and, for query optimization, we've got just one 'fact' per record. Payments, APR, Balances, they all get slapped in.
It's one of the best OLAP tools I've seen. A hell of a lot of work to do it 'right', like ten hours processing to put in a months' worth of date, said month loading into SQL in about twenty minutes. After that, a response time measured in seconds.
And, coming from a pure DB2 background, the thought that A->B->C->D may not give the same D as A->C->B->D initially freaked me out... but then one starts comparing that to the funky results on a standard database with left/right/innner/outer joins, and it doesn't look so bad.
My department has 'Analysis' in its name. So we put a lot of thought into the design. Won't stop false mining, but the users are generally thrilled to pieces with it.
I hate to jump on the Java/VB/C/C++ lovefest, but the question was about a teaching language.
Why not something simple - like Pascal? Basic? A step up, but COBOL?
Yes, there are advantages to learning a language like C++ that you will end up using, but it's not necessarily the best approach.
One of the biggest complaints I have about a lot of the VB and C++ programmers I've been exposed to is a complete lack of fundamentals. Code that works, but sucks because they never bother to think of the background stuff... memory, performance to name two. Multithreading is not a topic to start beginners on.
OTOH, how many people here can take the Nth root of a number by hand? At some point, you have to accept that automation is here stay. The first time I hit VB, after doing a large project in CICS, I was really happy. Tons of things that were a royal pain became relatively painless. Then the downside... performance sucks compared to CICS. Database interface sucked. Debugging really sucked. Generally, I like having my code in one place, not scattered over screens, buttons, rollovers...
Things are better now. SQL/SQL Server work really well together. A proper front end in some tools can be done FAST and painlessly (e.g. Brio (Now Hyperion Intelligence, to better play with the faster database around!)
I've seen a couple of multi-hundred-million dollar projects die, because of innappropriate choice of languages (VB for one, VC++ the other). But management bought into the argument New=Better.
Personally, I think C++ is a horrible choice as a starter language. Then again, I started on a virtual assembler language, designed strictly for teaching. Kinda like Pascal.
A few years back, I read a couple of articles about reversible chips... run the op through one way, store the results, then run the exact mirror back through. Net heat result was (theoretically) zero. Reality was about 1-2% of regular heat build-up.
But I haven't heard anything more on this. Sure, it effectively halves chip speed. And, even at the time, I thought it would be insane to engineer with the pre-emptive tasking coming into vogue. But something that drops heat production by two orders of magnitude seemed worthwhile pursuing. Anyone else heard where this research is at?
Actually, I'm gonna give some kudos to IBM... recently had to reformat the wife's Thinkpad... quite simply, one of the easiest operations ever. Walks you through the format and reinstall (W2K). No CD required.
After that; the wireless drivers, Opera, Norton Internet Security, The Bat, Agent, Corel Suite, Adobe Suite, the pda sh*#, and Grapevine.
There's a vast difference between what they are supposed to do, and what they actually do. Enron, WorldCom being perfect examples.
And what time frame are we talking about? The best way to maximize future dividends is to minimize those paid out now, leaving plenty of cash for growth/development. It's a fine line to walk, keeping investors happy and still maintaining future profitability.
Looting a good company is another consequence of IPOs (thankfully somewhat rarer). Normally done by members of the board through 'options', thus deferring the rape till some time after the IPO, and out of the public's attention.
>And you try and tell someone how lucky they are to be working at a computer, and they just don't believe you!
Back somewhere around grade 9, I had a summer job in a truck-axle assembly plant. The hours spent with a hand-grinder, trying to fix the 'issues' they half-mil$ plasma cutter had were trivial...
Imagine standing outside a welding robot room (sparks flying, conversation impossible), grabbing axles off the track, stacking them, and putting another model on (the production order was screwed up). Now imagine metal 3/4 inch thick, glowing white for about two inches on each side of a three foot circle. Had to wear coveralls, extra-heavy leather apron, sleeves, safety glasses, face shield, ear plugs and ear protectors/muffs, cap and protective helmet... in the middle of a heat wave (over 100 F) in a gas lit factory. Was drinking four or five juice containers every half hour to replace the sweat. Kinda like a scene out of a conventional view of hell.
And then came home and hacked up black phlegm for a while.
On the plus side, the pay was good, and it really made me appreciate the benefits of a nice office job;)
I caught the first few episodes of Enterprise... at least with TNG the preaching was in-tune with reality... Enterprise seemed to be merely a thin sham for the Republicans:
1/ Those evil intellectuals, the Vulcans. Not only do those pointy-eared freaks secretly keep red-blooded 'Mericans from doing what they want to, but they lie outright and spy on others.
2/ There was that whole "Don't take the law into your own hands, for justice you have to work within the system." line that many, myself included, choked on.
3/ If you didn't picked up on the subtle slights against lifestyles not approved by the Religious Right, then you might not notice brick walls when you run through them.
This is, to be fair, based on just the first few episodes. After choking on the (im-)moral lessons contained, I decided to abstain. Nice SFX, not to mention the gel shower scene, but sci-fi is generally for progressive people.
They're a heck of lot less wasteful (electrickery into heat) than they used to be, and require a lot less space (again, compared to the past).
Clusters... I don't know where you get the 'faster and cheaper' line, unless you're talking about applications specifically designed for clusters. When you start writing apps designed for a few thousand simultaneous users, the benefits of the mainframe become apparent. Stability. Speed. The ability to hold gobs of info in ram. Which, BTW, makes them the nearly ideal web server. Security (hey, it's not M$!). Mainframes are a mature technology... meaning lots of the annoying things (both hardware and software) still plaguing the small boxes have been fixed. (Admittedly, 'mature' often translates into 'f$cking obsolete pos' (i.e. panvalet).)
I don't worry about backups conflicting with apps on the mainframe. I don't worry about the details of storing things reduntantly (although that's quickly getting solved on the smaller boxes). For those things written on WinWhatever, the programmers need to worry about every little upgrade/patch from M$.
Now, most places still give mainframes a room of their own... and it tends to be a bigger room than servers get. And, if you're happy with something a little slower and little less reliable, a good farm runs less than a mainframe.
But, to put things in perspective, one of my databases (non-mainframe) is moving to a USD 2.1 million machine. That's a fraction... as in, from 1/4 to 1/20 (depending on options) of a mainframe.
I'm working in both worlds. I like the cost benefits of the smaller boxes. But it still freaks me out when users punch in a query and it takes several seconds (to minutes) for a response, when the delay on the mainframe is done by the time the enter key pops up.
OK, the logic goes something like this: governments are supposed to provide an infrastructure for society to work. Necessities, like police, military, fire departments, clean water, roads, and, *surprise*, in this day and age, that also includes electricity.
Now, the government can certainly subcontract these things out. There are very few big highway construction companies run by the goverment. And, although the police are entirely gov, there's a lot more dependence on 'private' security.
Now, deregulation. The US has a major problem, called shortsightedness. Politicos are only interested in what they can loot during their term, and, if possible, re-election. Companies are concerned with profit, and surviving a bit longer has taken a very secondary role. So, maintenance, or improving the safeties/redundencies/cut-outs in the power grid - it just ain't gonna happen (or, only under extreme duress, and far less than required).
The situation in California was a debacle. But that had more to do with how the law was done... companies that kept both generating and transmission couldn't raise rates, while those that split apart, could. Seems imbecelically stupid. So, a number of companies did the 'split'... and I use the term loosely, as the owners of the predessor tended to have majority holdings in both the new pieces. Enron (and others) manipulated the market, buy playing buy-and-sell. The original companies simply started tacking on little hikes at each of the several new, and completely artificial steps of the process. The net result was the avg cit in CA ended up paying triple... for exactly the same product, made by exactly the same people, delivered over exactly the same power lines. The difference was that numerous unscrupulous, immoral and total bastids were taking more money from the end user, under varying pretexts.
So, the question, was deregulation to blame... in part. The companies in question are trying to maximize profit, at the expense of long-term viability.
That strategy has Apple down to what, 3% of the market?
Unfortunately, when we're discussing the infrastructure we all depend on, that's a very stupid idea.
For reference, look at the what has happened to the phone system since deregulation kicked in... the average phone bill is staggeringly higher (and the average cell phone bill runs ~$60, despite their 'low cost' plans), and the people at the top are rolling in more dough than ever (Hello? Verizon workers? Can you hear the bills crinkle as Seidenberg rolls in his $9.5 million? Or Lee in his 15.6? How does your labor battle over healthcare sound now?)
It's not that deregulation is a bad thing... just, we aren't seeing it... what the elite are trotting out is a dog-and-pony show, designed to cover their act of ripping the public off.
As for the power companies, let's learn from CA's example - just say no to deregulation. Heck, let's nationalize the bastids... while all the 'competition' was (allegedly) lowering rates, Canada had cheaper power... from a monopoly! (Yeah, I know, the same greeding scum-suckers managed to break that up, too. And now the consumers are seeing their bills double (as of last winter). )
Ah well, as long as I can read by the glow of my monitor...
Me, I wanted portable. Overlay glasses (or contacts), voice recognition, perhaps glove and eye input devices, full wireless internet hookup. I see almost all these things kicking around, in one form or another, but not in a neat, slick package.
Xybernaut does a so-so job, but that's for strictly limited workplace applications. I want wearable, and I want the power of my deskdop (at a minimum)!
Oh, yeah, and harkening to Fire on the Deep, BANDWIDTH!!! Geez, things are slow. Whether it's DSL, cable, or just the bus connecting the DVD player, they could all be a lot better.
Oh, and I'd love a full VR suit, for some games... no, not those kind, more like the D&D style.
And, of course, which one is eaier for the techies to support...
Seriously, one of the big considerations in the corporate world is 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO). Virtually every Linux distro beats Win-whatever hands down in the intial cost... it's the support side that adds up. And I'm optimistic... as more and more companies spurn the MS line, and get onto Linux, that TCO figure is going to start plummeting... a combination of bugs getting fixed faster, user concerns being addressed (something MS doesn't seem to give a high priority to), and tools being developed to help in the corporate world.
Cynically, there's two driving forces behind development... games, and corporate concerns. Unfortuantely, hardware has developed enough to overcome the limitations of the Windows system for games (anyone ever see a decent version of NetTrek for Windows?). However, with the (arguably justifible) paranoia over security, and MS's continued failure to address it, Linux looks better and better.
WinXP has kind of hit a roadblock on this last issue. Large numbers of companies (and also large, as in Fortune 500) are refusing to upgrade over the security issue. The interface is just one consideration. Apps are another (and games just a subset of that). In the corporate world, all management is primarily concerned with is productivity. It doesn't make much difference if you're using MS Office, the WP suite, Star or Free Office (emacs is intentionally not mentioned;)... they all run pretty much the same (a colon in Excel vs a.. in Quattro Pro sums up the difference - trivial and cosmetic.)
I got SuSe, and like the KDE environment. Also got RedHat, BeOs and Win2K, although haven't booted the BeOs for quite some time. It depends on what I want to do... as cait said, 'which one is better for what type of user.' In my case, what I want to do right then.
I'd like to point out that IBM's demo of the 7 q-bit machine last year involved factoring a number... which seemed to me to be pretty explicit about one intended use.
Given the demo was last year, give it another year or so, and they'll have the beast large and stable enough to do the breaking in no time flat.
As an aside, an earlier q-bit demo had 25 ops in 9 nanoseconds... which scales to about 25 billion hertz, kinda leaving most Athlons and PIVs in the dust. That's 8 orders of magnitude faster, which, by the way Moore's law is going, would still take several years to achieve with mainstream processors...
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I thought Sony had learned their lesson after losing completely and utterly to VHS. Most would agree Betamax was a superior product, technically speaking, but being the 'better' product is no guarantee of success - pricing and marketing are critical. They priced themselves out of existence.
Blu-ray was a much better roll-out. They enlisted major studios before the product hit the market. Licensed it to many other companies. And the pricing - while still not making most happy - is keeping them in the game. (And Toshiba's HD DVD died just like Betamax did before it)
I had a pair of the Sony eReaders. They were great - insane battery life, excellent controls. And no stupid touch-screen - like any sane person wants fingerprints on their reading surface? OTOH, the software, as you said, sucked big-time. And then, both readers died within a few months of each other. And my customer experience with Sony pretty much drove me to the competition. And while that is a technically inferior model, I don't suffer from the software pains that Sony caused.
My Sony library still exists - inaccessible - on my hard-drive, thanks to their !@#$ DRM insanity. Again, part of the friendly service from the Sony people - their advice began and ended with 'Buy a newer Sony eReader!'
It's not you.
I've had some odd interviews over the years. One in which the head of IT was a Luddite - and proud of it. One in which the phone and HR interviews went well, but the interview with the manager left me wondering if she had psychological problems ... later, from my headhunter, I learned her sister was going though a very bad breakup, including stalking, and I was very similar to the ex.
And, of course, sometimes the interview is for show. They've got someone they want, but have to keep HR happy, and demonstrate they considered other candidates.
My best advice is a) research the company/position, b) be honest, and c) try and be positive. Note that 'being honest' doesn't preclude omitting horrendous things. e.g. "I made an internal transfer as soon as I realized my boss was a lying, backstabbing hypocritical s.o.b., and was much happier with my new position." can be reworded as "I made an internal transfer, after achieving some great things in my first position, because the new job offered more opportunities for professional development."
Here's something a little more upscale: 17.3" core i7 8 Gb/500 Gb For the same price https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/bonx6 Personally, upgrading to the two 1Tb drives, at $1,660, makes this a !@#$ing phenomenal Ubuntu machine.
The first series (1996) was a PR scam. It is incorrect to say he was playing 'Deep Blue'. It is far, far more correct to say he was playing a team, comprising many of the top players, who used Deep Blue to test their moves before implementing them. The programming on the machine changed daily. In the second series, the program was - according to IBM - only changed between games ... although there was a serious question of a mid-game change (Game 1) that led to the computer's loss.
... not so much. Deep Blue's 'innovation', such as it was, was simply to numerically rate a sequence of moves, discarding the lowest scoring, and then continuing its computation from that point. (...and it was a supercomputer) Contrasting with the previous 'Brute force, try all possibilities, select the best after _n_ moves.' As chess is, practically, a finite game, once computers reach the level of _n_ that is about the end point of all games, they aren't going to lose anymore. A lot of the modern chess programs that are free/cheap follow the brute force model, not the more analytical method pioneered by Deep Blue. The top machines do have better coding that Deep Blue ... more importantly, the number of plies has improved, due to better weighting (far more situational / far less point oriented).
That said, yeah, a lot of modern machines leave their predecessors in the dust, computationally. Chess algorithms
Two killers, i.e. 'making them so complex only ...'
1/ Not having the time to clean stuff up. If it works, management generally wants you to move on to the next fire.
2/ Documentation oversights and assumptions. "Check the syslog for errors" doesn't cover what to do when errors arise. I'd reached the point of coding the automated sending of e-mails on errors - with the fix included - to the person running a job, on dozens of issues. Things that one just assumes after years of experience are complete show-stoppers to someone who doesn't have that same experience. And it only shows up when someone else does try and run something, per the documentation.
&, of course, 1.5, not having the time to do any documentation ...
I like automating the heck out of stuff, handing it off to some poor schlub to run as needed/scheduled, and moving on to the next problem. But I also recognize that it's done me out of a job a couple of times. Which really, truly sucks.
The best advice I received from a friend was "Don't make yourself indispensible. You won't get vacations."
It's a trade-off. I think I prefer being viewed as a valuable asset, getting new challenges, rather than the only guy who knows how to fix something.
That said, US law does support wrongful termination, in many states. Which, strangely enough, covers people quitting when their work is substantially changed ... i.e. a $50K programmer gets transferred to a $11K washroom scrubber. Or telling someone that their salary has just been cut in half.
The legal fiction of firing, and then rehiring for the same position, at a lower wage, has been stomped on by the courts.
Although - and this is where things get interesting - I'm wondering if 10 weeks is long enough to get around the courts' interpretation of the prior precedent. That's slightly over two months, which far exceeds the previous cases.
The reason the courts originally jumped in was because this was used as a union busting tactic. A company's workforce goes union, the company lays them all off ... changes hands on paper ... and then offers to rehire previous employees (albeit with different titles and lower wages). Needless to say, the (US) courts take a very dim view of anyone trying legal trickery (that is, after all, reserved for themselves in their decisions).
But man, Circuit City? The company that even beats cable companies at the BBB for number of complaints? Buying there is idiotic enough (Go NewEgg!), working there about the same.
Not only that, they made me do Microcode! Every !@# gate on the system.
Which explains why I'm quite happy playing with SQL & Essbase.
More seriously, I don't think it helps anymore. Knowing how to program efficiently in Assembler doesn't help with coding efficiently in SQL. Knowing about optimizing indices, partitioning, minimizing joins, and database tuning in general doesn't rely on the same concepts at all.
And, to be honest, most modern compilers spit out code that runs nigh-on as fast as optimal Assembler ... and, being honest again, a lot of Assembler I've seen professionally is less-than-optimal
Nope. In IT, it might have to do with the Special Libraries Association. Or, if you happened to be doing to AutoCAD out front, they might have an SLA system (computerized manufacturing toys from heck) out back.
Possibly the closest attempt at 'operating a real starship in combat' - while still remaining playable - is Attack Vector. Designed by one of the guys who was heavily involved in SFB (even worked for them for a while). Although, it too is a board game :(
Based on Newtonian movement and real physics. Even got a favourable review from the editor of SciAm.
Plays pretty fast, though not on the level of SFC :)
First and foremost, virtually every group develops its own language of obfuscation. It identifies who is in the group (and understands it), and who isn't. Which becomes a self-reinforcing form of validation. The unfortunate side-effect of that is the tendency of people in a given group to discount anyone who doesn't speak the lingo.
Second, corp-speak is intentionally vague and general. If something goes wrong, and the person who f*!@ed up points the finger at you, you can always say "I didn't tell him to do that! He misinterpreted my statement!"
I span a couple of groups with their own language - programmers, accountants, lawyers, and doctors. I still trip up on the occasional buzz-word/phrase that means completely different things to each. Band. Debug. Clamp. Sudden Death ;). The first time a relative used the term MI in a description of her day, I made the connection. However, unless one is familiar with terms like Myocardial Infarction, you'd be left in the dark ... which is one way doctors use to justify rather high salaries ("You don't understand. I'm a doctor, and went to school for many years to learn this stuff!")
The original question was whether one needed to learn it. God yes! If you don't understand it, you will be treated as an outsider; get blind-sided by things you should have known ("But no-one said anything!" "What do you mean? We've been elevating the risk assessment of that challenge for weeks!"); and all sorts of other issues.
Learn to swim with the other sharks, or they'll turn on you. It's that simple.
Think star schema, with the central table containing just numerical 'facts'. Each record's key links to every other table, and, for query optimization, we've got just one 'fact' per record. Payments, APR, Balances, they all get slapped in.
It's one of the best OLAP tools I've seen. A hell of a lot of work to do it 'right', like ten hours processing to put in a months' worth of date, said month loading into SQL in about twenty minutes. After that, a response time measured in seconds. And, coming from a pure DB2 background, the thought that A->B->C->D may not give the same D as A->C->B->D initially freaked me out ... but then one starts comparing that to the funky results on a standard database with left/right/innner/outer joins, and it doesn't look so bad.
My department has 'Analysis' in its name. So we put a lot of thought into the design. Won't stop false mining, but the users are generally thrilled to pieces with it.
I hate to jump on the Java/VB/C/C++ lovefest, but the question was about a teaching language.
Why not something simple - like Pascal? Basic? A step up, but COBOL?
Yes, there are advantages to learning a language like C++ that you will end up using, but it's not necessarily the best approach.
One of the biggest complaints I have about a lot of the VB and C++ programmers I've been exposed to is a complete lack of fundamentals. Code that works, but sucks because they never bother to think of the background stuff ... memory, performance to name two. Multithreading is not a topic to start beginners on.
OTOH, how many people here can take the Nth root of a number by hand? At some point, you have to accept that automation is here stay. The first time I hit VB, after doing a large project in CICS, I was really happy. Tons of things that were a royal pain became relatively painless. Then the downside ... performance sucks compared to CICS. Database interface sucked. Debugging really sucked. Generally, I like having my code in one place, not scattered over screens, buttons, rollovers ...
Things are better now. SQL/SQL Server work really well together. A proper front end in some tools can be done FAST and painlessly (e.g. Brio (Now Hyperion Intelligence, to better play with the faster database around!)
I've seen a couple of multi-hundred-million dollar projects die, because of innappropriate choice of languages (VB for one, VC++ the other). But management bought into the argument New=Better.
Personally, I think C++ is a horrible choice as a starter language. Then again, I started on a virtual assembler language, designed strictly for teaching. Kinda like Pascal.
A few years back, I read a couple of articles about reversible chips ... run the op through one way, store the results, then run the exact mirror back through. Net heat result was (theoretically) zero. Reality was about 1-2% of regular heat build-up.
But I haven't heard anything more on this. Sure, it effectively halves chip speed. And, even at the time, I thought it would be insane to engineer with the pre-emptive tasking coming into vogue. But something that drops heat production by two orders of magnitude seemed worthwhile pursuing. Anyone else heard where this research is at?
Seriously, no (minimal) games, no graphics (apart from ASCII) ... just pure mind-numbing productivity!
Trial by combat didn't end ... it just moved from the arena into the courtroom.
Don't make the mistake of believing right will triumph. It helps a lot in the courtroom, but is no means a guarantee, by itself, of victory.After that; the wireless drivers, Opera, Norton Internet Security, The Bat, Agent, Corel Suite, Adobe Suite, the pda sh*#, and Grapevine.
'...sole OFFICIAL responsibility ...'
There's a vast difference between what they are supposed to do, and what they actually do. Enron, WorldCom being perfect examples.
And what time frame are we talking about? The best way to maximize future dividends is to minimize those paid out now, leaving plenty of cash for growth/development. It's a fine line to walk, keeping investors happy and still maintaining future profitability.
Looting a good company is another consequence of IPOs (thankfully somewhat rarer). Normally done by members of the board through 'options', thus deferring the rape till some time after the IPO, and out of the public's attention.
Back somewhere around grade 9, I had a summer job in a truck-axle assembly plant. The hours spent with a hand-grinder, trying to fix the 'issues' they half-mil$ plasma cutter had were trivial ...
Imagine standing outside a welding robot room (sparks flying, conversation impossible), grabbing axles off the track, stacking them, and putting another model on (the production order was screwed up). Now imagine metal 3/4 inch thick, glowing white for about two inches on each side of a three foot circle. Had to wear coveralls, extra-heavy leather apron, sleeves, safety glasses, face shield, ear plugs and ear protectors/muffs, cap and protective helmet ... in the middle of a heat wave (over 100 F) in a gas lit factory. Was drinking four or five juice containers every half hour to replace the sweat. Kinda like a scene out of a conventional view of hell.
And then came home and hacked up black phlegm for a while.
On the plus side, the pay was good, and it really made me appreciate the benefits of a nice office job ;)
1/ Those evil intellectuals, the Vulcans. Not only do those pointy-eared freaks secretly keep red-blooded 'Mericans from doing what they want to, but they lie outright and spy on others.
2/ There was that whole "Don't take the law into your own hands, for justice you have to work within the system." line that many, myself included, choked on.
3/ If you didn't picked up on the subtle slights against lifestyles not approved by the Religious Right, then you might not notice brick walls when you run through them.
This is, to be fair, based on just the first few episodes. After choking on the (im-)moral lessons contained, I decided to abstain. Nice SFX, not to mention the gel shower scene, but sci-fi is generally for progressive people.
They're a heck of lot less wasteful (electrickery into heat) than they used to be, and require a lot less space (again, compared to the past).
Clusters ... I don't know where you get the 'faster and cheaper' line, unless you're talking about applications specifically designed for clusters. When you start writing apps designed for a few thousand simultaneous users, the benefits of the mainframe become apparent. Stability. Speed. The ability to hold gobs of info in ram. Which, BTW, makes them the nearly ideal web server. Security (hey, it's not M$!). Mainframes are a mature technology ... meaning lots of the annoying things (both hardware and software) still plaguing the small boxes have been fixed. (Admittedly, 'mature' often translates into 'f$cking obsolete pos' (i.e. panvalet).)
I don't worry about backups conflicting with apps on the mainframe. I don't worry about the details of storing things reduntantly (although that's quickly getting solved on the smaller boxes). For those things written on WinWhatever, the programmers need to worry about every little upgrade/patch from M$.
Now, most places still give mainframes a room of their own ... and it tends to be a bigger room than servers get. And, if you're happy with something a little slower and little less reliable, a good farm runs less than a mainframe.
But, to put things in perspective, one of my databases (non-mainframe) is moving to a USD 2.1 million machine. That's a fraction ... as in, from 1/4 to 1/20 (depending on options) of a mainframe.
I'm working in both worlds. I like the cost benefits of the smaller boxes. But it still freaks me out when users punch in a query and it takes several seconds (to minutes) for a response, when the delay on the mainframe is done by the time the enter key pops up.
Now, the government can certainly subcontract these things out. There are very few big highway construction companies run by the goverment. And, although the police are entirely gov, there's a lot more dependence on 'private' security.
Now, deregulation. The US has a major problem, called shortsightedness. Politicos are only interested in what they can loot during their term, and, if possible, re-election. Companies are concerned with profit, and surviving a bit longer has taken a very secondary role. So, maintenance, or improving the safeties/redundencies/cut-outs in the power grid - it just ain't gonna happen (or, only under extreme duress, and far less than required).
The situation in California was a debacle. But that had more to do with how the law was done ... companies that kept both generating and transmission couldn't raise rates, while those that split apart, could. Seems imbecelically stupid. So, a number of companies did the 'split' ... and I use the term loosely, as the owners of the predessor tended to have majority holdings in both the new pieces. Enron (and others) manipulated the market, buy playing buy-and-sell. The original companies simply started tacking on little hikes at each of the several new, and completely artificial steps of the process. The net result was the avg cit in CA ended up paying triple ... for exactly the same product, made by exactly the same people, delivered over exactly the same power lines. The difference was that numerous unscrupulous, immoral and total bastids were taking more money from the end user, under varying pretexts.
So, the question, was deregulation to blame ... in part. The companies in question are trying to maximize profit, at the expense of long-term viability.
That strategy has Apple down to what, 3% of the market?
Unfortunately, when we're discussing the infrastructure we all depend on, that's a very stupid idea.
For reference, look at the what has happened to the phone system since deregulation kicked in ... the average phone bill is staggeringly higher (and the average cell phone bill runs ~$60, despite their 'low cost' plans), and the people at the top are rolling in more dough than ever (Hello? Verizon workers? Can you hear the bills crinkle as Seidenberg rolls in his $9.5 million? Or Lee in his 15.6? How does your labor battle over healthcare sound now?)
It's not that deregulation is a bad thing ... just, we aren't seeing it ... what the elite are trotting out is a dog-and-pony show, designed to cover their act of ripping the public off.
As for the power companies, let's learn from CA's example - just say no to deregulation. Heck, let's nationalize the bastids ... while all the 'competition' was (allegedly) lowering rates, Canada had cheaper power ... from a monopoly! (Yeah, I know, the same greeding scum-suckers managed to break that up, too. And now the consumers are seeing their bills double (as of last winter). )
Ah well, as long as I can read by the glow of my monitor ...
Xybernaut does a so-so job, but that's for strictly limited workplace applications. I want wearable, and I want the power of my deskdop (at a minimum)!
Oh, yeah, and harkening to Fire on the Deep, BANDWIDTH!!! Geez, things are slow. Whether it's DSL, cable, or just the bus connecting the DVD player, they could all be a lot better. Oh, and I'd love a full VR suit, for some games ... no, not those kind, more like the D&D style.
And, of course, which one is eaier for the techies to support ...
Seriously, one of the big considerations in the corporate world is 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO). Virtually every Linux distro beats Win-whatever hands down in the intial cost ... it's the support side that adds up. And I'm optimistic ... as more and more companies spurn the MS line, and get onto Linux, that TCO figure is going to start plummeting ... a combination of bugs getting fixed faster, user concerns being addressed (something MS doesn't seem to give a high priority to), and tools being developed to help in the corporate world.
Cynically, there's two driving forces behind development ... games, and corporate concerns. Unfortuantely, hardware has developed enough to overcome the limitations of the Windows system for games (anyone ever see a decent version of NetTrek for Windows?). However, with the (arguably justifible) paranoia over security, and MS's continued failure to address it, Linux looks better and better.
WinXP has kind of hit a roadblock on this last issue. Large numbers of companies (and also large, as in Fortune 500) are refusing to upgrade over the security issue. The interface is just one consideration. Apps are another (and games just a subset of that). In the corporate world, all management is primarily concerned with is productivity. It doesn't make much difference if you're using MS Office, the WP suite, Star or Free Office (emacs is intentionally not mentioned;) ... they all run pretty much the same (a colon in Excel vs a .. in Quattro Pro sums up the difference - trivial and cosmetic.)
I got SuSe, and like the KDE environment. Also got RedHat, BeOs and Win2K, although haven't booted the BeOs for quite some time. It depends on what I want to do ... as cait said, 'which one is better for what type of user.' In my case, what I want to do right then.
Given the demo was last year, give it another year or so, and they'll have the beast large and stable enough to do the breaking in no time flat.
As an aside, an earlier q-bit demo had 25 ops in 9 nanoseconds ... which scales to about 25 billion hertz, kinda leaving most Athlons and PIVs in the dust. That's 8 orders of magnitude faster, which, by the way Moore's law is going, would still take several years to achieve with mainstream processors...