Twice I've got my front wheel got caught in a streetcar track and gone down (happens frequently in Toronto). The other time a limo raced away from a red light and knocked me over. (Yes, he was charged, and there was a trial in Old City Hall -- GUILTY.) I've also been in a motorcycle accident (speed wobble on the 401) where a helmet saved my coconut. And my uncle Tim died from a head injury when riding a bicycle (granted, this was in the 1940's).
So you could say that my position on requiring helmets when riding a bicycle is.. inflexible.
My previous employer moved into a new space but refused to install a single shower (200 employees, and dozens of bicyclists). After a half hour commute by bicycle, a quick rinse would have been wonderful. Too bad.
Think about the last time you had a revelation -- walking somewhere by yourself, washing yourself in the shower, driving somewhere without the radio on. That's valuable thinking time.
I used to be on Twitter dozens of times a day -- no pictures of the meal I was about to eat, but lots of surfing. I took a two week trip to China, and limited my wireless access to a few times a day for E-Mail only -- the rest of the time I was off the grid. Now I'm back in Canada, I'm continuing that trend -- I've visted Twitter a few times, but my participation is way down. Even riding the subway with my eyes closed is a nice respite from a busy day.
I happened to be touring a university campus (UCLA? Berkeley?) and saw a poster for a talk he was giving, and bought a ticket on a whim. He was a fascinating speaker, and it was intriguing to hear him re-engineer and expand on Fahrenheit 451. What a treat. Afterwards, he gladly stayed behind and autographed books for quite a while.
I also remember something about him being arrested in Paris, France for being 'drunk and in charge of a bicycle'. What's not to like?
The FA clearly states he's in second year. Normally a general degree is three years and an honours degree is four years; strike one. It's March -- most school years go at least until April; strike two.
Guys, welcome to 2012. Now, about the price on your unit.. way, way too high.
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
I don't even care what it does -- it's too much money. So, good luck with that.
I used Windows 95 (a step up from 3.11, but took a while to mature) and Windows 98 (fantastic) before I moved to Linux. My parents and friends continued on the bandwagon with Windows ME (disaster), Windows XP (pretty damn good) and Windows Vista (crap). I now have a Windows 7/Debian dual boot system, and it works quite well.
I remember Microsoft just about killed themselves getting Windows 95 done, in reaction to OS/2's stronger than expected showing. They just about had to release something in order to quiet the market down. Early versions were indeed rough, but after 18 months it was much better; who knows what might have happened if they'd waiting that long -- OS/2 might have grabbed significantly more market share.
Windows Vista was the next generation XP.. but missing several of the significant features that ended up going into Windows 7.
If Windows 8 is also going to be used as a mobile platform, it might get some extra testing that will find the Oh, It Broke Out In The Field mistakes. It could be that Microsoft has finally learned their lesson, and won't release according to some Marketdroid's schedule, but rather when the product is cooked and ready for release.. but history suggests otherwise.
What idiots. Any time you use a piece of scientific equipment regularly, you have to be sure you're calibrating it. Even better if you're checking your calibrations multiple different ways.
If the ideal solution has lighting vary with the amount of traffic, perhaps the highways should be an integrated system with wires sensing traffic and sensors measuring ambient light so as to produce a target amount of illumination, mostly regardless of the time of day. And if the lights are cut from 100% to 50% in a single step, it's going to be a little startling for anyone on the road. Hopefully they'll design a system intelligent enough to reduce the power gradually.
Politicians are always attempting to be experts at everything. This failure is magnified when they start talking about the Internet, because on the Internet, everyone's an expert.
Kudos for Comcast for finally getting the ball rolling on IPv6. A/128 address gets their foot in the door, and as their post says, they can expand it later.
I signed up for OKCupid in November of last year. Getting back into the dating game was quite weird after two failed marriages.
Yep, I met a few duds, but I also met some very attractive, very intelligent, sexy women. I met my girlfriend of six months on the site -- I think she contacted me first, but I'm not sure.
Here's the key: BE YOURSELF.
[] Offer an honest portrait of yourself. [] Upload pictures where people can get a good look at you (so, duh, no sunglasses, no pictures of scenery with you a little splotch in the far left corner). They should be recent, and they should show you enjoying yourself. They could be conversation starters. [] If you find someone fascinating, drop them a line; if they respond, great. If they don't, move on. [] If the conversation remains at the 'small talk' level, it's your option, but I'd say move on. [] A neutral location is a great place to meet for the first time. I like Starbucks because they have nice chairs, a variety of nice drinks and they don't hustle you out the door after ten minutes. Chat. Did I mention BE YOURSELF? [] If you both discover that you've been talking for 45 minutes, that's good. If you're struggling to keep the conversation alive after five minutes, that's good -- it's not happening. Move on. [] I took two women to shoot pool because it's something I enjoy. They both had a blast. Don't try to manufacture some 'event'; do something fun, something you want to do.
And no, I'm not some twenty-something living in his Mom's basement. I own my house, and I finished university thirty years ago.
Been with pair Networks (pair.com) for over ten years. They're probably not the cheapest, as other folks have been saying, but they are rock solid, and they provide great customer service. I met some of the pair guys when they were at YAPC in Toronto in 2003. Very nice.
No, the servers don't run Linux, they use FreeBSD, but it's absolutely solid, and they're progressive about upgrading their machines and their network. Highly recommended.
I made the huge mistake of deciding that C was all I'd ever need back in the early 90's. I quickly found out that there were new technologies (HTML, Unix/Linux, awk, Perl) that I needed to learn, and pretty damned fast if I wanted to land another job.
That's a mistake I'll never make again. (I think that was also around the time that I put off procrastinating about getting a home computer, and got a Windows 95 box that I could dual boot to OS/2.)
When I was hired by my current employer two years ago, the lead interviewer was one of the senior developers. He was born two days before I got accepted into University.
Fortunately, the age difference didn't matter to either of us. They were doing some cool stuff and needed great developers; I was really interested in working with a bunch of motivated, bright folks. A good fit.
Well, of course, I do more than write Perl. Been doing that for over ten years.
I also deal with web stuff, like explaining to a co-worker that it is actually possible to do an HTTP re-direction while including a cookie in the request.
And I deal with the usual database CRUD code. I'm using DB2 now, before that I spent five years each on PostgreSQL and then MySQL.
And I know enough about SysAdmin stuff to set up an NFS server and configure Apache.
And before forex, I worked in finance, pharmacy management, robotics and data communications. And before Perl I wrote C and assembler for 15 years.
I'm still *way* too fascinated in solving technical problems and writing great code to think about doing something else.
It's the University of Waterloo, not Waterloo University, just like it's University of Notre Dame, not the other way around. The top Google search comes up with the correct name. Although, given the topic, feel free to mod this #ironic.
And I get 'http://www.alexa.com/hoturls?q=exercise bike clearance' which links to 'http://www.goodroi.com/why-google-allows-target-com-to-spam-results/', a post dated December 10, 2009 (thirteen days ago).
And the boss of the bosses is called the Head of Engineering (Operations and Development), but perhaps the company I work for is unusual.
We do have an IT team: it consists of about five people who take care of managing the hardware, the development containers, the networking, speccing hardware, and doing capacity planning. Operations is about a dozen people who take care of managing the application software that we use to provide forex trading. Then there are several dozen developers just doing development for the web site and the trading platform.
I find the term IT a little out-dated, personally. It makes me think of white shirts and ties, salesman from IBM and the hallowed machine room with the God-like mainframe.
My experience with OpenSolaris has been great. I set up an OpenSolaris NFS server with a RAID 1 array using two 300G drives under ZFS, and it's been rock solid.
A few months ago (I'm not that great of a SysAdmin) I decided I'd better check the health of the server, and discovered that my Secondary IDE channel was gonzo, and that OpenSolaris was reporting that my RAID 1 array was 'degraded', and running on only one drive. (Each drive is on a different IDE channel for redundancy -- guess that was the right decision.)
I now have a new chassis that I'll be putting that system's three drives into.. Real Soon Now.
I'd have a chance to do some of the projects I've put aside over my career.
[] AI research [] Robotics (I did that at my third job and loved it) [] Writing my very own full screen editor (reinventing a wheel, but it intrigues me) [] Music notation software [] A few device drivers (because writing assembler is hard, but great fun when it works)
COBOL has a lot of issues but speed isn't a big one. I'm willing to bet that on tasks that are appropriate to COBOL it would kick most "modern" scripting languages asses in terms of speed.
Well. All this talk of speed. Are we talking speed of execution, or speed of development? I would be willing to bet the speed of development under COBOL would be relatively poor, compared to just about any other scripting language you can think of. *Any* language, in fact.
Can you imagine doing *anything* with an associative array in COBOL? Even (shudder) OO-COBOL?
In 2000 or so I managed to install SuSE 6.2 on my spare P400 box, and somehow made a connection through my ADSL modem thanks to Roaring Penguin's scripts. I was absolutely thrilled, and ftp'd into my web provider, tried Alt-F2 to start other sessions, the works. I shut it down, and the Internet connection never worked after that.
I then battled with X-Windows, fiddling with the contents of the configuration script, all the while very wary of blowing up my one CRT with the wrong Sync values. The system wasn't usable, and I had no idea what I was doing, so I shelved it, and remained a Windows 98 guy running VanDyke Systems excellent ssh and ftp clients into my employer's machines.
Really, I knew so little when I set that original SuSE box up, I'm amazed that I got it working at all. I do plan to install SuSE 6.2 again, just to see if it's as clunky as I thought it was. Should be amusing.
From TFA: "Note, most projects used more than one language and these results are based on the number of projects using a given language, not the number of lines of code created."
Slashdot Mirror
Twice I've got my front wheel got caught in a streetcar track and gone down (happens frequently in Toronto). The other time a limo raced away from a red light and knocked me over. (Yes, he was charged, and there was a trial in Old City Hall -- GUILTY.) I've also been in a motorcycle accident (speed wobble on the 401) where a helmet saved my coconut. And my uncle Tim died from a head injury when riding a bicycle (granted, this was in the 1940's).
So you could say that my position on requiring helmets when riding a bicycle is .. inflexible.
And yeah, probably time for a new bike helmet.
This.
My previous employer moved into a new space but refused to install a single shower (200 employees, and dozens of bicyclists). After a half hour commute by bicycle, a quick rinse would have been wonderful. Too bad.
Think about the last time you had a revelation -- walking somewhere by yourself, washing yourself in the shower, driving somewhere without the radio on. That's valuable thinking time.
I used to be on Twitter dozens of times a day -- no pictures of the meal I was about to eat, but lots of surfing. I took a two week trip to China, and limited my wireless access to a few times a day for E-Mail only -- the rest of the time I was off the grid. Now I'm back in Canada, I'm continuing that trend -- I've visted Twitter a few times, but my participation is way down. Even riding the subway with my eyes closed is a nice respite from a busy day.
It's important to get your brain some time off.
I happened to be touring a university campus (UCLA? Berkeley?) and saw a poster for a talk he was giving, and bought a ticket on a whim. He was a fascinating speaker, and it was intriguing to hear him re-engineer and expand on Fahrenheit 451. What a treat. Afterwards, he gladly stayed behind and autographed books for quite a while.
I also remember something about him being arrested in Paris, France for being 'drunk and in charge of a bicycle'. What's not to like?
RIP.
Mod parent up.
The FA clearly states he's in second year. Normally a general degree is three years and an honours degree is four years; strike one. It's March -- most school years go at least until April; strike two.
Get it right.
Guys, welcome to 2012. Now, about the price on your unit .. way, way too high.
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
I don't even care what it does -- it's too much money. So, good luck with that.
Mod parent up.
I used Windows 95 (a step up from 3.11, but took a while to mature) and Windows 98 (fantastic) before I moved to Linux. My parents and friends continued on the bandwagon with Windows ME (disaster), Windows XP (pretty damn good) and Windows Vista (crap). I now have a Windows 7/Debian dual boot system, and it works quite well.
I remember Microsoft just about killed themselves getting Windows 95 done, in reaction to OS/2's stronger than expected showing. They just about had to release something in order to quiet the market down. Early versions were indeed rough, but after 18 months it was much better; who knows what might have happened if they'd waiting that long -- OS/2 might have grabbed significantly more market share.
Windows Vista was the next generation XP .. but missing several of the significant features that ended up going into Windows 7.
If Windows 8 is also going to be used as a mobile platform, it might get some extra testing that will find the Oh, It Broke Out In The Field mistakes. It could be that Microsoft has finally learned their lesson, and won't release according to some Marketdroid's schedule, but rather when the product is cooked and ready for release .. but history suggests otherwise.
What idiots. Any time you use a piece of scientific equipment regularly, you have to be sure you're calibrating it. Even better if you're checking your calibrations multiple different ways.
Buy your own laptop or tablet and use that. It doesn't sound like it's worth it to go to all that trouble just to play some games or watch a movie.
If the ideal solution has lighting vary with the amount of traffic, perhaps the highways should be an integrated system with wires sensing traffic and sensors measuring ambient light so as to produce a target amount of illumination, mostly regardless of the time of day. And if the lights are cut from 100% to 50% in a single step, it's going to be a little startling for anyone on the road. Hopefully they'll design a system intelligent enough to reduce the power gradually.
Politicians are always attempting to be experts at everything. This failure is magnified when they start talking about the Internet, because on the Internet, everyone's an expert.
Right?
Kudos for Comcast for finally getting the ball rolling on IPv6. A /128 address gets their foot in the door, and as their post says, they can expand it later.
I signed up for OKCupid in November of last year. Getting back into the dating game was quite weird after two failed marriages.
Yep, I met a few duds, but I also met some very attractive, very intelligent, sexy women. I met my girlfriend of six months on the site -- I think she contacted me first, but I'm not sure.
Here's the key: BE YOURSELF.
[] Offer an honest portrait of yourself.
[] Upload pictures where people can get a good look at you (so, duh, no sunglasses, no pictures of scenery with you a little splotch in the far left corner). They should be recent, and they should show you enjoying yourself. They could be conversation starters.
[] If you find someone fascinating, drop them a line; if they respond, great. If they don't, move on.
[] If the conversation remains at the 'small talk' level, it's your option, but I'd say move on.
[] A neutral location is a great place to meet for the first time. I like Starbucks because they have nice chairs, a variety of nice drinks and they don't hustle you out the door after ten minutes. Chat. Did I mention BE YOURSELF?
[] If you both discover that you've been talking for 45 minutes, that's good. If you're struggling to keep the conversation alive after five minutes, that's good -- it's not happening. Move on.
[] I took two women to shoot pool because it's something I enjoy. They both had a blast. Don't try to manufacture some 'event'; do something fun, something you want to do.
And no, I'm not some twenty-something living in his Mom's basement. I own my house, and I finished university thirty years ago.
Been with pair Networks (pair.com) for over ten years. They're probably not the cheapest, as other folks have been saying, but they are rock solid, and they provide great customer service. I met some of the pair guys when they were at YAPC in Toronto in 2003. Very nice.
No, the servers don't run Linux, they use FreeBSD, but it's absolutely solid, and they're progressive about upgrading their machines and their network. Highly recommended.
I made the huge mistake of deciding that C was all I'd ever need back in the early 90's. I quickly found out that there were new technologies (HTML, Unix/Linux, awk, Perl) that I needed to learn, and pretty damned fast if I wanted to land another job.
That's a mistake I'll never make again. (I think that was also around the time that I put off procrastinating about getting a home computer, and got a Windows 95 box that I could dual boot to OS/2.)
When I was hired by my current employer two years ago, the lead interviewer was one of the senior developers. He was born two days before I got accepted into University.
Fortunately, the age difference didn't matter to either of us. They were doing some cool stuff and needed great developers; I was really interested in working with a bunch of motivated, bright folks. A good fit.
Well, of course, I do more than write Perl. Been doing that for over ten years.
I also deal with web stuff, like explaining to a co-worker that it is actually possible to do an HTTP re-direction while including a cookie in the request.
And I deal with the usual database CRUD code. I'm using DB2 now, before that I spent five years each on PostgreSQL and then MySQL.
And I know enough about SysAdmin stuff to set up an NFS server and configure Apache.
And before forex, I worked in finance, pharmacy management, robotics and data communications. And before Perl I wrote C and assembler for 15 years.
I'm still *way* too fascinated in solving technical problems and writing great code to think about doing something else.
Dudes, get it right. This is an edit #fail.
It's the University of Waterloo, not Waterloo University, just like it's University of Notre Dame, not the other way around. The top Google search comes up with the correct name. Although, given the topic, feel free to mod this #ironic.
Alex
Yep, a UW grad.
And I get 'http://www.alexa.com/hoturls?q=exercise bike clearance' which links to 'http://www.goodroi.com/why-google-allows-target-com-to-spam-results/', a post dated December 10, 2009 (thirteen days ago).
No biggie.
And the boss of the bosses is called the Head of Engineering (Operations and Development), but perhaps the company I work for is unusual.
We do have an IT team: it consists of about five people who take care of managing the hardware, the development containers, the networking, speccing hardware, and doing capacity planning. Operations is about a dozen people who take care of managing the application software that we use to provide forex trading. Then there are several dozen developers just doing development for the web site and the trading platform.
I find the term IT a little out-dated, personally. It makes me think of white shirts and ties, salesman from IBM and the hallowed machine room with the God-like mainframe.
My experience with OpenSolaris has been great. I set up an OpenSolaris NFS server with a RAID 1 array using two 300G drives under ZFS, and it's been rock solid.
A few months ago (I'm not that great of a SysAdmin) I decided I'd better check the health of the server, and discovered that my Secondary IDE channel was gonzo, and that OpenSolaris was reporting that my RAID 1 array was 'degraded', and running on only one drive. (Each drive is on a different IDE channel for redundancy -- guess that was the right decision.)
I now have a new chassis that I'll be putting that system's three drives into .. Real Soon Now.
I'd have a chance to do some of the projects I've put aside over my career.
[] AI research
[] Robotics (I did that at my third job and loved it)
[] Writing my very own full screen editor (reinventing a wheel, but it intrigues me)
[] Music notation software
[] A few device drivers (because writing assembler is hard, but great fun when it works)
What a blast that would be.
COBOL has a lot of issues but speed isn't a big one. I'm willing to bet that on tasks that are appropriate to COBOL it would kick most "modern" scripting languages asses in terms of speed.
Well. All this talk of speed. Are we talking speed of execution, or speed of development? I would be willing to bet the speed of development under COBOL would be relatively poor, compared to just about any other scripting language you can think of. *Any* language, in fact.
Can you imagine doing *anything* with an associative array in COBOL? Even (shudder) OO-COBOL?
In 2000 or so I managed to install SuSE 6.2 on my spare P400 box, and somehow made a connection through my ADSL modem thanks to Roaring Penguin's scripts. I was absolutely thrilled, and ftp'd into my web provider, tried Alt-F2 to start other sessions, the works. I shut it down, and the Internet connection never worked after that.
I then battled with X-Windows, fiddling with the contents of the configuration script, all the while very wary of blowing up my one CRT with the wrong Sync values. The system wasn't usable, and I had no idea what I was doing, so I shelved it, and remained a Windows 98 guy running VanDyke Systems excellent ssh and ftp clients into my employer's machines.
Really, I knew so little when I set that original SuSE box up, I'm amazed that I got it working at all. I do plan to install SuSE 6.2 again, just to see if it's as clunky as I thought it was. Should be amusing.
From TFA: "Note, most projects used more than one language and these results are based on the number of projects using a given language, not the number of lines of code created."
There, I fixed that for you. :)