I'm sure I'm not the only one who used the *D&D framework as their training ground for programming languages and architectures. I know I've build character toolkits, etc, in Pascal, C, C++, VB, Java, and a few other oddball platforms (like the pocket PC and my HP 48). It has been years since I actually played, but modeling some of the game mechanics, learning how to have multiple people working on a project, discovering how stupid/ungrateful/correct users can actually be all started from personal projects based on the game. If for nothing else, it was nice to have such a tangible target - even if it was just to play a game.
Funny thing, i just installed 2 PCs for someone who needed windows for the kids with office and all, and it wasnt harder to pirate than 5 or 10 or 15 or...years ago...
I'm not talking about warz stuff or the versions that lack activation - more the casual bring the cd's home from work type stuff.
Finding an actual windows install cd is pretty rare these days from dell/gateway/hp/etc.. Most are just recovery images.
I think Microsoft is finally starting to succeed in eliminating the 'casual' software pirating. Sure, there are the larger corporate versions that don't have the activation feature - but most of the smaller companies (less than 25 people) won't have that type of license. A few years back, you could buy a dell and take the copy of office 97 and stick it on every desktop - not legal, but easily to do. Now that is just not the case as today's software loves to finger print your hardware to prevent this from happening.
So why the increase in OSS? I suspect a big chunk comes from folks who look at the CAL's, email, file, or print servers - all the things in addition to an office suite - and have to decide if they really want to pony up for it. A personal example: a friend was looking to get a copy of office to update their resume, among other things. With the product activation, they could not install my copy of Word. Best case, they could buy a student edition for $130 (and sign up for classes) or plunk down $200 for a normal version. I explained what the activation did, pointed them to some on-line vendors I trust, and then gave them the link to Open Office to use while they thought about what to do.
Office is just peanuts, IMHO. The back office pieces are the spendy bits, and that is where a lot of the OSS software shines. Even for something as basic as a web server for the public, is it really worth two grand for IIS? Some folks might say yes, others might go Apache...
This sounds like subharmonic oscillation in the inductor core used in the DC-DC converter. Pop it open, find the inductor, and replace it - thing should be good as new.
The sad part is I still have not figured out if you are making a Trek funny or have a soldering iron and know how to use it. God help me, I actually thought to see how the mods would tag it to decide...
I can't believe you left out the HP 19B Got one 'free' with a HP mass spectrometer. Bought my bride a 48G when she needed one for school, because I was not willing to share. Still use the thing...
Another RPN junky. (grin) I got hooked on it way back when as well, but I usually pull out my HP only for taxes these days. I get by with an HP emulator for my pocket pc, which works the way you expect it too - but is no replacement for the real thing if you are doing more than currency conversion for your expense reports.
Is there any reason you like slot1's better than because it was what you were used to?:) You can buy slot1 to socket and socket to slot1 converters btw, they aren't that much, so your form factor change point is moot.
Water cooling. Much easier to work with the tubes and mounting the block. No vibration issues on the block in my case.
Forget about seats reclining. I just hopped the pond on one of Continental's 757's - Not only could I (barely) open my laptop once the passenger reclined her seat, but seems that Continental decided to charge for that glass of wine as well. They don't bother to upgrade platinums either.... It will be a cold day in hell before I get on one of those meat wagons again - they actually make Northwest's DC-10's look good./. Me wanders off grumbling - thankful to have this chance to vent to those who care...
As my friends still working at Cray are so fond of reminding me - 'that's not a knife, THIS is a knife'. The intent was not to say look at how huge of a machine this runs on. I'll be the first to say don't buy a 990 if you are into high energy modeling. Wrong tool for the job. Most mainframes can be pummeled by my thinkpad running a zOS emulator. Looking at the the register's numbers about Itanium's shipped you may have your hands on an even rarer bit of kit than I've seen. There more than 10 of those 64 CPU boxes in the world? (Same can be said for the stacked z990's) As for the as/400 - I got to assume that is a special kind of crazy quest for uptime.
But back to the point I was trying to make. Simply, most folks rarely do more than four CPUs with intel. Two CPU's is usually a starting point for most of the other non-intel production machines. There are exceptions all over, but generally speaking that is what I see. We sell code that is licensed based on logical instance. You can run it on as many CPUs - unix or windows - as you want. I'll see some IT departments drop it on some big unix boxes, but never more than a quad xeon. The last time I saw an alpha running windows was on my desk six years ago. Again, your mileage may vary. No software developer knows everything, or so I've heard....
I'm saying nothing about whether.NET or Java is better, but am just saying that the "Java scales,.NET doesn't"
Just talking about hardware, not microsoft. I've not seen many high end x86 boxes out there. Once I saw a 16xCPU box, and I can count the 8xCPU boxes I've seen in production land on one hand. A big chunk of the boxes we install on is x86 - ymmv, but that is what I see.
As for mainframes - I just got done working on a box with 72 tetrabytes of RAM, shared over three states. It is not the same thing. Your right, I bet the itanium is a faster CPU than the slice of the system I got in my VM.
Firstly, this is classic "just in case" argumentation that people make in defense of Java, despite the fact that about, oh, 99% of applications won't need anything more than a 2-way server
Odds are, if it could get by running it on a laptop - you don't need the J2EE framework. Tomcat and Struts are probably enough. Heck, microsoft access can handle most light duty SQL for that matter..NET for GUI and J2EE for server side are not the same thing.
Re:Java vs. .Net
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
The ".Net only works on Microsoft" is more than just a classic arguement. In fact, I think it's the most important factor to take into account.
Since microsoft only handles 2-4 CPU x86 boxes (in practice), that is one of the real limiting factors IMHO. There is just so much beef you can toss at.net platform. j2ee on the other hand has many more options since some of the big unix boxes are far more common than the once in a blue moon 8xCPU intel boxes out there running windows.
Just consider it VMWare for big boys. I'm doing a wee bit of development for Linux on zOS, and most things just work once you get it installed. Lots of options, depending on how you carve up the system. Anyhow, for the most part it is all about fast i/o, rather than monster processing power.
Picked up Linux on the Mainframe over the weekend, but plan to read it on a (very long) plane ride next week - looked like it focused on care and feeding, however.
I hate XP with a passion. That aside XP offers these things over 2k:
* Faster searching, with ability to search based on type (more sopisticated than *.txt searches)
Unless you are searching for text within *.java or *.jsp. Real handy. Here is the fix for XP - or switch back to win2k like I did...
To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option.
If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. This can affect the performance of the search functionality. To do this:
1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
They can ship the business, project management, and all the other aspects of a software project overseas. I've seen quite a few companies attempt to do off shore development, and most have failed catastrophically. Why? The business side was fuzzy. Most projects have vague (at best) requirements and possibly a few meaningless use cases. So digging into one of the analogies in the article - developers are in the same boat factory workers were a several decades ago, the jobs all moved. When you are tooling a factory, you give someone a circuit diagram, blueprints, and cut out all areas that might have creative latitude. That works. Ever see someone try to design something over email with a day delay tossed into the mix? Joy.
Not to say it cannot be done. It can for software elements that have very clear design docs, etc. Last I looked, almost all the software I code is custom 'non-shrinkwrapped' stuff.
Anyone with some experience on setting up RAID on that hardware?
I'll chime in - KT7-RAID chugging along in production land since fall 2000 in RAID 1 config. Only thing to watch for is the bios updates - make dang sure your data is backed up before you update the drivers/bios. Bloody thing won't die... go figure.
Experience will make more of a difference than your education level. I would rate a masters with the same level of interest as someone who has an MBA - someone willing to continue to learn. A PhD in computer science would scare me, as the time you spent focusing on earning your doctorate does not really constitute real world experience. Experience being equal, I might take the PhD. A PhD in math, bioinformatics, or something where you applied software development is much more impressive. Given the choice between someone who has worked in the trenches, death marches, fluctuating requirements, and knowing how to say good enough, and someone who spent the last four to six years slaving over a doctorate? Not a chance. You would have to show that you were not an academic if you could make it to the interview.
You really want to impress me? Author a programming textbook and get published. I hear you make almost as much as a grad student too... (grin)
>> Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512K RAM.
>Sorry, but I'd rather go with your 33Mhz with 8Mb of ram. At least it may be able to boot DOS;-)
While certainly a typo, the XP 2400 does have 128KB L1 and 256KB L2 cache built into the CPU. My first x86 compatible computer only had 512k of standard RAM soldered to the motherboard - which was a huge upgrade from my C64. It would not surprise me to see someone clever (and way too much free time) get an old cut of DOS to boot from that cache.
I'd avoid the Creative Labs card based on driver issues I've had in the past. It is not so much that their drivers don't work - it is the way they bundle everything in an exe. Not good when you are trying to work around problems. I know nothing about M-Audio, however..
What is this about developers having anything to do with the outside public? You have to be a very small shop for a marketing department to not wrap their talons around all 'promises' made to cus^H^H^H gamers, be it tradeshow, advert, etc. The only thing worse than the devils called marketing are the demons in sales.
I can think of many times where my team responded in total disbelief - you promised what? Ah, the classic start of a death march project....
First off, best to be innocent. Second, get a lawyer. Real attorneys are required to play this game properly.
If the company is terribly illiterate when it comes to technology, it should not take much to truly scare the bejesus out of them. Get the ball moving on a wrongful termination suite. I suspect it will take nothing more than having your attorney formally request a copy of the log files. Move to negotiate, but be persistent. Most small/mid-size companies will settle rather than going the distance. They will posture, however, since they are looking for a quick brush-off. Most people will spend hours at the bar griping about how they were wronged, most never get a lawyer. Much like rebate 'programs', that is what they are counting on. You may get your job back, you may get damages - best to ask for both. Take the time once you do get your job back to find another, however... because this one is done. Exit fast...
Hell, I've seen folks busted for robbing us blind get a years wages for 'wrongful termination'. The mind boggles... evidence is overrated.
Interesting read. With all things, there is a balance between performance and clarity. The Strings I was concatenating was usually in a loop, so that may have skewed my results. In my case, it was a substantial gain. YMMV
I happen to be typing on one of these babies right now. My thinkpad is running Redhat 8 as the host OS, with the FLEX-ES emulator that lets me run zOS or z series Linux (Suse in my case). The emulator has dongles and is pretty touchy about the hardware as well, so odds are you will pick up a xSeries machine or a T30 Thinkpad if you want to do a mainframe on the cheap.
(Cheap being a relative thing when you are talking about mainframe costs, btw...)
Try never to use java.lang.String One of the sins of my past was concatenating Strings together rather than using a StringBuffer. For example...
String str = "foo"; str+="bar";
rather than...
StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer("foo"); str.append("bar");
Mostly in building HTML in Servlets. I had not even thought about what was happening under the covers, and not thinking is what will bite you in the ass with any language. I was shocked to see how much faster StringBuffer concatenation was - but did not believe one of my co-workers until I ran some quick benchmarks.
An older, but still valid book is Practical Java by Peter Haggar. A must read if you are looking for this type of info.
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I'm sure I'm not the only one who used the *D&D framework as their training ground for programming languages and architectures. I know I've build character toolkits, etc, in Pascal, C, C++, VB, Java, and a few other oddball platforms (like the pocket PC and my HP 48). It has been years since I actually played, but modeling some of the game mechanics, learning how to have multiple people working on a project, discovering how stupid/ungrateful/correct users can actually be all started from personal projects based on the game. If for nothing else, it was nice to have such a tangible target - even if it was just to play a game.
Funny thing, i just installed 2 PCs for someone who needed windows for the kids with office and all, and it wasnt harder to pirate than 5 or 10 or 15 or ...years ago...
I'm not talking about warz stuff or the versions that lack activation - more the casual bring the cd's home from work type stuff.
Finding an actual windows install cd is pretty rare these days from dell/gateway/hp/etc.. Most are just recovery images.
I think Microsoft is finally starting to succeed in eliminating the 'casual' software pirating. Sure, there are the larger corporate versions that don't have the activation feature - but most of the smaller companies (less than 25 people) won't have that type of license. A few years back, you could buy a dell and take the copy of office 97 and stick it on every desktop - not legal, but easily to do. Now that is just not the case as today's software loves to finger print your hardware to prevent this from happening.
So why the increase in OSS? I suspect a big chunk comes from folks who look at the CAL's, email, file, or print servers - all the things in addition to an office suite - and have to decide if they really want to pony up for it. A personal example: a friend was looking to get a copy of office to update their resume, among other things. With the product activation, they could not install my copy of Word. Best case, they could buy a student edition for $130 (and sign up for classes) or plunk down $200 for a normal version. I explained what the activation did, pointed them to some on-line vendors I trust, and then gave them the link to Open Office to use while they thought about what to do.
Office is just peanuts, IMHO. The back office pieces are the spendy bits, and that is where a lot of the OSS software shines. Even for something as basic as a web server for the public, is it really worth two grand for IIS? Some folks might say yes, others might go Apache...
This sounds like subharmonic oscillation in the inductor core used in the DC-DC converter. Pop it open, find the inductor, and replace it - thing should be good as new.
The sad part is I still have not figured out if you are making a Trek funny or have a soldering iron and know how to use it. God help me, I actually thought to see how the mods would tag it to decide...
I can't believe you left out the HP 19B Got one 'free' with a HP mass spectrometer. Bought my bride a 48G when she needed one for school, because I was not willing to share. Still use the thing...
Another RPN junky. (grin) I got hooked on it way back when as well, but I usually pull out my HP only for taxes these days. I get by with an HP emulator for my pocket pc, which works the way you expect it too - but is no replacement for the real thing if you are doing more than currency conversion for your expense reports.
Is there any reason you like slot1's better than because it was what you were used to? :) You can buy slot1 to socket and socket to slot1 converters btw, they aren't that much, so your form factor change point is moot.
Water cooling. Much easier to work with the tubes and mounting the block. No vibration issues on the block in my case.
Forget about seats reclining. I just hopped the pond on one of Continental's 757's - Not only could I (barely) open my laptop once the passenger reclined her seat, but seems that Continental decided to charge for that glass of wine as well. They don't bother to upgrade platinums either.... It will be a cold day in hell before I get on one of those meat wagons again - they actually make Northwest's DC-10's look good. /. Me wanders off grumbling - thankful to have this chance to vent to those who care...
As my friends still working at Cray are so fond of reminding me - 'that's not a knife, THIS is a knife'. The intent was not to say look at how huge of a machine this runs on. I'll be the first to say don't buy a 990 if you are into high energy modeling. Wrong tool for the job. Most mainframes can be pummeled by my thinkpad running a zOS emulator. Looking at the the register's numbers about Itanium's shipped you may have your hands on an even rarer bit of kit than I've seen. There more than 10 of those 64 CPU boxes in the world? (Same can be said for the stacked z990's) As for the as/400 - I got to assume that is a special kind of crazy quest for uptime.
But back to the point I was trying to make. Simply, most folks rarely do more than four CPUs with intel. Two CPU's is usually a starting point for most of the other non-intel production machines. There are exceptions all over, but generally speaking that is what I see. We sell code that is licensed based on logical instance. You can run it on as many CPUs - unix or windows - as you want. I'll see some IT departments drop it on some big unix boxes, but never more than a quad xeon. The last time I saw an alpha running windows was on my desk six years ago. Again, your mileage may vary. No software developer knows everything, or so I've heard....
I'm saying nothing about whether .NET or Java is better, but am just saying that the "Java scales, .NET doesn't"
.NET for GUI and J2EE for server side are not the same thing.
Just talking about hardware, not microsoft. I've not seen many high end x86 boxes out there. Once I saw a 16xCPU box, and I can count the 8xCPU boxes I've seen in production land on one hand. A big chunk of the boxes we install on is x86 - ymmv, but that is what I see.
As for mainframes - I just got done working on a box with 72 tetrabytes of RAM, shared over three states. It is not the same thing. Your right, I bet the itanium is a faster CPU than the slice of the system I got in my VM.
Firstly, this is classic "just in case" argumentation that people make in defense of Java, despite the fact that about, oh, 99% of applications won't need anything more than a 2-way server
Odds are, if it could get by running it on a laptop - you don't need the J2EE framework. Tomcat and Struts are probably enough. Heck, microsoft access can handle most light duty SQL for that matter.
The ".Net only works on Microsoft" is more than just a classic arguement. In fact, I think it's the most important factor to take into account.
.net platform. j2ee on the other hand has many more options since some of the big unix boxes are far more common than the once in a blue moon 8xCPU intel boxes out there running windows.
Since microsoft only handles 2-4 CPU x86 boxes (in practice), that is one of the real limiting factors IMHO. There is just so much beef you can toss at
Gah - no. I turned off sigs, so I never saw it... looks like my kid brother was having some fun with my account.
Just consider it VMWare for big boys. I'm doing a wee bit of development for Linux on zOS, and most things just work once you get it installed. Lots of options, depending on how you carve up the system. Anyhow, for the most part it is all about fast i/o, rather than monster processing power.
Picked up Linux on the Mainframe over the weekend, but plan to read it on a (very long) plane ride next week - looked like it focused on care and feeding, however.
I hate XP with a passion. That aside XP offers these things over 2k:
K B; en-us;309173&
* Faster searching, with ability to search based on type (more sopisticated than *.txt searches)
Unless you are searching for text within *.java or *.jsp. Real handy. Here is the fix for XP - or switch back to win2k like I did...
To configure Windows XP to search all files no matter what the file type, obtain the latest service pack for Windows XP and then turn on the Index file types with unknown extensions option.
If you use this method, Windows XP searches all file types for the text that you specify. This can affect the performance of the search functionality. To do this:
1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
Not sure if win2003 has this 'feature' or not....
Was it SGI head honcho that wanted to fire all of its 'c' programmers, because they only wanted 'a' programmers on staff a few years back?
They can ship the business, project management, and all the other aspects of a software project overseas. I've seen quite a few companies attempt to do off shore development, and most have failed catastrophically. Why? The business side was fuzzy. Most projects have vague (at best) requirements and possibly a few meaningless use cases. So digging into one of the analogies in the article - developers are in the same boat factory workers were a several decades ago, the jobs all moved. When you are tooling a factory, you give someone a circuit diagram, blueprints, and cut out all areas that might have creative latitude. That works. Ever see someone try to design something over email with a day delay tossed into the mix? Joy.
Not to say it cannot be done. It can for software elements that have very clear design docs, etc. Last I looked, almost all the software I code is custom 'non-shrinkwrapped' stuff.
Anyone with some experience on setting up RAID on that hardware?
I'll chime in - KT7-RAID chugging along in production land since fall 2000 in RAID 1 config. Only thing to watch for is the bios updates - make dang sure your data is backed up before you update the drivers/bios. Bloody thing won't die... go figure.
Experience will make more of a difference than your education level. I would rate a masters with the same level of interest as someone who has an MBA - someone willing to continue to learn. A PhD in computer science would scare me, as the time you spent focusing on earning your doctorate does not really constitute real world experience. Experience being equal, I might take the PhD. A PhD in math, bioinformatics, or something where you applied software development is much more impressive. Given the choice between someone who has worked in the trenches, death marches, fluctuating requirements, and knowing how to say good enough, and someone who spent the last four to six years slaving over a doctorate? Not a chance. You would have to show that you were not an academic if you could make it to the interview.
You really want to impress me? Author a programming textbook and get published. I hear you make almost as much as a grad student too... (grin)
>> Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512K RAM.
;-)
>Sorry, but I'd rather go with your 33Mhz with 8Mb of ram. At least it may be able to boot DOS
While certainly a typo, the XP 2400 does have 128KB L1 and 256KB L2 cache built into the CPU. My first x86 compatible computer only had 512k of standard RAM soldered to the motherboard - which was a huge upgrade from my C64. It would not surprise me to see someone clever (and way too much free time) get an old cut of DOS to boot from that cache.
I'd avoid the Creative Labs card based on driver issues I've had in the past. It is not so much that their drivers don't work - it is the way they bundle everything in an exe. Not good when you are trying to work around problems. I know nothing about M-Audio, however..
What is this about developers having anything to do with the outside public? You have to be a very small shop for a marketing department to not wrap their talons around all 'promises' made to cus^H^H^H gamers, be it tradeshow, advert, etc. The only thing worse than the devils called marketing are the demons in sales.
...
I can think of many times where my team responded in total disbelief - you promised what? Ah, the classic start of a death march project.
First off, best to be innocent. Second, get a lawyer. Real attorneys are required to play this game properly.
If the company is terribly illiterate when it comes to technology, it should not take much to truly scare the bejesus out of them. Get the ball moving on a wrongful termination suite. I suspect it will take nothing more than having your attorney formally request a copy of the log files. Move to negotiate, but be persistent. Most small/mid-size companies will settle rather than going the distance. They will posture, however, since they are looking for a quick brush-off. Most people will spend hours at the bar griping about how they were wronged, most never get a lawyer. Much like rebate 'programs', that is what they are counting on. You may get your job back, you may get damages - best to ask for both. Take the time once you do get your job back to find another, however... because this one is done. Exit fast...
Hell, I've seen folks busted for robbing us blind get a years wages for 'wrongful termination'. The mind boggles... evidence is overrated.
Interesting read. With all things, there is a balance between performance and clarity. The Strings I was concatenating was usually in a loop, so that may have skewed my results. In my case, it was a substantial gain. YMMV
I happen to be typing on one of these babies right now. My thinkpad is running Redhat 8 as the host OS, with the FLEX-ES emulator that lets me run zOS or z series Linux (Suse in my case). The emulator has dongles and is pretty touchy about the hardware as well, so odds are you will pick up a xSeries machine or a T30 Thinkpad if you want to do a mainframe on the cheap.
(Cheap being a relative thing when you are talking about mainframe costs, btw...)
Try never to use java.lang.String
One of the sins of my past was concatenating Strings together rather than using a StringBuffer. For example...
String str = "foo"; str+="bar";
rather than...
StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer("foo"); str.append("bar");
Mostly in building HTML in Servlets. I had not even thought about what was happening under the covers, and not thinking is what will bite you in the ass with any language. I was shocked to see how much faster StringBuffer concatenation was - but did not believe one of my co-workers until I ran some quick benchmarks.
An older, but still valid book is Practical Java by Peter Haggar. A must read if you are looking for this type of info.