I have a close friend who's a programmer at EA. There are harsh deadlines, but less so than I've seen in many of my consultant friends. They DO get to "play" the game they're working on as it goes along, but I think you'd find it less than fun at that stage. How do you think you test it? They also get sneak peeks at cool upcoming games, and have awesome perks, like huge libraries of games to check out from work, etc. And the functions aren't that different either. Last I heard they were looking to standardize on something like flash or the like for GUI's.
I too am a career programmer, but I work in research in academia. My life is the complete opposite of his workwise. I actually have much more personal time to play games or whatever I want to do in my free time. I can take off when I like (within reason), while he has to schedule every second off up till the next milestone.
If you'd really like to show your stuff as a level designer, games a la quake and a la civilization have MUCH larger audiences than ones like Neverwinter nights. If you're really serious, you'll build some of each however. I think over a year/year and a half of building you could get 5 or 6 hits in various realms, and have a further 10 or so failures that show something good in them.
If the alternative is an exposed wire or tunnelling through plaster or crawling around in a crawlspace? $400 bucks isn't so bad. If you live in a house older than about 40 years old, going through a wall isn't a light endeavor.
Depending on the length of the cable run and what you have to punch through, that's exactly what I'd do. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm doing to connected up to my stereo.
The defecit is a bigger deal because it means the US governement is sucking up too much investment capital. Treasury Bills are the safest of the safe as far as investments go, and their rate goes up when the government runs s deficit. When their rate goes up, it makes it harder to get loans/sell bonds elsewhere in the economy, because nothing from a risk/reward standpoint can hold a flame to a high interest rate Treasury Bond.
Oh yeah. I would agree:)
For laptop sized purchases, its still a signifigant expense to people like you and I (My student debt is in CC's instead of loans, I'm tempted to go back to school just to roll that over).
Even if you can afford to buy a new laptop if it breaks it's still cheaper to use a warranty.
Naw, its not when you look at it the right way. When you have a sufficently large amount of money, you are only looking at expected value of an investment. Lets say a laptop costs $1000. If the warrenty is $250 and
there is a 25% chance you'll have to pay for at least 250 for repairs over the life of the warrenty, its a better idea to put the money elsewhere.
Your chance of needing a repair X the cost of the repair is almost guarenteed to be less than the warrenty. Otherwise the company would charge more for it.
For some companies yes, but mostly the scam works like this
This is the "scam" that all insurance is based upon. One should never buy these warrenties if one has large cash reserves to draw on in case of accident, and one should always buy them if one does live paycheck to paycheck and the thing can't be lived without. I'd definitly buy one of these if I was supporting myself though college at a shitty job.
This is the same reason many millionaires have the exact same car insurance I do: The shittiest, cheapest liability/Medical/etc with a cheap $1 a month umbrella policy (for catastrophic medical damages). They have the reserves to handle anything less, and the collect the interest on the money erstwhile.
The only tricky part of these is that middle ground where varience of something breaking is annoying, yet the cost of the warrenty is still meaningful.
This is a labelling error. They should have labelled the chips 9200, not 9000. Would that make you happy? Did you read what the difference between two chips are?
And there is NO damage here, so there is no case either. Just a bunch of "detail freaks" getting upset about a sticker.
ATI should mail a new sticker to anyone who complains. Then the complainers will have a "real" 9200.
Dude, chill. Just check the model number. Most companies are more than happy to hunt down the exact model number if you specify that when ordering, but most people WANT the company to send them the slightly newer model if they are willing.
There is no question here. This is a tested point of law (which is why this is STANDARD PRACTICE in the electronics industry). ATI will get off scott free, I see them taking this to litigation and asking for a summary judgement (that means the defendent basically says to the judge, "I agree that every fact the plaintiff says is correct, but there is no defense I must give as though facts do not show I have done any wrong". Any judge with a brief on the caselaw will immeadiately grant a dismissal
They advertise a 9200. That implies a certain amount of performance. What is actually in the laptop is a 9000, which provides a lower level of performance that would be expected of a 9200. Saying that a 9200 would perform the same in the laptop does not make it all right; a 9200 should be expected to provide better performance than a 9000.
The difference between a model 9200 and a model 9000 is ONLY the fact that the 9000 has a 8X agp bus while the 9000 is limited to 4x. In all other respects they are identical. This often means that a 9200 and a 9000 are THE SAME CHIPS off the SAME PRODUCTION LINE, and that they just didn't run the test for the 8x AGP bus (or they did and they failed). The difference between two adjacent models is often a sticker and the amount of testing one has passed.
Why does this matter? All these laptops are centrino laptops. Centrino doesn't support 8x AGP. Therefore, these chips, which probably ARE made in the same batch as several chips labeled 9200, are 9200's as far as this entire shindig matters. If ATI would have just stuck a 9200 sticker on the damn things, none of you would have been the wiser or cared at all about this highly unimportant matter
It is STANDARD PRACTICE in the electronics industry to treat equivalent configurations that meet advertised practice as the same model. The difference between a 2.4 GHz and 2.6 GHz CPU? More of the batch the 2.4's came from failed when clocked at 2.6 then the 2.6 batch. That's it.
I'm sure the company planned to use 9200 chips eventually, especially when the 9000 chips ran out. How it probably happened is that the laptop companies designed in a 9200, found out 9000 would save some money without costing anything feature wise (due to the AGP bus width), then did a chip swap, as they were identical as far as this configuration was concerned. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that "9000's" are actually the same die as 9200's, but if the AGP 8X bus fails tests (or if it doesen't and the chip manufactuer just wants to have a price differential), then the chip manufacturer screens the 9000 number on the chip and ships it out. This is economical for the chip company because they then only have to gear up their production line for the 9200 layout, while they can sell them as both 9000's and 9200's.
Its not false advertising, its an error at worse, and doesn't hurt ANYONE in ANY WAY. There is NO damages here for anyone.
Step 1> Buy a large amount of bottled water to take to work and have at home
Step 2> Whenever you'd normally have coffee/coke, drink that bottled water instead
Step 3> Whenever you get a headache, take excedrin. It contains caffine and will get rid of the withdrawl headache without exposing you to caffine in a drinkable form.
After about 3 days, it gets rid of moderate addictions, and after a week it gets rid of bad addictions.
Is it just me, or does anyone PREFER 9-5ers on their team? I LIKE people who are dedicated for their 8-9 hours a day, dedicated to getting a process and development schedule that only requires that, and only working that? Or do you actually like having people on a team who will often agree to overly ambitious deadlines and kill themselves for it?
Sure, that's only 4-5 hours of coding a day after subtracting all the other activities that go on at work, but man, its easy to do it right for those hours, and to get everyone else to as well.
--Michael
PS: I too sometimes will have 60-80 hour weeks. But that's far from the norm and usually involves schedules of outside parties that were not done with enough slack time to handle suprises.
Excellent point. Most of the time you will get more money, but I've found one of the cooler results of this is getting perqs/advancement opportunities promised.
"We can't afford a penny more than 88,500, but you're at the point in your carrer where you may be looking for some project management, so we'll commit to you running two projects over the course of the next year and a half if you come work at [insert company]"
--or--
You: "95K" Them: "We can't give you more than $90K" You: "Okay then, I get an office with a door with no office mate, and a $5000 raise above and beyond any normal performance based raises if I ever lose it" Them: "That could cause resentment in the other coders" You: "If you think its causing problems, at that time give me the raise and move me into the cube farm. I don't think it will be a problem, especially since you can tell them I got it because I took a sizable salary cut to get it" Them: "Alright"
PGP's freeware version comes with a "Create Self Decrypting Archive" option that does exactly what you want. It wants you to use big passwords, but I think its okay with you using smaller ones as well.
TCHAR isn't actually what I was thinking LPCSTR was. But I'm in linux right now, so I couldn't easily look it up.
Standard notiation such as hungrain notiation does make the code easier to read exceptioally when a number of programmers are working on the same piece of code
I'm not sure the extreme case of standard notation known as hungarian itself does improve the process as a whole.
I've found that users of hungarian get more painful typos in loop constructs and math/bitoperations. That's because there can be as many as twice as many characters, and they just can't see the mistake as easy.
Also hungarians use line continuation/multiline prototypes more often, which as a class can be rather buggy. Its also harder to automatically know when you're using an idiom, such as the if(fp=fopen("file","r")) or for(i=0;iMAX;i++) or you're really doing something odd, like for(resultant=0;(5*(resultant+1))-(resultant*resul tant);resultant++);
This is one of those issues like vi/emacs, rather than one like to use source control or not. You actually gain something from either approach, as opposed to not really gaining anything other then not having to set it up.
I used to be a hardcore hungarian, but then I worked on linux kernel modifcations and another unix program and I noticed the downsides.
To tell you the truth, I do still mark global and static variables with a g and s respectively and put m_ in front of my class members. But I picked up that habit in the embedded world, as far from MS as you can get. I've used it in the MS world before too, but I don't think it did much for most people and its a bitch when you need to change variable types.
However I will have to say that type awareness is MUCH better taken care of using things such as std::string (as opposed to TCHAR, char*, char buffer[3234] so on and so forth), and also putting on all the compiler warnings and using lint as a normal compilation step. You'll catch a LOT more bugs than using hungarian. Splint and PClint(unix varient by same company called somethig else) are two up to date lints. At first its just painful to do so, but after you turn off a couple warnings and get the codebase into compliance initially, all the programmers start writing lint-passing code by default (just like they ususally write code that compiles). This has the added benefit of those habits continuting on to other pojects as well.
Another reason UNIX gets away with no hungarian, is that windows has HUGE functions much of the time. This is because many of the calls take bizzare structures or 5 calls to setup. Try to get the text back from a common dialog that you have starting in a certain initial directory. You'll see what I mean about requiring several lines of code to get things done.
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I have a close friend who's a programmer at EA. There are harsh deadlines, but less so than I've seen in many of my consultant friends. They DO get to "play" the game they're working on as it goes along, but I think you'd find it less than fun at that stage. How do you think you test it? They also get sneak peeks at cool upcoming games, and have awesome perks, like huge libraries of games to check out from work, etc. And the functions aren't that different either. Last I heard they were looking to standardize on something like flash or the like for GUI's.
I too am a career programmer, but I work in research in academia. My life is the complete opposite of his workwise. I actually have much more personal time to play games or whatever I want to do in my free time. I can take off when I like (within reason), while he has to schedule every second off up till the next milestone.
If you'd really like to show your stuff as a level designer, games a la quake and a la civilization have MUCH larger audiences than ones like Neverwinter nights. If you're really serious, you'll build some of each however. I think over a year/year and a half of building you could get 5 or 6 hits in various realms, and have a further 10 or so failures that show something good in them.
Route the ssh over the modem, and use the web, ftp, etc over the satelite. There are several toolkits that do this.
Modern fonts are typeset do you should not use two spaces after a period.
If the alternative is an exposed wire or tunnelling through plaster or crawling around in a crawlspace? $400 bucks isn't so bad. If you live in a house older than about 40 years old, going through a wall isn't a light endeavor.
Depending on the length of the cable run and what you have to punch through, that's exactly what I'd do. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm doing to connected up to my stereo.
A much better space series....
The defecit is a bigger deal because it means the US governement is sucking up too much investment capital. Treasury Bills are the safest of the safe as far as investments go, and their rate goes up when the government runs s deficit. When their rate goes up, it makes it harder to get loans/sell bonds elsewhere in the economy, because nothing from a risk/reward standpoint can hold a flame to a high interest rate Treasury Bond.
Oh yeah. I would agree :)
For laptop sized purchases, its still a signifigant expense to people like you and I (My student debt is in CC's instead of loans, I'm tempted to go back to school just to roll that over).
Even if you can afford to buy a new laptop if it breaks it's still cheaper to use a warranty.
Naw, its not when you look at it the right way. When you have a sufficently large amount of money, you are only looking at expected value of an investment. Lets say a laptop costs $1000. If the warrenty is $250 and there is a 25% chance you'll have to pay for at least 250 for repairs over the life of the warrenty, its a better idea to put the money elsewhere. Your chance of needing a repair X the cost of the repair is almost guarenteed to be less than the warrenty. Otherwise the company would charge more for it.
You're talking about the kelly criteron as explained here
For some companies yes, but mostly the scam works like this
This is the "scam" that all insurance is based upon. One should never buy these warrenties if one has large cash reserves to draw on in case of accident, and one should always buy them if one does live paycheck to paycheck and the thing can't be lived without. I'd definitly buy one of these if I was supporting myself though college at a shitty job.
This is the same reason many millionaires have the exact same car insurance I do: The shittiest, cheapest liability/Medical/etc with a cheap $1 a month umbrella policy (for catastrophic medical damages). They have the reserves to handle anything less, and the collect the interest on the money erstwhile.
The only tricky part of these is that middle ground where varience of something breaking is annoying, yet the cost of the warrenty is still meaningful.
Its a laptop with "integrated video" :) I think they have nothing to worry about with that arguement.
This is a labelling error. They should have labelled the chips 9200, not 9000. Would that make you happy? Did you read what the difference between two chips are? And there is NO damage here, so there is no case either. Just a bunch of "detail freaks" getting upset about a sticker. ATI should mail a new sticker to anyone who complains. Then the complainers will have a "real" 9200.
Dude, chill. Just check the model number. Most companies are more than happy to hunt down the exact model number if you specify that when ordering, but most people WANT the company to send them the slightly newer model if they are willing.
Its not a feature if you can't use it.
There is no question here. This is a tested point of law (which is why this is STANDARD PRACTICE in the electronics industry). ATI will get off scott free, I see them taking this to litigation and asking for a summary judgement (that means the defendent basically says to the judge, "I agree that every fact the plaintiff says is correct, but there is no defense I must give as though facts do not show I have done any wrong". Any judge with a brief on the caselaw will immeadiately grant a dismissal
They advertise a 9200. That implies a certain amount of performance. What is actually in the laptop is a 9000, which provides a lower level of performance that would be expected of a 9200. Saying that a 9200 would perform the same in the laptop does not make it all right; a 9200 should be expected to provide better performance than a 9000.
The difference between a model 9200 and a model 9000 is ONLY the fact that the 9000 has a 8X agp bus while the 9000 is limited to 4x. In all other respects they are identical. This often means that a 9200 and a 9000 are THE SAME CHIPS off the SAME PRODUCTION LINE, and that they just didn't run the test for the 8x AGP bus (or they did and they failed). The difference between two adjacent models is often a sticker and the amount of testing one has passed.
Why does this matter? All these laptops are centrino laptops. Centrino doesn't support 8x AGP. Therefore, these chips, which probably ARE made in the same batch as several chips labeled 9200, are 9200's as far as this entire shindig matters. If ATI would have just stuck a 9200 sticker on the damn things, none of you would have been the wiser or cared at all about this highly unimportant matter
It is STANDARD PRACTICE in the electronics industry to treat equivalent configurations that meet advertised practice as the same model. The difference between a 2.4 GHz and 2.6 GHz CPU? More of the batch the 2.4's came from failed when clocked at 2.6 then the 2.6 batch. That's it.
I'm sure the company planned to use 9200 chips eventually, especially when the 9000 chips ran out. How it probably happened is that the laptop companies designed in a 9200, found out 9000 would save some money without costing anything feature wise (due to the AGP bus width), then did a chip swap, as they were identical as far as this configuration was concerned. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that "9000's" are actually the same die as 9200's, but if the AGP 8X bus fails tests (or if it doesen't and the chip manufactuer just wants to have a price differential), then the chip manufacturer screens the 9000 number on the chip and ships it out. This is economical for the chip company because they then only have to gear up their production line for the 9200 layout, while they can sell them as both 9000's and 9200's.
Its not false advertising, its an error at worse, and doesn't hurt ANYONE in ANY WAY. There is NO damages here for anyone.
Step 1> Buy a large amount of bottled water to take to work and have at home
Step 2> Whenever you'd normally have coffee/coke, drink that bottled water instead
Step 3> Whenever you get a headache, take excedrin. It contains caffine and will get rid of the withdrawl headache without exposing you to caffine in a drinkable form.
After about 3 days, it gets rid of moderate addictions, and after a week it gets rid of bad addictions.
Is it just me, or does anyone PREFER 9-5ers on their team? I LIKE people who are dedicated for their 8-9 hours a day, dedicated to getting a process and development schedule that only requires that, and only working that? Or do you actually like having people on a team who will often agree to overly ambitious deadlines and kill themselves for it?
Sure, that's only 4-5 hours of coding a day after subtracting all the other activities that go on at work, but man, its easy to do it right for those hours, and to get everyone else to as well.
--Michael
PS: I too sometimes will have 60-80 hour weeks. But that's far from the norm and usually involves schedules of outside parties that were not done with enough slack time to handle suprises.
Excellent point. Most of the time you will get more money, but I've found one of the cooler results of this is getting perqs/advancement opportunities promised.
"We can't afford a penny more than 88,500, but you're at the point in your carrer where you may be looking for some project management, so we'll commit to you running two projects over the course of the next year and a half if you come work at [insert company]"
--or--
You: "95K"
Them: "We can't give you more than $90K"
You: "Okay then, I get an office with a door with no office mate, and a $5000 raise above and beyond any normal performance based raises if I ever lose it"
Them: "That could cause resentment in the other coders"
You: "If you think its causing problems, at that time give me the raise and move me into the cube farm. I don't think it will be a problem, especially since you can tell them I got it because I took a sizable salary cut to get it"
Them: "Alright"
I bet it would run with WINE :)
Then again, I've not really tried to encrypt files on unix beyond in transit method such as ssh.
PGP's freeware version comes with a "Create Self Decrypting Archive" option that does exactly what you want. It wants you to use big passwords, but I think its okay with you using smaller ones as well.
--Michael
TCHAR isn't actually what I was thinking LPCSTR was. But I'm in linux right now, so I couldn't easily look it up.
l tant);resultant++);
Standard notiation such as hungrain notiation does make the code easier to read exceptioally when a number of programmers are working on the same piece of code
I'm not sure the extreme case of standard notation known as hungarian itself does improve the process as a whole.
I've found that users of hungarian get more painful typos in loop constructs and math/bitoperations. That's because there can be as many as twice as many characters, and they just can't see the mistake as easy.
Also hungarians use line continuation/multiline prototypes more often, which as a class can be rather buggy. Its also harder to automatically know when you're using an idiom, such as the if(fp=fopen("file","r")) or for(i=0;iMAX;i++) or you're really doing something odd, like for(resultant=0;(5*(resultant+1))-(resultant*resu
This is one of those issues like vi/emacs, rather than one like to use source control or not. You actually gain something from either approach, as opposed to not really gaining anything other then not having to set it up.
I used to be a hardcore hungarian, but then I worked on linux kernel modifcations and another unix program and I noticed the downsides.
To tell you the truth, I do still mark global and static variables with a g and s respectively and put m_ in front of my class members. But I picked up that habit in the embedded world, as far from MS as you can get. I've used it in the MS world before too, but I don't think it did much for most people and its a bitch when you need to change variable types.
However I will have to say that type awareness is MUCH better taken care of using things such as std::string (as opposed to TCHAR, char*, char buffer[3234] so on and so forth), and also putting on all the compiler warnings and using lint as a normal compilation step. You'll catch a LOT more bugs than using hungarian. Splint and PClint(unix varient by same company called somethig else) are two up to date lints. At first its just painful to do so, but after you turn off a couple warnings and get the codebase into compliance initially, all the programmers start writing lint-passing code by default (just like they ususally write code that compiles). This has the added benefit of those habits continuting on to other pojects as well.
Another reason UNIX gets away with no hungarian, is that windows has HUGE functions much of the time. This is because many of the calls take bizzare structures or 5 calls to setup. Try to get the text back from a common dialog that you have starting in a certain initial directory. You'll see what I mean about requiring several lines of code to get things done.
He's a nurse, not a millionaire. He makes much less than you or I most likely.