I met Bruce Eckel at SD98. He was wearing a ringmaster's suit and standing behind a folding table with a guy in a gorilla suit. He was hawking some service, but I can't remember what it was. I did have a good laugh, though.
I laughed there almost as hard as I did when I saw the Sun Javabean having to be escorted by security guards there to prevent people from tipping it over. Now that was funny.
In general though, should companies be allowed to tell their employees that their service is no longer appreciated for the sole fact that their age has progressed to a certain number? This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Not that Intel's got a fear of lawsuits, though.
When it comes to affecting your congressman, the only two things that work are [1] 1) Hand written letters, and 2) Phone calls.
All else is simply thrown into the garbage. Petitions are useless. Protests are largely ignored. Outrage expressed in the form of riots (Seattle) throw a very bad light on you instead of the issue you are upset about.
Stop trying to effect change from without. You can only peacefully effect change from within.
Dancin Santa
[1] There is a third option if you are a rich entity, which is to throw money at politicians.
Document Hardware Laboratory
Physicist or Electrical Engineer
(Posted 4/4/1001)
Join a dynamic, inter-disciplinary research team working on breakthrough applications of MEMS, micro-fluidics, ultrasonics, microwaves, and electrically addressable paper-like substrates. The candidate will be responsible for modeling, experimental studies and hardware prototyping that will serve as the basis for new business opportunities. Our lab includes a wide range of hardware/software activities for new products, ventures and licensing. Hands-on experience in some subset of the following areas is highly desirable: MEMS, precision instrumentation, thin- film technologies, display technologies, imaging, printing, optics or micro-fluidics. The position requires a Ph.D. in physics, electrical engineering or a related subject. Successful candidates should be highly creative and self- motivated with excellent communication and problem solving skills.
How to apply:
(Please identify this position in the subject line when submitting your resume)
To apply please submit your resume via email to dhljobs@parc.xerox.com.
What do you want to do as a Computer Science graduate?
Do you want to code and hack? Get a job right away.
Do you want to do research? Check out PARC's employment page.
An advanced degree will not get you any further than a bachelors in JoeSchmo Bank. But you won't even get talked to without one if you want to work in a research center (HP, PARC, MS Research).
The fascination with Japan comes as a result of its perfect embodiment of postmodernism. The future isn't about a painless symbiosis of ancient traditions and modern thought and technology. Rather it is the result of the clash of those things that results in a wholly new and sometimes weird perspective and culture.
On the one hand, we have the Confucian and Buddhist and Shinto traditions, eons old, which dictates the day to day relationships of the Japanese. It forces itself into every crack that it finds, from the Buddha box in the home, to the strict social stratification at school and work, to the omamori hanging from the rearview mirror. As much as these are traditions and rituals, they still hold meaning for the Japanese people.
On the other hand, Japan is a country that is insecure with itself in many respects. It is this insecurity that causes them to throw themselves headlong into crazy escapades of modernization. In the Meiji era, they showed that while they weren't the first to discover mechanization, they could still use it to raise themselves to par with the West. In the early Post-War they were the quintessential apes, copying anything they could, eventually producing goods quite a bit better than their Western counterparts. Now we find them early adopters rather than copycats with their train system, cell phone system, among other things. They are more "Western" than the West in many respects, likely because of their awareness of "Westernness".
At the same time they worry that their customs are throwbacks to a bygone era and take up technology for its own sake, the culture finds its way back into the technology and products. These two paradigms can't be simutaneously believed. So long as their insecurity of their own traditions persists, they will always be forced to update and advance themselves. But this updating does nothing to assuage their insecurity, rather it reinforces it.
The Japanese awareness of their place and unsurety of the same is a sci-fi author's draw. What else does the sci-fi author write about other than society's coming to grips with the future and its place in that future?
Gibson's "diatribe" isn't about turning a blind eye towards the problems of the Japanese society, it is about the fascination with that aspect of the Japanese culture that so closely resembles his vision of the future.
I'm sure that we won't be able to watch the blue to red-shift occur, but rather that we could possibly see what side of the orbit we were on (in order to see how many million years we have left).
But aside from that, I was wondering why something so close wouldn't have a higher luminosity than other stars that are much further away. Granted it's supposedly a red dwarf which wouldn't give off too much light, but at 1-3lys away, it should show up fairly brightly, I would guess.
about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure. When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network).
A Perl interpreter built from the ground up might be fairly interesting. I imagine that if LW were to start the Perl project today he might use C++ as the implementation language. I think Topaz just got too big too fast for Chip to handle by himself. If he had had a C++ source base, though, I think we'd be looking at a somewhat cleaner design.
No one stops you from opting out of Spam mailing lists either, but it's something that I'd rather not do. If I want to play with something, I'll explicitly say so.
As far as your favorite module, it would be helpful for you to make it -w quiet yourself or to ask the module author to do it. This is why Open Source works, isn't it?
That's the impression that I got also, and it has a certain ring to it. However, I find this akin to Java's mandatory exception handling or Python's mandatory code blocks. Nice in theory, but heavy handed in real life (like a large program with many modules). Perl's motto has always been TIMTOWDI, but this change makes Perl a little Rubyesque - there's a better way to do it.
Just about all useful functions have been moved to the std namespace. sprintf, cout, cin, string, vector, etc have all been moved up. It's possible to write a program without using the standard library, but it's pretty hard.
I have to agree. The amount of extra baggage thrown into C++ in its last rev is enormous and much of it is extraneous, IMO.
The most notable, for me, is the addition of namespaces. While I understand and agree with the idea that unused functions shouldn't pollute the global namespace, I find that moving all of C++'s standard functions into a separate namespace overkill. It isn't like C++ programmers were having trouble coming up with function names that clashed with strcmp(), for example. What this leads to is the extra line
use namespace std;
in many programs. In essence, the moving of all these functions into a separate namespace just forced developers to create a rote workaround, not unlike the issue Larry brought up with class or module.
Perl itself has grown over the years, and while many changes have benefitted the programmers and opened up many doors (references, objects, etc) the core language has changed little. Larry seems to be moving away from the spirit of TIMTOWTDI and more towards the BSDM style of language exemplified by Java (or insert a language you love to hate). "You must use warnings and strict everywhere except your main module" is not free and fun.
There is no doubting the efficacy of -w and use strict;. I use it in all my own Perl programs, but many don't. This used to be okay. When I used to answer questions on clpm, I always chided querents for not using them. It was good advice (just turning on warnings can help nail a problem in many cases), but they could always take it or leave it. Now in Perl 6 it seems that this attitude that what goes on between programmers and the language is none of our business is done away with, and a school marm with a quick ruler is the new paradigm.
I grew up in Perl during Perl 5 and always laughed at the backwardness of those who touted Perl 4's abilities (Alaskan electrician, Purl Gurl, etc.), but now I find myself wondering if I am exhibiting the same stubbornness. If I am, am I right in this? Perhaps I need to change with the language?
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps Wolfram could get his book out a little sooner and clear up this mess.
Dancin Santa
I met Bruce Eckel at SD98. He was wearing a ringmaster's suit and standing behind a folding table with a guy in a gorilla suit. He was hawking some service, but I can't remember what it was. I did have a good laugh, though.
I laughed there almost as hard as I did when I saw the Sun Javabean having to be escorted by security guards there to prevent people from tipping it over. Now that was funny.
Dancin Santa
You can find book 1 here.
And book 2 in the series here.
And if you're so inclined, the CD can be found here.
You may be boycotting that site, so check out the following links.
Book 1
Book 2
The CD
Dancin Santa
In general though, should companies be allowed to tell their employees that their service is no longer appreciated for the sole fact that their age has progressed to a certain number? This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Not that Intel's got a fear of lawsuits, though.
Dancin Santa
But doesn't a "mandatory retirement age" smack of ageism and being wholly illegal?
Dancin Santa
But doesn't a "mandatory retirement age" smack of ageism and be wholly illegal?
Dancin Santa
When it comes to affecting your congressman, the only two things that work are [1] 1) Hand written letters, and 2) Phone calls.
All else is simply thrown into the garbage. Petitions are useless. Protests are largely ignored. Outrage expressed in the form of riots (Seattle) throw a very bad light on you instead of the issue you are upset about.
Stop trying to effect change from without. You can only peacefully effect change from within.
Dancin Santa
[1] There is a third option if you are a rich entity, which is to throw money at politicians.
Thus proving what we developers already know: QA is the cause of all our problems.
Dancin Santa
True, true. But for debugging in general they are fairly useful.
Dancin Santa
Spinlocks
Mutexes
Critical Sections
printf() statements
Breakpoints
Logging
Also keep in mind that many of C and C++ built-ins are not necessarily thread-safe.
Dancin Santa
Maybe PARC needs some Y2K specialists...
Document Hardware Laboratory
Physicist or Electrical Engineer
(Posted 4/4/1001)
Join a dynamic, inter-disciplinary research team
working on breakthrough applications of MEMS,
micro-fluidics, ultrasonics, microwaves, and
electrically addressable paper-like substrates.
The candidate will be responsible for modeling,
experimental studies and hardware prototyping
that will serve as the basis for new business
opportunities. Our lab includes a wide range of
hardware/software activities for new products,
ventures and licensing. Hands-on experience in
some subset of the following areas is highly
desirable: MEMS, precision instrumentation, thin-
film technologies, display technologies, imaging,
printing, optics or micro-fluidics. The position
requires a Ph.D. in physics, electrical
engineering or a related subject. Successful
candidates should be highly creative and self-
motivated with excellent communication and
problem solving skills.
How to apply:
(Please identify this position in the subject
line when submitting your resume)
To apply please submit your resume via email to dhljobs@parc.xerox.com.
What do you want to do as a Computer Science graduate?
Do you want to code and hack? Get a job right away.
Do you want to do research? Check out PARC's employment page.
An advanced degree will not get you any further than a bachelors in JoeSchmo Bank. But you won't even get talked to without one if you want to work in a research center (HP, PARC, MS Research).
Dancin Santa
More fun
Dancin Santa
The fascination with Japan comes as a result of its perfect embodiment of postmodernism. The future isn't about a painless symbiosis of ancient traditions and modern thought and technology. Rather it is the result of the clash of those things that results in a wholly new and sometimes weird perspective and culture.
On the one hand, we have the Confucian and Buddhist and Shinto traditions, eons old, which dictates the day to day relationships of the Japanese. It forces itself into every crack that it finds, from the Buddha box in the home, to the strict social stratification at school and work, to the omamori hanging from the rearview mirror. As much as these are traditions and rituals, they still hold meaning for the Japanese people.
On the other hand, Japan is a country that is insecure with itself in many respects. It is this insecurity that causes them to throw themselves headlong into crazy escapades of modernization. In the Meiji era, they showed that while they weren't the first to discover mechanization, they could still use it to raise themselves to par with the West. In the early Post-War they were the quintessential apes, copying anything they could, eventually producing goods quite a bit better than their Western counterparts. Now we find them early adopters rather than copycats with their train system, cell phone system, among other things. They are more "Western" than the West in many respects, likely because of their awareness of "Westernness".
At the same time they worry that their customs are throwbacks to a bygone era and take up technology for its own sake, the culture finds its way back into the technology and products. These two paradigms can't be simutaneously believed. So long as their insecurity of their own traditions persists, they will always be forced to update and advance themselves. But this updating does nothing to assuage their insecurity, rather it reinforces it.
The Japanese awareness of their place and unsurety of the same is a sci-fi author's draw. What else does the sci-fi author write about other than society's coming to grips with the future and its place in that future?
Gibson's "diatribe" isn't about turning a blind eye towards the problems of the Japanese society, it is about the fascination with that aspect of the Japanese culture that so closely resembles his vision of the future.
Dancin Santa
I'm sure that we won't be able to watch the blue to red-shift occur, but rather that we could possibly see what side of the orbit we were on (in order to see how many million years we have left).
But aside from that, I was wondering why something so close wouldn't have a higher luminosity than other stars that are much further away. Granted it's supposedly a red dwarf which wouldn't give off too much light, but at 1-3lys away, it should show up fairly brightly, I would guess.
Dancin Santa
about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure. When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network).
Saved for posterity!
Dancin Santa
As evidenced in this this thread on the VC newsgroup.
Dancin Santa
Of course the .h header files just look like this:
#include <STDLIBRARYHEADER>
use namspace std;
Dancin Santa
A Perl interpreter built from the ground up might be fairly interesting. I imagine that if LW were to start the Perl project today he might use C++ as the implementation language. I think Topaz just got too big too fast for Chip to handle by himself. If he had had a C++ source base, though, I think we'd be looking at a somewhat cleaner design.
Dancin Santa
No one stops you from opting out of Spam mailing lists either, but it's something that I'd rather not do. If I want to play with something, I'll explicitly say so.
As far as your favorite module, it would be helpful for you to make it -w quiet yourself or to ask the module author to do it. This is why Open Source works, isn't it?
Dancin Santa
C and C++ have had this for years.
Here's a link.
Dancin Santa
That's the impression that I got also, and it has a certain ring to it. However, I find this akin to Java's mandatory exception handling or Python's mandatory code blocks. Nice in theory, but heavy handed in real life (like a large program with many modules). Perl's motto has always been TIMTOWDI, but this change makes Perl a little Rubyesque - there's a better way to do it.
Dancin Santa
Just about all useful functions have been moved to the std namespace. sprintf, cout, cin, string, vector, etc have all been moved up. It's possible to write a program without using the standard library, but it's pretty hard.
Dancin Santa
The most notable, for me, is the addition of namespaces. While I understand and agree with the idea that unused functions shouldn't pollute the global namespace, I find that moving all of C++'s standard functions into a separate namespace overkill. It isn't like C++ programmers were having trouble coming up with function names that clashed with strcmp(), for example. What this leads to is the extra line
use namespace std;
in many programs. In essence, the moving of all these functions into a separate namespace just forced developers to create a rote workaround, not unlike the issue Larry brought up with class or module.Perl itself has grown over the years, and while many changes have benefitted the programmers and opened up many doors (references, objects, etc) the core language has changed little. Larry seems to be moving away from the spirit of TIMTOWTDI and more towards the BSDM style of language exemplified by Java (or insert a language you love to hate). "You must use warnings and strict everywhere except your main module" is not free and fun.
There is no doubting the efficacy of -w and use strict;. I use it in all my own Perl programs, but many don't. This used to be okay. When I used to answer questions on clpm, I always chided querents for not using them. It was good advice (just turning on warnings can help nail a problem in many cases), but they could always take it or leave it. Now in Perl 6 it seems that this attitude that what goes on between programmers and the language is none of our business is done away with, and a school marm with a quick ruler is the new paradigm.
I grew up in Perl during Perl 5 and always laughed at the backwardness of those who touted Perl 4's abilities (Alaskan electrician, Purl Gurl, etc.), but now I find myself wondering if I am exhibiting the same stubbornness. If I am, am I right in this? Perhaps I need to change with the language?
Dancin Santa
See Yellow Dog Linux's site for more info.
Dancin Santa