Didn't they also sell MIPS? I was under the impression that all their offerings were now some flavor of Intel chips.
At the end of the day, what now makes SGI really any different than Intergraph used to be? Intel? Check. Cool looking boxes? Check. Future in the high end graphics world? Um....
I bought the PS2 Linux kit when it first came out, and ended up selling all of my PS2 games and using it as my primary server on my network. Pretty much everything compiles and runs on it, so I use Samba as a file server and it acts as my front end ftp/web server so I don't have to deal with reassigning IP addresses when I want to make a file availaable (I just use Samba to connect to the remote machine and have a link). As far as straight Linux use, it's pretty nice and speed isn't really a factor as only a couple of people use it at any given time.
As far as game development, Sony doesn't really go out of their way to tell you how to use it, but you really do have a full PS2 development platform insofar as that you can use GCC to compile code that uses the Emotion engine as well as the gamepads. I wrote a quick little demo of an OpenGL cube that moved based on moving the left joystick in pretty short order.
It's obviously not a *real* development system in that you are writing stuff that only other people with the Linux system can use. The way I see it, if you wrote some amazing kick-ass game for PS2 Linux, and showed it to enough folks, and created a buzz, perhaps someone at Sony would take notice and go from there. That's the fantasy, anyway.
As an update, I tried entering Java at a command prompt and got a seg fault. I went to the ADC site and they had a newer version of Java available; I installed, rebooted, and all seems well again (though the search applets for the C/C++ Journal cd rom don't work).
Is it only me, or are all Java-based apps now unusable? I tried a few and they all start (show up on the dock) then disappear. I haven't done anything to Java external to Apple's updates to make this happen. Not critical as I don't really use Java that much, but I do have a couple of handy ldap tools written in Java that would be nice to get working again.
Autocad is probably one of the most complex applications that I know. But the one thing that they've done right over the years is preserve a command line that gives you total functionality, along with a history to show you what you did. You can click and drag your way through a design, or you can type it in at the command line and then selectively move items with the mouse *if* you want.
It also reinforces your understanding of the commands to the point where the dialog boxes are merely pretty wrappers and you know exactly what you're trying to do, instead of getting wrapped up in the position and naming of items to click.
The command line also reinforces concepts and a deeper understanding of what the program is designed to accomplish (with Autocad, designing objects). Try as the designers might, you can always get into an argument that this menu item belonged here, and this dialog box doesn't make sense, etc. etc. With a command line in the program, I simply ignore the arguments and get work done.
Is it just me, or is this the first time anyone has heard of AT&T's Daytona? A quick Google search reveals a pdf and 8 links before Daytona becomes Daytona Beach.
For such a high ranking, I'd think AT&T would want to make it better known that they have this system.
Unless you've done the majority of your C++ programming using VC4.1/4.2/5/6 which doesn't support this feature, but all of a sudden 7.1 does and you want to see what you've been missing.
...http and https? What if I'm just about to buy something and instead of getting "We have just confirmed your order of $10,000 worth of thinkgeek merchandise" with Belkin's page.
If they're talking a real "sure-it-can-run-CICS" mainframe, they must've gotten some help from the security staff to move them...I've never seen any mainframe that weighed less than 300lbs. Even the IBM zSeries is the size of a couple of fridges lashed together.
I don't have any medical proof, but I can share a story that happened to me: I was a tech in the early 90s when IBM was still selling their personal laser printer (I *think* it was the model 4019, but don't quote me). This machine had an interesting (i.e. abso-freak-lutely crazy) way of refilling the toner...You attached a narrow tray upside down on top of a hopper inside the printer, then turned a little crank, which peeled back the protective plastic, and the toner dropped into the hopper. Close the lid and you're done.
Except that the latch for the tray was very very thin, and on one occasion the tray flipped up while I was turning the crank, and the toner flew into the air. I was absolutely covered in the stuff, and ended up taking 3 days off work because of respitory problems. While not on par with the crazy stuff they use to make chips (I think arsnic and cyanide are used somewhere along the way), I'm pretty certain I lessed my life expectancy that day.:(
I'm a Windows developer who in the year 2003 is using a product that came out in 1998. The venerable Visual Studio 6. The first version of VS.net gave absolutely nothing to straight C/C++ developers who were not interested in C# or windows forms or what-have-you, but instead wanted to write good solid code using an ISO-standards compliant compiler for backend work. VS.net gave us nothing new.
VS.net 2003, that's a different story. It does all the things I want to do in a C++ compiler, but apart from the cost, what do you suppose is keeping the bosses from approving it? That's right:.NET. I have told everyone that it actually has a decent C++ compiler, but everybody thinks that it can only be used for.NET work.
So here I am, about to go back to a compiler that has no partial template specialization, a version of STL that I have to patch *by* *hand*, and if I want to look something up? Well, I've got my msdn help files from October 2001 to explain it to me, because that was the last version that integrated with VS6.
By pushing.NET they've done a good job of alienating the core base of people who write the back end code where too-fast-is-not-fast-enough. Maybe it'll come to the point where if you want to write services or databases or anything where speed and size are most important, you'll use a totally different compiler, say, Borland or Metrowerks. But if you're going to do that, why not also look at other platforms, say, Linux?
Though they only worked with terminals, the *real* manly keyboard in a world of manly keyboards was the IBM 3270/5250 terminal keyboard. Twenty-four function keys across the top, ten special purpose function keys on the left side, arrow keys actually laid out in a diamond shape instead of the common upside-down T, a numeric keypad, and a keyboard cable so thick it could be used to support bridges.
Add to the fact that it had a metal casing similar to the original IBM keyboard whereas the later model keyboards, and all the PS/2 keyboards are plastic. Tough plastic to be sure, but I still was able to chip and crack one.
With all that you had a keyboard that weighed two pounds!
I rescued one from a dumpster, but couldn't figure out the pin configuration to make any kind of whatever-to-ps2 adapter.
Even stranger were the IBM 3278 terminal keyboards..they had a weird form of tactile feedback that has to be used to be believed. They were more conventional in terms of layout, but were packaged into a case that, while detached from the terminal itself, was a massive block of metal that weighed in at 2+ pounds.
The strangest keyboard I think IBM ever made was a keyboard for the Chinese; it was big (I think it was about two feet square) and was laid out like a giant tablet; the left side was a massive set of overlays and "mushy" buttons" with individual characters, and the right side had conventional keys a la the 3270/5250 keyboard. I wish I had some pictures of it...it was in IBM's computer exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for years and years, but that exhibit has long since disappeared and with it the keyboard.
You gotta hand it to IBM...they built their (mainframe) equipment to last. I fully expect to be sitting at the Social Security office when I'm 70+, complaining about my measly $2.53 check with a person sitting in front of an IBM terminal with one of those massive metal keyboards. Fun!
Is that they suck for FPS-ish gaming where you want more sensitivity...my UT performance went up considerably when my much-loved IBM PS/2 keyboard met an unfortuant death at the hands of a can of coke.
And though it may only be me, my hands used to get tired and sore after long bouts of typing with them.
H-1B visas are not just for the tech industry.
the new legislation did increase the number of visas for three years, but also increased the cost to businesses for hiring H-1B workers
The extra cost goes to train Americans in new jobs. (that was the way the legislation was written anyway).
Companies must pay the greater of the prevailing wage or "actual" wage for the job. The prevailing wage is essentially what every other employer pays a similiarly qualified worker for that job. The "actual" wage is what *that specific employer sponsoring the H-1B worker* pays other employees for that job.
If employers are abusing the system there is a remedy, you can report them to the Department of Labor and/or the INS.
And if you actually READ the legislation, you'd know that the numbers go back down to 65,000 after three years.
Also that employers must pay the prevailing wage for the job in the geographic area in which the job is located. (as determined by either US DOL statistics (which believe it or not are often higher than what employers actually pay in the region) or a private wage survey that must conform to certain guidelines.
*ALSO* the H-1B dependent regulations have now gone into effect, basically saying that if your company is H-1B dependent, you must show the INS/DOL that you looked for qualified American workers and found none.
The fact that you ask this question at all means you know nothing of how our government works. To make such a change in our immigration policy would take BARE MINIMUM a year and probably more. By that time, the economy might be on the upswing again and everyone will be saying...where are the workers?
This also completely ignores the fact that the H-1b worker compared to the US worker at a particular company just might have better skills or be a more valued employee. You are saying the company shouldn't have a choice of who to hire and who to retain.
Wherever it is, it takes nine days of air travel to get to it from Australia. Note the link:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20010420/us/glob al_hawk_la101.html
220 hours!
I agree in that Apple has been taken over by all things NeXT, and that's not at all a bad thing. If anything, I admire Apple (and before it NeXT) for pushing the state of the art. I used an original monochrome-monitor Cube back in the early nineties and found its interface, while more complex at first coming from the Mac world (before Win3.1 had taken over the world), but that it was a breeze to use, and really put a beautiful spin on the true power of the machine. The MacOS (vers. 1-9) I thought hid *too* much of the machine away, which might be ok for arists and designers, but more hard core users, I think, grumbled not a few times at not being able to just drop to a command line and "just do it".
NeXT, and now Apple, have done, I think what no one else has done in the *thirty* years Unix has been available... create an elegant interface that is not overly confusing for a newbie, while still powerful enough for hardcode. I've used a *lot* of window managers over the years, motif, openlook, tom's, et al. Those wms merely provided easier ways of having multiple xterms open, and wms like Gnome try to curry favor with windows users who demand a start button in the lower left hand corner. NeXT and Apple tried to create a truly useful interface that would appeal to the masses without insulting their intelligence *or* limiting them. Though it's not flawless, I think it's better than anything out there. As it is said, only God is perfect.
By the way: In regards to a slick high-end workstation, I think that's what they designed the Mac Cube for... no slots, but has that NeXT enclosure, and smaller too. I'm guessing that the Mac Cube is the machine Jobs has been dreaming of, even since the NeXT Cube days.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't they also sell MIPS? I was under the impression that all their offerings were now some flavor of Intel chips.
At the end of the day, what now makes SGI really any different than Intergraph used to be? Intel? Check. Cool looking boxes? Check. Future in the high end graphics world? Um....
Wpart of DCOM is user-friendly, exactly?
I bought the PS2 Linux kit when it first came out, and ended up selling all of my PS2 games and using it as my primary server on my network. Pretty much everything compiles and runs on it, so I use Samba as a file server and it acts as my front end ftp/web server so I don't have to deal with reassigning IP addresses when I want to make a file availaable (I just use Samba to connect to the remote machine and have a link). As far as straight Linux use, it's pretty nice and speed isn't really a factor as only a couple of people use it at any given time.
As far as game development, Sony doesn't really go out of their way to tell you how to use it, but you really do have a full PS2 development platform insofar as that you can use GCC to compile code that uses the Emotion engine as well as the gamepads. I wrote a quick little demo of an OpenGL cube that moved based on moving the left joystick in pretty short order.
It's obviously not a *real* development system in that you are writing stuff that only other people with the Linux system can use. The way I see it, if you wrote some amazing kick-ass game for PS2 Linux, and showed it to enough folks, and created a buzz, perhaps someone at Sony would take notice and go from there. That's the fantasy, anyway.
As an update, I tried entering Java at a command prompt and got a seg fault. I went to the ADC site and they had a newer version of Java available; I installed, rebooted, and all seems well again (though the search applets for the C/C++ Journal cd rom don't work).
Is it only me, or are all Java-based apps now unusable? I tried a few and they all start (show up on the dock) then disappear. I haven't done anything to Java external to Apple's updates to make this happen. Not critical as I don't really use Java that much, but I do have a couple of handy ldap tools written in Java that would be nice to get working again.
Autocad is probably one of the most complex applications that I know. But the one thing that they've done right over the years is preserve a command line that gives you total functionality, along with a history to show you what you did. You can click and drag your way through a design, or you can type it in at the command line and then selectively move items with the mouse *if* you want.
It also reinforces your understanding of the commands to the point where the dialog boxes are merely pretty wrappers and you know exactly what you're trying to do, instead of getting wrapped up in the position and naming of items to click.
The command line also reinforces concepts and a deeper understanding of what the program is designed to accomplish (with Autocad, designing objects). Try as the designers might, you can always get into an argument that this menu item belonged here, and this dialog box doesn't make sense, etc. etc. With a command line in the program, I simply ignore the arguments and get work done.
Is it just me, or is this the first time anyone has heard of AT&T's Daytona? A quick Google search reveals a pdf and 8 links before Daytona becomes Daytona Beach. For such a high ranking, I'd think AT&T would want to make it better known that they have this system.
Unless you've done the majority of your C++ programming using VC4.1/4.2/5/6 which doesn't support this feature, but all of a sudden 7.1 does and you want to see what you've been missing.
...http and https? What if I'm just about to buy something and instead of getting "We have just confirmed your order of $10,000 worth of thinkgeek merchandise" with Belkin's page.
I'm pissed just thinking about the possiblity.
If they're talking a real "sure-it-can-run-CICS" mainframe, they must've gotten some help from the security staff to move them...I've never seen any mainframe that weighed less than 300lbs. Even the IBM zSeries is the size of a couple of fridges lashed together.
I don't have any medical proof, but I can share a story that happened to me: I was a tech in the early 90s when IBM was still selling their personal laser printer (I *think* it was the model 4019, but don't quote me). This machine had an interesting (i.e. abso-freak-lutely crazy) way of refilling the toner...You attached a narrow tray upside down on top of a hopper inside the printer, then turned a little crank, which peeled back the protective plastic, and the toner dropped into the hopper. Close the lid and you're done.
:(
Except that the latch for the tray was very very thin, and on one occasion the tray flipped up while I was turning the crank, and the toner flew into the air. I was absolutely covered in the stuff, and ended up taking 3 days off work because of respitory problems. While not on par with the crazy stuff they use to make chips (I think arsnic and cyanide are used somewhere along the way), I'm pretty certain I lessed my life expectancy that day.
I'm a Windows developer who in the year 2003 is using a product that came out in 1998. The venerable Visual Studio 6. The first version of VS.net gave absolutely nothing to straight C/C++ developers who were not interested in C# or windows forms or what-have-you, but instead wanted to write good solid code using an ISO-standards compliant compiler for backend work. VS.net gave us nothing new.
.NET. I have told everyone that it actually has a decent C++ compiler, but everybody thinks that it can only be used for .NET work.
.NET they've done a good job of alienating the core base of people who write the back end code where too-fast-is-not-fast-enough. Maybe it'll come to the point where if you want to write services or databases or anything where speed and size are most important, you'll use a totally different compiler, say, Borland or Metrowerks. But if you're going to do that, why not also look at other platforms, say, Linux?
VS.net 2003, that's a different story. It does all the things I want to do in a C++ compiler, but apart from the cost, what do you suppose is keeping the bosses from approving it? That's right:
So here I am, about to go back to a compiler that has no partial template specialization, a version of STL that I have to patch *by* *hand*, and if I want to look something up? Well, I've got my msdn help files from October 2001 to explain it to me, because that was the last version that integrated with VS6.
By pushing
Just my $0.02
Though they only worked with terminals, the *real* manly keyboard in a world of manly keyboards was the IBM 3270/5250 terminal keyboard. Twenty-four function keys across the top, ten special purpose function keys on the left side, arrow keys actually laid out in a diamond shape instead of the common upside-down T, a numeric keypad, and a keyboard cable so thick it could be used to support bridges.
Add to the fact that it had a metal casing similar to the original IBM keyboard whereas the later model keyboards, and all the PS/2 keyboards are plastic. Tough plastic to be sure, but I still was able to chip and crack one.
With all that you had a keyboard that weighed two pounds!
I rescued one from a dumpster, but couldn't figure out the pin configuration to make any kind of whatever-to-ps2 adapter.
Even stranger were the IBM 3278 terminal keyboards..they had a weird form of tactile feedback that has to be used to be believed. They were more conventional in terms of layout, but were packaged into a case that, while detached from the terminal itself, was a massive block of metal that weighed in at 2+ pounds.
The strangest keyboard I think IBM ever made was a keyboard for the Chinese; it was big (I think it was about two feet square) and was laid out like a giant tablet; the left side was a massive set of overlays and "mushy" buttons" with individual characters, and the right side had conventional keys a la the 3270/5250 keyboard. I wish I had some pictures of it...it was in IBM's computer exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for years and years, but that exhibit has long since disappeared and with it the keyboard.
You gotta hand it to IBM...they built their (mainframe) equipment to last. I fully expect to be sitting at the Social Security office when I'm 70+, complaining about my measly $2.53 check with a person sitting in front of an IBM terminal with one of those massive metal keyboards. Fun!
Is that they suck for FPS-ish gaming where you want more sensitivity...my UT performance went up considerably when my much-loved IBM PS/2 keyboard met an unfortuant death at the hands of a can of coke.
And though it may only be me, my hands used to get tired and sore after long bouts of typing with them.
H-1B visas are not just for the tech industry. the new legislation did increase the number of visas for three years, but also increased the cost to businesses for hiring H-1B workers The extra cost goes to train Americans in new jobs. (that was the way the legislation was written anyway). Companies must pay the greater of the prevailing wage or "actual" wage for the job. The prevailing wage is essentially what every other employer pays a similiarly qualified worker for that job. The "actual" wage is what *that specific employer sponsoring the H-1B worker* pays other employees for that job. If employers are abusing the system there is a remedy, you can report them to the Department of Labor and/or the INS.
And if you actually READ the legislation, you'd know that the numbers go back down to 65,000 after three years. Also that employers must pay the prevailing wage for the job in the geographic area in which the job is located. (as determined by either US DOL statistics (which believe it or not are often higher than what employers actually pay in the region) or a private wage survey that must conform to certain guidelines. *ALSO* the H-1B dependent regulations have now gone into effect, basically saying that if your company is H-1B dependent, you must show the INS/DOL that you looked for qualified American workers and found none.
The fact that you ask this question at all means you know nothing of how our government works. To make such a change in our immigration policy would take BARE MINIMUM a year and probably more. By that time, the economy might be on the upswing again and everyone will be saying...where are the workers? This also completely ignores the fact that the H-1b worker compared to the US worker at a particular company just might have better skills or be a more valued employee. You are saying the company shouldn't have a choice of who to hire and who to retain.
Wherever it is, it takes nine days of air travel to get to it from Australia. Note the link: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20010420/us/glob al_hawk_la101.html
220 hours!
I agree in that Apple has been taken over by all things NeXT, and that's not at all a bad thing. If anything, I admire Apple (and before it NeXT) for pushing the state of the art. I used an original monochrome-monitor Cube back in the early nineties and found its interface, while more complex at first coming from the Mac world (before Win3.1 had taken over the world), but that it was a breeze to use, and really put a beautiful spin on the true power of the machine. The MacOS (vers. 1-9) I thought hid *too* much of the machine away, which might be ok for arists and designers, but more hard core users, I think, grumbled not a few times at not being able to just drop to a command line and "just do it". NeXT, and now Apple, have done, I think what no one else has done in the *thirty* years Unix has been available ... create an elegant interface that is not overly confusing for a newbie, while still powerful enough for hardcode. I've used a *lot* of window managers over the years, motif, openlook, tom's, et al. Those wms merely provided easier ways of having multiple xterms open, and wms like Gnome try to curry favor with windows users who demand a start button in the lower left hand corner. NeXT and Apple tried to create a truly useful interface that would appeal to the masses without insulting their intelligence *or* limiting them. Though it's not flawless, I think it's better than anything out there. As it is said, only God is perfect.
By the way: In regards to a slick high-end workstation, I think that's what they designed the Mac Cube for ... no slots, but has that NeXT enclosure, and smaller too. I'm guessing that the Mac Cube is the machine Jobs has been dreaming of, even since the NeXT Cube days.