My '06 hybrid Civic averages me 50+ MPG in southern california driving (lots of hills in my area and any part of my 32 mile regular commute is neither up hill nor down hill, just an even mix of both but not very flat.
That said, the poing of me purchasing mainly because of the MPG. My 2000 Toyota Tacoma PreRunner was costing me about $480/mo. in gas (@ $3.45/gal in those days) and the hybrid has reduced it to roughly $90/mo. Less than $70/mo. with the current gas prices. I did not purchase it because of the carpool sticker but its nice to have just in case, but my MPG drops significantly when I use the carpool mainly because of the speeds I have to maintain (70+) to avoid getting run over by a tank behind me.
I hear a lot of people talking smack about hybrids in various places including Slashdot but I think the car will get you a good 45+ MPG if you just watch your acceleration and life your foot off the gas and brake. Getting 53 or so what I average takes effort but I really like filling up my tanks at 680+ miles for the tank. Even with the payments (only $200 mo. since I put so much cash down) and gas it costs me less than gas for the truck and I owned the truck outright since I took it off the lot.
But... once my wife's acura dies (hopefully soon, its been 10 years already) I get to replace it with the '07/'08 model (or whatever year it is) of the new Toyota Tacoma or a 4Runner and I'll get my truck back. Hopefully my commute won't be so far.
In all, I like the hybrid. But I really miss my truck.
I started by getting about 40 MPG in my new hybrid (Civic '06). Now, even going through intense mountainous areas, I'm averaging 51-53.5 MPG on 680 Mile tank refills. Even today I started at my house with 50.8 MPG in the dash display and went through some series mountainous terrain for an hour and brought down to 47 MPG but by the time I arrived home I was back to 50.2. I know a few hybrid owners and they mostly take their MPG seriously and only one I know doesn't care and gets about 38 MPG.
I'll bet your Eclipse doesn't average 50+ MPG no matter how you drive it. Mine can range from 35 with a lead foot and hard braking to 65+ with some serious discipline and appropriate terrain/weather conditions. Coming back from Vegas for 389 miles of driving I averaged 74.8 MPG (but the trip is mostly downhill). I'm mostly highway driving (95%). City driving can be a nuissance. If I do a lot I'll average about 45-48 MPG. But, now I plan all my errands for the week in such ways I can do it all at once, I know where the "efficient" roads are to travel for the best FE around my regular communte and a few other less frequent places. Don't drive during lunch and so on. Depending on the wind, I have 3 different commute options so there's a 75% chance I can get in a direction for at least half the trip where the wind pushes me.
On two occasions for 11-13 miles I have achieved 104 MPG but its not something that I can regularize. On the same tanks, I might start with 104 MPG but I'll end with about 53 MPG or so.
In all, the Civic hybrid is a robust car and quite capable of performing as advertised.
The problem is, that in today's society, if Congress goes back to re-examine the intellecutally property laws and assumptions, it'll be so heavily lobied by the special interests that it'll serve no purpose but to protect big business. The notion of IP on Capitol Hill has become so delusional that there is no faint resemblance of what it was intended to be. It is a now a cest pool of a place to fight out marketplace ownership. If it does get re-examined, in order to be something worthy of implement, it'll have no choice but to consider the original intend and the difference in times against the early times. Congress' notion of IP is very much aligned with those who lobby and not society. Who would be best to do the re-examination? The people? that's what our elected officials are supposed to do, be our proxy. Who would be allowed to have input: lobby and people? what constitutes who's input is greater heard?
If memory serves, the debates leading to our constitution was very intense and nearly fell apart multiple times. But they all wanted a better country compared to what they were coming from at the time. However, the wealthy wanted something better for them and most of our founding fathers were indeed quite wealthy with their own interests at heart. Sounds no different than what we have today. The only differences is that the wealthy lobbyist have learned they can devise the rules of the game, they don't need to play by the rules anymore.
If things keep going the way they are today, in 30 years time (or earlier) I wouldn't be surprised if so many laws are made in favor of big business that they never lose a lawsuit, no matter who initiates it (governement, class action, themselves to sue others, etc.). The power of lobby needs first to be weakened, but it is too much of a cash cow for elected officials that I doubt it'll ever be weaked to the poitn that the people can control the election process and the lawmaking process again.
Well, to be fair, Microsoft Genuine (Dis)advangate has nothing to do with the content industry, it is their own choice to implement and they happily do so. Product activation does not benefit anyone but MS (not even the content industry if pirates can't use Windows then fewer people use use WMP DRM).
So... Microsoft has not qualms with it. In reality, if MS didn't want to implement DRM for the content industry, they simple could say "no" and what can the media industry do about it? I few tiny iffy DRM producers won't further the content industries agenda if MS doesn't support it but MS is happy to support it because ever since Gate's first open letter to pirates 30 years ago, MS has been against piracy and DRM is at the moment the best way to thwart it.
Let me give you a clue. Most of it does not cost anything to the end user.
But it does. Lets just talk cost and no other factors. If the user does not pay for usage of an OSS web application (managed by someone else, as that's normally what we're talking about when discussing web applications)... then how will the bandwidth bill be floated once it gets popular? The way I see it, there are numerous concerns at play here:
1) The user pays nothing. The host must pay for bandwidth. If it gets too popular, the host must also provide the means to scale which costs money. The host, must find a way to pay such costs.
2) Advertisers will not pay to get their message to every hosted OSS web application so, while a few will get the advertising dollars and the advertisers will get exposure, there won't be enough money to support the number of hosted web applications sans the number of sourceforge projects.
3) While small and medium sized companies *might* use a hosted OSS web application, what'll most likely happen is that they'll take the source and install it on their own servers in which case its not really the same as a web application in the sense that someone else is hosting, maintaining, and looking after scaleability as users are daily added. Large companies may not use OSS hosted web applications for various reasons, but they'll have no problems using subscription web application ala' salesforce. 165,000 users each paying roughly $65 USD.
4) Patents. I can foresee many hosted proprietary enforcing their patents and OSS being left in the dust. There may be forces to mitigate that in the future but I still see it as a threat from they eyes I have today. I mean, netflix has their queue patented so others can't compete using a queue... I would expect others to do the same.
5) What might happen when some OSS web application grow too large and have hefty bandwidth expenses and advertising revenue is less than sufficient, there might end up being some companies that user their own datacenters to host the application and for a fee will provide you access. At the same time, they'll keep the source-code up-to-date with the latest changes and look after scaleability and so on. In that sense, there might be various companies hosting the same application but you have to pay. But when I think hosted OSS web applications, and in the context of your point about it costing nothing, I'm thinking that you won't need to pay a fee and can just use it without expense from your end. To that point, I don't know whether hostied OSS web applications (or rich internet applications) will truly work. Someone has to foot the bill, and if not the user, than who?
But, considering Linux is free, I see a lot of companies (red hat, xandros, etc.) charging $200+ in the stores from their server editions. I thought they were free? But appearantly people (businesses) pay for something that should be free. So the same very well could happen with OSS web applications/rich internet applications.
How about the HYDRA from www.xgamestation.com or www.parallax.com . It's CPU is a 32-bit CPU with 8 cores running at 80 MHz total. the only problem is 32k of ram with 128k expansion. even SNES was better than that in terms of memory. But, its a great start if that's what you're looking for.
There's something else that stands in the way of how widely software as a rent model will work: cost. Right now, most people know that if they pay for software then it'll work for at least as long as the OS is maintained in most cases and if they need an upgrade, they can wait until they are ready to pay for an upgrade.
But if *all* software was "leasted", then there comes a point where people have to decide how much money to part with on a *regular* basis. A few lucky companies will remain popular in this model and will be wildly successful because they take the first part of people's money. But many other software companies will barely scrap buy. People won't pay $300/mo for 20 pieces of software. They'll pay maybe $70-100/mo for 5 pieces of software.
If what you purchase on physcial media costs $200, then rental for a year must be about $30 in order for it to work. Otherwise what'll happen is the few successful software providers will starve the rest of the market of its revenue and then we'll see competitive advantages in physically installed media that doesn't expire (what a concept).
Right now, we are moving towards the age of paying every year for updates. Its roughly the same thing except if you don't pay you don't get updates after your year expires. The only difference between this model and rental is that if you don't renew you don't use the software anymore.
Can OSS compete in this market? Perhaps. If the trend leans towards web based software as a rental model, then OSS can only survive as long as they providers can support the bandwidth.
Time will tell, but I for one won't pay $300/mo. for all the software I use (I use a lot but I also pay for it when I see the need to).
I work on a project with millions of lines of code (C#/VB) and merely tens of thousands of C++ and hundreds of thousands of SQL (2000). We have about 15 development workstations here and not a single one of us has yet to describe any of the problems you describe except the toolbar placement but there's a way to avoid that problem.
On the contrary, we've found VS 2005 to be the most stable and productive IDE MS has produced yet and works great and intellisense has been surprisingly accurate. Perhaps its just your dev box. But I know people that also work on multi-million lines of code project for.NET and have no complaints about the IDE in the vein that you experienced.
"I could have thought of that" vs. "why didn't you think of that" can probly be described best as, not having thought of it becuase the person saying it wasn't confronted with solving the problem.
I'm a business software programmer. Never programmed a game in my life or studied how to do it. I don't participate in conversations or venues that are even remotely related. I am not a graphic artist and don't deal with that kind of stuff.
Yet, I sat down the other day to make a side-scrolling simple game of the NES era and needed to solve the problem of scrolling tile-based screens. After about 15 minutes of thought, I came up with the exact same solution that Carmack eventually did when he came up with an extremely "clever" way of PC's of the era to do side-scrolling (appearantly he even did a remake of Super Mario Bros. 3). It just seemed logical to me from two perspecitves: 1) despite having GHz of power, I still want to keep performance at its peak, and 2) it seems better to stream only the visible area of the game map plus some off screen border and shift the image around than to constantly re-render the screen 60x/sec and grind the CPU. There's a few other things regarding graphics/game programming that I thought of to solve the problem that appearantly are well known techniques, also.
My point here is that there are a few things that all of us can think of if we are confronted with the problem. So while it might be valid "I could have done that", for the most part, we all could have thought of that when confronted with the problem to solve, but there are some things that aren't ovbious.
For example, we call could have thought of electro-statically charging some fur at the end of a broom to make it a magnet for dust, but when confronted with solving the problem of making a dust magnet broom, only very few would be able to conduct proper research into the physics to even discover that would work in the first place. Even among physicists, it may not be obvious such things.
Obviousness is hard to guage. The only way to truly rule it out is, during the patent examination period, propose the problem to people practicing the art who are all at various levels of skill/non-skill in the art, and have them indepentantly solve the problem without collaboration or reviewing the solution proposed by the patent.
When Mr. Goldstein noted that "every single major patent bar association in the country has filed on our side," the chief justice interjected: "Well, which way does that cut? That just indicates that this is profitable for the patent bar." And when Mr. Goldstein referred to experts who had testified that the Teleflex patent was not obvious, the chief justice asked: "Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? I mean, the least insightful person you can find?"
Chief Justice Roberts made the comments with a smile, and the courtroom audience responded with laughter. Mr. Goldstein, an experienced Supreme Court advocate, was unfazed at finding himself the straight man in a courtroom comedy. He kept returning to his theme, which was that the Federal Circuit's test, properly understood, served the function of focusing the inquiry.
I've learned long ago: You're product is only as reliable as your least reliable 3rd party, and you can only move as fast as your slowest 3rd party.
If you're company depends on your IT product. If you're company is a bank or something not IT related than maybe using multiple 3rd parties make sense.
Have you ever tried to get a 3rd party networking toolkit, AI library, PDF generator, business intelligence agent, fax server, grids, image processing, charting, digramming, xml processing, voice recognition, and some others to all hamronize in one product? Now, what happens when the OS flips a version (such as XP->Vista) and then just a few of those require an update to function properly? What happens when a new platform releases (such as.NET to.NEXT as did ActiveX to.NET) and vendors never update? Problem problems problems.
I'm glad I've only worked places where the 3rd party dependancy is absolutely minimal and in most cases absent. The most successful projects I've been on are where the majority of the various technologies (as mentioned above) were done in-house and not contracted out to a 3rd party. But, they have their place. A visul Grid component for example is useful because its a decent enough abstraction but most other things are too important if the product is the blood of the company.
Not necessarily true. I just switched from Sprint to Cingular and paid for my new cellphone in full cash ($299). I had to agree to a minimum 12 month contract. To get their $249 price on the same phone I would have to agree to a mininum 24 month contract and mail in a voucher for the discount. I didn't have an option for no contract. Only 12 months or 24 months.
There's no choice.
Sprint, who I had been with for 7 years without contract, wanted a 24 month contract just to change my plan, activate a new/replacement phone on the same account, add a phone to the account, or whatever else. T-Mobile? Not any different. Nextel? Didn't have what I was looking for so I don't know about their contracts. Cingular? At least I had the 12 month option which I agreed to because I had too many problems with Sprint so I switched and retained my phone number of 7 years.
I'm generally against contracts. For that reason, I don't have satellite TV or cable TV or TiVo or whatever. SBC DSL required me to cancel my current account and open a new one when I moved to another city but having been with them for 6 years they decided to waive the contract after I raised a stink about how I'm not really starting a new service but just moving.
There is really only 2 options these days: contract + service we want, or go without. And they know it, that's why it is the way it is. And we allow it, that's why it doesn't change.
The more interesting thing is that if you use a KeyGen that generates what looks like an authentic volume license key (not the 640 range) and Microsoft themselves didn't issue it, then the activation will actually tell you its valid but Microsoft didn't issue the key and then reject it. All others it will simply say it is not a valid key. Otherwise, it'll succeed if it actually is a valid key the MS issued. Interesting, I say... interesting.
The runtime has COM helper functions in it that get reused... other things like MsgBox are reusable functions that are located in the "runtime". The runtime can act as an interpreter if compiled to P-Code but by default, VB5 and higher are compiled to native executable code and do not get intepreted.
If you create an ActiveX DLL that *must* be distributed with every application you write because it contains useful helper functions, you might consider that a runtime and an equal corallary with the VB6 runtime that must be present for every Visual Basic program.
Just wait until self-destructing DVD's become mainstream, by the time you get the DVD you won't be able to view it anymore, all this because they sniffed a legitimate DVD. I wonder if lawsuits will ensue.
I started my degree in Comp. Science about 3 years ago. I've been programming and designing large scale enterprise solutions for about 8 years now and programming for 15. I'm well paid, manage to find some of the best positions (for me) available (above average salary for comparable software engineers/Sr. Developers, excellent working conditions, 8/hrs. a day working hours the norm, good benefits, advancement, great pay raises, always increasing responsibilities, etc.) (3 companies in a row, all full-time, over the past 8 years). I don't need a degree related to computer science or software engineering, but I want one because this is what I love to do; I live, eat and breathe software development, algorithms, design paradigms and solutions.
The problem is that in the classes, I was getting easy A's. Too easy for my taste. I like to earn things, not be given them on a golden platter. My wife says that I did earn it the last 15 years when I gave up my life to get good at what I love to do, but I don't look at it that way. I'm not paying thousands of $$$ to waste my time. In any case, if I didn't do the assignments exactly as taught in the class or the book, I got marked down. By that, I mean, I got zero credit. So when she asked us to solve some problem and I solved it very efficiently, realistically, and simply, it wasn't good enough because it wasn't the way the book taught it.
Frankly, I would never hire a Sr. Developer that did things the way the book taught, it simply isn't realistic to expect such low quality work from people I pay big bucks for. I got sick of suffering for my creativity and insights when there is absolutely no other reason why they should be rejected other than they aren't in the book. Of course not, very few good textbooks ever reflect reality and true hard-earned experience and insight. I got bored. I learned that our universities want to produce a breed of conformists, people who just follow directions and to the minimum possible to get by. At least, if that's how the teachers drill it into the students that's how they'll become. For a while, I was even "conforming" but it wasn't me and I wasn't happy. I'm a thinker, not a follower/hand-holder.
After a few semesters of this I switched to become a business major. I figured, I'm already designing software used concurrently by thousands of people, accounting systems, insurance solutions, inventory systems that closely resemble the WalMart inventory system (but for the Steel industry) and has some cooler paradigms involved, and so on. My next logical step would be to become a bona-fide architect. I figure a business degree and later on a MBA and econ degree would be more beneficial to my long-term plans. I love to program more than anything, but I'm more valuable in all the positiions I've held if I'm also a business major/econ major/accounting major. Pick one, or two. That's where I'm heading.
I'm glad for it, but I wouldn't have realized it if the Comp. Sci. classes weren't so boring and stale and conformist. There are, of course, exceptions. MIT, CalTech, Standford, UCI, etc. have courses that are research based and therefore probly better, but for that vast majority of people they end up with mediocre courses and dead-end teachers just reading from a textbook with no motivation to reward experience or creativity in their classroom.
The real idea is whether they can explain when to use one over the other or why the worse would be used (you never use the worse). I know the list traversal is horrible for sorted data, but never under estimate the power of suggestion. If someone says they know these things I will make sure they know. I sometimes ask, implying the worse of the two is the better way. If they say they know something, I make sure they aren't lying otherwise I won't get too hung up over it unless it is critical to the position they know (and I don't think hardcore computer science is critical to anything we do in this company). Anyway, there really is no reason to use a list traversal for sorted data but there's no reason to use binary search for unsorted data. If someone is going to be an architect or Sr. Developer or otherwise has a Comp. Sci. degree, they should know how to answer the question (and correct me when I ask it incorrectly). I love when people correct my questions in an interview or question my logic, or even get a warm fuzzy feeling that something is wrong even if they can't put their finger on it.
You'd be surprised how many "architects" get it wrong in an interview. Not actually because I "suggested" it, but because often they use verbal ques to "guage" what my expected response should be. Actually, they get it wrong because they otherwise wouldn't know how to properly answer the question if I didn't lead them on. The smartest people I've encountered in the interviews know exactly what to answer and know when to say "I don't know". Some better ones will say "I don't know but I'd like to try and answer anyway" and I will absolutely respect that and not hold the wrong answer against them. Beyond that, regardless of who it is that's applying, people who know the answer will always get the answer, no matter how I present the question.
I understand being interviewed is a nerve wrecking experience. But I also like to guage how they response to stress. Many times, people don't pick up on obviously false information or assumptions. Othertimes, I'll give them some code (or a design) that works perfectly and ask them what's wrong with it. I've never yet got someone to answer "nothing is wrong with it." but they try to go fishing for the answer (from me) and try to avoid it altogether.
For example, if someone says they know design patterns on their resume, I'll ask something like "how many instances should I create for a singleton when the application initializes". Simple question, simple answer. But most people don't get the correct answer. Some have answered "10 sounds like a good number and if you need more instances you create more when necessary". I might ask other questions relating to design patterns that expect an answer the directly conflicts with the purpose or implentation of the pattern in question. Very few answer correctly or even realize they are wrong after explaining their answer for 5 minutes.
My main point in all this is that a good architect will know the answer to most of my simple questions and will truly understand how to design software. We don't pay our architects to learn on the job, we pay them to design very complicated software. They must know what they're doing. Even moreso, they must know when to identify incorrect design implementations and assumptions and correct them appropriately. I like to get a feel for those abilities during the interview process.
Your idea of a software architect is flawed. I interview people for a Sr. Developer position that says that are also an architect. Problem is, in over a year, we haven't found a single person that knows what software architecture truly is and it sounds like you don't either.
Is software architecture all about flowcharts and design specs but the architect not a competent programmer? Not in my shop (we make insurance and accounting software). A truly competent architect will be deeply acquainted with various design methadologies, techniques, tips & tricks for that various technologies/paradigms being implemented, industry trends and will have been through quite a lot in the trenches before they can truly design a system like ours that scales to tens of thousands of concurrent users daily and millions of financial & non-financial transactions per day.
We get applications that think they are an architect because they know what the Factory or Strategy patterns are but can't write explain or write code that explains why one would use a quicksort over a bubblesort or why one would use a list traversal over a binary search for finding sorted information. The same people say they are competent in distributed architectures but can't explain when to use SOAP and WebServices instead of a custom TCP/IP server or how a message-based system works. They can't explain the difference between a Factory and an Abstract Factory or any suitable definition and implementation of the Provider and Observer design patterns. I'm not talking about rocket science. I don't expect my architects to be one with design patterns but if they put on their resume that they are expert with patterns they better impress me regarding that topic.
The same people can explain the difference between.NET/ASP.NET and Java/JSP but can't come up with any good comparitive strenths/weaknesses between both. The same "architects" know very little about clustering and load balancing but somehow feel competent in designing systems that scale to potentially millions of users.
They can't explain (or more importantly, demonstrate) very well how to both invoke and prevent against cross-site scripting attacks and SQL-Injection attacks alike. While a few applicants appeared to be well acquainted with preventing SQL injection attacks neither could write code that has the vulnerability or explain certain practices/mindsets that can contribute to both the cause and the solution to the problem. When asked how they would design a destributed component over a network, they would write "chatty" interfaces and thus, consume more resources, network bandwith, and impede performance and act surprised when asked if there was a better way.
Many have the attitude that they know everything and what they know is how they'll do anything. While not wrong if they are truly that competent, in general, a good architect will be open to new ideas and will refuse to lock themselves into a box. I don't want a COBOL architect on my team that hasn't opened their mind to newer ideas and methadologies, more importantly, an architect that full well is aware they don't know everything and always double-checks and verifies their designs/ideas are the right way vs. assuming such is the architect that gets my praise and will have the best success anywhere they go.
When asked to about transactional system (both at the database level and at via compensating resource managers for non-database transactions) only one demonstrating any understanding of the topic, problems, concerns, and good design skills relating to the topic. Others had simply avoided using transactions for the past 15 years of the "architectural" career. They don't udnerstand the nature of insurance accounting, and related banking, I suppose. About all were uncomfortable discussing transactions and transactional systems/concerns during the interview (to their defense, no one ever made a point of it on their resume either, at least; the one guy who did was truly amazing
I paid for a subscription to classmates.com and still get served with tons of the most annoying adverts ever when logged in. That's just wrong. I cancelled my subscription so it won't renew next year.
This is no different. If I'm paying, then I should not be bothered with in game advertisements if they are intrusive. For example, seeing a Coke billboard or poster isn't annoying, so much, as its modeling reality. However, when the adverts become annoying or too much, or somehow, the game goes out of its way to impose the advert on you is a whole different story. Won't get my money, because they don't need it, not when advertisers are paying their way.
How long before it is a crime to release your own music without the assistance of a music label or music publisher? Punishable by spending a few years in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison sharing your cell with rapist and murderer? I say few years, because he'll be getting out in a few years while your still rotting away... while he committed a crime that hurt people with completely irreparable damage and traume (family and friends), the punishment for hurting corporate profits is 10x worse for somethings that is completely recoverable and harmless to anyone.
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My '06 hybrid Civic averages me 50+ MPG in southern california driving (lots of hills in my area and any part of my 32 mile regular commute is neither up hill nor down hill, just an even mix of both but not very flat.
/mo. Less than $70 /mo. with the current gas prices. I did not purchase it because of the carpool sticker but its nice to have just in case, but my MPG drops significantly when I use the carpool mainly because of the speeds I have to maintain (70+) to avoid getting run over by a tank behind me.
That said, the poing of me purchasing mainly because of the MPG. My 2000 Toyota Tacoma PreRunner was costing me about $480/mo. in gas (@ $3.45/gal in those days) and the hybrid has reduced it to roughly $90
I hear a lot of people talking smack about hybrids in various places including Slashdot but I think the car will get you a good 45+ MPG if you just watch your acceleration and life your foot off the gas and brake. Getting 53 or so what I average takes effort but I really like filling up my tanks at 680+ miles for the tank. Even with the payments (only $200 mo. since I put so much cash down) and gas it costs me less than gas for the truck and I owned the truck outright since I took it off the lot.
But... once my wife's acura dies (hopefully soon, its been 10 years already) I get to replace it with the '07/'08 model (or whatever year it is) of the new Toyota Tacoma or a 4Runner and I'll get my truck back. Hopefully my commute won't be so far.
In all, I like the hybrid. But I really miss my truck.
Thanks,
Leabre
I started by getting about 40 MPG in my new hybrid (Civic '06). Now, even going through intense mountainous areas, I'm averaging 51-53.5 MPG on 680 Mile tank refills. Even today I started at my house with 50.8 MPG in the dash display and went through some series mountainous terrain for an hour and brought down to 47 MPG but by the time I arrived home I was back to 50.2. I know a few hybrid owners and they mostly take their MPG seriously and only one I know doesn't care and gets about 38 MPG.
I'll bet your Eclipse doesn't average 50+ MPG no matter how you drive it. Mine can range from 35 with a lead foot and hard braking to 65+ with some serious discipline and appropriate terrain/weather conditions. Coming back from Vegas for 389 miles of driving I averaged 74.8 MPG (but the trip is mostly downhill). I'm mostly highway driving (95%). City driving can be a nuissance. If I do a lot I'll average about 45-48 MPG. But, now I plan all my errands for the week in such ways I can do it all at once, I know where the "efficient" roads are to travel for the best FE around my regular communte and a few other less frequent places. Don't drive during lunch and so on. Depending on the wind, I have 3 different commute options so there's a 75% chance I can get in a direction for at least half the trip where the wind pushes me.
On two occasions for 11-13 miles I have achieved 104 MPG but its not something that I can regularize. On the same tanks, I might start with 104 MPG but I'll end with about 53 MPG or so.
In all, the Civic hybrid is a robust car and quite capable of performing as advertised.
Thanks,
Leabre
The problem is, that in today's society, if Congress goes back to re-examine the intellecutally property laws and assumptions, it'll be so heavily lobied by the special interests that it'll serve no purpose but to protect big business. The notion of IP on Capitol Hill has become so delusional that there is no faint resemblance of what it was intended to be. It is a now a cest pool of a place to fight out marketplace ownership. If it does get re-examined, in order to be something worthy of implement, it'll have no choice but to consider the original intend and the difference in times against the early times. Congress' notion of IP is very much aligned with those who lobby and not society. Who would be best to do the re-examination? The people? that's what our elected officials are supposed to do, be our proxy. Who would be allowed to have input: lobby and people? what constitutes who's input is greater heard?
If memory serves, the debates leading to our constitution was very intense and nearly fell apart multiple times. But they all wanted a better country compared to what they were coming from at the time. However, the wealthy wanted something better for them and most of our founding fathers were indeed quite wealthy with their own interests at heart. Sounds no different than what we have today. The only differences is that the wealthy lobbyist have learned they can devise the rules of the game, they don't need to play by the rules anymore.
If things keep going the way they are today, in 30 years time (or earlier) I wouldn't be surprised if so many laws are made in favor of big business that they never lose a lawsuit, no matter who initiates it (governement, class action, themselves to sue others, etc.). The power of lobby needs first to be weakened, but it is too much of a cash cow for elected officials that I doubt it'll ever be weaked to the poitn that the people can control the election process and the lawmaking process again.
Thanks,
Shawn
Well, to be fair, Microsoft Genuine (Dis)advangate has nothing to do with the content industry, it is their own choice to implement and they happily do so. Product activation does not benefit anyone but MS (not even the content industry if pirates can't use Windows then fewer people use use WMP DRM).
So... Microsoft has not qualms with it. In reality, if MS didn't want to implement DRM for the content industry, they simple could say "no" and what can the media industry do about it? I few tiny iffy DRM producers won't further the content industries agenda if MS doesn't support it but MS is happy to support it because ever since Gate's first open letter to pirates 30 years ago, MS has been against piracy and DRM is at the moment the best way to thwart it.
Thanks,
Leabre
Let me give you a clue. Most of it does not cost anything to the end user.
But it does. Lets just talk cost and no other factors. If the user does not pay for usage of an OSS web application (managed by someone else, as that's normally what we're talking about when discussing web applications)... then how will the bandwidth bill be floated once it gets popular? The way I see it, there are numerous concerns at play here:
1) The user pays nothing. The host must pay for bandwidth. If it gets too popular, the host must also provide the means to scale which costs money. The host, must find a way to pay such costs.
2) Advertisers will not pay to get their message to every hosted OSS web application so, while a few will get the advertising dollars and the advertisers will get exposure, there won't be enough money to support the number of hosted web applications sans the number of sourceforge projects.
3) While small and medium sized companies *might* use a hosted OSS web application, what'll most likely happen is that they'll take the source and install it on their own servers in which case its not really the same as a web application in the sense that someone else is hosting, maintaining, and looking after scaleability as users are daily added. Large companies may not use OSS hosted web applications for various reasons, but they'll have no problems using subscription web application ala' salesforce. 165,000 users each paying roughly $65 USD.
4) Patents. I can foresee many hosted proprietary enforcing their patents and OSS being left in the dust. There may be forces to mitigate that in the future but I still see it as a threat from they eyes I have today. I mean, netflix has their queue patented so others can't compete using a queue... I would expect others to do the same.
5) What might happen when some OSS web application grow too large and have hefty bandwidth expenses and advertising revenue is less than sufficient, there might end up being some companies that user their own datacenters to host the application and for a fee will provide you access. At the same time, they'll keep the source-code up-to-date with the latest changes and look after scaleability and so on. In that sense, there might be various companies hosting the same application but you have to pay. But when I think hosted OSS web applications, and in the context of your point about it costing nothing, I'm thinking that you won't need to pay a fee and can just use it without expense from your end. To that point, I don't know whether hostied OSS web applications (or rich internet applications) will truly work. Someone has to foot the bill, and if not the user, than who?
But, considering Linux is free, I see a lot of companies (red hat, xandros, etc.) charging $200+ in the stores from their server editions. I thought they were free? But appearantly people (businesses) pay for something that should be free. So the same very well could happen with OSS web applications/rich internet applications.
Thanks,
Leabre
How about the HYDRA from www.xgamestation.com or www.parallax.com . It's CPU is a 32-bit CPU with 8 cores running at 80 MHz total. the only problem is 32k of ram with 128k expansion. even SNES was better than that in terms of memory. But, its a great start if that's what you're looking for.
Thanks,
Leabre
There's something else that stands in the way of how widely software as a rent model will work: cost. Right now, most people know that if they pay for software then it'll work for at least as long as the OS is maintained in most cases and if they need an upgrade, they can wait until they are ready to pay for an upgrade.
/mo for 20 pieces of software. They'll pay maybe $70-100 /mo for 5 pieces of software.
/mo. for all the software I use (I use a lot but I also pay for it when I see the need to).
But if *all* software was "leasted", then there comes a point where people have to decide how much money to part with on a *regular* basis. A few lucky companies will remain popular in this model and will be wildly successful because they take the first part of people's money. But many other software companies will barely scrap buy. People won't pay $300
If what you purchase on physcial media costs $200, then rental for a year must be about $30 in order for it to work. Otherwise what'll happen is the few successful software providers will starve the rest of the market of its revenue and then we'll see competitive advantages in physically installed media that doesn't expire (what a concept).
Right now, we are moving towards the age of paying every year for updates. Its roughly the same thing except if you don't pay you don't get updates after your year expires. The only difference between this model and rental is that if you don't renew you don't use the software anymore.
Can OSS compete in this market? Perhaps. If the trend leans towards web based software as a rental model, then OSS can only survive as long as they providers can support the bandwidth.
Time will tell, but I for one won't pay $300
Thanks,
Leabre
I work on a project with millions of lines of code (C#/VB) and merely tens of thousands of C++ and hundreds of thousands of SQL (2000). We have about 15 development workstations here and not a single one of us has yet to describe any of the problems you describe except the toolbar placement but there's a way to avoid that problem.
.NET and have no complaints about the IDE in the vein that you experienced.
On the contrary, we've found VS 2005 to be the most stable and productive IDE MS has produced yet and works great and intellisense has been surprisingly accurate. Perhaps its just your dev box. But I know people that also work on multi-million lines of code project for
Thanks,
Leabre
"I could have thought of that" vs. "why didn't you think of that" can probly be described best as, not having thought of it becuase the person saying it wasn't confronted with solving the problem.
I'm a business software programmer. Never programmed a game in my life or studied how to do it. I don't participate in conversations or venues that are even remotely related. I am not a graphic artist and don't deal with that kind of stuff.
Yet, I sat down the other day to make a side-scrolling simple game of the NES era and needed to solve the problem of scrolling tile-based screens. After about 15 minutes of thought, I came up with the exact same solution that Carmack eventually did when he came up with an extremely "clever" way of PC's of the era to do side-scrolling (appearantly he even did a remake of Super Mario Bros. 3). It just seemed logical to me from two perspecitves: 1) despite having GHz of power, I still want to keep performance at its peak, and 2) it seems better to stream only the visible area of the game map plus some off screen border and shift the image around than to constantly re-render the screen 60x/sec and grind the CPU. There's a few other things regarding graphics/game programming that I thought of to solve the problem that appearantly are well known techniques, also.
My point here is that there are a few things that all of us can think of if we are confronted with the problem. So while it might be valid "I could have done that", for the most part, we all could have thought of that when confronted with the problem to solve, but there are some things that aren't ovbious.
For example, we call could have thought of electro-statically charging some fur at the end of a broom to make it a magnet for dust, but when confronted with solving the problem of making a dust magnet broom, only very few would be able to conduct proper research into the physics to even discover that would work in the first place. Even among physicists, it may not be obvious such things.
Obviousness is hard to guage. The only way to truly rule it out is, during the patent examination period, propose the problem to people practicing the art who are all at various levels of skill/non-skill in the art, and have them indepentantly solve the problem without collaboration or reviewing the solution proposed by the patent.
Thanks,
Leabre
Favorite quote from the NYT article:o urt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/business/29bizc
When Mr. Goldstein noted that "every single major patent bar association in the country has filed on our side," the chief justice interjected: "Well, which way does that cut? That just indicates that this is profitable for the patent bar." And when Mr. Goldstein referred to experts who had testified that the Teleflex patent was not obvious, the chief justice asked: "Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? I mean, the least insightful person you can find?"
Chief Justice Roberts made the comments with a smile, and the courtroom audience responded with laughter. Mr. Goldstein, an experienced Supreme Court advocate, was unfazed at finding himself the straight man in a courtroom comedy. He kept returning to his theme, which was that the Federal Circuit's test, properly understood, served the function of focusing the inquiry.
Thanks,
Leabre
I was thinking more along the lines of Yoogle
Thanks,
Leabre
I've learned long ago: You're product is only as reliable as your least reliable 3rd party, and you can only move as fast as your slowest 3rd party.
.NET to .NEXT as did ActiveX to .NET) and vendors never update? Problem problems problems.
If you're company depends on your IT product. If you're company is a bank or something not IT related than maybe using multiple 3rd parties make sense.
Have you ever tried to get a 3rd party networking toolkit, AI library, PDF generator, business intelligence agent, fax server, grids, image processing, charting, digramming, xml processing, voice recognition, and some others to all hamronize in one product? Now, what happens when the OS flips a version (such as XP->Vista) and then just a few of those require an update to function properly? What happens when a new platform releases (such as
I'm glad I've only worked places where the 3rd party dependancy is absolutely minimal and in most cases absent. The most successful projects I've been on are where the majority of the various technologies (as mentioned above) were done in-house and not contracted out to a 3rd party. But, they have their place. A visul Grid component for example is useful because its a decent enough abstraction but most other things are too important if the product is the blood of the company.
Thanks,
Leabre
This must be why there's the other article about the continued opposition to laptops in schools.
Thanks,
Shawn
I was thinking about a Jackie-Chan style... use your environment to destroy your foes kind of game, aptly titled "house of flying chairs".
Thanks,
Leabre
Not necessarily true. I just switched from Sprint to Cingular and paid for my new cellphone in full cash ($299). I had to agree to a minimum 12 month contract. To get their $249 price on the same phone I would have to agree to a mininum 24 month contract and mail in a voucher for the discount. I didn't have an option for no contract. Only 12 months or 24 months.
There's no choice.
Sprint, who I had been with for 7 years without contract, wanted a 24 month contract just to change my plan, activate a new/replacement phone on the same account, add a phone to the account, or whatever else. T-Mobile? Not any different. Nextel? Didn't have what I was looking for so I don't know about their contracts. Cingular? At least I had the 12 month option which I agreed to because I had too many problems with Sprint so I switched and retained my phone number of 7 years.
I'm generally against contracts. For that reason, I don't have satellite TV or cable TV or TiVo or whatever. SBC DSL required me to cancel my current account and open a new one when I moved to another city but having been with them for 6 years they decided to waive the contract after I raised a stink about how I'm not really starting a new service but just moving.
There is really only 2 options these days: contract + service we want, or go without. And they know it, that's why it is the way it is. And we allow it, that's why it doesn't change.
Thanks,
Leabre
The more interesting thing is that if you use a KeyGen that generates what looks like an authentic volume license key (not the 640 range) and Microsoft themselves didn't issue it, then the activation will actually tell you its valid but Microsoft didn't issue the key and then reject it. All others it will simply say it is not a valid key. Otherwise, it'll succeed if it actually is a valid key the MS issued. Interesting, I say... interesting.
Thanks,
Leabre
The runtime has COM helper functions in it that get reused... other things like MsgBox are reusable functions that are located in the "runtime". The runtime can act as an interpreter if compiled to P-Code but by default, VB5 and higher are compiled to native executable code and do not get intepreted.
If you create an ActiveX DLL that *must* be distributed with every application you write because it contains useful helper functions, you might consider that a runtime and an equal corallary with the VB6 runtime that must be present for every Visual Basic program.
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Leabre
Just wait until self-destructing DVD's become mainstream, by the time you get the DVD you won't be able to view it anymore, all this because they sniffed a legitimate DVD. I wonder if lawsuits will ensue.
Thanks,
Leabre
I started my degree in Comp. Science about 3 years ago. I've been programming and designing large scale enterprise solutions for about 8 years now and programming for 15. I'm well paid, manage to find some of the best positions (for me) available (above average salary for comparable software engineers/Sr. Developers, excellent working conditions, 8/hrs. a day working hours the norm, good benefits, advancement, great pay raises, always increasing responsibilities, etc.) (3 companies in a row, all full-time, over the past 8 years). I don't need a degree related to computer science or software engineering, but I want one because this is what I love to do; I live, eat and breathe software development, algorithms, design paradigms and solutions.
The problem is that in the classes, I was getting easy A's. Too easy for my taste. I like to earn things, not be given them on a golden platter. My wife says that I did earn it the last 15 years when I gave up my life to get good at what I love to do, but I don't look at it that way. I'm not paying thousands of $$$ to waste my time. In any case, if I didn't do the assignments exactly as taught in the class or the book, I got marked down. By that, I mean, I got zero credit. So when she asked us to solve some problem and I solved it very efficiently, realistically, and simply, it wasn't good enough because it wasn't the way the book taught it.
Frankly, I would never hire a Sr. Developer that did things the way the book taught, it simply isn't realistic to expect such low quality work from people I pay big bucks for. I got sick of suffering for my creativity and insights when there is absolutely no other reason why they should be rejected other than they aren't in the book. Of course not, very few good textbooks ever reflect reality and true hard-earned experience and insight. I got bored. I learned that our universities want to produce a breed of conformists, people who just follow directions and to the minimum possible to get by. At least, if that's how the teachers drill it into the students that's how they'll become. For a while, I was even "conforming" but it wasn't me and I wasn't happy. I'm a thinker, not a follower/hand-holder.
After a few semesters of this I switched to become a business major. I figured, I'm already designing software used concurrently by thousands of people, accounting systems, insurance solutions, inventory systems that closely resemble the WalMart inventory system (but for the Steel industry) and has some cooler paradigms involved, and so on. My next logical step would be to become a bona-fide architect. I figure a business degree and later on a MBA and econ degree would be more beneficial to my long-term plans. I love to program more than anything, but I'm more valuable in all the positiions I've held if I'm also a business major/econ major/accounting major. Pick one, or two. That's where I'm heading.
I'm glad for it, but I wouldn't have realized it if the Comp. Sci. classes weren't so boring and stale and conformist. There are, of course, exceptions. MIT, CalTech, Standford, UCI, etc. have courses that are research based and therefore probly better, but for that vast majority of people they end up with mediocre courses and dead-end teachers just reading from a textbook with no motivation to reward experience or creativity in their classroom.
In short, I feel your pain.
Thanks,
Leabre
The real idea is whether they can explain when to use one over the other or why the worse would be used (you never use the worse). I know the list traversal is horrible for sorted data, but never under estimate the power of suggestion. If someone says they know these things I will make sure they know. I sometimes ask, implying the worse of the two is the better way. If they say they know something, I make sure they aren't lying otherwise I won't get too hung up over it unless it is critical to the position they know (and I don't think hardcore computer science is critical to anything we do in this company). Anyway, there really is no reason to use a list traversal for sorted data but there's no reason to use binary search for unsorted data. If someone is going to be an architect or Sr. Developer or otherwise has a Comp. Sci. degree, they should know how to answer the question (and correct me when I ask it incorrectly). I love when people correct my questions in an interview or question my logic, or even get a warm fuzzy feeling that something is wrong even if they can't put their finger on it.
You'd be surprised how many "architects" get it wrong in an interview. Not actually because I "suggested" it, but because often they use verbal ques to "guage" what my expected response should be. Actually, they get it wrong because they otherwise wouldn't know how to properly answer the question if I didn't lead them on. The smartest people I've encountered in the interviews know exactly what to answer and know when to say "I don't know". Some better ones will say "I don't know but I'd like to try and answer anyway" and I will absolutely respect that and not hold the wrong answer against them. Beyond that, regardless of who it is that's applying, people who know the answer will always get the answer, no matter how I present the question.
I understand being interviewed is a nerve wrecking experience. But I also like to guage how they response to stress. Many times, people don't pick up on obviously false information or assumptions. Othertimes, I'll give them some code (or a design) that works perfectly and ask them what's wrong with it. I've never yet got someone to answer "nothing is wrong with it." but they try to go fishing for the answer (from me) and try to avoid it altogether.
For example, if someone says they know design patterns on their resume, I'll ask something like "how many instances should I create for a singleton when the application initializes". Simple question, simple answer. But most people don't get the correct answer. Some have answered "10 sounds like a good number and if you need more instances you create more when necessary". I might ask other questions relating to design patterns that expect an answer the directly conflicts with the purpose or implentation of the pattern in question. Very few answer correctly or even realize they are wrong after explaining their answer for 5 minutes.
My main point in all this is that a good architect will know the answer to most of my simple questions and will truly understand how to design software. We don't pay our architects to learn on the job, we pay them to design very complicated software. They must know what they're doing. Even moreso, they must know when to identify incorrect design implementations and assumptions and correct them appropriately. I like to get a feel for those abilities during the interview process.
Thanks,
Shawn
Your idea of a software architect is flawed. I interview people for a Sr. Developer position that says that are also an architect. Problem is, in over a year, we haven't found a single person that knows what software architecture truly is and it sounds like you don't either.
.NET/ASP.NET and Java/JSP but can't come up with any good comparitive strenths/weaknesses between both. The same "architects" know very little about clustering and load balancing but somehow feel competent in designing systems that scale to potentially millions of users.
Is software architecture all about flowcharts and design specs but the architect not a competent programmer? Not in my shop (we make insurance and accounting software). A truly competent architect will be deeply acquainted with various design methadologies, techniques, tips & tricks for that various technologies/paradigms being implemented, industry trends and will have been through quite a lot in the trenches before they can truly design a system like ours that scales to tens of thousands of concurrent users daily and millions of financial & non-financial transactions per day.
We get applications that think they are an architect because they know what the Factory or Strategy patterns are but can't write explain or write code that explains why one would use a quicksort over a bubblesort or why one would use a list traversal over a binary search for finding sorted information. The same people say they are competent in distributed architectures but can't explain when to use SOAP and WebServices instead of a custom TCP/IP server or how a message-based system works. They can't explain the difference between a Factory and an Abstract Factory or any suitable definition and implementation of the Provider and Observer design patterns. I'm not talking about rocket science. I don't expect my architects to be one with design patterns but if they put on their resume that they are expert with patterns they better impress me regarding that topic.
The same people can explain the difference between
They can't explain (or more importantly, demonstrate) very well how to both invoke and prevent against cross-site scripting attacks and SQL-Injection attacks alike. While a few applicants appeared to be well acquainted with preventing SQL injection attacks neither could write code that has the vulnerability or explain certain practices/mindsets that can contribute to both the cause and the solution to the problem. When asked how they would design a destributed component over a network, they would write "chatty" interfaces and thus, consume more resources, network bandwith, and impede performance and act surprised when asked if there was a better way.
Many have the attitude that they know everything and what they know is how they'll do anything. While not wrong if they are truly that competent, in general, a good architect will be open to new ideas and will refuse to lock themselves into a box. I don't want a COBOL architect on my team that hasn't opened their mind to newer ideas and methadologies, more importantly, an architect that full well is aware they don't know everything and always double-checks and verifies their designs/ideas are the right way vs. assuming such is the architect that gets my praise and will have the best success anywhere they go.
When asked to about transactional system (both at the database level and at via compensating resource managers for non-database transactions) only one demonstrating any understanding of the topic, problems, concerns, and good design skills relating to the topic. Others had simply avoided using transactions for the past 15 years of the "architectural" career. They don't udnerstand the nature of insurance accounting, and related banking, I suppose. About all were uncomfortable discussing transactions and transactional systems/concerns during the interview (to their defense, no one ever made a point of it on their resume either, at least; the one guy who did was truly amazing
I'm waiting for the Intel Hard-Core Extreme Edition: Keep your servers up and running all night, watch them scream.
Uhmmm... count me in.
Thanks,
Leabre
I paid for a subscription to classmates.com and still get served with tons of the most annoying adverts ever when logged in. That's just wrong. I cancelled my subscription so it won't renew next year.
This is no different. If I'm paying, then I should not be bothered with in game advertisements if they are intrusive. For example, seeing a Coke billboard or poster isn't annoying, so much, as its modeling reality. However, when the adverts become annoying or too much, or somehow, the game goes out of its way to impose the advert on you is a whole different story. Won't get my money, because they don't need it, not when advertisers are paying their way.
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Leabre
I will, just as soon as one runs for presidency.
Thanks,
Leabre
How long before it is a crime to release your own music without the assistance of a music label or music publisher? Punishable by spending a few years in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison sharing your cell with rapist and murderer? I say few years, because he'll be getting out in a few years while your still rotting away... while he committed a crime that hurt people with completely irreparable damage and traume (family and friends), the punishment for hurting corporate profits is 10x worse for somethings that is completely recoverable and harmless to anyone.
Thanks,
Leabre