the shutdown thing so that the computer came back to the same state after a shutdown that it was in before, then I'd shut my computer off at night. The way it is, I often have 5 minutes to get something off the computer and run out the door. If I have to wait 3.5 minutes for the thing to boot up then it won't happen, so I leave it running 24/7.
I know of the swsup program, but it isn't included in the stock kernel, and the only available patch is for an old version of the kernel. Besides, if I change it, then security patches will no longer work.
So, why are the kernel hackers resistant to this technology? If they are doing it for their own pleasure on their own machines for their own machines, why is an instant reboot feature not included? Why is 16 way multiprocessor support more important than instant shutdown and reboot to a hacker with one computer? My guess is that Linus, et.al., actually do know on which side the bread is buttered.
All the talk seems to be about either a union or non at all. We're smarter than the average button pusher/machine watcher over at the steel mill. Why can't we find a better solution to our problems using the technology we love so much?
The biggest problems I've heard expressed here as a reason why tech needs unions are:
1) unrealistic hours
2) pay that is not as high as it should be
The main reason not to unionize is that a tech worker can walk next door to get a job at any time. This argument is quickly countered with the idea that individuals don't make enough of a difference to force a change.
The problem boils down to that the individuals do not work in concert to sway management. Unions fix this, but impose their own overbearing 'management' in the process. I pose this question: Would tech workers work in concert if the had the same expectations of their workplace?
For instance, many here report being 'expected' to work 12/7 for weeks on end. I find this appalling, as do many others, but yet this poor slob is told, "that's tech work." But what if there is a way for the poor slob to show his manager that 12/7 is not normal in any way, and that professional workers do not find those requirements 'professional' in any way?
There has been some moves to form a programmer's guild. If one of these guilds posted sample contracts that listed what are reasonable pay and expectations for workers, would it produce change? Specifically, could the poor slob show that to his manager, say," Hell, no!" to his manager when asked to work ridiculous hours, and resonably expect that no other poor slob would step in to take his position after being fired? Could the existance of such a standard of conduct and expectations reasonably be expected to convince the manager that he won't be able to find anyone to fill a position with unreasonable requirements?
My take on the situation is that tech workers are being taken advantage of because they are young, inexperienced and just don't know any better. I think the situation could easily be rectified if we informally banded together to agree on broad expectations of pay and working conditions. Then the college grad could look at the "What to expect from work" website before the job hunt, and not settle for third world sweatshop working conditions.
Having experienced full 1080i I'll never go back to regular TV.
Down with analog TV.
Unless you have tried it, don't bitch or you'll be a fool.
I haven't tried it, but I'll bitch about it anyway and not be a fool. I've got DTV (mainly so that I don't have to worry about returning tapes on time when I want to rent a movie), but I switch over to regular broadcast every Tuesday to get my fill of Buffy and Angel, since DTV doesn't broadcast the WB.
Guess what. HDTV and all the other new, expensive, 'better' display technologies can kiss my ass. There I am, with my snowy reception through a pair of rabbit ears, completely engrossed in the story line, plot, and character development of the only show that makes TV worth the electricity. I'm totally oblivious to the snowy picture.
Why is that? For the same reason that my kids enjoy me reading them "The Chronicles of Narnia" more than they like the Cartoon Network. A movie/show that is about telling a good story will always beat out 2 hours of eye candy. HDTV does nothing to improve the situation of the good script writers and actors. It just make the execs think that all a movie needs is something blowing up or a clearer picture of some singer's half exposed buttocks.
I go back a forth between the digital DTV and regular broadcast on a regular basis, and I can say with a straight face that I don't give a damn which I have. Just put something worth watching on the signal. At that point, the technology really won't matter.
Crusaders like Bush-buddy William Bennett and Vice-President Cheney have long and loudly argued that the Net is rife with pornography and violent imagery,
And how is this false? About the only dot coms making any money are the ones selling porn. Why would anyone looking at the situation from the outside think anything different that what the Bush clan think? Hell, why would anyone from the inside think anything different?
Look for the FBI to be given broader authority to track dangerous and illegal activities online and creater a "safer" environment in which businesses can operate.
And how is tracking dangerous and illegal activities a disaster? If you mean that the FBI will be given leave to offend civil liberties, then say so. I personally think the FBI will be called out by civil liberty groups when they break the law.
Bush's education reforms, both in Texas, and as outlined in Washington this week, centered on literary and standardized testing and accountability. They don't deal with technology, perhaps more educationally significant in the long run.
Jon, are you stupid. How is giving a kid a computer more important than make damn sure that he can read. Yeah, that is just what we need; more kids who think they are journalist because they can use a spelling and grammar checker.
The ocean is full of gold, but no one has made a fortune off of it because the cost of collection exceeds the worth. The gold is dissolved in the water, and to get it you have to find a way to precipitate it out without getting all the other salts.
There are a lot of unused cycles out there, but they are cheap and so finely dissolved that the extraction process isn't viable.
I agree totally. The author gave the example of needing to complete a quarterly report in a timely manner. Large companies buy mainframes to do quarterly reports, not because of processing power, but because of their throughput. Huge datapipelines that make RAID-5 SCSI look like a straw. The actual processing is usually very small (add up the numbers we give you).
The cost to buy and maintain the bandwidth needed to push the data out to distributed resources would be more than the cost of a mainframe.
I don't have all the numbers to fill this in, but here's a try.
The technology is aiming to be available 5 yrs from now (notice how long shots are always 5 yrs out)
The latest generation of microprocessors have around ?20?million transistors. 5yrs will give us 3 more doublings (assuming Moore's Law holds), so will be looking at replicationg 160mil transistors for the processor. 1Gig of Ram, add another billion. All the other circuitry, lets just make it simple and say that an average computer will have 1.5billion transistors in 2005.
A magazine has around 200 pages. So each page of this computer will have to hold something like 7.5million transistors (assuming an even distribution).
Assuming they can print at 300dpi (which I believe is high for mass printing) on 8inx11in media gives
300x8x300x11 = 7.92 million
This may look like it will pass until you consider that a transistor will take more than a pixel and then consider inter-transistor wiring. If this is enough they will barely be cutting the edge unless:
-they can print at higher resolution
-they can print more pages
I don't see the need anyway. Computers are cheap now. You can get one for $100. What's expensive are the latest processors, and they're not expensive because of production cost. It's recapturing the engineering cost that drives up the price. This will only produce $15 computers if someone is willing to pay $500million for the first one.
I see companies all the the time starting programs to make work more social. Here this:
Work is not a place to make friends.
It may happen that you'll make friends with coworkers, and that's nice, but should not be expected. Work is not a social club. If you don't believe me, spend half of tomorrow playing board games with your 'friends' and see how long it is before your boss tells you the same thing.
If these people are friends, they'll be your friends after you work elsewhere. If the only thing making them friends is the coincidence that you are forced together by a mutual need to put bread on the table, I would rather classify them as aquaintances.
I left IBM for various reasons, but I still have friends there. One in particular is afraid to leave because everyone likes her there. She is underpaid and overworked. She can easily do much better elsewhere, but she doesn't want to lose her "friends". It's dumb and I've told her so.
When you choose to enlist as a foot soldier, don't complain when the enemy decides to use its tanks.
So long as it is economically viable for the junk mailers to send out the stuff, so long as they're at least getting something out of it, then they will continue to do so.
So, if I can make your job so bad that you quit and no one else will take it, the jer^H^H^H"powers-that-be" will have to open their own mail. This will most likely be the point that it is no longer viable economically.
Get this straight. I wish to make your job as difficult as possible. I wish to make the telemarketer's job as difficult as possible. I wish to make the spammer's job as difficult as possible. Eventually, no one will take these jobs, and the world will be the better for it. These tactics are not the most effective tool, but it is the only way in which I can get you all to leave me alone.
How tough would it be to create a Perl script to run in Windoze that could detect your existing hardware configs
My guess...very.(tough that is).
Configuring hardware under Windows is VERY difficult and fault prone with very strange behaviours. Device conflicts and hardware peculuarities are often ignored, only to pop up in the strangest places. My Windows config works (mostly), but looking at their configuration GUI shows some devices duplicated with an exclamation point on one. Deleting the one cause the computer not to work, so I leave it alone.
Relying on this information to configure a Linux system would propogate bad info.
but my boss tells me that we have 2yrs of work to do by July. Optimize code? Hell, as soon as something looks as if it might possibly work one day it is ripped from my hands, stamped with Version 1.0 and shipped to the customer. I'm told that 'we'll fix it later', but there is another list of features that are slated for the next release (December).
I do code as the author suggest at home on my own projects. I'll rework a program at the drop of a hat if I see or hear of a better way. But, at work, and I'm sure this holds for the vast majority of programmers, code is considered optimized when it works correctly on 95% of a regression test set.
the guy makes a big show of talking about how the integrated boards are underperforming value systems, but then doesn't supply a point of reference in his benchmarks. These leaves of lot of his statements unsupported unless I go and look up results for the exact same benchmarks on other types of hardware (not very likely).
If you're going to state that hardware category X doesn't perform as well as hardware category Y in a review of hardware category Y then you should show at least one benchmark for both in order to put things in perspective. It tends to give the number a little more meaning.
The problem with stylish cases is that they often limit your ability to upgrade. HP and Compaq often have proprietary motherboards, riser cards or power supplies that put a halt to any thought of upgrading in the future. The companies become the only place for upgrade parts, they know it and charge accordingly. I much prefer to stick with generic parts and retain the pleasure of being able to shop around for upgrades.
This doesn't mean that you can't make a cool generic case, it just means that a no-name biege case guarantees an open upgrade path.
Why, oh why, can't the credit reporting agencies be sued for slander?
They will continue the current practice for as long as it is profitable to do so. Their system now is to take whatever information companies pay them to take and dump it into a database. Proof and error checking be damned. They just say, "We're not responsible."
Well, if I go around spreading lies, I am responsible, doubly so if I do it without even attempting to verify any facts.
Unfortunately, those denied credit are generally those who can't afford to launch a legal attack against a well funded opponent.
Spend about $300 on a stereo. I got a nice Sony combo unit from Circuit City for around $350. I paid extra because of the 50+1 CD changer.
Spend the other $1000 in good alcoholic beverages.
Drink large amounts of the beverages.
You're system will sound just as good as everyone elses, your dick will be the same lenght as it was before, and if you're lucky you might have a jolly good time.
Didn't the author say that this is a question that needs study?
We have both enterprise-scale and small-business scale versions, but neither would survive long as a procedural app.
And your still a software house building apps for other businesses. The software you produce is your product, so you expect to extend and improve upon it. You don't expect to throw it away at the end of the quarter/project/fiscal year. It wouldn't last long as a procedural app, but the authors point was that most of the software he has been commissioned to produce doesn't last long...period.
Moreover, the enterprise "niche" is the greater part of the software market.
Your point being...?
There's no reason to object-orient the shitty little linux apps that you use, since they are usually 1-2 wannabe code monkeys writing bad C++.
OK. A personal attack. So if someone disagrees with you then their applications are shitty and they are code monkeys. Or is it that when someone buys the hype and uses the it-applies-to-everything sledge hammer to build a picture frame and ends up with a mess, then they are wannabe carpenters. Oh, and by the way, Chevy's suck.
Any multi-employee project requires the kind of abstraction that only OOP provides.
So you're saying that there are no large projects except those using OOP techniques?
I read as much of the article as I could stomach before his baseless graphs and lack of data made me stop, but I saw enough to know an Epsilon Minus Semi-Moron trying to sound academic.
You couldn't stomach what he had to say because it challenged your close minded view of the world. The author didn't present data, because (as he repeatedly pointed out) there is no data to present. OOP is hyped as the next big thing, but no one has studied the parameters of when, why, and where it is successful in any meaningful way. He stessed at the start of the article that he was presenting his view of the world and where he was oriented in order to have that view. His article was a data point and asked questions. Scientist and academics don't just present data, they also gather, analyze and question data and assumptions. Assholes and idiots, on the other hand, resort to name calling and flaming when their ideas of their own superiority is called into question.
It was a pathetic article, and anyone with a college degree and a smidgen of programming experience would tell you the same thing. It certainly provided a lot of laughs in my office.
There are a lot of people with college degrees and lots of programming experience who would say that it is a quite well thought out article. Many with the same credentials would say that the article is mediocre flaimbait. Either way, if this is what produces laughs in your office, then you need counseling.
Overall, the author tried to point out that no language is appropriate for all projects and tried to set parameters where one language/style of programming would be better than others. Of course, some people who only know OOP, believe that OOP solves everything and get upset when someone suggest differently.
If you have something that somebody else is willing to buy, well, that's an asset.
So, someone is willing to buy a stolen TV. If I steal yours, then go bankrupt, will the bankruptcy court hold that I be allowed to sell your TV to pay my debts? Remember, possession is 9/10ths of the law, but it is only 9/10ths.
"You're sworn to sell whatever assets you have and give it to the creditors. You're caught between a rock and a hard place," Leahy said.
But that information is not an asset, because the company doesn't have complete control over it. If I put my name in that pot, it would have been under an agreement between Toysmart and myselft that stipulates that my name would not be sold. That contract does not change under bankruptcy proceedings does it? They don't own my information, they've only been given leave to hold it for a while. If a bank goes under, can it take all the deposits and hand it out to creditors? If one of those companies that provide small storage spaces goes out of business, are they suddenly allowed to open all the shed and start auctioning off what they find?
You can't call something you don't own an asset, and I think the bankruptcy court erred when it assumed that Toysmarts marketing list was under the companies control.
I work in a software company, and our product takes up no less than 300 MB of code. Even in the most well-organized non-OOP code, our software would be impossible to debug or even build, because we would need to go through hundreds of lines of code. In addition, reusability would be hurt, since even though the functions would be there, minor changes in the arguments might make the entire function worthless.
And your niche is the specific case that the author spent considerable time excusing from his argument. The niche he talked about was the small business application that would not be expected to last more than 3 years. He specifically stated that large applications written by software houses for others were the province of OOP and OOD.
Read the article before making a fool of yourself in an open forum.
To get people to change what their actions, usually requires that you have a stick to beat them with. The stick is usually made up of some sort of power over things that the person cares about. Where does your power to affect change within the standards come from?
It is assumed that certain media conglomerates are responsible for this bug. Where does there power to move the hardware manufacturers come from?
Finally, do the manufacturers even care what Open Source advocates have to say, and if so what is the most effective way for Open Source advocates to provide input?
There have been a few stories on/. about new strains of bacteria that will feast on things like heavy metals and such. What's the feasibility of a machine that trawls a landfill for specific materials? Line these together in a train, each car feeding a single engine that simply pulls the train around the landfill. The train pulls into a depot where it gets to defecate valuable materials for reclaimation and deadly materials for proper disposal. The whole thing should be very low maintainance.
It seems the general consensus among white, male tech workers is that they belong in the industry. If they are up for a promotion against an equally skilled minority, of COURSE they should get the promotion, because they're automatically more skilled. Because the majority of tech managers are ALSO white, this attitude is perpetuated.
Let's set the record straight: My racial group does not choose to be less educated...we simply don't always have access to the same resources growing up as whites. That can't possibly be understood by someone who's never attended public school in a major city (I'm from Detroit). I took freshman EECS with 3 hundred white guys that had been taking C classes since the 9th grade, and the only exposure I'd had to any form of high-level programming was self-taught. Poor K-12 education == Poor SAT/ACT!= quality higher education. This uneven playing field is the reason for the small numbers of us in the tech industry.
First you complain that racism comes from white people's misguided assumptions, then you argue why those assumptions are true. I don't get the promotion because they think I'm not as good. That's wrong. I'm not as good because I didn't have enough of a chance!!
I'm American Indian. My race has no political power and almost no representation anywhere other than Alchoholics Anonymous meetings. In high school I was ostracized by both white and black groups, and that didn't leave much to choose from. Yes, I'm discriminated against. My name went to the top of most companies hiring list since my race looks very good on their quotas.
Yes, that's right quotas. All the race mongers claim that no one wants to enforce quotas, it being a diry word and all, but here we see the lawyers using a percentage of workforce in a court case. Companies see this and realize that if they are to survive such lawsuits they have to make sure that they have that percentage in the workforce. Hence, quotas.
I went to a 'historically black college'. It was the most pathetic excuse for an educational institution that I had attended (I attended 4 post high schools institutions). Grades were given out, and professors fired for failing students that deserved it. Incompetent 'teachers' were retained because they had once been tight with Martin Luther King. Academic standards were a joke. But everyone who graduated got a job. Why? A black man with a degree is a valuable commodity. They may not ever be promoted, but they are on the roles and help to ensure that the company has a shield against $5B lawsuits.
This is the reason that 'white, male tech workers' feel 'they're automatically more skilled'. They don't know you, but they know the group that you identify yourself with. Since birds of a feather flock together, they assume that you are as pathetic as a large percentage of the people I graduated with. The assumption is that you were given the job to meet a percentage.
If you don't want to be associated with these people, do like I do and lie about your race...a different lie each time someone ask...and don't ever tell the truth...and act like you're upset if someone guesses the truth...keep them guessing, and make sure that they know that you are lying. The point being that you don't let anyone associate you with anyone but yourself. Eventually no one will care about what you are and will start concentrating on who you are.
Why are the two exlusionary? Why can't you have a beautiful bootup screen that has a window that scrolls the bootup messages? You get a nice looking bootup, and the useful information.
In fact why can't we add in sound to the bootup process? A good deep sci-fi voice would inform the user during the booting process:
"Your sound device has been configured and is online."
"Now configuring video interfaces."
"Video has been optimized for maximum speed/resolution/?."
"Now configuring hard drive interfaces"
"Maximum boot count reached. Checking disk for possible errors."
"All disk have valid filesystems."
"Hard drives have been optimized for maximum performance"
"Web server has been started"
"Networking file system is online."
"Unable to mount a network filesystem. Bootup will continue. Please review log files."
etc.
Completely and totally useless waste of electricity, but it would give the newbies out there the feeling that their computers were smarter than the Windows boxes ("Heh, my computer tells me what it is doing."), and a nice reassuring feeling that everything is working. It would also make the bootup 'feel' faster (though it would actually be slower), and it would let me do something else during bootup and still be informed if something went wrong.
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the shutdown thing so that the computer came back to the same state after a shutdown that it was in before, then I'd shut my computer off at night. The way it is, I often have 5 minutes to get something off the computer and run out the door. If I have to wait 3.5 minutes for the thing to boot up then it won't happen, so I leave it running 24/7.
I know of the swsup program, but it isn't included in the stock kernel, and the only available patch is for an old version of the kernel. Besides, if I change it, then security patches will no longer work.
So, why are the kernel hackers resistant to this technology? If they are doing it for their own pleasure on their own machines for their own machines, why is an instant reboot feature not included? Why is 16 way multiprocessor support more important than instant shutdown and reboot to a hacker with one computer? My guess is that Linus, et.al., actually do know on which side the bread is buttered.
All the talk seems to be about either a union or non at all. We're smarter than the average button pusher/machine watcher over at the steel mill. Why can't we find a better solution to our problems using the technology we love so much?
The biggest problems I've heard expressed here as a reason why tech needs unions are:
1) unrealistic hours
2) pay that is not as high as it should be
The main reason not to unionize is that a tech worker can walk next door to get a job at any time. This argument is quickly countered with the idea that individuals don't make enough of a difference to force a change.
The problem boils down to that the individuals do not work in concert to sway management. Unions fix this, but impose their own overbearing 'management' in the process. I pose this question: Would tech workers work in concert if the had the same expectations of their workplace?
For instance, many here report being 'expected' to work 12/7 for weeks on end. I find this appalling, as do many others, but yet this poor slob is told, "that's tech work." But what if there is a way for the poor slob to show his manager that 12/7 is not normal in any way, and that professional workers do not find those requirements 'professional' in any way?
There has been some moves to form a programmer's guild. If one of these guilds posted sample contracts that listed what are reasonable pay and expectations for workers, would it produce change? Specifically, could the poor slob show that to his manager, say," Hell, no!" to his manager when asked to work ridiculous hours, and resonably expect that no other poor slob would step in to take his position after being fired? Could the existance of such a standard of conduct and expectations reasonably be expected to convince the manager that he won't be able to find anyone to fill a position with unreasonable requirements?
My take on the situation is that tech workers are being taken advantage of because they are young, inexperienced and just don't know any better. I think the situation could easily be rectified if we informally banded together to agree on broad expectations of pay and working conditions. Then the college grad could look at the "What to expect from work" website before the job hunt, and not settle for third world sweatshop working conditions.
Having experienced full 1080i I'll never go back to regular TV.
Down with analog TV.
Unless you have tried it, don't bitch or you'll be a fool.
I haven't tried it, but I'll bitch about it anyway and not be a fool. I've got DTV (mainly so that I don't have to worry about returning tapes on time when I want to rent a movie), but I switch over to regular broadcast every Tuesday to get my fill of Buffy and Angel, since DTV doesn't broadcast the WB.
Guess what. HDTV and all the other new, expensive, 'better' display technologies can kiss my ass. There I am, with my snowy reception through a pair of rabbit ears, completely engrossed in the story line, plot, and character development of the only show that makes TV worth the electricity. I'm totally oblivious to the snowy picture.
Why is that? For the same reason that my kids enjoy me reading them "The Chronicles of Narnia" more than they like the Cartoon Network. A movie/show that is about telling a good story will always beat out 2 hours of eye candy. HDTV does nothing to improve the situation of the good script writers and actors. It just make the execs think that all a movie needs is something blowing up or a clearer picture of some singer's half exposed buttocks.
I go back a forth between the digital DTV and regular broadcast on a regular basis, and I can say with a straight face that I don't give a damn which I have. Just put something worth watching on the signal. At that point, the technology really won't matter.
Crusaders like Bush-buddy William Bennett and Vice-President Cheney have long and loudly argued that the Net is rife with pornography and violent imagery,
And how is this false? About the only dot coms making any money are the ones selling porn. Why would anyone looking at the situation from the outside think anything different that what the Bush clan think? Hell, why would anyone from the inside think anything different?
Look for the FBI to be given broader authority to track dangerous and illegal activities online and creater a "safer" environment in which businesses can operate.
And how is tracking dangerous and illegal activities a disaster? If you mean that the FBI will be given leave to offend civil liberties, then say so. I personally think the FBI will be called out by civil liberty groups when they break the law.
Bush's education reforms, both in Texas, and as outlined in Washington this week, centered on literary and standardized testing and accountability. They don't deal with technology, perhaps more educationally significant in the long run.
Jon, are you stupid. How is giving a kid a computer more important than make damn sure that he can read. Yeah, that is just what we need; more kids who think they are journalist because they can use a spelling and grammar checker.
The ocean is full of gold, but no one has made a fortune off of it because the cost of collection exceeds the worth. The gold is dissolved in the water, and to get it you have to find a way to precipitate it out without getting all the other salts.
There are a lot of unused cycles out there, but they are cheap and so finely dissolved that the extraction process isn't viable.
I agree totally. The author gave the example of needing to complete a quarterly report in a timely manner. Large companies buy mainframes to do quarterly reports, not because of processing power, but because of their throughput. Huge datapipelines that make RAID-5 SCSI look like a straw. The actual processing is usually very small (add up the numbers we give you).
The cost to buy and maintain the bandwidth needed to push the data out to distributed resources would be more than the cost of a mainframe.
...but most of all, remember that your labor is a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder.
I don't have all the numbers to fill this in, but here's a try.
The technology is aiming to be available 5 yrs from now (notice how long shots are always 5 yrs out)
The latest generation of microprocessors have around ?20?million transistors. 5yrs will give us 3 more doublings (assuming Moore's Law holds), so will be looking at replicationg 160mil transistors for the processor. 1Gig of Ram, add another billion. All the other circuitry, lets just make it simple and say that an average computer will have 1.5billion transistors in 2005.
A magazine has around 200 pages. So each page of this computer will have to hold something like 7.5million transistors (assuming an even distribution).
Assuming they can print at 300dpi (which I believe is high for mass printing) on 8inx11in media gives
300x8x300x11 = 7.92 million
This may look like it will pass until you consider that a transistor will take more than a pixel and then consider inter-transistor wiring. If this is enough they will barely be cutting the edge unless:
-they can print at higher resolution
-they can print more pages
I don't see the need anyway. Computers are cheap now. You can get one for $100. What's expensive are the latest processors, and they're not expensive because of production cost. It's recapturing the engineering cost that drives up the price. This will only produce $15 computers if someone is willing to pay $500million for the first one.
I see companies all the the time starting programs to make work more social. Here this:
Work is not a place to make friends.
It may happen that you'll make friends with coworkers, and that's nice, but should not be expected. Work is not a social club. If you don't believe me, spend half of tomorrow playing board games with your 'friends' and see how long it is before your boss tells you the same thing.
If these people are friends, they'll be your friends after you work elsewhere. If the only thing making them friends is the coincidence that you are forced together by a mutual need to put bread on the table, I would rather classify them as aquaintances.
I left IBM for various reasons, but I still have friends there. One in particular is afraid to leave because everyone likes her there. She is underpaid and overworked. She can easily do much better elsewhere, but she doesn't want to lose her "friends". It's dumb and I've told her so.
When you choose to enlist as a foot soldier, don't complain when the enemy decides to use its tanks.
So long as it is economically viable for the junk mailers to send out the stuff, so long as they're at least getting something out of it, then they will continue to do so.
So, if I can make your job so bad that you quit and no one else will take it, the jer^H^H^H"powers-that-be" will have to open their own mail. This will most likely be the point that it is no longer viable economically.
Get this straight. I wish to make your job as difficult as possible. I wish to make the telemarketer's job as difficult as possible. I wish to make the spammer's job as difficult as possible. Eventually, no one will take these jobs, and the world will be the better for it. These tactics are not the most effective tool, but it is the only way in which I can get you all to leave me alone.
How tough would it be to create a Perl script to run in Windoze that could detect your existing hardware configs
My guess...very.(tough that is).
Configuring hardware under Windows is VERY difficult and fault prone with very strange behaviours. Device conflicts and hardware peculuarities are often ignored, only to pop up in the strangest places. My Windows config works (mostly), but looking at their configuration GUI shows some devices duplicated with an exclamation point on one. Deleting the one cause the computer not to work, so I leave it alone.
Relying on this information to configure a Linux system would propogate bad info.
but my boss tells me that we have 2yrs of work to do by July. Optimize code? Hell, as soon as something looks as if it might possibly work one day it is ripped from my hands, stamped with Version 1.0 and shipped to the customer. I'm told that 'we'll fix it later', but there is another list of features that are slated for the next release (December).
I do code as the author suggest at home on my own projects. I'll rework a program at the drop of a hat if I see or hear of a better way. But, at work, and I'm sure this holds for the vast majority of programmers, code is considered optimized when it works correctly on 95% of a regression test set.
the guy makes a big show of talking about how the integrated boards are underperforming value systems, but then doesn't supply a point of reference in his benchmarks. These leaves of lot of his statements unsupported unless I go and look up results for the exact same benchmarks on other types of hardware (not very likely).
If you're going to state that hardware category X doesn't perform as well as hardware category Y in a review of hardware category Y then you should show at least one benchmark for both in order to put things in perspective. It tends to give the number a little more meaning.
The problem with stylish cases is that they often limit your ability to upgrade. HP and Compaq often have proprietary motherboards, riser cards or power supplies that put a halt to any thought of upgrading in the future. The companies become the only place for upgrade parts, they know it and charge accordingly. I much prefer to stick with generic parts and retain the pleasure of being able to shop around for upgrades.
This doesn't mean that you can't make a cool generic case, it just means that a no-name biege case guarantees an open upgrade path.
Why, oh why, can't the credit reporting agencies be sued for slander?
They will continue the current practice for as long as it is profitable to do so. Their system now is to take whatever information companies pay them to take and dump it into a database. Proof and error checking be damned. They just say, "We're not responsible."
Well, if I go around spreading lies, I am responsible, doubly so if I do it without even attempting to verify any facts.
Unfortunately, those denied credit are generally those who can't afford to launch a legal attack against a well funded opponent.
Spend about $300 on a stereo. I got a nice Sony combo unit from Circuit City for around $350. I paid extra because of the 50+1 CD changer.
Spend the other $1000 in good alcoholic beverages.
Drink large amounts of the beverages.
You're system will sound just as good as everyone elses, your dick will be the same lenght as it was before, and if you're lucky you might have a jolly good time.
How do you use the Freedom of Information Act to make information more difficult to obtain?
Lawyers never cease to amaze me.
How small is a small business app?
Didn't the author say that this is a question that needs study?
We have both enterprise-scale and small-business scale versions, but neither would survive long as a procedural app.
And your still a software house building apps for other businesses. The software you produce is your product, so you expect to extend and improve upon it. You don't expect to throw it away at the end of the quarter/project/fiscal year. It wouldn't last long as a procedural app, but the authors point was that most of the software he has been commissioned to produce doesn't last long...period.
Moreover, the enterprise "niche" is the greater part of the software market.
Your point being...?
There's no reason to object-orient the shitty little linux apps that you use, since they are usually 1-2 wannabe code monkeys writing bad C++.
OK. A personal attack. So if someone disagrees with you then their applications are shitty and they are code monkeys. Or is it that when someone buys the hype and uses the it-applies-to-everything sledge hammer to build a picture frame and ends up with a mess, then they are wannabe carpenters. Oh, and by the way, Chevy's suck.
Any multi-employee project requires the kind of abstraction that only OOP provides.
So you're saying that there are no large projects except those using OOP techniques?
I read as much of the article as I could stomach before his baseless graphs and lack of data made me stop, but I saw enough to know an Epsilon Minus Semi-Moron trying to sound academic.
You couldn't stomach what he had to say because it challenged your close minded view of the world. The author didn't present data, because (as he repeatedly pointed out) there is no data to present. OOP is hyped as the next big thing, but no one has studied the parameters of when, why, and where it is successful in any meaningful way. He stessed at the start of the article that he was presenting his view of the world and where he was oriented in order to have that view. His article was a data point and asked questions. Scientist and academics don't just present data, they also gather, analyze and question data and assumptions. Assholes and idiots, on the other hand, resort to name calling and flaming when their ideas of their own superiority is called into question.
It was a pathetic article, and anyone with a college degree and a smidgen of programming experience would tell you the same thing. It certainly provided a lot of laughs in my office.
There are a lot of people with college degrees and lots of programming experience who would say that it is a quite well thought out article. Many with the same credentials would say that the article is mediocre flaimbait. Either way, if this is what produces laughs in your office, then you need counseling.
Overall, the author tried to point out that no language is appropriate for all projects and tried to set parameters where one language/style of programming would be better than others. Of course, some people who only know OOP, believe that OOP solves everything and get upset when someone suggest differently.
If you have something that somebody else is willing to buy, well, that's an asset.
So, someone is willing to buy a stolen TV. If I steal yours, then go bankrupt, will the bankruptcy court hold that I be allowed to sell your TV to pay my debts? Remember, possession is 9/10ths of the law, but it is only 9/10ths.
"You're sworn to sell whatever assets you have and give it to the creditors. You're caught between a rock and a hard place," Leahy said.
But that information is not an asset, because the company doesn't have complete control over it. If I put my name in that pot, it would have been under an agreement between Toysmart and myselft that stipulates that my name would not be sold. That contract does not change under bankruptcy proceedings does it? They don't own my information, they've only been given leave to hold it for a while. If a bank goes under, can it take all the deposits and hand it out to creditors? If one of those companies that provide small storage spaces goes out of business, are they suddenly allowed to open all the shed and start auctioning off what they find?
You can't call something you don't own an asset, and I think the bankruptcy court erred when it assumed that Toysmarts marketing list was under the companies control.
I work in a software company, and our product takes up no less than 300 MB of code. Even in the most well-organized non-OOP code, our software would be impossible to debug or even build, because we would need to go through hundreds of lines of code. In addition, reusability would be hurt, since even though the functions would be there, minor changes in the arguments might make the entire function worthless.
And your niche is the specific case that the author spent considerable time excusing from his argument. The niche he talked about was the small business application that would not be expected to last more than 3 years. He specifically stated that large applications written by software houses for others were the province of OOP and OOD.
Read the article before making a fool of yourself in an open forum.
To get people to change what their actions, usually requires that you have a stick to beat them with. The stick is usually made up of some sort of power over things that the person cares about. Where does your power to affect change within the standards come from?
It is assumed that certain media conglomerates are responsible for this bug. Where does there power to move the hardware manufacturers come from?
Finally, do the manufacturers even care what Open Source advocates have to say, and if so what is the most effective way for Open Source advocates to provide input?
One step further.
/. about new strains of bacteria that will feast on things like heavy metals and such. What's the feasibility of a machine that trawls a landfill for specific materials? Line these together in a train, each car feeding a single engine that simply pulls the train around the landfill. The train pulls into a depot where it gets to defecate valuable materials for reclaimation and deadly materials for proper disposal. The whole thing should be very low maintainance.
There have been a few stories on
It seems the general consensus among white, male tech workers is that they belong in the industry. If they are up for a promotion against an equally skilled minority, of COURSE they should get the promotion, because they're automatically more skilled. Because the majority of tech managers are ALSO white, this attitude is perpetuated.
Let's set the record straight: My racial group does not choose to be less educated...we simply don't always have access to the same resources growing up as whites. That can't possibly be understood by someone who's never attended public school in a major city (I'm from Detroit). I took freshman EECS with 3 hundred white guys that had been taking C classes since the 9th grade, and the only exposure I'd had to any form of high-level programming was self-taught. Poor K-12 education == Poor SAT/ACT!= quality higher education. This uneven playing field is the reason for the small numbers of us in the tech industry.
First you complain that racism comes from white people's misguided assumptions, then you argue why those assumptions are true. I don't get the promotion because they think I'm not as good. That's wrong. I'm not as good because I didn't have enough of a chance!!
I'm American Indian. My race has no political power and almost no representation anywhere other than Alchoholics Anonymous meetings. In high school I was ostracized by both white and black groups, and that didn't leave much to choose from. Yes, I'm discriminated against. My name went to the top of most companies hiring list since my race looks very good on their quotas.
Yes, that's right quotas. All the race mongers claim that no one wants to enforce quotas, it being a diry word and all, but here we see the lawyers using a percentage of workforce in a court case. Companies see this and realize that if they are to survive such lawsuits they have to make sure that they have that percentage in the workforce. Hence, quotas.
I went to a 'historically black college'. It was the most pathetic excuse for an educational institution that I had attended (I attended 4 post high schools institutions). Grades were given out, and professors fired for failing students that deserved it. Incompetent 'teachers' were retained because they had once been tight with Martin Luther King. Academic standards were a joke. But everyone who graduated got a job. Why? A black man with a degree is a valuable commodity. They may not ever be promoted, but they are on the roles and help to ensure that the company has a shield against $5B lawsuits.
This is the reason that 'white, male tech workers' feel 'they're automatically more skilled'. They don't know you, but they know the group that you identify yourself with. Since birds of a feather flock together, they assume that you are as pathetic as a large percentage of the people I graduated with. The assumption is that you were given the job to meet a percentage.
If you don't want to be associated with these people, do like I do and lie about your race...a different lie each time someone ask...and don't ever tell the truth...and act like you're upset if someone guesses the truth...keep them guessing, and make sure that they know that you are lying. The point being that you don't let anyone associate you with anyone but yourself. Eventually no one will care about what you are and will start concentrating on who you are.
Why are the two exlusionary? Why can't you have a beautiful bootup screen that has a window that scrolls the bootup messages? You get a nice looking bootup, and the useful information.
In fact why can't we add in sound to the bootup process? A good deep sci-fi voice would inform the user during the booting process:
"Your sound device has been configured and is online."
"Now configuring video interfaces."
"Video has been optimized for maximum speed/resolution/?."
"Now configuring hard drive interfaces"
"Maximum boot count reached. Checking disk for possible errors."
"All disk have valid filesystems."
"Hard drives have been optimized for maximum performance"
"Web server has been started"
"Networking file system is online."
"Unable to mount a network filesystem. Bootup will continue. Please review log files."
etc.
Completely and totally useless waste of electricity, but it would give the newbies out there the feeling that their computers were smarter than the Windows boxes ("Heh, my computer tells me what it is doing."), and a nice reassuring feeling that everything is working. It would also make the bootup 'feel' faster (though it would actually be slower), and it would let me do something else during bootup and still be informed if something went wrong.