You may want to look more at Multics developed in the 60's. Multics was designed from start to run on multiple CPU's. Multics did not have a primary CPU, all were created/treated the same. Every 'process' ran basically in its own "virtual machine".
So far I've gotten along fine with my handspring prizm. For all the normal things I want something portable it does or has applications that will do the functions I want. The only time I really need more I want my full function laptop.
What the original post seems to be ignoring is the amount of 'data' stored with the block of data seen by the customer. It has been many years since I last looked into this so there may well be changes but:
A block of data consists of:
header/leader: this is alignment, block id, and other control information. at least 128 bytes
block of data: the data actually seen by the user
trailer: I don't remember the length, but probably close to the size of the header, but at least 64 bytes, probably 128. includes ecc and a second block id and other control information.
so assuming you have a track with a raw capacity of 1MB, just as an example:
512 byte blocks: 1,000,000/(128+512+128) = 1,000,000/768 = 1,302 blocks = 666,624 usable bytes out of 1,000,000 or 67%
4096 byte blocks: 1,000,000/(128+4096+128) = 1,000,000/4352 = 229 blocks = 937,984 usable bytes out of 1,000,000 or 94%
so the larger blocks make mush more efficient usage of the raw space. Even if the trailer becomes 512 bytes, the new utilization is 84%
In the proprietary system I used the BaSIC language was burned in ROM as the OS, no other languages. I've worked on other systems that did not have a C compiler or were sufficiently unique that the 'generic' tools would not work. I've even seen some generic tools blow up due to some of the bad programming used and/or not be able to figure out what was going on.
I'm not saying that the person should always write their own tools. If the generic ones aren't available or don't work for whatever reason, writing some of your own to help can be a bonus in the long run.
Sometimes having tools that know more about your specific environment can be more helpful. Sometimes the information you want isn't something available from a generic tool.
There are many things I'd do and some are dependent on the language as some things make more sense in some languages and less in others.
First thing I'd do is get all the existing documentation I can find including the end user documentation of how to use the software.
I'd next try to break the software down by modules, subroutines, functions, library routines, etc. to get an idea of what does what. I'd also try to determine variable usage, such as local vs global variables and where things are defined.
If the above is not already documented I'd work on creating the documentation so I don't have to refigure things out each time I dig into the code for something.
The code style of the previous people who worked with the code can be very important. Some languages are easier to write obscured code in then others. If the code is NOT documented or the documentation is obsolete I'd start working on the inline documentation. Anyplace that the code is very obscured or poorly written I might look into rewriting so the code is easier to document and easier to read.
Don't trust any of the documentation until you've made sure it is up to date.
At one of my jobs the package I was hired to maintain, support, and enhance had been modified on a per customer basis where some varialbes had different meanings in different versions. There where some features where the feature was implimented differently in different systems to meet different customers differing and conflicting needs. In some cases the mainline module code would look the same but the differences would be hidden in the subroutines. This was made even more complicated by being a multiuser application that did its own file locking. The original application had been single user so there was more then one method of gdoing file locking, some of which was based on what files where in which 'partition'. The system only allowed locking entire 'partitions' at one time. As customer grew to need multiple disks with multiple partitions the multiuser locking would erratically fail, corrupt data or deadlock, etc.
Look for the tools people mentioned that can help you easier figure out how things work. There were no tools for the system I worked on so I had to create my own (proprietary non-standed OS and interpreted language).. My boss complained aobut some of the time I spent working on the tools until he saw how they were saving time and helping make it easier to make changes.
Don't be afraid to look for tools to make your life easier. Don't be afraid to write your own if there is a good reason to do so.
The system I worked with was about 200 programs / customer with about 200 subroutines (sometimes unique for a customer) in each system.
Does that mean any politician in and from NC would have to register, particularly if they received any money from any foreign source? How about newspapers with readers outside the US that publish any editorial about changing/making laws?
One thing no one has asked is, when were the photo's taken? They could have been taken before she was depressed. Mental illnesses I'm familiar with tend to have good days and bad days. The problem is you have little to no control over when you'll have a good day or a bad day.
Security and performance are different issues though they can overlap.
The first step for security is turn off every service not needed. For remote access use ssh, not telnet.
The first step for performance is to learn to use the various monitoring tools and how to interpret their information. Some of these are top, vmstat, sar, free, netstat, ifconfig, du, df. Depending on your flavor of os and what is installed you may have some of these. You may also have vendor specific tools as well.
Sometimes just watching the various indicator lights can give you an idea of what might be a problem, like if the disk activity light is on solid for minutes at a time.
Don't wait until you have a problem, get used to the tools, how they work, and what they display when the system is running normally.
Some problems are caused by peaks in services. The boss sends an email to everyone that includes a 1mb attachment and everyone has their mail program set to check for new mail every 10 minutes. You can have very short term problems that aren't really a problem. On the other hand, if mail is always a little slow, there could be a problem.
Throwing money at a problem won't fix it if you don't know what the real problem(s) are. Most performance issues tend to be caused more by I/O bottlenecks then by cpu. Faster disks and/or more ram tend to help more then a faster cpu in many cases.
You might want to think about some of the real classics, like Jules Verne and HG Wells.
You might want to look at authors/books that have won awards like the hugo, nebula, Campbell, etc. You may also want to check them out first a bit as some may be more suitable for juveniles then others.
Author's writings can change over time. Heinleins earlier juveniles would be great, but as you get to the lazarous long and related books some can be pretty adult.
CJ Cherry, Mercedes lackey, Bujold, most Norton, are all pretty good. Eric Flint, Devid Weber and others are good military SF as well as some general SF.
As someone suggested, try your local library, they may even have a separate SCIFI section. Many libraries do these days. If you are near a larger town/city, try them.
Vacuum is very useful in a variety of manufacturing processes. Gravity is also useful as you don't need expensive zero gravity toilets, etc. I remember reading that titanium is one of many elements available on the moon. With lots of solar energy and raw materials, I would think a moon base/colony could become self self sufficient.
In the longer term be able to provide materials to nearby space for orbital constriction easier then launching the materials from earth. The choice of material may change, but the cost could be much lower.
Going to the moon only makes sense if you look at it as a long term investment where the break even/profit is many years away. The benefits may end up being measured more from increased human knowledge then from direct financial profit.
One of the major problems large companies have with investing in R&D is the investment is always a long term process that may take years before showing a result and even longer before showing a profit.
The longer the payback time frame and/or more expensive the research, the harder it is for a business to justify the research. Look at the internet. The basic start was back in the 70's as Arpanet. Until the mid 90's most people had never heard of the internet. Now not only has almost everyone heard of the internet, almost everyone has some type of internet access. Communications satellites were science fiction until the 60's when the first one was launched.
What we really need is a federal sales tax on internet sales delivered to addresses in the US. One that prohibits states from taxing these sales. Otherwise we will have every state passing different tax laws with different rules making it a bookkeeping and reporting nightmare.
What I propose is a federal sales tax on internet commerce (with reciprocal rules for other countries that pass compatible laws.
a 5% tax that is distributed as follows:
2% goes to the federal goveernment.
2% to the state/province with the only reporting done by zip code/postal code and city
The remaining 1% is split and goes to the following purposes as needed:
part goes to FEMA/disaster relief fund so funds are already on hand, no need to wait for congress to authorize funds to help with a disaster (or maybe something like FEMA). This would be used to reimburse the DOD for disaster relief missions, emergency food and supplies, etc.
part goes to setting up public internet exchange points and transit capacity between these points.
part goes to internet R&D and deployment of new technology (like ipv6).
You are confusing two different pieces of information.
Maximum speed: This is the maximum speed the plane can reach. this is usually with afterburners on and for short periods of time. It is not a sustainable cruise speed. Many modern finghters/intercepters can exceed mach 2.5 and perhaps mach 3. They can't do this for more then a few minutes without taking damage from friction heating unless they are builit from high temperture materials like titanium.
Cruising speed: The SR-71 cruise speed is mach 3+. In fact it has problems at lower speeds as it's airframe and components are designed to fit properly only when the cruising speed heats the airframe to 'operating temperature'. The fuel tanks leak until heated by high speed flight and the parts fit. None of the other planes can cruise at mach 3+ for hours at a time.
I've heard, but not confirmed, that the SR-71 does a short high speed cruise before the first refueling after takeoff to warm up the plane to operating temperature so the fuel tanks stop leaking.
In the mid 80's I ran an email based file server useing caned software from decwrl? with some changes I made. requests were sent to the file server email address which then process the email to find requests for help, requests for files, etc. I think the package was several years old at that time.
The Multics system used source level debugging in 1977 when I wa a Multics Analyst. This was a standard feature. I suspect it was part of the original system first booted in 1969. breakpoints could be inserted by the debugger based on source into the object files. You could add code, branch around code. You could also use tools to trace how many times a line was executed as well as get an estimate of the amount of cpu time spent on each line.
The real reason T1 lines are so expensive is they are part of the regulated products from the ILEC. Last time when I ran an ISP in the mid/late 90's a T1 from Nynex/verizon was just under $500/month point to point if both points were servedby the same telco switch. If not there was an additional milage charge.
NYS has lots of local telco's from when phone service was new covering anywhere from one or two exchanges to multiple exchanges. In the next county over from where I am outside Verizon land you can get a point to point T1 for under $200/month.
The bove prices are just the telco line charge, any internet, etc access is extra.
DSL is an unregulated service so you can get a DSL line that uses more telco resources then a T1 for under $50/month.
New Ctalyst Media Center vs all-in-wonder
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AMD's New DRM
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I had my local computer shop build me a nice new XP Machine. I tried to get al All-in-wonder video card and they don't make them anymore. I finally decided on the TV wonder 650. The cards seems nice, the new catalyst media software is terrible. It Can't find all the local over the air channels due to needing to change antennae direction for some. Unlike the older Catalyst media center there is no way to manually tell it about channels that do exist even if it can't find them. The sofware takes several extra mouse clicks to get to the functions you want. You can't just make an ATI TV icon on the desktop for quick access to the TV function. The program guide interface is the worst I've ever seen. You can't eaisly get any type of gride showing what's playing other then one station at a time.
I've removed the software and installed an older PCI tv wonder card with the old media center. I'm about to start experimenting with non-ATI solutions for my video capture and tv watching needs. ATI has lost a customer. I've bought at least 6 ATI AIW cards since the old ISA days.
There is one very good reason for knowing assembly or at least looking under the hood of whatever environment yo program in. The hardware/assembly language or whatever is the next level or more down makes restrictions on what the next layer up can do. Sometimes the restrictions can be wrong so you can have a mysterious error caused by an error at a lower level. Understanding the lower level(s) can help figure out the error.
Fortran VI example:
main routine code:..... i=3 call foobar(1,2) j=2*i print i, j....
subroutiune foobar(l,m).... m=l.... return
program outputs: 3 3
knowing what goes on in the compiler will tell you what happened;) NOTE: this may not be true ofevery fortran compiler.
I think I can reply to this having both an Engineering degree (Computer and Systems Engineering (I started as electrical)) and a CS degree (both from www.rpi.edu). Comments apply to my experience and knowledge in the US and specifically New York State.
There is a significant difference in how engineers and CS approach problems. As has been pointed out, Engineers (depending on the field) have hundreds of years of past experience. In some fields, the default method is someone does the design and at least one other engineer reviews the design before it is implimented, in some cases several engineers. With civil engineering things like buildings and bridges at least one PE (Professional Engineer) has approved the plans. In general this is at a minimum standard practice and for public buildings/bridges/etc often mandatory by law. In addition, most projects have some form of government inspection done while the project is underway.
CS is still so new that the favorite language is usually the favorite language of the decade.in the 60's/70's the big ones were Fortan, Cobol, and Pl/1. 80's/90's had C as the big new language, C++/Perl in the 90's and now java. Along the way lots of other languages came and went or are used more in special purpose areas like SNOBOL, LISP, Pascel, Ada, and many more. Computer Science professors tend to push their favorite language of the semester. Usually for some esoteric pure science type reason having nothing to do with being practical.
Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 weere in general developed/designed by either engineers or business people to solve practical problems and insure that problems could either be avoided or readily found. C, C++, and from what I've seen java all have alot of builtin gotcha's that can be very hard to track down, particularly C++/Java as so much work is left to the compiler that the programmer may not know if a bug is in his program or the compiler or the documentation for the compiler/language. With Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 there is a very easy to associate one to one corespondence between the lines of code in the language and the machine code produced.
These 3 languages are designed to solve real world problems. Cobol is designed to handle financial data, Fortran to handle scientific/engineering calculations, PL/1 is designed to handle both with Cobol equivalent data types for financial data and Fortran data types for Engineering/Scientific plus some additional types to make programming easier to both read as well as document. PL/1 also added programmer control over many errors (events) and allowed the programmer to override the system default when/as needed.
The addition of the STL for C++ will hopefully be a big help there so there is alot less rolling your own for things done well in the STL. I haven't studied C++ recently so I've only heard of the STL.
C, perl, C++, and I assume java lend themselves very readily to obfuscted programming contests. This can be done in any language, but those languages tend to encourage many programmers to do this type of coding on a more regular basis.
Another difference is there is alot more emphases on documenting things including the 'chain' of authority then in programming. Other then at NASA and DOD there is alot less code review and debugging done then there should be and alot more of the programming is sloppy. In some cases this is preassure from management to get the job done quickly. Some know they are asking for a lower quality product, others don't.
Another problem with many software projects is management can't see the work progress as with some projects there is nothing that will work until you get to the 70% to 90% completed part. Well we've got 20MB of source, 50MB of documentation, but we've still got another 2MB or code to write before we can start running any demos or testing. With most engineering projects there is some type of progress you can see: The architecte shows concepts, the customer selects one or works with the architec until they like the concep
One of the problems that is occuring now is installing some of these programs. They may not list all the other programs you need first. This causes installs to fail for various reasons, missing header files, missing libraries, incompatable compiler options, incorrect versions of things.
It can be a nightmare with some programs tracking down all the dependencies. I've been there with several flavors of *nix and also with windows.
As reuse of code and/or code fragments becomes more and more common the problems with getting all the right stuff that is presumed to be installed located and installed to make life happy.
In the US this is what Title insurance is all about. If you get title insurance when you purchase a house, the title insurance company will guarentee you have clear title to the property. If someone comes along later and shows any type of problem, such as the seller was not the real owner at the time or the building or part of it is not in compliance with the terms/conditions of the deed, the title company will correct things. I don't remember the details as it has been too long since I last read through the title insurance paperwork.
I guess the author never heard of CTSS running multics-user at MIT. I don't know the exact dates but it ran on the older IBM 7094/7096 systems. I think it was written in the late 50's.
This is my biggest complaint and the reason, besides being poor at the moment, I have avoided buying any new games. I have too many games I can't play anymore as I've lost the install media during a move. I've written the maker about getting a new install/key media in a couple cases for old games I still would like to play and have received no response. I figure if the company won't respond to requests for help in replacing old failed/lost required media why should I reward them by buying anything from them now? If they maybe would release an update a couple years after the game release that would fix the game so you no longer needed the install media for copy protection I'd be more interested in buying games at stores rather then via online download.
I don't pirate games or software. The problems with copy protection and tracking install media and haivng to have specific types of drives for the media to be recognized (you need a cd drive, the DVD burner isn't recognized by the copy protection) means many games just no longer work. It's become too much hassle.
I use several computers (w2k, xp, linux) via a KVM switch as I tend to do alot of data crunching (video) at times. Depending on which machine is crunching data determines which one may be free for gaming. I'd prefer to be able to use whichever one is free for gaming since most of the games don't like to compete with data crunching. It is even worse when I'm doing video capture since I don't want to loose frames when doing tape conversions for professors.
If this outlaws all analog to digital conversions, does this also outlow all digital cameras, webcams, video cameras as they take in an analog signal (light) and convert it to digital?
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You may want to look more at Multics developed in the 60's. Multics was designed from start to run on multiple CPU's. Multics did not have a primary CPU, all were created/treated the same. Every 'process' ran basically in its own "virtual machine".
So far I've gotten along fine with my handspring prizm. For all the normal things I want something portable it does or has applications that will do the functions I want. The only time I really need more I want my full function laptop.
What the original post seems to be ignoring is the amount of 'data' stored with the block of data seen by the customer. It has been many years since I last looked into this so there may well be changes but:
A block of data consists of:
header/leader: this is alignment, block id, and other control information. at least 128 bytes
block of data: the data actually seen by the user
trailer: I don't remember the length, but probably close to the size of the header, but at least 64 bytes, probably 128. includes ecc and a second block id and other control information.
so assuming you have a track with a raw capacity of 1MB, just as an example:
512 byte blocks: 1,000,000/(128+512+128) = 1,000,000/768 = 1,302 blocks = 666,624 usable bytes out of 1,000,000 or 67%
4096 byte blocks: 1,000,000/(128+4096+128) = 1,000,000/4352 = 229 blocks = 937,984 usable bytes out of 1,000,000 or 94%
so the larger blocks make mush more efficient usage of the raw space. Even if the trailer becomes 512 bytes, the new utilization is 84%
In the proprietary system I used the BaSIC language was burned in ROM as the OS, no other languages. I've worked on other systems that did not have a C compiler or were sufficiently unique that the 'generic' tools would not work. I've even seen some generic tools blow up due to some of the bad programming used and/or not be able to figure out what was going on.
I'm not saying that the person should always write their own tools. If the generic ones aren't available or don't work for whatever reason, writing some of your own to help can be a bonus in the long run.
Sometimes having tools that know more about your specific environment can be more helpful. Sometimes the information you want isn't something available from a generic tool.
There are many things I'd do and some are dependent on the language as some things make more sense in some languages and less in others.
First thing I'd do is get all the existing documentation I can find including the end user documentation of how to use the software.
I'd next try to break the software down by modules, subroutines, functions, library routines, etc. to get an idea of what does what. I'd also try to determine variable usage, such as local vs global variables and where things are defined.
If the above is not already documented I'd work on creating the documentation so I don't have to refigure things out each time I dig into the code for something.
The code style of the previous people who worked with the code can be very important. Some languages are easier to write obscured code in then others. If the code is NOT documented or the documentation is obsolete I'd start working on the inline documentation. Anyplace that the code is very obscured or poorly written I might look into rewriting so the code is easier to document and easier to read.
Don't trust any of the documentation until you've made sure it is up to date.
At one of my jobs the package I was hired to maintain, support, and enhance had been modified on a per customer basis where some varialbes had different meanings in different versions. There where some features where the feature was implimented differently in different systems to meet different customers differing and conflicting needs. In some cases the mainline module code would look the same but the differences would be hidden in the subroutines. This was made even more complicated by being a multiuser application that did its own file locking. The original application had been single user so there was more then one method of gdoing file locking, some of which was based on what files where in which 'partition'. The system only allowed locking entire 'partitions' at one time. As customer grew to need multiple disks with multiple partitions the multiuser locking would erratically fail, corrupt data or deadlock, etc.
Look for the tools people mentioned that can help you easier figure out how things work. There were no tools for the system I worked on so I had to create my own (proprietary non-standed OS and interpreted language).. My boss complained aobut some of the time I spent working on the tools until he saw how they were saving time and helping make it easier to make changes.
Don't be afraid to look for tools to make your life easier. Don't be afraid to write your own if there is a good reason to do so.
The system I worked with was about 200 programs / customer with about 200 subroutines (sometimes unique for a customer) in each system.
Does that mean any politician in and from NC would have to register, particularly if they received any money from any foreign source? How about newspapers with readers outside the US that publish any editorial about changing/making laws?
Does this mean a community can rule the bible obscene and ban any and all mention of the bible on the net?
Best idea yet in this discussion. I'm pretty sure I could do a better job.
I'm also going to have to rewatch my Blake's 7 videos. Maybe a Blake's 7 weekend ;)
One thing no one has asked is, when were the photo's taken? They could have been taken before she was depressed. Mental illnesses I'm familiar with tend to have good days and bad days. The problem is you have little to no control over when you'll have a good day or a bad day.
Security and performance are different issues though they can overlap.
The first step for security is turn off every service not needed. For remote access use ssh, not telnet.
The first step for performance is to learn to use the various monitoring tools and how to interpret their information. Some of these are top, vmstat, sar, free, netstat, ifconfig, du, df. Depending on your flavor of os and what is installed you may have some of these. You may also have vendor specific tools as well.
Sometimes just watching the various indicator lights can give you an idea of what might be a problem, like if the disk activity light is on solid for minutes at a time.
Don't wait until you have a problem, get used to the tools, how they work, and what they display when the system is running normally.
Some problems are caused by peaks in services. The boss sends an email to everyone that includes a 1mb attachment and everyone has their mail program set to check for new mail every 10 minutes. You can have very short term problems that aren't really a problem. On the other hand, if mail is always a little slow, there could be a problem.
Throwing money at a problem won't fix it if you don't know what the real problem(s) are. Most performance issues tend to be caused more by I/O bottlenecks then by cpu. Faster disks and/or more ram tend to help more then a faster cpu in many cases.
You might want to think about some of the real classics, like Jules Verne and HG Wells.
You might want to look at authors/books that have won awards like the hugo, nebula, Campbell, etc. You may also want to check them out first a bit as some may be more suitable for juveniles then others.
Author's writings can change over time. Heinleins earlier juveniles would be great, but as you get to the lazarous long and related books some can be pretty adult.
CJ Cherry, Mercedes lackey, Bujold, most Norton, are all pretty good. Eric Flint, Devid Weber and others are good military SF as well as some general SF.
As someone suggested, try your local library, they may even have a separate SCIFI section. Many libraries do these days. If you are near a larger town/city, try them.
Vacuum is very useful in a variety of manufacturing processes. Gravity is also useful as you don't need expensive zero gravity toilets, etc. I remember reading that titanium is one of many elements available on the moon. With lots of solar energy and raw materials, I would think a moon base/colony could become self self sufficient.
In the longer term be able to provide materials to nearby space for orbital constriction easier then launching the materials from earth. The choice of material may change, but the cost could be much lower.
Going to the moon only makes sense if you look at it as a long term investment where the break even/profit is many years away. The benefits may end up being measured more from increased human knowledge then from direct financial profit.
One of the major problems large companies have with investing in R&D is the investment is always a long term process that may take years before showing a result and even longer before showing a profit.
The longer the payback time frame and/or more expensive the research, the harder it is for a business to justify the research. Look at the internet. The basic start was back in the 70's as Arpanet. Until the mid 90's most people had never heard of the internet. Now not only has almost everyone heard of the internet, almost everyone has some type of internet access. Communications satellites were science fiction until the 60's when the first one was launched.
What we really need is a federal sales tax on internet sales delivered to addresses in the US. One that prohibits states from taxing these sales. Otherwise we will have every state passing different tax laws with different rules making it a bookkeeping and reporting nightmare.
What I propose is a federal sales tax on internet commerce (with reciprocal rules for other countries that pass compatible laws.
a 5% tax that is distributed as follows:
2% goes to the federal goveernment.
2% to the state/province with the only reporting done by zip code/postal code and city
The remaining 1% is split and goes to the following purposes as needed:
part goes to FEMA/disaster relief fund so funds are already on hand, no need to wait for congress to authorize funds to help with a disaster (or maybe something like FEMA). This would be used to reimburse the DOD for disaster relief missions, emergency food and supplies, etc.
part goes to setting up public internet exchange points and transit capacity between these points.
part goes to internet R&D and deployment of new technology (like ipv6).
part goes to basic R&D grants/NSF.
You are confusing two different pieces of information.
Maximum speed: This is the maximum speed the plane can reach. this is usually with afterburners on and for short periods of time. It is not a sustainable cruise speed. Many modern finghters/intercepters can exceed mach 2.5 and perhaps mach 3. They can't do this for more then a few minutes without taking damage from friction heating unless they are builit from high temperture materials like titanium.
Cruising speed: The SR-71 cruise speed is mach 3+. In fact it has problems at lower speeds as it's airframe and components are designed to fit properly only when the cruising speed heats the airframe to 'operating temperature'. The fuel tanks leak until heated by high speed flight and the parts fit. None of the other planes can cruise at mach 3+ for hours at a time.
I've heard, but not confirmed, that the SR-71 does a short high speed cruise before the first refueling after takeoff to warm up the plane to operating temperature so the fuel tanks stop leaking.
In the mid 80's I ran an email based file server useing caned software from decwrl? with some changes I made. requests were sent to the file server email address which then process the email to find requests for help, requests for files, etc. I think the package was several years old at that time.
The Multics system used source level debugging in 1977 when I wa a Multics Analyst. This was a standard feature. I suspect it was part of the original system first booted in 1969.
breakpoints could be inserted by the debugger based on source into the object files. You could add code, branch around code. You could also use tools to trace how many times a line was executed as well as get an estimate of the amount of cpu time spent on each line.
The real reason T1 lines are so expensive is they are part of the regulated products from the ILEC. Last time when I ran an ISP in the mid/late 90's a T1 from Nynex/verizon was just under $500/month point to point if both points were servedby the same telco switch. If not there was an additional milage charge.
NYS has lots of local telco's from when phone service was new covering anywhere from one or two exchanges to multiple exchanges. In the next county over from where I am outside Verizon land you can get a point to point T1 for under $200/month.
The bove prices are just the telco line charge, any internet, etc access is extra.
DSL is an unregulated service so you can get a DSL line that uses more telco resources then a T1 for under $50/month.
I had my local computer shop build me a nice new XP Machine. I tried to get al All-in-wonder video card and they don't make them anymore. I finally decided on the TV wonder 650. The cards seems nice, the new catalyst media software is terrible. It Can't find all the local over the air channels due to needing to change antennae direction for some. Unlike the older Catalyst media center there is no way to manually tell it about channels that do exist even if it can't find them. The sofware takes several extra mouse clicks to get to the functions you want. You can't just make an ATI TV icon on the desktop for quick access to the TV function. The program guide interface is the worst I've ever seen. You can't eaisly get any type of gride showing what's playing other then one station at a time.
I've removed the software and installed an older PCI tv wonder card with the old media center. I'm about to start experimenting with non-ATI solutions for my video capture and tv watching needs. ATI has lost a customer. I've bought at least 6 ATI AIW cards since the old ISA days.
There is one very good reason for knowing assembly or at least looking under the hood of whatever environment yo program in. The hardware/assembly language or whatever is the next level or more down makes restrictions on what the next layer up can do. Sometimes the restrictions can be wrong so you can have a mysterious error caused by an error at a lower level. Understanding the lower level(s) can help figure out the error.
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Fortran VI example:
main routine code:
i=3
call foobar(1,2)
j=2*i
print i, j
subroutiune foobar(l,m)
m=l
return
program outputs: 3 3
knowing what goes on in the compiler will tell you what happened
NOTE: this may not be true ofevery fortran compiler.
I think I can reply to this having both an Engineering degree (Computer and Systems Engineering (I started as electrical)) and a CS degree (both from www.rpi.edu). Comments apply to my experience and knowledge in the US and specifically New York State.
There is a significant difference in how engineers and CS approach problems. As has been pointed out, Engineers (depending on the field) have hundreds of years of past experience. In some fields, the default method is someone does the design and at least one other engineer reviews the design before it is implimented, in some cases several engineers. With civil engineering things like buildings and bridges at least one PE (Professional Engineer) has approved the plans. In general this is at a minimum standard practice and for public buildings/bridges/etc often mandatory by law. In addition, most projects have some form of government inspection done while the project is underway.
CS is still so new that the favorite language is usually the favorite language of the decade.in the 60's/70's the big ones were Fortan, Cobol, and Pl/1. 80's/90's had C as the big new language, C++/Perl in the 90's and now java. Along the way lots of other languages came and went or are used more in special purpose areas like SNOBOL, LISP, Pascel, Ada, and many more. Computer Science professors tend to push their favorite language of the semester. Usually for some esoteric pure science type reason having nothing to do with being practical.
Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 weere in general developed/designed by either engineers or business people to solve practical problems and insure that problems could either be avoided or readily found. C, C++, and from what I've seen java all have alot of builtin gotcha's that can be very hard to track down, particularly C++/Java as so much work is left to the compiler that the programmer may not know if a bug is in his program or the compiler or the documentation for the compiler/language. With Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 there is a very easy to associate one to one corespondence between the lines of code in the language and the machine code produced.
These 3 languages are designed to solve real world problems. Cobol is designed to handle financial data, Fortran to handle scientific/engineering calculations, PL/1 is designed to handle both with Cobol equivalent data types for financial data and Fortran data types for Engineering/Scientific plus some additional types to make programming easier to both read as well as document. PL/1 also added programmer control over many errors (events) and allowed the programmer to override the system default when/as needed.
The addition of the STL for C++ will hopefully be a big help there so there is alot less rolling your own for things done well in the STL. I haven't studied C++ recently so I've only heard of the STL.
C, perl, C++, and I assume java lend themselves very readily to obfuscted programming contests. This can be done in any language, but those languages tend to encourage many programmers to do this type of coding on a more regular basis.
Another difference is there is alot more emphases on documenting things including the 'chain' of authority then in programming. Other then at NASA and DOD there is alot less code review and debugging done then there should be and alot more of the programming is sloppy. In some cases this is preassure from management to get the job done quickly. Some know they are asking for a lower quality product, others don't.
Another problem with many software projects is management can't see the work progress as with some projects there is nothing that will work until you get to the 70% to 90% completed part. Well we've got 20MB of source, 50MB of documentation, but we've still got another 2MB or code to write before we can start running any demos or testing. With most engineering projects there is some type of progress you can see: The architecte shows concepts, the customer selects one or works with the architec until they like the concep
One of the problems that is occuring now is installing some of these programs. They may not list all the other programs you need first. This causes installs to fail for various reasons, missing header files, missing libraries, incompatable compiler options, incorrect versions of things.
It can be a nightmare with some programs tracking down all the dependencies. I've been there with several flavors of *nix and also with windows.
As reuse of code and/or code fragments becomes more and more common the problems with getting all the right stuff that is presumed to be installed located and installed to make life happy.
In the US this is what Title insurance is all about. If you get title insurance when you purchase a house, the title insurance company will guarentee you have clear title to the property. If someone comes along later and shows any type of problem, such as the seller was not the real owner at the time or the building or part of it is not in compliance with the terms/conditions of the deed, the title company will correct things. I don't remember the details as it has been too long since I last read through the title insurance paperwork.
I guess the author never heard of CTSS running multics-user at MIT. I don't know the exact dates but it ran on the older IBM 7094/7096 systems. I think it was written in the late 50's.
This is my biggest complaint and the reason, besides being poor at the moment, I have avoided buying any new games. I have too many games I can't play anymore as I've lost the install media during a move. I've written the maker about getting a new install/key media in a couple cases for old games I still would like to play and have received no response. I figure if the company won't respond to requests for help in replacing old failed/lost required media why should I reward them by buying anything from them now? If they maybe would release an update a couple years after the game release that would fix the game so you no longer needed the install media for copy protection I'd be more interested in buying games at stores rather then via online download.
I don't pirate games or software. The problems with copy protection and tracking install media and haivng to have specific types of drives for the media to be recognized (you need a cd drive, the DVD burner isn't recognized by the copy protection) means many games just no longer work. It's become too much hassle.
I use several computers (w2k, xp, linux) via a KVM switch as I tend to do alot of data crunching (video) at times. Depending on which machine is crunching data determines which one may be free for gaming. I'd prefer to be able to use whichever one is free for gaming since most of the games don't like to compete with data crunching. It is even worse when I'm doing video capture since I don't want to loose frames when doing tape conversions for professors.
If this outlaws all analog to digital conversions, does this also outlow all digital cameras, webcams, video cameras as they take in an analog signal (light) and convert it to digital?