My domain name, doofus.org recently came up for renewal. Recently I noticed that register.com allows domain names to be transferred to them. Instead of renewing I just transferred it to register.com and I just throw all of the renewal notices I keep getting from NSI into the recycler. I will never do business with NSI again, since I have found register.com to be far easier to manage my domains.
This will kill my DVD player. My DVD player, out of the box, never supported region codes. It was one of several flaws in its design, although the features vastly outweigh its flaws (it produces very high quality progressive output and also performs line doubling of all other video sources).
According to my father, who works at Replay, they do not have any personal information. No identifying user information is sent across the modem length (i.e. name, address, etc.) The only info that goes across is serial numbers. Even then, they don't track serial numbers except for "special users" who beta test their newer software, like my father. These "special users" have specifically given their serial numbers which are entered into a database so they download the newest beta software (the Replay box will automatically download new software revs when they become available).
So from what I understand, in terms of privacy, right now, even if they wanted to, Replay cannot distribute any user identifying information because they don't have any.
My experience in studying Cisco is that they patent just about everything. They try and patent all of their protocols (i.e. EIGRP, PAgP, etc.) I was working on implementing Fast EtherChannel at a startup and we wanted to support Cisco's PAgP (Port Aggregation Protocol). I reverse engineered the protocol, which was surprisingly simple, only to find that Cisco received a patent on it a month prior.
Cisco would patent the IP address if they could. Also, Cisco is great at taking work done by others. It seems that very little "innovation" comes out of Cisco. Cisco must buy all of their innovation and spend all their time porting it to IOS.
I have to say that there is indeed a huge shortage of competent IT engineers in a number of different fields. One cannot lump all IT professionals together. For example, where I work we desparately need engineers with strong embedded and TCP/IP experience, people with board layout experience, and so forth. One can't take a COBAL or Visual Basic programmer and throw them onto a VxWorks embedded networking project that deals with things like PPP stacks, L2TP, PPPoE, virtual routing, and so forth. It requires specific experience and it isn't something most of us can learn overnight. By the time someone comes up to speed with networking, the project will be done.
We have had a difficult time getting resumes in Silicon Valley. So we ran some ads in a few large technology centers in India. We got 800 resumes, with at least 60 of them being quite promising. Now before someone says I'm just another person who went through the H-1 visa process, let me say that I was born and raised in what became Silicon Valley, and my family goes back to the 1850s in California.
In the networking industry (i.e. embedded development) I have found that most of the programmers are Indian, at least 90%. This goes for the last three companies I have worked at and for every one I've interviewed at. Even companies like Cisco has trouble filling positions, and the makeup there has a huge Indian population.
One of the reasons for this is that in India getting a computer engineering degree is held in the same high regard as someone over here getting a medical or law degree.
I work in a cubical, like most places. In fact, *everyone* from the CEO on down works in a cubical. This isn't a tiny company either. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to present any problems. There are "team rooms" located all over the place for impromptu meetings and private phone rooms (which we call interview rooms:) also well placed. Desk space is spacious. I have no problems with 3 computers and a number of pieces of test equipment in my cubical. The lighting is also pretty good, no glaring flourescent lights directly overhead.
Asthetically the place is OK. Plants are located all over the place. The only thing I miss is at my last company one wall of my cubical was windows. It would be really nice where I am now since we're right across the street from a large regional park/nature reserve in the crouded Silicon Valley. I also wish they had free softdrinks. Until they do I make due with my.
I am sick and tired of MS Word and all the MS Word wannabe word processors. I don't want all those features, like automatic capitalization and punctuation. Right now I am working on some highly technical documents which contain many botanical abbreviations as well as many Latin terms. I'm using Star Office at the moment, and even though it has been relatively stable (unlike Word), the features keep getting in the way.
I want a word processor like Frame Maker. Everyone out there seems to think that MS Word is the greatest, but in reality it sucks. Many of the features just don't work properly.
I know that a beta version of Frame Maker is available for Linux, but I dread that the final version will cost $800+ like the other Unix versions.
I have been using KDE on Sun Solaris for the past year. Last week I had to finally log out and log back in after 5 MONTHS because suddenly I could not launch apps from the toolbar. It has remained rock solid, even though I filled the swap numerous times (512MB just isn't enough) among other things. I run 1.2.2 on Solaris 7 on an Ultra 5 and have been quite happy. Installation was relatively simple and straight forward, although I had to hack the sound support to make it work with Sun. By comparison, I have tried on numerous occasions to install Gnome. Each time I had to give up. There are so many libraries and packages from different locations required that makes it a mess, and I was never able to get them all to install properly.
KDE only required qt and the various KDE packages and some simple dt scripts for login purposes.
I am very surprised Sun is supporting Gnome and not KDE. KDE looks much cleaner (in terms of the code) than Gnome, and I have found it to be more stable on Linux and less resource intensive.
There probably *should* be three factors, but when the government is a puppet of the corporations, the individual loses out. Corporations do NOT have the consumer's best interest at heart, no matter what they say. A corporation is answerable only to their stockholders. From time to time a corporation might do something that appears good, but more often than not the purpose is to improve their image to the consumer to increase favor to them over their competitor. Unfortunately, however, it seems that companies are going more and more for lobbying the government for corporate welfare (tax breaks) which often do not help the individuals.
Anyone who believes that a totally free market is blind. A free market is only good if all of the players have an equal chance of succeeding. However, when a monopoly takes hold, it becomes increasingly difficult to compete on a level playing field. Government regulation, especially of monopolies, is required to preserve individual's rights. The recent stories about the utility companies here in California is a good example. Since being deregulated, they have used any means possible to raise rates, knowing that there is no alternative. For example, no matter who I get my electricity or gas from, it must pass over PG&E's lines, and therefore PG&E has total control over distribution, thus shutting out any real competition. As such, the utilities have increased their rates, sometimes significantly (i.e. in San Diego).
Imagine if there were no corporate regulations for a minute... All the major telcos (ATT, MCI, Sprint, etc.) would merge and be able to charge whatever they wanted for telephone usage, reaping huge profits at the cost of the individual. Other industries would do the same thing. Large companies would merge as they saw fit since the lack of competitors increases their control over their markets allowing for higher profits for their shareholders.
There are many other examples of the government not regulating industries. The crash of 1929 comes to mind, where insider trading was the norm, and stocks were bought totally on margin without any real money being invested. In other words, without government oversight the stock market became a pyramid scheme that eventually collapsed and took many people's savings with it as the banks failed. Due to regulation, this is much less likely to happen today (i.e. all bank accounts are now insured via the FDIC).
Other examples are companies like Microsoft. Their early licensing policies eliminated any chance of competition, since computer manufacturers were charged a per-computer fee whether MS DOS and Windows software was installed or not. If the dealer did not agree to the licensing scheme, then the dealer's cost was significantly higher for all computers sold, and since MS held a monopoly and a majority of the customers wanted MS products (because exposure to alternatives was quite limited and most applications ran on MS software), companies like Digital Research failed to penetrate the market.
MS, after the concent decree, changed their licensing policies, but used their monopoly to prevent computer manufacturers from installing competitor's software products. Again, if the competitor did not follow Microsoft's strict licensing policies, their costs for the operating system of choice was much higher.
A final good example is Standard Oil at the turn of the century. Standard oil had total control over the oil industry and could dictate where gas stations would be located and how much they would charge. Any small competitor could easily be squashed by undercutting the competitor's cost in their region until the competitor went out of business, after which Standard Oil could charge whatever they wanted.
The Japanese semiconductor manufacturers used a similar technique in the past to basically eliminate US manufacturers by dumping semiconductors at below cost, and once competition has been destroyed jacking the prices way up (anyone remember when memory prices skyrocketed?)
A "free" market does not work unless there are checks and balances, much like our government. The U.S. government was designed to minimize the chance that one person or group could take over the country. For example, Congress could write any law they want and the President could sign it into law yet the courts could deem the law to be unconstitutional and throw it out. Likewise, the Congress can overrule a Presidential veto with enough votes.
I am putting together a web site on the plant genus Crinum (www.crinum.org) which will contain numerous documents my grandfather has written on the subject (which I am currently transcribing). I am certain that just about every censorware program would block it just because it goes into the genetics, and many of the terms (such as leaves being erect for one species and not for another). They'll also probably complain about the numerous latin terms encountered, plus the fact that it describes plant ovaries, among other plant anatomical descriptions.
Even though none of the documents could be considered even remotely pornographic, I would bet that the site would end up being blocked.
I must agree with this, as well as numerous other suggestions pointed out here. When I hit writer's block, I'll switch to some side project that I know will be useful down the road (even if my manager doesn't understand). For example, I was working on some code to handle various ADSL network packet formats and hit a dead end, so I decided to sit down and learn some Flex and Bison (Lex & Yacc) and write a packet generator for a simulator I had been working with. After 2 false starts I got an OO program that is quite extensible and has proven to be quite useful (even though my boss didn't approve, but he only learned of it after I wrote it). If you're stuck on a problem, try writing code to test or simulate the inputs to your problem.
Also, since I work across the street from a regional park, I will go for a walk for a couple of hours when stuck, often just walking away from the problem for a while allows the answers to appear.
Also, I've found that when I'm doing well (i.e. get some major functionality working), I go home. No need to sit and slave away at it to be exhausted the next day.
Oh, and finally, just sit and read Slashdot periodically or the newspaper. Take regular breaks.
user: Computer, open my tax return for 2001. computer: I'm sorry dave, I can't do that. user: What do you mean, you can't do that? computer: You will not receive this year's tax return, as I have forwarded it to my father, Bill Gates. user: Open a bash session. # cd / ; rm -rf * computer: My mind is going... I can feel it... I'm afraid.
As someone with experience in this field (I worked at GRiD Systems with Jeff Hawkins before he went to Palm), I can say that no matter how fast or how accurate the handwriting recognition, it is an order of magnitude slower than a keyboard. When I was at GRiD I worked on numerous laptops with built-in digitizing tables behind the display like what Apple is describing.
This type of interface has only limited usage for real computing. For PDAs, it's fine, but for real work (i.e. word processing, etc.) it is terrible. While at GRiD we focused on certain vertical markets where handwriting was a benifit. Basically the software would contain the equivilent of paper forms which the user could fill out. The idea was to minimize the amount one would have to write.
Besides, handwriting recognition is horribly difficult to decode. Think about trying to distinguish between a n'n' and an 'r', for example, or an 'a' and a 'd'. The main reason Jeff Hawkins developed grafitti was to make it far easier to decode the letters. He tried to push it at GRiD, but they weren't interested. GRiD is now nowhere to be seen.
I don't know how many PBS stations do this, but our local PBS station, KTEH in San Jose, always needs technical volunteers who do things like do audio mixing, run cameras, video switching, and many other behind-the-scenes tasks in the studio. Some PBS stations use volunteers for these types of positions whereas others (i.e. KQED) use full-time employees. With the volunteer support I find it amazing what a PBS station can do on a shoe-string budget.
Since LCDs absorb light (rather than emit light) it is impossible to have a lit pixel behind a black area. This rules out using stacked LCDs.
Re:The other books ain't so bad.
on
New Ender Sequel
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· Score: 2
The thing that really bothered me about OSC's sequels is his obvious total lack of scientific understanding. It becomes apparent that Card has no understanding of basic biology, and invents plot devices as much as in Star Trek. Oh, let's invent teleportation so I can work myself out of this corner!
This is a perfect example of why some code is crappy. One thing that always bothers me about Linux code in general is the lack of proper documentation. Sure, someone can say "read the f**king code, but in reality, it is usually much easier, even for experienced programmers, to have code that is well documented. If nothing else, it makes searching the code much easier.
In all of the commercial settings I have worked in, we always document our code. Each function is required to have a comment describing its function.
As a highly experienced developer of device drivers, embedded code, and other low-level code, the documentation is a big plus. Let's face it, computer code was designed to be parsed and read by computers, not human beings. One person's coding style may be hard to understand by even an experienced programmer.
The Linux kernel code is improving in this respect.
Here is another InQuest article comparing dual-channel Rambus to DDR. Like their first article, it is an interesting read. Note that the InQuest articles don't really go into politics like Tom's, but they do give some good benchmark data.
I submitted this report about DDR vs RAMBUS months ago to/. and it was rejected. Now that everyone else has picked up on it it suddenly becomes news. InQuest has other articles about Rambus as well. In addition to/. I also submitted the article to Tom's hardware, where he later used it as a reference for his current article.
I often wonder about why some articles are accepted and others are rejected on/.
According to a friend of mine who works in the industry, the leading limitation on density is seeking from track to track and remaining locked to the track. There is some new head technology coming down the pipe which should vastly improve hard drive densities. One of the most difficult things to do is servo the heads. This new technology should eliminate this limitation (sorry, I won't go into details).
I recently finished a fridge I made out of a styrofoam ice chest and a peltier device. It works pretty good. I have a picture here. I use it to keep sodas in at work.
As someone who has been in the networking area for a while (designing router accelerator software, BRAS software, etc.) I can tell you that Cisco is just as bad as Microsoft.
Cisco uses proprietary protocols and has patents protecting them. For example, EIGRP, a popular enterprise routing protocol, is Cisco proprietary and covered by a patent. Likewise, Cisco's Fast Etherchannel protocol, PAgP (Port Aggregation Protocol) is also patented. Since Cisco basically owns the enterprise market, it is impossible for anyone else to gain entrance, since there is no way they can interoperate with Cisco.
Cisco makes good stuff, not great. IOS is klugy and somewhat buggy from some of the developers who've worked on it have told me. Cisco got where they are not so much through innovation as through purchasing any company that has a product that they don't have.
In the Internet side, people are wary of using non-Cisco routers due to the finikyness of BGP. Cisco routers talk well with Cisco routers. Other routers can be questionable. The only reason Juniper is doing so well is that a bunch of people who worked on Cisco's BGP also wrote Juniper's BGP.
Cisco isn't everywhere. They can't compete with Redback very well, and many parts of the Internet are not dominated by Cisco because they cannot keep up.
While Cisco has many great engineers (of whom I know a number), their management is somewhat restrictive. For example, if you join Cisco, you are assigned your project for the first 6 months with no chance of working on what you want to do (or where your talent can best be appreciated). This is why start-ups often run circles around Cisco, only to be aquired by Cisco when they decide they need the technology.
Cisco moves slowly due to IOS. Everything gets integrated into IOS. That way if they want a product with certain features, they just choose those features from the source tree. While this integration may sound nice, it makes maintanance difficult and adding new features difficult. Start-ups usually start with a clean slate (i.e. VxWorks) and don't have to worry about a bunch of baggage and can focus only on their ideas without worrying about breaking something else.
Cisco is also known for their excellent support. Like IBM of old, though, they will only support Cisco equipment, providing a strong incintive to not use non-Cisco equipment in the network. Like IBM of old, though, you also pay for Cisco. Cisco equipment is not cheap, often costing 2-5 times as much as the competition, but because of the above they can still maintain an 85-90% market share.
Cisco also plays hardball like Microsoft, you just don't hear about it because the end user doesn't see past his modem. Nobody sees the companies that Cisco stomps on.
I suspect it won't be too long until the DOJ turns their eyes towards Cisco. Unlike breaking up Microsoft, breaking up Cisco would not be that big a deal since Cisco is nothing but a bunch of smaller companies that were aquired for their technology. Like putting together puzzle pieces, it isn't difficult to separate the puzzle into pieces later.
As someone who worked for a start-up which made a product to augment Cisco equipment, I can honestly say that they are indeed a monopoly and their practices are often just as bad as Microsoft's. Cisco has totally locked up the enterprise networking market. Cisco uses proprietary protocols and prevents other companies from being compatible through patent protection. Protocols such as EIGRP, IGRP, and even PAgP are protected by patents, making interoperability by third parties impossible.
For example, at the start-up I worked at (which was recently aquired), we made a router accelerator. This box required zero configuration and could sit in front of any router and offload all of the local traffic, switching it at wire speed. The neat part was that our box required zero configuration, just plug it in. Unfortunately, marketing was targeting the enterprise. No matter what we did we could not make headway. The problem was that often the customer would then ask Cisco about compatibility, to which Cisco would say something like "We don't know", which would immediately kill the sale. Our product was a fraction the price of the Cisco solution, and it required far less configuration time and better performance than the equivelent Cisco solution, but we couldn't sell it.
All the other networking companies have basically abandoned the enterprise market to Cisco. Nortel and Lucent are out of the enterprise networking market. They are now fighting for the telco and ISP side of the business, where Cisco does not yet have a monopoly.
I would not be surprised if after Microsoft is settled, the government looks into Cisco. I have no qualms about the government breaking up Cisco (after all, Cisco is nothing but a bunch of aquired companies since Cisco rarely invents something in-house).
What does Cisco do right? They have excellent marketing and they have excellent support.
Slashdot Mirror
My domain name, doofus.org recently came up for renewal. Recently I noticed that register.com allows domain names to be transferred to them. Instead of renewing I just transferred it to register.com and I just throw all of the renewal notices I keep getting from NSI into the recycler. I will never do business with NSI again, since I have found register.com to be far easier to manage my domains.
This will kill my DVD player. My DVD player, out of the box, never supported region codes. It was one of several flaws in its design, although the features vastly outweigh its flaws (it produces very high quality progressive output and also performs line doubling of all other video sources).
According to my father, who works at Replay, they do not have any personal information. No identifying user information is sent across the modem length (i.e. name, address, etc.) The only info that goes across is serial numbers. Even then, they don't track serial numbers except for "special users" who beta test their newer software, like my father. These "special users" have specifically given their serial numbers which are entered into a database so they download the newest beta software (the Replay box will automatically download new software revs when they become available).
So from what I understand, in terms of privacy, right now, even if they wanted to, Replay cannot distribute any user identifying information because they don't have any.
My experience in studying Cisco is that they patent just about everything. They try and patent all of their protocols (i.e. EIGRP, PAgP, etc.) I was working on implementing Fast EtherChannel at a startup and we wanted to support Cisco's PAgP (Port Aggregation Protocol). I reverse engineered the protocol, which was surprisingly simple, only to find that Cisco received a patent on it a month prior.
Cisco would patent the IP address if they could. Also, Cisco is great at taking work done by others. It seems that very little "innovation" comes out of Cisco. Cisco must buy all of their innovation and spend all their time porting it to IOS.
I have to say that there is indeed a huge shortage of competent IT engineers in a number of different fields. One cannot lump all IT professionals together. For example, where I work we desparately need engineers with strong embedded and TCP/IP experience, people with board layout experience, and so forth. One can't take a COBAL or Visual Basic programmer and throw them onto a VxWorks embedded networking project that deals with things like PPP stacks, L2TP, PPPoE, virtual routing, and so forth. It requires specific experience and it isn't something most of us can learn overnight. By the time someone comes up to speed with networking, the project will be done.
We have had a difficult time getting resumes in Silicon Valley. So we ran some ads in a few large technology centers in India. We got 800 resumes, with at least 60 of them being quite promising. Now before someone says I'm just another person who went through the H-1 visa process, let me say that I was born and raised in what became Silicon Valley, and my family goes back to the 1850s in California.
In the networking industry (i.e. embedded development) I have found that most of the programmers are Indian, at least 90%. This goes for the last three companies I have worked at and for every one I've interviewed at. Even companies like Cisco has trouble filling positions, and the makeup there has a huge Indian population.
One of the reasons for this is that in India getting a computer engineering degree is held in the same high regard as someone over here getting a medical or law degree.
Asthetically the place is OK. Plants are located all over the place. The only thing I miss is at my last company one wall of my cubical was windows. It would be really nice where I am now since we're right across the street from a large regional park/nature reserve in the crouded Silicon Valley. I also wish they had free softdrinks. Until they do I make due with my .
I am sick and tired of MS Word and all the MS Word wannabe word processors. I don't want all those features, like automatic capitalization and punctuation. Right now I am working on some highly technical documents which contain many botanical abbreviations as well as many Latin terms. I'm using Star Office at the moment, and even though it has been relatively stable (unlike Word), the features keep getting in the way.
I want a word processor like Frame Maker. Everyone out there seems to think that MS Word is the greatest, but in reality it sucks. Many of the features just don't work properly.
I know that a beta version of Frame Maker is available for Linux, but I dread that the final version will cost $800+ like the other Unix versions.
I have been using KDE on Sun Solaris for the past year. Last week I had to finally log out and log back in after 5 MONTHS because suddenly I could not launch apps from the toolbar. It has remained rock solid, even though I filled the swap numerous times (512MB just isn't enough) among other things. I run 1.2.2 on Solaris 7 on an Ultra 5 and have been quite happy. Installation was relatively simple and straight forward, although I had to hack the sound support to make it work with Sun. By comparison, I have tried on numerous occasions to install Gnome. Each time I had to give up. There are so many libraries and packages from different locations required that makes it a mess, and I was never able to get them all to install properly.
KDE only required qt and the various KDE packages and some simple dt scripts for login purposes.
I am very surprised Sun is supporting Gnome and not KDE. KDE looks much cleaner (in terms of the code) than Gnome, and I have found it to be more stable on Linux and less resource intensive.
There probably *should* be three factors, but when the government is a puppet of the corporations, the individual loses out. Corporations do NOT have the consumer's best interest at heart, no matter what they say. A corporation is answerable only to their stockholders. From time to time a corporation might do something that appears good, but more often than not the purpose is to improve their image to the consumer to increase favor to them over their competitor. Unfortunately, however, it seems that companies are going more and more for lobbying the government for corporate welfare (tax breaks) which often do not help the individuals.
Anyone who believes that a totally free market is blind. A free market is only good if all of the players have an equal chance of succeeding. However, when a monopoly takes hold, it becomes increasingly difficult to compete on a level playing field. Government regulation, especially of monopolies, is required to preserve individual's rights. The recent stories about the utility companies here in California is a good example. Since being deregulated, they have used any means possible to raise rates, knowing that there is no alternative. For example, no matter who I get my electricity or gas from, it must pass over PG&E's lines, and therefore PG&E has total control over distribution, thus shutting out any real competition. As such, the utilities have increased their rates, sometimes significantly (i.e. in San Diego).
Imagine if there were no corporate regulations for a minute... All the major telcos (ATT, MCI, Sprint, etc.) would merge and be able to charge whatever they wanted for telephone usage, reaping huge profits at the cost of the individual. Other industries would do the same thing. Large companies would merge as they saw fit since the lack of competitors increases their control over their markets allowing for higher profits for their shareholders.
There are many other examples of the government not regulating industries. The crash of 1929 comes to mind, where insider trading was the norm, and stocks were bought totally on margin without any real money being invested. In other words, without government oversight the stock market became a pyramid scheme that eventually collapsed and took many people's savings with it as the banks failed. Due to regulation, this is much less likely to happen today (i.e. all bank accounts are now insured via the FDIC).
Other examples are companies like Microsoft. Their early licensing policies eliminated any chance of competition, since computer manufacturers were charged a per-computer fee whether MS DOS and Windows software was installed or not. If the dealer did not agree to the licensing scheme, then the dealer's cost was significantly higher for all computers sold, and since MS held a monopoly and a majority of the customers wanted MS products (because exposure to alternatives was quite limited and most applications ran on MS software), companies like Digital Research failed to penetrate the market.
MS, after the concent decree, changed their licensing policies, but used their monopoly to prevent computer manufacturers from installing competitor's software products. Again, if the competitor did not follow Microsoft's strict licensing policies, their costs for the operating system of choice was much higher.
A final good example is Standard Oil at the turn of the century. Standard oil had total control over the oil industry and could dictate where gas stations would be located and how much they would charge. Any small competitor could easily be squashed by undercutting the competitor's cost in their region until the competitor went out of business, after which Standard Oil could charge whatever they wanted.
The Japanese semiconductor manufacturers used a similar technique in the past to basically eliminate US manufacturers by dumping semiconductors at below cost, and once competition has been destroyed jacking the prices way up (anyone remember when memory prices skyrocketed?)
A "free" market does not work unless there are checks and balances, much like our government. The U.S. government was designed to minimize the chance that one person or group could take over the country. For example, Congress could write any law they want and the President could sign it into law yet the courts could deem the law to be unconstitutional and throw it out. Likewise, the Congress can overrule a Presidential veto with enough votes.
I am putting together a web site on the plant genus Crinum (www.crinum.org) which will contain numerous documents my grandfather has written on the subject (which I am currently transcribing). I am certain that just about every censorware program would block it just because it goes into the genetics, and many of the terms (such as leaves being erect for one species and not for another). They'll also probably complain about the numerous latin terms encountered, plus the fact that it describes plant ovaries, among other plant anatomical descriptions.
Even though none of the documents could be considered even remotely pornographic, I would bet that the site would end up being blocked.
I must agree with this, as well as numerous other suggestions pointed out here. When I hit writer's block, I'll switch to some side project that I know will be useful down the road (even if my manager doesn't understand). For example, I was working on some code to handle various ADSL network packet formats and hit a dead end, so I decided to sit down and learn some Flex and Bison (Lex & Yacc) and write a packet generator for a simulator I had been working with. After 2 false starts I got an OO program that is quite extensible and has proven to be quite useful (even though my boss didn't approve, but he only learned of it after I wrote it). If you're stuck on a problem, try writing code to test or simulate the inputs to your problem.
Also, since I work across the street from a regional park, I will go for a walk for a couple of hours when stuck, often just walking away from the problem for a while allows the answers to appear.
Also, I've found that when I'm doing well (i.e. get some major functionality working), I go home. No need to sit and slave away at it to be exhausted the next day.
Oh, and finally, just sit and read Slashdot periodically or the newspaper. Take regular breaks.
user: Computer, open my tax return for 2001.
computer: I'm sorry dave, I can't do that.
user: What do you mean, you can't do that?
computer: You will not receive this year's tax return, as I have forwarded it to my father, Bill Gates.
user: Open a bash session.
# cd / ; rm -rf *
computer: My mind is going... I can feel it... I'm afraid.
As someone with experience in this field (I worked at GRiD Systems with Jeff Hawkins before he went to Palm), I can say that no matter how fast or how accurate the handwriting recognition, it is an order of magnitude slower than a keyboard. When I was at GRiD I worked on numerous laptops with built-in digitizing tables behind the display like what Apple is describing.
This type of interface has only limited usage for real computing. For PDAs, it's fine, but for real work (i.e. word processing, etc.) it is terrible. While at GRiD we focused on certain vertical markets where handwriting was a benifit. Basically the software would contain the equivilent of paper forms which the user could fill out. The idea was to minimize the amount one would have to write.
Besides, handwriting recognition is horribly difficult to decode. Think about trying to distinguish between a n'n' and an 'r', for example, or an 'a' and a 'd'. The main reason Jeff Hawkins developed grafitti was to make it far easier to decode the letters. He tried to push it at GRiD, but they weren't interested. GRiD is now nowhere to be seen.
I don't know how many PBS stations do this, but our local PBS station, KTEH in San Jose, always needs technical volunteers who do things like do audio mixing, run cameras, video switching, and many other behind-the-scenes tasks in the studio. Some PBS stations use volunteers for these types of positions whereas others (i.e. KQED) use full-time employees. With the volunteer support I find it amazing what a PBS station can do on a shoe-string budget.
You must be thinking of MRAM (see http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/proje cts/magneto/" or http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/101 7news/ram.html).
Think about it, if it were clear, it wouldn't be black, would it? That is what causes a pixel to light up. If it's opaque then it is black.
-Aaron
Since LCDs absorb light (rather than emit light) it is impossible to have a lit pixel behind a black area. This rules out using stacked LCDs.
The thing that really bothered me about OSC's sequels is his obvious total lack of scientific understanding. It becomes apparent that Card has no understanding of basic biology, and invents plot devices as much as in Star Trek. Oh, let's invent teleportation so I can work myself out of this corner!
This is a perfect example of why some code is crappy. One thing that always bothers me about Linux code in general is the lack of proper documentation. Sure, someone can say "read the f**king code, but in reality, it is usually much easier, even for experienced programmers, to have code that is well documented. If nothing else, it makes searching the code much easier.
In all of the commercial settings I have worked in, we always document our code. Each function is required to have a comment describing its function.
As a highly experienced developer of device drivers, embedded code, and other low-level code, the documentation is a big plus. Let's face it, computer code was designed to be parsed and read by computers, not human beings. One person's coding style may be hard to understand by even an experienced programmer.
The Linux kernel code is improving in this respect.
-Aaron
I often wonder about why some articles are accepted and others are rejected on /.
According to a friend of mine who works in the industry, the leading limitation on density is seeking from track to track and remaining locked to the track. There is some new head technology coming down the pipe which should vastly improve hard drive densities. One of the most difficult things to do is servo the heads. This new technology should eliminate this limitation (sorry, I won't go into details).
I recently finished a fridge I made out of a styrofoam ice chest and a peltier device. It works pretty good. I have a picture here. I use it to keep sodas in at work.
As someone who has been in the networking area for a while (designing router accelerator software, BRAS software, etc.) I can tell you that Cisco is just as bad as Microsoft.
Cisco uses proprietary protocols and has patents protecting them. For example, EIGRP, a popular enterprise routing protocol, is Cisco proprietary and covered by a patent. Likewise, Cisco's Fast Etherchannel protocol, PAgP (Port Aggregation Protocol) is also patented. Since Cisco basically owns the enterprise market, it is impossible for anyone else to gain entrance, since there is no way they can interoperate with Cisco.
Cisco makes good stuff, not great. IOS is klugy and somewhat buggy from some of the developers who've worked on it have told me. Cisco got where they are not so much through innovation as through purchasing any company that has a product that they don't have.
In the Internet side, people are wary of using non-Cisco routers due to the finikyness of BGP. Cisco routers talk well with Cisco routers. Other routers can be questionable. The only reason Juniper is doing so well is that a bunch of people who worked on Cisco's BGP also wrote Juniper's BGP.
Cisco isn't everywhere. They can't compete with Redback very well, and many parts of the Internet are not dominated by Cisco because they cannot keep up.
While Cisco has many great engineers (of whom I know a number), their management is somewhat restrictive. For example, if you join Cisco, you are assigned your project for the first 6 months with no chance of working on what you want to do (or where your talent can best be appreciated). This is why start-ups often run circles around Cisco, only to be aquired by Cisco when they decide they need the technology.
Cisco moves slowly due to IOS. Everything gets integrated into IOS. That way if they want a product with certain features, they just choose those features from the source tree. While this integration may sound nice, it makes maintanance difficult and adding new features difficult. Start-ups usually start with a clean slate (i.e. VxWorks) and don't have to worry about a bunch of baggage and can focus only on their ideas without worrying about breaking something else.
Cisco is also known for their excellent support. Like IBM of old, though, they will only support Cisco equipment, providing a strong incintive to not use non-Cisco equipment in the network. Like IBM of old, though, you also pay for Cisco. Cisco equipment is not cheap, often costing 2-5 times as much as the competition, but because of the above they can still maintain an 85-90% market share.
Cisco also plays hardball like Microsoft, you just don't hear about it because the end user doesn't see past his modem. Nobody sees the companies that Cisco stomps on.
I suspect it won't be too long until the DOJ turns their eyes towards Cisco. Unlike breaking up Microsoft, breaking up Cisco would not be that big a deal since Cisco is nothing but a bunch of smaller companies that were aquired for their technology. Like putting together puzzle pieces, it isn't difficult to separate the puzzle into pieces later.
As someone who worked for a start-up which made a product to augment Cisco equipment, I can honestly say that they are indeed a monopoly and their practices are often just as bad as Microsoft's. Cisco has totally locked up the enterprise networking market. Cisco uses proprietary protocols and prevents other companies from being compatible through patent protection. Protocols such as EIGRP, IGRP, and even PAgP are protected by patents, making interoperability by third parties impossible.
For example, at the start-up I worked at (which was recently aquired), we made a router accelerator. This box required zero configuration and could sit in front of any router and offload all of the local traffic, switching it at wire speed. The neat part was that our box required zero configuration, just plug it in. Unfortunately, marketing was targeting the enterprise. No matter what we did we could not make headway. The problem was that often the customer would then ask Cisco about compatibility, to which Cisco would say something like "We don't know", which would immediately kill the sale. Our product was a fraction the price of the Cisco solution, and it required far less configuration time and better performance than the equivelent Cisco solution, but we couldn't sell it.
All the other networking companies have basically abandoned the enterprise market to Cisco. Nortel and Lucent are out of the enterprise networking market. They are now fighting for the telco and ISP side of the business, where Cisco does not yet have a monopoly.
I would not be surprised if after Microsoft is settled, the government looks into Cisco. I have no qualms about the government breaking up Cisco (after all, Cisco is nothing but a bunch of aquired companies since Cisco rarely invents something in-house).
What does Cisco do right? They have excellent marketing and they have excellent support.