I can almost beat that. A old quantum chemistry code- many, many lines of complex math doing very sophisticated calculations.
The beginning of the program went something like this
INTEGER MAXCORE
MAXCORE = (memory on machine)
DOUBLE PRECISION A
DIMENSION A(MAXCORE)
Yes, the array A took up every bit of memory. What about other variables? There weren't any. There was A. Store your data in A. Do you remember what A(326) is?
I seem to remember some 2-d arrays in the code as well. Well, not really 2-d arrays, they were A. Just make sure to keep track of the rows and column indices, ok?
The contractors (roofers, electricians, etc) in my neighborhood make a lot more than I do, even given that I work in academia. Hell, we've got guys working truck driving jobs who appear to make more than I do. (Don't know details: they might be near-broke, but they've also got a bigger house and $40k pickup trucks while I'm driving a used Honda Accord.) The mover I had going from CA->VA last time claimed to pull >$100K on a 9-month schedule.
Judging by what the dealer charges me for car repairs, the high end mechanics are getting $30-40/hour. In my area that's good money, and more than the folks in my department make.
The Washington Post had an article in the magazine a few months ago about a hair colorer in the DC area who pulls in well over 6 figures. (And blows it all on designer shoes)
You had two parents. You had seen a computer before you were 16, so you could actually get a job doing something other than flipping burgers. Your parents bootstrapped themselves: so did mine, but by the time you (and I) came along they had a solid work ethic and valued education. You could even join the military like I did and unlike many of the folks who grew up in shitty neighborhoods. (Police records, don't you know)
I don't doubt you busted ass to get where you got- I did too. But neither of us started at the bottom.
We've got a woman at school here who grew up in a Masai village. Normal schooling for girls stops at about the 3rd grade- after that you help your family on the farm and get married at 15. (And there's intense pressure from both parents and tribal elders to conform to this ethic) She didn't have running water, or electricity, or a computer, or very many books for that matter. She's going to graduate this spring with honors and wants to go on for a doctorate. She's going to get it too.
I'm the same as you. I *didn't* start from scratch.
I had upper-middle class parents, a Mom who didn't work outside the home and who always had time for homework. I had a decent public school to go to, then an even better private one, followed by a college paid for by my folks. (Public, so I didn't need loans.)
Compare that to someone growing up in a single parent home, with that parent holding two jobs to pay the rent on a crappy apartment in a war zone. The nearby schools graduate kids who can barely read and have no college prep classes. College is funded totally by loans because they've got to work 40+ hours a week to live while going to school. After college, they've got a pile of debt to pay off-get a job now, no matter how bad. Failure doesn't mean that you go back and live with Daddy while you sort out your options, failure means going on welfare or being homeless.
You are I are blessed far beyond what you think. We've got the education, we've got the parents to bail us out if we get into serious trouble, we don't have to worry about Mom losing one of her two dead-end jobs and getting tossed out of her apartment. Gates was even more so- he *never* had to worry about money, even if MS tanked. He was a millionaire to start.
In grad school, I had a long discussion with my (black) roommate asking why there were huge numbers of blacks in med, law and engineering schools and less than 1% in my chemistry department. His answer: when you're the first kid to get this far, money matters. Money matters a *lot*- you're going to have to pay back a fortune. (And he commented that he needed to be able to give back to others as well- someone's got to help pull the other smart but forgotten kids out of the hole.) Chemistry is great for middle class white kids who can afford to not think about the bottom line.
From what you say, you've *never* had to really think about the bottom line. Neither have I. We're lucky.
The guy was the son of a wealthy lawyer. Went to an elite prep school then to Harvard, with all bills paid by Daddy.
When I think of "from scratch", I'm thinking of some dirt-poor immigrant or farmer who had to bust ass even to get a basic education-think someone like Colin Powell, although even he wasn't that bad off.
While we're at it, why not remove the shell and the TCP/IP stack and let people choose alternatives to those too?
Back in the Win3.1 days, those were supplied by companies other than MS. Evil MS killed them by bundling fripperies like a decent shell and stack.
Let's go even farther. You used to be able to buy programs that replaced the Apple-supplied virtual memory and multitasking systems for MacOS. (I've still got a copy of RAMdoubler around here somewhere) Perhaps those should come out of the MS distribution too?
Not sure what's left to ship after we're done with that (anyone remember if there were OSs with add-on filesystems?), but I'm sure there's something else that MS bundles that we could remove.
I mean, there hasn't been any real technological innovation since the Gutenberg Bible brought us moveable type. I mean, sure books are cheaper and there are more of them, but all they do is rehash the same story lines in the same boring format. B&W text, even with nice fonts is just so dull. A few still pictures is the biggest advance.
Worse, there are entire sections of the library containing books without a *single* picture in them. No wonder there's no longterm market.
In all seriousness, what a garbage article. *Story* sells books. *Story* sells movies. (For the most part- bad movies with good special effects can still do ok) Story is going to sell huge classes of video games. Yes, sports games will be pretty much the same with updated graphics from year to year, but long term we'll see the growth of games with deep, involving storylines.
His criticism that interactivity ruins the experience is really misguided. Plenty of games aren't as dumb as Rogue Squadron- compare it to Planetscape Torment. You *can't* die in that game, and it's a wonderfully immersive experience.
Finally, I'm a married 38-year-old with a kid. Do I have a lot of time for games? No- it takes me months to play a typical one. Oh well, it saves money in the long run. But I still play.
I just tried to setup Linux (RH9- it needs to be this version to mirror an existing server) on a machine that used to run Windows. It can't even get to the graphical installer before the screen goes blank. Why? Who knows? I've swapped monitors and it doesn't help- autoconfigure screws up.
Add that to the mysterious MySQL errors the server I mentioned before has been having- it simply stops listening and won't restart. It went an entire semester without problems last year: now it doesn't last two days before crashing again. Nothing on the MySQL site about the error and I can't find much of use with Google. So I upgraded- read the "Upgrade MySQL 3.x to 4.x' document some time for amusement- the official method has you downloading/installing source RPMs (So where are those, and what versions should I be using?), force installing 4.0 since dependency checks fail and then running scripts (with known bugs) to alter permissions on the DBs.
Ugh. Now I'm sitting here with crossed fingers hoping that the upgrade fixed the problem, and wondering how I can get something other than text mode through SSH to access the staging server.
My brand new (yesterday) WinXP box got everything perfectly- it installed the USB printer driver the instant it was plugged in, got the dual monitor setup right and even found a driver for my graphics tablet. I love Linux but there are days it just pisses me off.
When checking over the Ghost image for our labs last year to see if some of the stuff I wanted was installed correctly I ran Ad-aware over it for laughs.
Gator?! How the fark did that get there?
I'm still not sure what it piggybacked onto. Luckily we killed it before it went out. We're more careful now.
You know, I'm usually the most cynical person in the world, but I'm also a serious skeptic. All they found were the lids, along with lots of other trash. Maybe, just maybe, the elections commissions threw away the boxes when they were done with them?
It seems a simpler explaination, especially since there is a chain of custody of ballot boxes and someone saying "Oh, I can't find those boxes" to their boss is going to cause issues.
The issues you mention aren't really problems in the US.
Large numbers of ballots and ballot boxes going missing would throw serious red flags- the local news would catch serious shenanigans. Ditto burning down warehouses. (And e-voting doesn't solve these problems either: simply disappear the smart cards or machines.)
We already have very fast reporting, so the "Green" vote problem won't crop up either.
Where the US has been vulnerable in the past is voter rolls (Just how many dead people voted for Kennedy in Chicago?) and direct manipulation of voters (How many minority voters were "discouraged" in Florida last election?) E-voting doesn't solve these problems either.
WTF? I had one of these back in *1997*, and they weren't new then. (Well, it didn't have the optical pickup- it was gyro only)
I've got a dozen of this exact model in classrooms across the campus- I put them there last summer. We've had older versions (ball mouse) in place for ~3 years. Those are more expensive and have a much longer (~100 foot) range, but this isn't exactly a new product.
But Bank of Fooblitzky sure as hell does. And if your Free Software portfolio says that you're more likely to be able to write it than the n00b out of college with a degree and no portfolio, guess who gets hired by Bank of Fooblitzky.
Who gets hired? An Indian development team that will do the job for less than the Free Software programmer will spend in Jolt Colt.
Imagine that Xerox's top management had a clue. They patent everything: Ethernet, laser printers, most of the elements of a GUI, etc. They sue the hell out of anyone copying the tech, while marketing all-in-one solutions for "document management" with immense profit margins. This is what the document industry is doing now, but the tech is available to everyone, so the margins are a lot smaller.
Xerox rakes in sagans of dollars, just like they did when they made the first copier. With a bit of creative lawyering and monopoly power, they can hold the market for a long, long time. The interconnects you talk about are available, but only from Xerox- pay up. Any company infringing in the area gets stomped by Xerox- they have infinite resources to pay legal fees due to 50%+ profit margins, kind of like IBM in its headay.
Sure, the computer we know today is delayed by 10-20 years. The internet boom is just a dream in people's eyes. Big deal- the Xerox bigwigs get as rich as Gates is today. That's all that matters.
Xerox is used today as a case study in business schools as an example of how *not* to handle tech change. They didn't get rich.
Xerox PARC was a godsend to computer technology. It was an utter disaster for Xerox.
It never managed to commercialize the products it created. The name PARC is known only to a few computer geeks. Xerox itself went into a tailspin during this time, unable to handle competition in the copy industry from companies that copied (heh) and improved Xerox technology and undercut it tremendously in price while at the same time Xerox was wasting billions of dollars trying to compete with IBM.
This is a horrible example of why a company would want Open Source. Xerox got nothing from the huge investments of money, but everyone else got rich.
Re:I don't get it. Dell is famous for crap support
on
Orwellian Tech Support
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· Score: 1
They're cheap and nobody else is any better.
As far as I can tell, the American consumer makes buying decisions on exactly two things
Price. Cheaper is always better.
Prestige. There's no other way to explain Prada handbags and Mercedes SUVs.
Yes, there are exceptions, but Service doesn't seem to ever enter the equation, with the occasional Nordstrom's being the exception to prove the rule.
"For $25, I'll make that company know you're pissed!"
Hey, it's better than selling pet food on the Internet.
My biggest complaint about McDevitt (and others)
on
Singularity Sky
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· Score: 2, Interesting
He can't write endings. He's got the idea thing down pat, and many of his characters are interesting. (A Talent For War and The Hercules Text are good examples, and much better books than Chindi)
But he can't write an ending to save his life. His books just sort of peter out, or end so abruptly you're left going WTF? Destiny Road is a great example of the latter: major plot points are still being resolved on the 3rd to last page. Stephenson, for all that's he's loved here, is another like that. I love Snow Crash, but the ending- sheesh. It's obvious in The Diamond Age that he just got bored and stopped writing.
Could be worse- he could be Peter Hamilton. Now there's a godawful writer.
By any definition I can think of, they are coders. They may not use an 3L33T language, but it's a computer language and they are writing code in that language, even if it consists of drag+drop actions.
We're using Claroline here. It's been doing fairly well, although there are some features I'd like it doesn't have yet. (I've already added 2 since it's just a set of PHP scripts- it ain't hard.)
Slashdot Mirror
The beginning of the program went something like this
INTEGER MAXCORE
MAXCORE = (memory on machine)
DOUBLE PRECISION A
DIMENSION A(MAXCORE)
Yes, the array A took up every bit of memory. What about other variables? There weren't any. There was A. Store your data in A. Do you remember what A(326) is?
I seem to remember some 2-d arrays in the code as well. Well, not really 2-d arrays, they were A. Just make sure to keep track of the rows and column indices, ok?
Judging by what the dealer charges me for car repairs, the high end mechanics are getting $30-40/hour. In my area that's good money, and more than the folks in my department make.
The Washington Post had an article in the magazine a few months ago about a hair colorer in the DC area who pulls in well over 6 figures. (And blows it all on designer shoes)
You can do just fine with a blue-collar job
You had two parents. You had seen a computer before you were 16, so you could actually get a job doing something other than flipping burgers. Your parents bootstrapped themselves: so did mine, but by the time you (and I) came along they had a solid work ethic and valued education. You could even join the military like I did and unlike many of the folks who grew up in shitty neighborhoods. (Police records, don't you know)
I don't doubt you busted ass to get where you got- I did too. But neither of us started at the bottom.
We've got a woman at school here who grew up in a Masai village. Normal schooling for girls stops at about the 3rd grade- after that you help your family on the farm and get married at 15. (And there's intense pressure from both parents and tribal elders to conform to this ethic) She didn't have running water, or electricity, or a computer, or very many books for that matter. She's going to graduate this spring with honors and wants to go on for a doctorate. She's going to get it too.
That's starting from scratch.
I'm the same as you. I *didn't* start from scratch.
I had upper-middle class parents, a Mom who didn't work outside the home and who always had time for homework. I had a decent public school to go to, then an even better private one, followed by a college paid for by my folks. (Public, so I didn't need loans.)
Compare that to someone growing up in a single parent home, with that parent holding two jobs to pay the rent on a crappy apartment in a war zone. The nearby schools graduate kids who can barely read and have no college prep classes. College is funded totally by loans because they've got to work 40+ hours a week to live while going to school. After college, they've got a pile of debt to pay off-get a job now, no matter how bad. Failure doesn't mean that you go back and live with Daddy while you sort out your options, failure means going on welfare or being homeless.
You are I are blessed far beyond what you think. We've got the education, we've got the parents to bail us out if we get into serious trouble, we don't have to worry about Mom losing one of her two dead-end jobs and getting tossed out of her apartment. Gates was even more so- he *never* had to worry about money, even if MS tanked. He was a millionaire to start.
In grad school, I had a long discussion with my (black) roommate asking why there were huge numbers of blacks in med, law and engineering schools and less than 1% in my chemistry department. His answer: when you're the first kid to get this far, money matters. Money matters a *lot*- you're going to have to pay back a fortune. (And he commented that he needed to be able to give back to others as well- someone's got to help pull the other smart but forgotten kids out of the hole.) Chemistry is great for middle class white kids who can afford to not think about the bottom line.
From what you say, you've *never* had to really think about the bottom line. Neither have I. We're lucky.
When I think of "from scratch", I'm thinking of some dirt-poor immigrant or farmer who had to bust ass even to get a basic education-think someone like Colin Powell, although even he wasn't that bad off.
Back in the Win3.1 days, those were supplied by companies other than MS. Evil MS killed them by bundling fripperies like a decent shell and stack.
Let's go even farther. You used to be able to buy programs that replaced the Apple-supplied virtual memory and multitasking systems for MacOS. (I've still got a copy of RAMdoubler around here somewhere) Perhaps those should come out of the MS distribution too?
Not sure what's left to ship after we're done with that (anyone remember if there were OSs with add-on filesystems?), but I'm sure there's something else that MS bundles that we could remove.
NM
Worse, there are entire sections of the library containing books without a *single* picture in them. No wonder there's no longterm market.
In all seriousness, what a garbage article. *Story* sells books. *Story* sells movies. (For the most part- bad movies with good special effects can still do ok) Story is going to sell huge classes of video games. Yes, sports games will be pretty much the same with updated graphics from year to year, but long term we'll see the growth of games with deep, involving storylines.
His criticism that interactivity ruins the experience is really misguided. Plenty of games aren't as dumb as Rogue Squadron- compare it to Planetscape Torment. You *can't* die in that game, and it's a wonderfully immersive experience.
Finally, I'm a married 38-year-old with a kid. Do I have a lot of time for games? No- it takes me months to play a typical one. Oh well, it saves money in the long run. But I still play.
Add that to the mysterious MySQL errors the server I mentioned before has been having- it simply stops listening and won't restart. It went an entire semester without problems last year: now it doesn't last two days before crashing again. Nothing on the MySQL site about the error and I can't find much of use with Google. So I upgraded- read the "Upgrade MySQL 3.x to 4.x' document some time for amusement- the official method has you downloading/installing source RPMs (So where are those, and what versions should I be using?), force installing 4.0 since dependency checks fail and then running scripts (with known bugs) to alter permissions on the DBs.
Ugh. Now I'm sitting here with crossed fingers hoping that the upgrade fixed the problem, and wondering how I can get something other than text mode through SSH to access the staging server.
My brand new (yesterday) WinXP box got everything perfectly- it installed the USB printer driver the instant it was plugged in, got the dual monitor setup right and even found a driver for my graphics tablet. I love Linux but there are days it just pisses me off.
Gator?! How the fark did that get there?
I'm still not sure what it piggybacked onto. Luckily we killed it before it went out. We're more careful now.
It seems a simpler explaination, especially since there is a chain of custody of ballot boxes and someone saying "Oh, I can't find those boxes" to their boss is going to cause issues.
Large numbers of ballots and ballot boxes going missing would throw serious red flags- the local news would catch serious shenanigans. Ditto burning down warehouses. (And e-voting doesn't solve these problems either: simply disappear the smart cards or machines.)
We already have very fast reporting, so the "Green" vote problem won't crop up either.
Where the US has been vulnerable in the past is voter rolls (Just how many dead people voted for Kennedy in Chicago?) and direct manipulation of voters (How many minority voters were "discouraged" in Florida last election?) E-voting doesn't solve these problems either.
I've got a dozen of this exact model in classrooms across the campus- I put them there last summer. We've had older versions (ball mouse) in place for ~3 years. Those are more expensive and have a much longer (~100 foot) range, but this isn't exactly a new product.
But Bank of Fooblitzky sure as hell does. And if your Free Software portfolio says that you're more likely to be able to write it than the n00b out of college with a degree and no portfolio, guess who gets hired by Bank of Fooblitzky.
Who gets hired? An Indian development team that will do the job for less than the Free Software programmer will spend in Jolt Colt.
Imagine that Xerox's top management had a clue. They patent everything: Ethernet, laser printers, most of the elements of a GUI, etc. They sue the hell out of anyone copying the tech, while marketing all-in-one solutions for "document management" with immense profit margins. This is what the document industry is doing now, but the tech is available to everyone, so the margins are a lot smaller.
Xerox rakes in sagans of dollars, just like they did when they made the first copier. With a bit of creative lawyering and monopoly power, they can hold the market for a long, long time. The interconnects you talk about are available, but only from Xerox- pay up. Any company infringing in the area gets stomped by Xerox- they have infinite resources to pay legal fees due to 50%+ profit margins, kind of like IBM in its headay.
Sure, the computer we know today is delayed by 10-20 years. The internet boom is just a dream in people's eyes. Big deal- the Xerox bigwigs get as rich as Gates is today. That's all that matters.
Xerox is used today as a case study in business schools as an example of how *not* to handle tech change. They didn't get rich.
It never managed to commercialize the products it created. The name PARC is known only to a few computer geeks. Xerox itself went into a tailspin during this time, unable to handle competition in the copy industry from companies that copied (heh) and improved Xerox technology and undercut it tremendously in price while at the same time Xerox was wasting billions of dollars trying to compete with IBM.
This is a horrible example of why a company would want Open Source. Xerox got nothing from the huge investments of money, but everyone else got rich.
As far as I can tell, the American consumer makes buying decisions on exactly two things
Yes, there are exceptions, but Service doesn't seem to ever enter the equation, with the occasional Nordstrom's being the exception to prove the rule.
Hey, it's better than selling pet food on the Internet.
But he can't write an ending to save his life. His books just sort of peter out, or end so abruptly you're left going WTF? Destiny Road is a great example of the latter: major plot points are still being resolved on the 3rd to last page. Stephenson, for all that's he's loved here, is another like that. I love Snow Crash, but the ending- sheesh. It's obvious in The Diamond Age that he just got bored and stopped writing.
Could be worse- he could be Peter Hamilton. Now there's a godawful writer.
Eric, with 2 Windows, 1 Linux and 2 OSX machines in his office...
By any definition I can think of, they are coders. They may not use an 3L33T language, but it's a computer language and they are writing code in that language, even if it consists of drag+drop actions.
And I thought I'd never see a link scarier than goatse or tubgirl...
...with 20 kilometer long power cord, since the batteries last roughly 30 seconds before expiring in a blue blaze.
Perhaps Firefox will finally report as Firebird?
Another possibility is Stanford's CourseWork
WebCT and Blackboard should be very, very scared