If you've ever been in a telco data centre or central office you've likely seen vast amounts of DC powered equipment. I was in a Bell Mobility test lab where they had "battery backup" for some equipment: car batteries in a big plastic tub (like a Rubbermaid storage container.) At a different telco (Aliant) we had to get special permission to use AC power for some servers we were having installed, as everything else was run with DC.
The downside? The hardware costs a premium, especially if you're working in the PC/x86 world. At the time you had very little choice in server hardware if you wanted to go DC. At least, if you wanted it to run Windows!
By using some pretty basic innovations to current technology, browsers can now deliver content in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago.
Wha? I happily admit that we've seen some pretty cool uses of the available technology in recent times, but I've personally been doing what is now known as Ajax for at least 5 years.
Would people please stop taking all the fun arcane stuff and wrapping up in media-friendly (and code monkey friendly) parcels?
Now a good chunk of my fun work will be replaced by some company's "Ajax Framework", just like web services and HTTP replaced roll-your-own network protocols, and Windows replaced custom GUIs.
With proper decomposition you can deal with this issue too.
For example, instead of using the domain type for everything, you divide your functionality into different concerns, each supported by a fairly specific interface.
I have to ask where you got your numbers from. Why 1200? Why only 16 cores/processors?
How specialized is it, would you say, to run Oracle? I've seen Oracle scale out quite nicely to accommodate more users on a 64-way Sun box.
I suppose that if you're talking about PC hardware, or PC-derived hardware such as Intel server mobos for Xeon processors, then I guess you might be right about the limitations. Other architectures have this problem largely solved.
"Let's disguise some random violence and tits as science"
You've just described two of my favourite things to watch on TV. The explosion of the day is great, as is the bit where they prove that you can stop rock 'n roll.
Science it aint, but random violence and tits it be.
I wonder just what you consider a "giant" database...
Sure, the laptop will run the software, and it can probably handle a few users with a moderate data size, but I doubt any could handle a truly "giant" database, even just considering storage requirements. Maybe with some externally attached storage... but that's cheating.
I agree that Eclipse is awesome, and doesn't really compare with Visual C# Express Edition, but what you are essentially saying is that the product doesn't do things the way you are used to. Developers coming from a Microsoft toolset background will likely find things to their liking, for better or worse. Additionally, some of the differences you cite are more related to the needs and features of the underlying platforms.
While I agree with your opinion re gas prices, I can't help but wonder about the reality of travelling that far to work. I realize that it's not this simple, but I think I'd rather move than commute that far. Is this the result of our relentless urbanization, or just an unlucky situation for a few? Perhaps you cannot move, perhaps you and your significant other can only find work 2 hours apart in different directions?
Not too long ago the economy could support smaller more distributed work, for example a small factory in each of several small towns. It makes sense that the need to sell for lower and lower prices drives the creation of larger and more centralized facilities. Right now when I visit the local supermarket, the produce on sale comes from all around the world. Some of it I could not get from local farms, which is a nice convenience, but the downside is that I'm supporting the economy of some other community or country while the farmers right here struggle.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I live in a smaller city and have my choice of housing no more than 10 minutes from work. If I wasn't such a slob I'd bike there in summer. I would suggest that many of us have the choice to live in smaller places where the distance is less of a burden.
I think there's a point here somewhere, despite my rambling.
Regarding cows and other methane producing animals - we do not need that many animals for our collective dietary needs. I'm not suggesting we do not eat meat, just that a more healthy diet across all westerners would reduce the need significantly. Also, years of manipulation from dairy board propaganda has contributed to our collective "need" for cows. Most women (it seems, I'd love to stand corrected) truly believe that you need to consume vast amounts of milk to avoid osteoporosis. What no one on TV commercials tells you is that cows milk is not a particularly absorbable source of calcium. (And yet studies show that high intake of animal fat [e.g. in milk and milk products] can reduce your bone density. Why is there a correlation between countries with high milk consumption and high rates of osteoporosis?)
Blah blah blah. I'll leave you all to your more coherent comments.
I would just like to add that I moved to Canada from New Zealand into skilled work. The employer was a little cautious at first, I did not disappoint.
So it is possible, but I suspect being a white English speaker helped a whole lot. (Perhaps in Quebec being a white francophone would be more useful, but I'm only speculating.)
I can see this initiative as targeting the citizenry of the United States.
I do not agree. Firstly, the Canadian govt spends sweet fa on teaching immigrants anything. In fact it typically insists that they spend their own money getting "qualified" for something they can already do back in their home country. This might make it quicker for an American working in Canada under current NAFTA rules to just get residency, but Americans who move here seldom have any trouble becoming residents (other than the usual problems, such as the horrendous bureaucracy and $$ involved - I have been through it myself.)
Regarding the wage numbers you give, you forgot to consider the generally higher taxation here in Canada.
That said, depending on where you live in Canada, you can have a very good standard of living. There are definitely opportunities here and I too welcome more immigrants. Even those weird ones that drive on the left-hand side of the road and those who use weird currency like the yuan.
On a related note, someone please teach Canadians to drive.
It's not just those from Western Canada and the Prairies that are dumbfounded by the gun registry. I would say that besides the few lucky folks who might now have a job because of it, the rest are just as ignorant of it or against it as everyone else.
It is not in the true spirit of HN to have the language data type encoded in the prefix. HN allows the scope, logical type and other useful documentation to be carried in the name. I find it unneeded these days with good tools (a helpful IDE for example.) It's been a long time since I've had to go look up the type or scope of a variable, I just hover my mouse over it and a tooltip tells me. (Additionally, I can use the context menu to jump to its definition.)
"qryFoo" tells me much more about the purpose of the variable than "strFoo", which tells me that it's a string, but strings have extremely broad use and doesn't narrow it down much. (Now that's an understatement.)
If I'd known I'd been sitting on such a "hot" invention for so long, I would have surely sold it. I guess my skill in coming up with new names for old and existing things are rusty. Or is it that I thought everyone knew this shit already?
I turns out that I'm not meant for sales or marketing. I'm so sad about that too. Apparently they have to take the fun out of everything. I really enjoyed some of those projects I did several years ago, now to do the same thing again I'd have to justify why I don't want to struggle against $VENDOR's AJAX toolkit. It used to be I could concentrate on getting something interesting done, but it seems vendors are now destined to remove all that extraneous fun and replace it with user concerns like business rules and such, where's the job satisfaction in that?
Where in the bible does it state that the universe is 5000 years old?
I think the Bible is purposefully vague on this issue. From what I can tell, Christian scholars have to extrapolate by working backwards through the biblical record... much like scientists have to work backwards through the geological record. Neither are likely to be terribly accurate. Besides, anyone who places too much importance on either might just be missing out on something more achievable - the day-to-day experience of life.
I attended school and never heard any mention of "Intelligent Design" as a noun.
Though I'm sure many theologians and philosophers have done much pondering over the subject matter in centuries past, it seems clear that they all, with the exception of some oddball yanks in more recent times, discounted it and moved on long ago.
How does one see a difference between belief and reality when one defines the other. A rational but unjustified belief is that reality defines belief, I would argue that it is typically the other way around. We humans have a great ability to ignore our senses and go on perceiving reality any way we please, it seems.
I am far from religious, but the underlying messages told in all religions I can speak of is very practical and generally constructive. As a father, I can clearly see what a position I am in to direct my childrens' beliefs in one way or another. What choice does anyone really have in early childhood to differentiate between belief and reality?
Despite his lack of convincing proof for some of what he claims (and oh how he turns short thoughts into long sentences,) Tom Harpur's insight into the problems with todays Christianity are convincing.
We need to remember why these stories (e.g. bible stories) exist, certainly not to lay a strict record of events (a history,) but to teach old wisdoms through allegory.
In Kansas, I guess, allegory becomes reality, and dogma becomes law.
Over here in New Zealand, I guess most of our road maintenance contractors don't know how much copper's worth, so they don't steal it. Doesn't stop 'em from ripping it up, but they still leave it right there
I recall from my younger years in Wellington some cases of thieves stealing old heavy copper pipes from the guttering of old homes.
I do agree though regarding contractors. There was an argument between some workers and their foreman near a previous residence where they were laying some cable TV cable. The workers took their frustration out on the cable before they covered and cemented over the hole.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've ever been in a telco data centre or central office you've likely seen vast amounts of DC powered equipment. I was in a Bell Mobility test lab where they had "battery backup" for some equipment: car batteries in a big plastic tub (like a Rubbermaid storage container.) At a different telco (Aliant) we had to get special permission to use AC power for some servers we were having installed, as everything else was run with DC.
The downside? The hardware costs a premium, especially if you're working in the PC/x86 world. At the time you had very little choice in server hardware if you wanted to go DC. At least, if you wanted it to run Windows!
Wha? I happily admit that we've seen some pretty cool uses of the available technology in recent times, but I've personally been doing what is now known as Ajax for at least 5 years.
Would people please stop taking all the fun arcane stuff and wrapping up in media-friendly (and code monkey friendly) parcels?
Now a good chunk of my fun work will be replaced by some company's "Ajax Framework", just like web services and HTTP replaced roll-your-own network protocols, and Windows replaced custom GUIs.
With proper decomposition you can deal with this issue too.
For example, instead of using the domain type for everything, you divide your functionality into different concerns, each supported by a fairly specific interface.
This is far more reusable for example:
than
Admittedly, there is a cost to this effort (design) but it's the sort of thing that one can work on over time.
I have to ask where you got your numbers from. Why 1200? Why only 16 cores/processors?
How specialized is it, would you say, to run Oracle? I've seen Oracle scale out quite nicely to accommodate more users on a 64-way Sun box.
I suppose that if you're talking about PC hardware, or PC-derived hardware such as Intel server mobos for Xeon processors, then I guess you might be right about the limitations. Other architectures have this problem largely solved.
"Let's disguise some random violence and tits as science"
You've just described two of my favourite things to watch on TV. The explosion of the day is great, as is the bit where they prove that you can stop rock 'n roll.
Science it aint, but random violence and tits it be.
That way you could see with a glance from roughly where on the HD your data is being read from.
It might just change colour too fast to really see anything...
I wonder just what you consider a "giant" database...
Sure, the laptop will run the software, and it can probably handle a few users with a moderate data size, but I doubt any could handle a truly "giant" database, even just considering storage requirements. Maybe with some externally attached storage... but that's cheating.
Vegemite rules. It is far superior to Marmite. However, with enough cheese the two are equivalent.
I agree that Eclipse is awesome, and doesn't really compare with Visual C# Express Edition, but what you are essentially saying is that the product doesn't do things the way you are used to. Developers coming from a Microsoft toolset background will likely find things to their liking, for better or worse. Additionally, some of the differences you cite are more related to the needs and features of the underlying platforms.
Merry Christmas!
While I agree with your opinion re gas prices, I can't help but wonder about the reality of travelling that far to work. I realize that it's not this simple, but I think I'd rather move than commute that far. Is this the result of our relentless urbanization, or just an unlucky situation for a few? Perhaps you cannot move, perhaps you and your significant other can only find work 2 hours apart in different directions?
Not too long ago the economy could support smaller more distributed work, for example a small factory in each of several small towns. It makes sense that the need to sell for lower and lower prices drives the creation of larger and more centralized facilities. Right now when I visit the local supermarket, the produce on sale comes from all around the world. Some of it I could not get from local farms, which is a nice convenience, but the downside is that I'm supporting the economy of some other community or country while the farmers right here struggle.
Where was I? Oh yeah, I live in a smaller city and have my choice of housing no more than 10 minutes from work. If I wasn't such a slob I'd bike there in summer. I would suggest that many of us have the choice to live in smaller places where the distance is less of a burden.
I think there's a point here somewhere, despite my rambling.
Regarding cows and other methane producing animals - we do not need that many animals for our collective dietary needs. I'm not suggesting we do not eat meat, just that a more healthy diet across all westerners would reduce the need significantly. Also, years of manipulation from dairy board propaganda has contributed to our collective "need" for cows. Most women (it seems, I'd love to stand corrected) truly believe that you need to consume vast amounts of milk to avoid osteoporosis. What no one on TV commercials tells you is that cows milk is not a particularly absorbable source of calcium. (And yet studies show that high intake of animal fat [e.g. in milk and milk products] can reduce your bone density. Why is there a correlation between countries with high milk consumption and high rates of osteoporosis?)
Blah blah blah. I'll leave you all to your more coherent comments.
I would just like to add that I moved to Canada from New Zealand into skilled work. The employer was a little cautious at first, I did not disappoint.
So it is possible, but I suspect being a white English speaker helped a whole lot. (Perhaps in Quebec being a white francophone would be more useful, but I'm only speculating.)
I can see this initiative as targeting the citizenry of the United States.
I do not agree. Firstly, the Canadian govt spends sweet fa on teaching immigrants anything. In fact it typically insists that they spend their own money getting "qualified" for something they can already do back in their home country. This might make it quicker for an American working in Canada under current NAFTA rules to just get residency, but Americans who move here seldom have any trouble becoming residents (other than the usual problems, such as the horrendous bureaucracy and $$ involved - I have been through it myself.)
Regarding the wage numbers you give, you forgot to consider the generally higher taxation here in Canada.
That said, depending on where you live in Canada, you can have a very good standard of living. There are definitely opportunities here and I too welcome more immigrants. Even those weird ones that drive on the left-hand side of the road and those who use weird currency like the yuan.
On a related note, someone please teach Canadians to drive.
How do you keep unemployable easterners happy
It's not just those from Western Canada and the Prairies that are dumbfounded by the gun registry. I would say that besides the few lucky folks who might now have a job because of it, the rest are just as ignorant of it or against it as everyone else.
While we're talking Canada, "go Sens!"
I'm beginning to think that the BSA you're referring to isn't the Boy Scouts of America...
It is not in the true spirit of HN to have the language data type encoded in the prefix. HN allows the scope, logical type and other useful documentation to be carried in the name. I find it unneeded these days with good tools (a helpful IDE for example.) It's been a long time since I've had to go look up the type or scope of a variable, I just hover my mouse over it and a tooltip tells me. (Additionally, I can use the context menu to jump to its definition.)
"qryFoo" tells me much more about the purpose of the variable than "strFoo", which tells me that it's a string, but strings have extremely broad use and doesn't narrow it down much. (Now that's an understatement.)
what issues are there which you believe to be detrimental to freedom in New Zealand?
As a Kiwi expat I'm curious about this topic. Can anybody offer something?
A quick search yields some interesting topics: Ahmed Zaoui: Freedom or a fair trial, Human Rights Foundation, US Dept of State's report on New Zealand's human rights practices.
They managed to keep sex and violence out of it
Where do I lobby to get more sex and violence on TV? (I am OK with the amount on the radio)
Good call.
If I'd known I'd been sitting on such a "hot" invention for so long, I would have surely sold it. I guess my skill in coming up with new names for old and existing things are rusty. Or is it that I thought everyone knew this shit already?
I turns out that I'm not meant for sales or marketing. I'm so sad about that too. Apparently they have to take the fun out of everything. I really enjoyed some of those projects I did several years ago, now to do the same thing again I'd have to justify why I don't want to struggle against $VENDOR's AJAX toolkit. It used to be I could concentrate on getting something interesting done, but it seems vendors are now destined to remove all that extraneous fun and replace it with user concerns like business rules and such, where's the job satisfaction in that?
Where in the bible does it state that the universe is 5000 years old?
I think the Bible is purposefully vague on this issue. From what I can tell, Christian scholars have to extrapolate by working backwards through the biblical record... much like scientists have to work backwards through the geological record. Neither are likely to be terribly accurate. Besides, anyone who places too much importance on either might just be missing out on something more achievable - the day-to-day experience of life.
I attended school and never heard any mention of "Intelligent Design" as a noun.
Though I'm sure many theologians and philosophers have done much pondering over the subject matter in centuries past, it seems clear that they all, with the exception of some oddball yanks in more recent times, discounted it and moved on long ago.
How does one see a difference between belief and reality when one defines the other. A rational but unjustified belief is that reality defines belief, I would argue that it is typically the other way around. We humans have a great ability to ignore our senses and go on perceiving reality any way we please, it seems.
I am far from religious, but the underlying messages told in all religions I can speak of is very practical and generally constructive. As a father, I can clearly see what a position I am in to direct my childrens' beliefs in one way or another. What choice does anyone really have in early childhood to differentiate between belief and reality?
Despite his lack of convincing proof for some of what he claims (and oh how he turns short thoughts into long sentences,) Tom Harpur's insight into the problems with todays Christianity are convincing.
We need to remember why these stories (e.g. bible stories) exist, certainly not to lay a strict record of events (a history,) but to teach old wisdoms through allegory.
In Kansas, I guess, allegory becomes reality, and dogma becomes law.
Mod me down if you will, but Lala is damn fine and TikiBarTV is hilarious.
This sounds very much like Pixomatic, courtesy of Michael Abrash.
:-)
The DX9 featureset appears to be the big win here, unless of course you consider Linux support important
I thought that gave me the right to steal as much music as I could fit on my levied blanks... :-)
I recall from my younger years in Wellington some cases of thieves stealing old heavy copper pipes from the guttering of old homes.
I do agree though regarding contractors. There was an argument between some workers and their foreman near a previous residence where they were laying some cable TV cable. The workers took their frustration out on the cable before they covered and cemented over the hole.