Ah cut him a break. He's busy admiring the MCSE cert on his wall. "Microsoft is great, for only a few thousand dollars, they made me a certified engineer.":)
I have my CCNA hanging on the wall, and stacks of Linux, Solaris, general *nix, Cisco, general networking, and programming books (many languages). The well worn books are my certification. The Perl reference books have visible marks where I thumb through the pages frequently. His books look like they just came out of a book store.
If some guy was stalking me in a IHOP, following me into the bathroom, makeing an effort to sit in the next stall, and paying that much attention to my bathroom activities, my main motivation would be to leave the bathroom quickly too. If he forgot to flush, so be it, some freak was following him around. Stop stalking the man.
If you're such a great Windows lover, go stalk Bill Gates instead. But, you may not see him in a IHOP.
So, if we're in the expanding universe, which is moving at near the speed of light, time is really dilated to almost infinitely slow to the outside observer?
Actually, at the speed of light, traveling towards the arth from Alpha Centauri, light from Sol would be traveling at 600,000km/sec in relationship to him. Light originating from his ship would be travling at normal speed to him, but faster or slower in perspective to anyone (or anything) he was passing.
That's something I don't quite grasp.
The milky galaxy is spinning at x km/s. The galaxy itself is moving away from the center of the (our?) universe at x km/s. A photon on the outward rotation of our planet, on the outward rotation of our solar system, on the outward rotation of our galaxy, moving away from the center of the universe (myself, as my girlfriend says I believe) would be traveling far faster than say a photon moving in the opposite direction from say the opposite side of the same planet.
To each other, their relative speeds would be 600,000km/s, even though to the casual observer standing on the planet, each one would be moving at 300,000km/s.
A photon moving towards the center of our universe could/would encounter one of our example photons moving outward from the center of the universe at a *MUCH* higher speed.
We'll name the photon coming from our planet at max speed Pa , and the incoming photon Pb.
Pa = speed of light (it's speed at creation) + rotation of the planet + rotation of the galaxy + rotation of the universe
Pb = speed of light (assuming it came from an absolute stand still in relation to the universe)
So, the speed of incidence would be Pa + Pb, which to either photon would be rather high.
So, if you were to walk across your yard (at the equator) at 4mile/hour in the same direction as the rotation of the earth, you're really moving at roughly 1004 miles/hour.
He decides to bash Linux because he can't make some anonymous sound card work. He does say Intel onboard of some sort..
I had problems with an Intel onboard sound card too. Some other people are using identical PC's to mine in an office environment, and they have problems with sound in Windows too. Ha! At least I got mine working with a newer kernel.
Actually, with a little (very little) effort, I find it's rare that I can't get something working. Just open your eyes, and look at what options are available.
He says that he was getting sound occasionally. Sounds like a conflict of some sort. I had a problem with some older distribution and some sound daemon that was running, which would do something like this. Some sounds would work, but once the x manager made a sound, it would be hosed. There was one option to turn that off.. But, that was an older distribution, I don't even remember what the program was (some three letter process I found running).
He can write 3 pages about how he couldn't fix it, writing for a technical publication??
You know, it took me 1/2 hour to get WinXP even to begin installing on my girlfriend's new computer? It's because it didn't have any freakin' concept of what a SATA hard drive was. I had to make a floppy driver disk, which had to be in the A: so I could hit F6 (or whatever) to add extra drivers. It was nice of them to supply a *CD*, which did me absolutely no good for putting the drivers on. I rebooted into Linux (ahh, dual boot) to copy the files over. The other computers near-by didn't even have floppy drives to use. This was the only one.
BTW, Linux installed in less than 1/2 hour for the complete install. XP, well, we went to the store, and came back to watch it still be installing. It took half the day to get an operational system going. If I was being paid by the hour, I'd love it, but I was doing it for my girlfriend, when we could have been doing something fun, instead of me watching "estimated time to completion: 32 hours"
[extend on for 3 pages, and submit to Information Week]
I had read an interview of one of the founders of Google, who said something to the effect that the whole SEC filing was going to cost them an absolute fortune, and they simply didn't want to do it.
To now, from my outside view, I see nothing wrong with the way they're doing things. Most people are very happy, except for sites who wish to artificially push themselves to the top of Googles rankings.
I do have one problem with Google. They didn't hire me. But, that's something I can live with.:) I didn't need a job, I just wanted to be part of their gig, it sounded like a great place to be, and I could offer a lot. But hey, if they don't want me, I have plenty of other things to do.:)
If only companies could pick and choose their stockholders. Imagine if just/. folks (well, the good ones) were the only shareholders in Google.
Once you're public, you're screwed. Any Joe-stocktrader can buy your stock, now you have to answer to him.
A lot has to be said for private companies.
My news site, the only thing I have that I could imagine getting that big, is mine. There are a few other people who work for/with me, but a few times, they've said "hey, it's your site, do what you want." While they're absolutely right, I do stop what I'm saying right there, and ask their opinions, which usually have sound ideas behind them. I'd hate to get into a situation where one day a group come to me and say "together, we're majority shareholders, and we want you to [insert insanely bad idea here]"
Maybe the guy who does the logo graphics was out sick. Or maybe they wanted to avoid religious bias by celebrating a Christian holiday. Not everyone celebrates Easter, no matter how many ads with bunnies you may see on TV.
But when you're rich, there's never enough money. I don't know it from personal experience, but I've known a few multi-millionaires. $5mil/yr isn't enough, they want $10mil, then $20. It almost makes me cry when they're making $40mil/yr, flying first class all over the world just because they can, and still complaining that they don't have enough money.
Aparently, no matter how much money you make, your expenses will grow to match your income. It does make sense. If you're making $10mil/yr, are you really going to live in the same house, and drive the same car, as you did when you were making $20k/yr. The downfall of that is, when you have a bit of extra income, and change your spending accordingly, if that money goes away, you're still stuck with the expenses. Myself, I had a bit of extra income, so I bought a second car. That income went away, so instead of having a bit of extra cash every month, we were cutting corners to get the bills paid.
While I'd love to get a hold of a bunch of Google stock when they're first offered, and then sell to all the suckers still clammering for the stocks a week later, they may have another option, which would keep them out of IPO land.
I've seen other companies do something similiar to this, to make themselves look smaller than they really are, and to protect themselves from lawsuits, even if it's in CEO's mind.
Split up the company.
Google could make google::adsense google::adwords google::froogle google::india google::news , and even split off their IT departments into seperate companies (google::it::newyork google::it::california google::it::atlanta), and then have google.com buy and sell services between these companies. So, the google::it companies would turn a smaller profit from google.com, but google.com would show an expense.
Google's income divisions could be split, so no one division would make over $10mil/yr . They could even subdivide the company down even more. Google::Adsense::US-East Google::Adsense::US-West Google::Adsense::Europe (etc, etc, etc)
Most of the companies I've known that did this with the idea that if one company gets sued and goes bankrupt, the others are uneffected. If that would really work in the legal system is another story (and IANAL).
I suspect some Google lawyer has already started drawing up the paperwork for this, unless they really want to go for the IPO, and are just playing like they don't.
I dated a brunette. She was absolutely beautiful. Her pickup line (the one I always fell for) was, "Lets work on that program". I gotta say, I loved dating a programmer.:)
I've used technology too long, I can still use my cell phone, when I probably shouldn't be. It's lead to some pretty embarassing phone calls to ex-girlfriends, when I was too drunk to think (or even walk).:)
Usually they're good enough to not hang up, and let me fully embarrass myself.
Someone should ask the question, what's the wierdest place you've woken up after a night of drinking..:)
Mine would be in a parking lot. I couldn't find my car keys (in my jacket pocket), so I laid down on the cement and went to sleep.:)
The runner up would be the back of an ex-girlfriends car at a rave at a beach 20 miles from home. A friend kinda borrowed my car, and forgot to come back, so I was stuck til the ex was ready to leave. It was ok though, she knew. Her boyfriend wasn't very happy about it though.
I used to be very close friends with the regional manager of a major theater chain. We'd "preview" movies the night before they were released, to "make sure they work". We'd smoke, drink beer and be generally obnoxious through movies. Of course, it was only theater staff at the previews.
Basically, he told me that the local theater never saw anything of the ticket sales. Most of it went back to the movie companies themselves, with a small part going back to the theater chain. They generated their income from concession sales. That's why they'll usually push you to upsize your drink or popcorn, or offer you candy with your snacks.
"You can upsize from a large to Bladder Buster for only 25 cents more!"
For them to "sneak" someone in the door, while completely against theater policy, and the movie companies would have a cow, happens all the time. But to the local shift manager, what's the difference if they had several hundred tickets sold in a night, who cares if a couple people get in free. Well, the movie companies do. Say 4 people get in free in a given night at one theater. Multiply that by how many theaters are running their movies, and it makes a real dollar amount. It could the difference between schwarzenegger getting 3 or 4 new Hummers this month.:) Ok, for normal humans, it doesn't make much of a difference.
But to be on topic, I just find it wierd thinking the projectionist is watching what we're doing in the theaters. What happened to just taking the camera away? I've seen bootlegged movies before. I've never watched the whole thing, simply because they suck. Well, unless you really like seeing a really low quality version of the movie, with the sound picked up on a camcorder's microphone. Ick. There's nothing like watching only part of the screen, and having the shot move around all the time. Camcorders are fine for recording your kids birthday party, but they're anything but acceptable for duplicating feature movies. They should worry more about people dubbing screeners. Those are decent quality, most of the time. Nothing can beat being friends with a theater manager, and previewing the movies in the theater with a couple cases of beer, and all the free popcorn we could eat, even if we did have to start watching movies at like 3am.:)
I think you have a definate point there. Moving parts would have more friction moving through (or in contact with) the denser matter. The motor in the hard drive would have to work harder, and the arms that the heads are attached to would be slower to move through the liquid than air. It makes me wonder why they haven't developed hard drives to work in a vacuum. With less friction due to the lack of air, the heads should move quite a bit faster.
I suspect a dunking wouldn't allow any or enough water inside the hard drive, but continued use in such an environment would obviously allow the liquid in.
And obviously it would make CDRoms very hard to use.:)
But, it does sound like a good idea for a full submersion motherboard. But, you'd probably have to mount the motherboard so all the connectors (keyboard, mouse, etc) were on top, or it would leak.
I'd be just a bit nervous of about having a power supply submerged.
And what happens if there's any condensation, or the liquid gets contaminated by any sort of conductive material? The liquid may be non-conductive, but contaminants would be.
It does sound like a better solution for current design liquid cooling systems. If they leak, it won't fry anything. That is assuming it conducts heat, rather than insulate from it.
I've done some tinkering in Java. I don't *LIKE* the language, but that's another story.
You're fairly close on the poor programmers. I was writing a java applet to handle streaming video for users (display in the browser). I wrote something myself, which ran ok. I also downloaded, decompiled, and read several other people's works. None of them worked very well, but they were what was available at the time (this was several years ago). I ended up taking his applet, and rewriting it. In the end, there was nothing left of the original program, but it gave me interesting design ideas.
So by the time I was done, I had an applet that was fairly quick, and worked pretty well on x86 (Windows and Linux). Users reported that it worked on other *nix's also. Then came in the Mac complaints.
It took a couple weeks to work it out so it would work as expected on the major platforms. It would still crash random people's browsers, or even their whole machines, but it wasn't reproducable on any of our machines, even with the same os and browser versions as they had.
In the end, I spent another day writing a cute chunk of javascript, which did the same job *MUCH* more efficently. It worked on every browser that supported JavaScript with almost no exceptions (like, none I can think of, but...). The JavaScript was much smaller, and much faster, to do the same job.
I don't write in Java any more. Well, I guess I could, I just don't. Looking at other people's Java work, I don't see much use into getting back into it. Their applications do hog much more of the machine than they should. If they work, they're fine, but the odds of getting a particular application to work on a particular platform are slim, unless you're using the specific platform that it was written for.
One case in point was a java program written on RedHat 7.3, using IBM's distribution of Java (I think) and IBM DB2.
Try tried to run it on RedHat 9 with Sun's Java, and IBM's DB2. It would run for about a day and then crash. Not much good for a production web site, right?
They tried various combinations, and finally ended up with an older RedHat, with an older version of Java. Write once, Run everywhere, failed.
Well, it may look cool, but I can drive 10 minutes from home, sit a trivial distance from the Hollywood sign, and talk on the cell phone for the same effect. They're implying there'll be fantastic radio noise 180' up over a city. Well, I dare say Los Angeles has a bit of radio noise.:) Even my tone&tester picks up radio stations by touching the phone lines here. It was rather distracting when I was tracing phone lines.
I'd like to see the balloons though. Well, assuming it works the way they expect. I'm going to ask a friend who lives near by to take pictures for me.
Reminds me of an old movie I saw last night. 1979's "Hardcore". God that had to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I watched the whole thing out of morbid curiousity.:)
Maybe I have a slightly skewed perspective, working so long in it, but through most of it I was like "what the fuck?"
Slashdot Mirror
Ah cut him a break. He's busy admiring the MCSE cert on his wall. "Microsoft is great, for only a few thousand dollars, they made me a certified engineer."
I have my CCNA hanging on the wall, and stacks of Linux, Solaris, general *nix, Cisco, general networking, and programming books (many languages). The well worn books are my certification. The Perl reference books have visible marks where I thumb through the pages frequently. His books look like they just came out of a book store.
If some guy was stalking me in a IHOP, following me into the bathroom, makeing an effort to sit in the next stall, and paying that much attention to my bathroom activities, my main motivation would be to leave the bathroom quickly too. If he forgot to flush, so be it, some freak was following him around. Stop stalking the man.
If you're such a great Windows lover, go stalk Bill Gates instead. But, you may not see him in a IHOP.
Hmmmm..
So, if we're in the expanding universe, which is moving at near the speed of light, time is really dilated to almost infinitely slow to the outside observer?
Actually, at the speed of light, traveling towards the arth from Alpha Centauri, light from Sol would be traveling at 600,000km/sec in relationship to him. Light originating from his ship would be travling at normal speed to him, but faster or slower in perspective to anyone (or anything) he was passing.
That's something I don't quite grasp.
The milky galaxy is spinning at x km/s. The galaxy itself is moving away from the center of the (our?) universe at x km/s. A photon on the outward rotation of our planet, on the outward rotation of our solar system, on the outward rotation of our galaxy, moving away from the center of the universe (myself, as my girlfriend says I believe) would be traveling far faster than say a photon moving in the opposite direction from say the opposite side of the same planet.
To each other, their relative speeds would be 600,000km/s, even though to the casual observer standing on the planet, each one would be moving at 300,000km/s.
A photon moving towards the center of our universe could/would encounter one of our example photons moving outward from the center of the universe at a *MUCH* higher speed.
We'll name the photon coming from our planet at max speed Pa , and the incoming photon Pb.
Pa = speed of light (it's speed at creation) + rotation of the planet + rotation of the galaxy + rotation of the universe
Pb = speed of light (assuming it came from an absolute stand still in relation to the universe)
So, the speed of incidence would be Pa + Pb, which to either photon would be rather high.
A little NASA trivia
So, if you were to walk across your yard (at the equator) at 4mile/hour in the same direction as the rotation of the earth, you're really moving at roughly 1004 miles/hour.
I'm amazed..
He decides to bash Linux because he can't make some anonymous sound card work. He does say Intel onboard of some sort..
I had problems with an Intel onboard sound card too. Some other people are using identical PC's to mine in an office environment, and they have problems with sound in Windows too. Ha! At least I got mine working with a newer kernel.
Actually, with a little (very little) effort, I find it's rare that I can't get something working. Just open your eyes, and look at what options are available.
He says that he was getting sound occasionally. Sounds like a conflict of some sort. I had a problem with some older distribution and some sound daemon that was running, which would do something like this. Some sounds would work, but once the x manager made a sound, it would be hosed. There was one option to turn that off.. But, that was an older distribution, I don't even remember what the program was (some three letter process I found running).
He can write 3 pages about how he couldn't fix it, writing for a technical publication??
You know, it took me 1/2 hour to get WinXP even to begin installing on my girlfriend's new computer? It's because it didn't have any freakin' concept of what a SATA hard drive was. I had to make a floppy driver disk, which had to be in the A: so I could hit F6 (or whatever) to add extra drivers. It was nice of them to supply a *CD*, which did me absolutely no good for putting the drivers on. I rebooted into Linux (ahh, dual boot) to copy the files over. The other computers near-by didn't even have floppy drives to use. This was the only one.
BTW, Linux installed in less than 1/2 hour for the complete install. XP, well, we went to the store, and came back to watch it still be installing. It took half the day to get an operational system going. If I was being paid by the hour, I'd love it, but I was doing it for my girlfriend, when we could have been doing something fun, instead of me watching "estimated time to completion: 32 hours"
[extend on for 3 pages, and submit to Information Week]
I thought they were fed to lions.
I had read an interview of one of the founders of Google, who said something to the effect that the whole SEC filing was going to cost them an absolute fortune, and they simply didn't want to do it.
:) I didn't need a job, I just wanted to be part of their gig, it sounded like a great place to be, and I could offer a lot. But hey, if they don't want me, I have plenty of other things to do. :)
To now, from my outside view, I see nothing wrong with the way they're doing things. Most people are very happy, except for sites who wish to artificially push themselves to the top of Googles rankings.
I do have one problem with Google. They didn't hire me. But, that's something I can live with.
I agree.
If only companies could pick and choose their stockholders. Imagine if just
Once you're public, you're screwed. Any Joe-stocktrader can buy your stock, now you have to answer to him.
A lot has to be said for private companies.
My news site, the only thing I have that I could imagine getting that big, is mine. There are a few other people who work for/with me, but a few times, they've said "hey, it's your site, do what you want." While they're absolutely right, I do stop what I'm saying right there, and ask their opinions, which usually have sound ideas behind them. I'd hate to get into a situation where one day a group come to me and say "together, we're majority shareholders, and we want you to [insert insanely bad idea here]"
If there was a Jesus. :)
(excuse me while I duck. The Christians will start throwing rocks again)
Maybe the guy who does the logo graphics was out sick. Or maybe they wanted to avoid religious bias by celebrating a Christian holiday. Not everyone celebrates Easter, no matter how many ads with bunnies you may see on TV.
But when you're rich, there's never enough money. I don't know it from personal experience, but I've known a few multi-millionaires. $5mil/yr isn't enough, they want $10mil, then $20. It almost makes me cry when they're making $40mil/yr, flying first class all over the world just because they can, and still complaining that they don't have enough money.
Aparently, no matter how much money you make, your expenses will grow to match your income. It does make sense. If you're making $10mil/yr, are you really going to live in the same house, and drive the same car, as you did when you were making $20k/yr. The downfall of that is, when you have a bit of extra income, and change your spending accordingly, if that money goes away, you're still stuck with the expenses. Myself, I had a bit of extra income, so I bought a second car. That income went away, so instead of having a bit of extra cash every month, we were cutting corners to get the bills paid.
While I'd love to get a hold of a bunch of Google stock when they're first offered, and then sell to all the suckers still clammering for the stocks a week later, they may have another option, which would keep them out of IPO land.
I've seen other companies do something similiar to this, to make themselves look smaller than they really are, and to protect themselves from lawsuits, even if it's in CEO's mind.
Split up the company.
Google could make google::adsense google::adwords google::froogle google::india google::news , and even split off their IT departments into seperate companies (google::it::newyork google::it::california google::it::atlanta), and then have google.com buy and sell services between these companies. So, the google::it companies would turn a smaller profit from google.com, but google.com would show an expense.
Google's income divisions could be split, so no one division would make over $10mil/yr . They could even subdivide the company down even more. Google::Adsense::US-East Google::Adsense::US-West Google::Adsense::Europe (etc, etc, etc)
Most of the companies I've known that did this with the idea that if one company gets sued and goes bankrupt, the others are uneffected. If that would really work in the legal system is another story (and IANAL).
I suspect some Google lawyer has already started drawing up the paperwork for this, unless they really want to go for the IPO, and are just playing like they don't.
HAHA!
I can just imagine waking up to the sound of a 747 taking off over your head.
I dated a brunette. She was absolutely beautiful. Her pickup line (the one I always fell for) was, "Lets work on that program". I gotta say, I loved dating a programmer.
"Take Me Home, I'm Drunk"
Isn't that the blonde mating call?
(good thing my girlfriend doesn't read here)
sed -e s/qu/d/g; :)
I've used technology too long, I can still use my cell phone, when I probably shouldn't be. It's lead to some pretty embarassing phone calls to ex-girlfriends, when I was too drunk to think (or even walk).
Usually they're good enough to not hang up, and let me fully embarrass myself.
Someone should ask the question, what's the wierdest place you've woken up after a night of drinking..
Mine would be in a parking lot. I couldn't find my car keys (in my jacket pocket), so I laid down on the cement and went to sleep.
The runner up would be the back of an ex-girlfriends car at a rave at a beach 20 miles from home. A friend kinda borrowed my car, and forgot to come back, so I was stuck til the ex was ready to leave. It was ok though, she knew. Her boyfriend wasn't very happy about it though.
I used to be very close friends with the regional manager of a major theater chain. We'd "preview" movies the night before they were released, to "make sure they work". We'd smoke, drink beer and be generally obnoxious through movies. Of course, it was only theater staff at the previews.
:) Ok, for normal humans, it doesn't make much of a difference.
:)
Basically, he told me that the local theater never saw anything of the ticket sales. Most of it went back to the movie companies themselves, with a small part going back to the theater chain. They generated their income from concession sales. That's why they'll usually push you to upsize your drink or popcorn, or offer you candy with your snacks.
"You can upsize from a large to Bladder Buster for only 25 cents more!"
For them to "sneak" someone in the door, while completely against theater policy, and the movie companies would have a cow, happens all the time. But to the local shift manager, what's the difference if they had several hundred tickets sold in a night, who cares if a couple people get in free. Well, the movie companies do. Say 4 people get in free in a given night at one theater. Multiply that by how many theaters are running their movies, and it makes a real dollar amount. It could the difference between schwarzenegger getting 3 or 4 new Hummers this month.
But to be on topic, I just find it wierd thinking the projectionist is watching what we're doing in the theaters. What happened to just taking the camera away? I've seen bootlegged movies before. I've never watched the whole thing, simply because they suck. Well, unless you really like seeing a really low quality version of the movie, with the sound picked up on a camcorder's microphone. Ick. There's nothing like watching only part of the screen, and having the shot move around all the time. Camcorders are fine for recording your kids birthday party, but they're anything but acceptable for duplicating feature movies. They should worry more about people dubbing screeners. Those are decent quality, most of the time. Nothing can beat being friends with a theater manager, and previewing the movies in the theater with a couple cases of beer, and all the free popcorn we could eat, even if we did have to start watching movies at like 3am.
Oh, I miss the good ol' days.
Oh ya.
I knew that, I just forgot..
But, if your constantly cooling the CPU, it will maintain a temperature much lower than when it's being cooled by air.
That is assuming it conducts heat.
I think you have a definate point there. Moving parts would have more friction moving through (or in contact with) the denser matter. The motor in the hard drive would have to work harder, and the arms that the heads are attached to would be slower to move through the liquid than air. It makes me wonder why they haven't developed hard drives to work in a vacuum. With less friction due to the lack of air, the heads should move quite a bit faster.
:)
I suspect a dunking wouldn't allow any or enough water inside the hard drive, but continued use in such an environment would obviously allow the liquid in.
And obviously it would make CDRoms very hard to use.
But, it does sound like a good idea for a full submersion motherboard. But, you'd probably have to mount the motherboard so all the connectors (keyboard, mouse, etc) were on top, or it would leak.
I'd be just a bit nervous of about having a power supply submerged.
And what happens if there's any condensation, or the liquid gets contaminated by any sort of conductive material? The liquid may be non-conductive, but contaminants would be.
It does sound like a better solution for current design liquid cooling systems. If they leak, it won't fry anything. That is assuming it conducts heat, rather than insulate from it.
I've done some tinkering in Java. I don't *LIKE* the language, but that's another story.
You're fairly close on the poor programmers. I was writing a java applet to handle streaming video for users (display in the browser). I wrote something myself, which ran ok. I also downloaded, decompiled, and read several other people's works. None of them worked very well, but they were what was available at the time (this was several years ago). I ended up taking his applet, and rewriting it. In the end, there was nothing left of the original program, but it gave me interesting design ideas.
So by the time I was done, I had an applet that was fairly quick, and worked pretty well on x86 (Windows and Linux). Users reported that it worked on other *nix's also. Then came in the Mac complaints.
It took a couple weeks to work it out so it would work as expected on the major platforms. It would still crash random people's browsers, or even their whole machines, but it wasn't reproducable on any of our machines, even with the same os and browser versions as they had.
In the end, I spent another day writing a cute chunk of javascript, which did the same job *MUCH* more efficently. It worked on every browser that supported JavaScript with almost no exceptions (like, none I can think of, but...). The JavaScript was much smaller, and much faster, to do the same job.
I don't write in Java any more. Well, I guess I could, I just don't. Looking at other people's Java work, I don't see much use into getting back into it. Their applications do hog much more of the machine than they should. If they work, they're fine, but the odds of getting a particular application to work on a particular platform are slim, unless you're using the specific platform that it was written for.
One case in point was a java program written on RedHat 7.3, using IBM's distribution of Java (I think) and IBM DB2.
Try tried to run it on RedHat 9 with Sun's Java, and IBM's DB2. It would run for about a day and then crash. Not much good for a production web site, right?
They tried various combinations, and finally ended up with an older RedHat, with an older version of Java. Write once, Run everywhere, failed.
Well, it may look cool, but I can drive 10 minutes from home, sit a trivial distance from the Hollywood sign, and talk on the cell phone for the same effect. They're implying there'll be fantastic radio noise 180' up over a city. Well, I dare say Los Angeles has a bit of radio noise. :) Even my tone&tester picks up radio stations by touching the phone lines here. It was rather distracting when I was tracing phone lines.
I'd like to see the balloons though. Well, assuming it works the way they expect. I'm going to ask a friend who lives near by to take pictures for me.
Sounds like the man working the camera. :)
:)
Reminds me of an old movie I saw last night. 1979's "Hardcore". God that had to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I watched the whole thing out of morbid curiousity.
Maybe I have a slightly skewed perspective, working so long in it, but through most of it I was like "what the fuck?"
Congratulations.