You'll either be faced by rows of cubicles (which I'm actually quite envious of as at least you get some privacy)
Unfortunately, these are still noisy as hell, except you won't know where the noise is coming from. My next-cubicle neighbour used to have an admin visit him every afternoon. For the entire duration of the meeting, I kept hearing this "thump, thump, thump-thump". After three days it drove me nuts, and I just had to find out what the noise was... she was bending her knee and thumping the floor with the toes of her sneakers.
Not forgetting the heavily built six foot six tall guy who just *had* to walk around barefoot on the dryboard floors. Every time he walked past, everyone felt their desk chairs bounce up and down like an early Disney cartoon.
You'd get a "insightful mod point" from me if I had any.
Modern laptop's now come with desktop quality texture mapping technology that can do at least 60Hz (that's how fast the LCD refreshes). The actual rendering speed is dependent upon window size, but a full-screen size the rendering rate is always above this. Maybe by the end of the year, the next-generation standard of removable graphics cards will be out and laptops will keep pace with desktop systems. The only thing I fear will be the size of the mains transformer. It seems graphics accelerated laptops now need two transformer coils - one for the motherboard, and another for the graphics accelerator.
Seriously - what the hell is up with Computer equipment prices in England? Is their economy so strong that $5519.37 is a reasonable price for a 3.6 ghz P4 with a Radeon X800?
The problem in the UK is two things. First of all, we have to pay import duty on anything manufactured abroad (+0% to +85%). Then, we also have to pay VAT (+17.5%). Then there's the middle man tax for the company that's doing the importing, and warehouse storage. Not forgetting the high price of petrol which means that transporting anything becomes increasingly more expensive the further away you are from London. Deliveries in the Greater London area are usually offered "same day", while it can take three days to get to the North of England. Details can be found at Rip-Off UK.
The combination of the high rates of taxation, and the rapid change of hardware has forced people to become cost-conscious about buying computers. Web based suppliers like Dabs.com are usually the first place people look when comparing prices. Nobody in their right mind is going to waste 400 pounds (600 dollars) on VAT, for a 1600 pound system, if they can help it.
The only people I know who are buying from Dell are the university departments when making a bulk order with educational discounts for a new computer lab.
The key point is "immediately available." That means that the research was not on a classified topic. In that case, the public should have free access to the results. They've already paid for the privilege.
In many cases, the paper is usually available for free on the university web page, or can be found in a local cache at another university. Both can be found using a Google search. For other documents such as technical reports and PhD papers, you can always make a standard request and receive a copy.
Having a suhscription to a printed journal helps to reduce the time doing this search and printing/binding the papers. However, many departments now prefer to have at least one electronic copy for archival purposes.
One of the places I worked in had computer labs with PC's exactly like those (assembled by a local suppler). Except each system also had "Turbo button". The idea was that if you wanted extra computing power for a particular task, you could press this button, and the system clock would be boosted up from 8.00Mhz to 16.00Mhz.
Usually, every user would just keep the turbo button on all the time, only releasing it to play some game which wasn't time synchronised (dragnfly.exe).
Later PC's actually had a LED display which displayed the clock speed at the front. Our technician once had to to repair a system because a user complained the turbo button wasn't changing the displayed speed. Rather unsurprisingly, we found out that the turbo button was only hardwired to the input pins of the LED display and the cooling fan motor. Pressing the Turbo button had no effect except to rev the cooling fan and make the PC sound a little louder.
Even for the most basic of computer jobs, the call-centre operator, touch-typing is absolutely essential. I could never understand why managers of such companies were complaining about the lack of "office skills" of interview candidates until I realised they meant touch-typing and basic computer technology. Anyone with those skills could find higher paying jobs working as help-desk operators, technicians, admins, receptionists and database operators.
It makes me grateful to think that because my first home computer had a full qwerty keyboard, I learned touch-typing automatically. I could never understand what the big deal when so many IT teachers/ trainers made a big fuss over the fact that I could touch type (this was the first new skill that most new staff had to learn; followed by ergonomics; how to adjust the brightness of the monitor and the height of the chair).
MFC is dead. It hasn't been updated since version 4.2 and even MS don't use it any more. It was a hideous abortion to start with anyway.
I will agree with you there. However, as it happens, I am porting a game engine + level editor from MFC to Linux. Porting the core geometry libraries has been easy. This only leaves the GUI interface to be ported. If there is any way possible, I'd rather not have the hassle of having to create/edit 20+ dialog menus + callback functions, then have to cut and paste the various function calls into the framework. Creating a single view window for the actual game is simple using SDL and OpenGL.
I believe ID avoid this problem by having the game engine and level editor combined together.
ESA researchers will make initial inquiries into DADLE (D-Ala,D-Leu-enkephalin), an opium-like drug that triggers hibernation in ground squirrels and human cells. Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate."
An alternative solution is to design a virtual environment simulator that will make ground squirrels and Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemurs believe they are jumping across tree branches, when in fact they are piloting an interstellar spaceships.
If you really want developers to consider Linux as a viable to Windows, then the first thing that should be done is to make it easy to port projects designed for MFC/Visual Studio into KDdevelop projects.
Well, if someone parked outside my building, pointed a six foot dish at my office, and told me my wireless data needed encrypting, I'd probably freak out too.
Where I work (a well-known PC gaming company) employees must sign a document that basically states that any concepts and technology are developed while employed here are property of the company.
You think that's bad for a a game company. Some UK companies require you to sign a contract giving 12 notices before moving to another company, and sign a worldwide Non-Compete Agreement prohibiting you from working for any similar project worldwide.
I had that problem upgrading from Red Hat Linux 9 to Fedora Core 2 - No KSokoban!!! Eventually I did manage to get the game installed again; after making multiple downloads and running rpm on various packages for several hours.
There was once an article about a guy who had filed a patent on a novel shape of brick. One problem was that any garden patio or driveway could deform due to flooding and heavy objects. Various solutions including placing layers of clay, cement and sand below ordinary shapes bricks. His solution was to have bricks in the shape of truncated tetrahedrons; take a tetrahedron and clip off two adjacent edges. This will leave two rectangle aligned at 90 degrees to each other. Placed side by side, the bricks would lock each other into shape, and thereby prevent any deformation.
So I'll just laugh at people who think their silly data move tricks are going to outperform a 9800XT's hardware acceleration. No, really, it's so idiotic, it's downright hillarious.
This software isn't being targeted at new systems, it's for old systems owned by users who don't wish to pay for expensive hardware upgrades, but still wish to make some use out of the system for Windows development. If these developers can squeeze this performance out of such systems, then it will put pressure on hardware vendors to make sure their latest systems offer the same price/performance ratio.
The idea of Sun Rays is to save sysadmin's the hassle of fighting viruses/trojans/spamware/malware by constantly having to clean hard disk drives. The thin client has no hard disk drive; everything is downloaded off the network. It's like an X-server which can handle audio, video and 3D graphics. Access is gained by using ID cards.
Corporate customers were complaining about the cost of maintaining PC networks. Sun saw there was demand for low-cost multimedia terminals (companies still wanted to their staff to be able to view training videos) which would have access to a centralised server.
I doubt that - all the major technology companies over here seemed to have been bought up by North American/Japanese companies. Psygnosis by Sony, Rare by Microsoft, Criterion by Electronic Arts. And the small companies wouldn't have the financial backing to file a patent lawsuit (any kind of litigation scares away future financial investors).
Who says it needs to be Americans or an American company doing it? I would love to see the EU or a group of UK companies sue the ass off the PTO
This would be very unlikely, since we have companies like BTG Plc which license patents worldwide. Plus European contractors for government DBMS are extremely keen to maintain their monopoly. To quote David Blunkett on ID Cards "we have to keep the terms of the contract strictly confidential and away from the public in order to guarantee value for money".
Whats the point of all this destructive testing? Do you really need your media to be THAT tough? (with the obvious exception of military applications but they can afford to pay for that.)
Because these are the things that happen when have a family. It's Saturday, the kids are outside playing, and they see something really funny, like a baby squirrel trying to raid a birdfeeder. You run upstairs, grab your camera and try and take some pictures to keep the kids happy. You take a couple of photographs or make a MPEG movie, then allow them to take the memory-card out to download onto the PC. You get the card back and put it back in your pocket. Forgetfully, you put the trousers in the washing basket, and fail to remove the card (It gets a full spin wash). Or you briefly put the camera down on a coffee table, leave the room to get your laptop. In the meantime, your 3-year old decides that its time for Builder Bob to search for building materials for the new multi-colored office block that going up in his bedroom. Or you leave a spare card in the carrying bag for the camera, on the picnic table in the sundeck, and there's a Summer thunderstorm. The bag is soaked, but at least the card still works (You don't have to spend another $50 on a new card).
Slashdot Mirror
You'll either be faced by rows of cubicles (which I'm actually quite envious of as at least you get some privacy)
Unfortunately, these are still noisy as hell, except you won't know where the noise is coming from. My next-cubicle neighbour used to have an admin visit him every afternoon. For the entire duration of the meeting, I kept hearing this "thump, thump, thump-thump". After three days it drove me nuts, and I just had to find out what the noise was... she was bending her knee and thumping the floor with the toes of her sneakers.
Not forgetting the heavily built six foot six tall guy who just *had* to walk around barefoot on the dryboard floors. Every time he walked past, everyone felt their desk chairs bounce up and down like an early Disney cartoon.
You'd get a "insightful mod point" from me if I had any.
Modern laptop's now come with desktop quality texture mapping technology that can do at least 60Hz (that's how fast the LCD refreshes). The actual rendering speed is dependent upon window size, but a full-screen size the rendering rate is always above this. Maybe by the end of the year, the next-generation standard of removable graphics cards will be out and laptops will keep pace with desktop systems. The only thing I fear will be the size of the mains transformer. It seems graphics accelerated laptops now need two transformer coils - one for the motherboard, and another for the graphics accelerator.
Seriously - what the hell is up with Computer equipment prices in England? Is their economy so strong that $5519.37 is a reasonable price for a 3.6 ghz P4 with a Radeon X800?
The problem in the UK is two things. First of all, we have to pay import duty on anything manufactured abroad (+0% to +85%). Then, we also have to pay VAT (+17.5%). Then there's the middle man tax for the company that's doing the importing, and warehouse storage. Not forgetting the high price of petrol which means that transporting anything becomes increasingly more expensive the further away you are from London. Deliveries in the Greater London area are usually offered "same day", while it can take three days to get to the North of England.
Details can be found at Rip-Off UK.
The combination of the high rates of taxation, and the rapid change of hardware has forced people to become cost-conscious about buying computers. Web based suppliers like Dabs.com are usually the first place people look when comparing prices. Nobody in their right mind is going to waste 400 pounds (600 dollars) on VAT, for a 1600 pound system, if they can help it.
The only people I know who are buying from Dell are the university departments when making a bulk order with educational discounts for a new computer lab.
Not forgetting the insanely large amounts of money used to subsidise the construction of the olympic village.
The key point is "immediately available." That means that the research was not on a classified topic. In that case, the public should have free access to the results. They've already paid for the privilege.
In many cases, the paper is usually available for free on the university web page, or can be found in a local cache at another university. Both can be found using a Google search. For other documents such as technical reports and PhD papers, you can always make a standard request and receive a copy.
Having a suhscription to a printed journal helps to reduce the time doing this search and printing/binding the papers. However, many departments now prefer to have at least one electronic copy for archival purposes.
... does the mouse have circular black ears and a cheesy grin?
They said that about floppy disks.
As Zahphod Beeblebrox would say:
"ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking".
The ISP would probably suspend her Internet account, giving Penquin the opportunity to seize the domain name.
Of course, she could take an interest in wildlife conservation in the Orkney's,
and tell the major book publisher what they can do.
One of the places I worked in had computer labs with PC's exactly like those (assembled by a local suppler). Except each system also had "Turbo button". The idea was that if you wanted extra computing power for a particular task, you could press this button, and the system clock would be boosted up from 8.00Mhz to 16.00Mhz.
Usually, every user would just keep the turbo button on all the time, only releasing it to play some game which wasn't time synchronised (dragnfly.exe).
Later PC's actually had a LED display which displayed the clock speed at the front. Our technician once had to to repair a system because a user complained the turbo button wasn't changing the displayed speed. Rather unsurprisingly, we found out that the turbo button was only hardwired to the input pins of the LED display and the cooling fan motor. Pressing the Turbo button had no effect except to rev the cooling fan and make the PC sound a little louder.
Even for the most basic of computer jobs, the call-centre operator, touch-typing is absolutely essential. I could never understand why managers of such companies were complaining about the lack of "office skills" of interview candidates until I realised they meant touch-typing and basic computer technology. Anyone with those skills could find higher paying jobs working as help-desk operators, technicians, admins, receptionists and database operators.
It makes me grateful to think that because my first home computer had a full qwerty keyboard, I learned touch-typing automatically. I could never understand what the big deal when so many IT teachers/ trainers made a big fuss over the fact that I could touch type (this was the first new skill that most new staff had to learn; followed by ergonomics; how to adjust the brightness of the monitor and the height of the chair).
Uhh Why?
MFC is dead. It hasn't been updated since version 4.2 and even MS don't use it any more. It was a hideous abortion to start with anyway.
I will agree with you there. However, as it happens, I am porting a game engine + level editor from MFC to Linux. Porting the core geometry libraries has been easy. This only leaves the GUI interface to be ported. If there is any way possible, I'd rather not have the hassle of having to create/edit 20+ dialog menus + callback functions, then have to cut and paste the various function calls into the framework. Creating a single view window for the actual game is simple using SDL and OpenGL.
I believe ID avoid this problem by having the game engine and level editor combined together.
ESA researchers will make initial inquiries into DADLE (D-Ala,D-Leu-enkephalin), an opium-like drug that triggers hibernation in ground squirrels and human cells. Other subjects of interest include dobutamine, a drug that maintains muscle, and the Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, the only primate known to hibernate."
An alternative solution is to design a virtual environment simulator that will make ground squirrels and Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemurs believe they are jumping across tree branches, when in fact they are piloting an interstellar spaceships.
If you really want developers to consider Linux as a viable to Windows, then the first thing that should be done is to make it easy to port projects designed for MFC/Visual Studio into KDdevelop projects.
Well, if someone parked outside my building, pointed a six foot dish at my office, and told me my wireless data needed encrypting, I'd probably freak out too.
Where I work (a well-known PC gaming company) employees must sign a document that basically states that any concepts and technology are developed while employed here are property of the company.
You think that's bad for a a game company. Some UK companies require you to sign a contract giving 12 notices before moving to another company, and sign a worldwide Non-Compete Agreement prohibiting you from working for any similar project worldwide.
What happens if he refuse to hand over the "documents". Will the FBI come with a warrant and seize his brain?
Will he get it back once it has been examined, albeit rather scratched and dented where the technicians have prized it open to examine the contents.
I had that problem upgrading from Red Hat Linux 9 to Fedora Core 2 - No KSokoban!!! Eventually I did manage to get the game installed again; after making multiple downloads and running rpm on various packages for several hours.
There was once an article about a guy who had filed a patent on a novel shape of brick. One problem was that any garden patio or driveway could deform due to flooding and heavy objects. Various solutions including placing layers of clay, cement and sand below ordinary shapes bricks. His solution was to have bricks in the shape of truncated tetrahedrons; take a tetrahedron and clip off two adjacent edges. This will leave two rectangle aligned at 90 degrees to each other. Placed side by side, the bricks would lock each other into shape, and thereby prevent any deformation.
So I'll just laugh at people who think their silly data move tricks are going to outperform a 9800XT's hardware acceleration. No, really, it's so idiotic, it's downright hillarious.
This software isn't being targeted at new systems, it's for old systems owned by users who don't wish to pay for expensive hardware upgrades, but still wish to make some use out of the system for Windows development. If these developers can squeeze this performance out of such systems, then it will put pressure on hardware vendors to make sure their latest systems offer the same price/performance ratio.
The idea of Sun Rays is to save sysadmin's the hassle of fighting viruses/trojans/spamware/malware by constantly having to clean hard disk drives. The thin client has no hard disk drive; everything is downloaded off the network. It's like an X-server which can handle audio, video and 3D graphics. Access is gained by using ID cards.
Corporate customers were complaining about the cost of maintaining PC networks. Sun saw there was demand for low-cost multimedia terminals (companies still wanted to their staff to be able to view training videos) which would have access to a centralised server.
Now that's funny. Europeans consider any electrical appliance that doesn't have a ground prong as flakey.
I doubt that - all the major technology companies over here seemed to have been bought up by North American/Japanese companies. Psygnosis by Sony, Rare by Microsoft, Criterion by Electronic Arts. And the small companies wouldn't have the financial backing to file a patent lawsuit (any kind of litigation scares away future financial investors).
Who says it needs to be Americans or an American company doing it? I would love to see the EU or a group of UK companies sue the ass off the PTO
This would be very unlikely, since we have companies like BTG Plc which license patents worldwide. Plus European contractors for government DBMS are extremely keen to maintain their monopoly. To quote David Blunkett on ID Cards "we have to keep the terms of the contract strictly confidential and away from the public in order to guarantee value for money".
Whats the point of all this destructive testing? Do you really need your media to be THAT tough? (with the obvious exception of military applications but they can afford to pay for that.)
Because these are the things that happen when have a family. It's Saturday, the kids are outside playing, and they see something really funny, like a baby squirrel trying to raid a birdfeeder. You run upstairs, grab your camera and try and take some pictures to keep the kids happy. You take a couple of photographs or make a MPEG movie, then allow them to take the memory-card out to download onto the PC. You get the card back and put it back in your pocket. Forgetfully, you put the trousers in the washing basket, and fail to remove the card (It gets a full spin wash). Or you briefly put the camera down on a coffee table, leave the room to get your laptop. In the meantime, your 3-year old decides that its time for Builder Bob to search for building materials for the new multi-colored office block that going up in his bedroom. Or you leave a spare card in the carrying bag for the camera, on the picnic table in the sundeck, and there's a Summer thunderstorm. The bag is soaked, but at least the card still works (You don't have to spend another $50 on a new card).
Thanks for the link - I thought my PC needed a new toner cartridge for the monitor.