It WILL end up being a slave to pro-government interest groups as the CBC is.
Do you ever listen to CBC radio? CBC television is another issue - I'd be more in favour of getting rid of that some of that rubbish - but CBC Radio and Radio Canada, along with snow removal, are one of the few things my near 50% effective income tax rate buys me in this country. The news reporting is actually good and insightful, more importantly, it's the most balanced reporting you hear anywhere IMHO. Their programs are excellent, and they actually play music that isn't top 40. Wow! I won't even get into nifty things like internet streaming, which anyone can tune into - even you Americans. (I highly recommend a good shortwave reciever and Radio Canada tho..)
Maybe internet access should be entirely funded by the government just like public roads and highways. After all, it is called the information superhighway. Besides, society benefits as a whole from increased communication.
If it wasn't in the government's red book from before the election, I could have more liscence with this. But their timing is something else. Who do you think is going to profit heavily from this expansion? I'll give you a hint. They've got a blue logo, located in Ottawa, and no, it's not IBM. Methinks the boys in Ottawa are a little concerned their RRSP's went south in a hurry because of said-unnamed company. In my humble opinion, anyhow.
Is this a good thing? Maybe. On the surface it's great, but most of the time in Canada (and yes, I am Canadian) private-public partnerships usually mean that the little guy (e.g. mom and pop ISP's) take it up the a$$ because they don't have the political connections, and that makes me sick.
Don't worry about it. I used to develop GIS applications, and we did a lot of projects with GPS recievers. They're touchy as all hell, and you always lose connections here and there. It would be EXTREMELY EASY to disable the (requrired) antenna, either with a switch or via electronic means (coupling noise, etc). This makes it unfeasible. You could even get slicker than that and spoof your signal, anyhow.
I don't think it'll ever happen. I wouldn't stand for it, that infringes on my freedom to the point where I'm willing to stand up in front of a judge, and I think a lot of other people (in North America) feel the same way. Safe speeds on freeways are often 20-30km/h above posted in traffic.
Used to think like that until I dropped my leather bound notebook in a mudpuddle in Spring. 4 years of contact information ruined. Gone. Went out and bought a Palm Pro the next day (this was 1997). Last month I gave the Pro to my GF and bought a IIIxe for $200cdn. Hands down, get the palm, yeah, no fancy features you don't use anyhow. It's $200cdn. 8meg. Works great.
And most importantly it backs up in a few seconds.
Maybe in the USA. I have an engineering degree and can't call myself an engineer for another 3 years (Although I can call myself a EIT, Engineer in Training). In Canada the engineering profession agressively defends it's trademark on the engineer title (yes, by law, they have domain). The reason they do that is exactly what you described above: There is a difference in skillset and responsibility between a technician, e.g. "Techie", with practical technical knowledge and an engineer with theoretical and design experience.
New Brunswick.. Saint John actually.. yeah, it is pretty nice an area. I'm originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, but had to MOVE, because there aren't any jobs there (Fancy that:). SJ is pretty industrial, but it's nice out of the city. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would move to Cali - traffic pisses me off.:)
Heh, if you're living in a homeless shelter, then that should be a big, red, blinking sign that your life is not on track and you're not following a sustainable path for employment in the future. Learn how to do something else. Go back to school. Assess what you're trying to do with your life. I think anyone paying $3 grand US a month for rent in Cali is insane. Move somewhere else. Reality-check time.
Nobody - but nobody - that I know who legitimately understands technology, has good qualifications, and most importantly, can do something besides useless "process meetings" and powerpoint slides - is worried about getting a job, or keeping a job. I still get cold calls, and a quick scan of monster.ca lists loads of jobs in technology. This is in CANADA! Our unemployement rate is more like ~8-10%, and in my area (Atlantic Canada) it's more like ~20%. Most americans need to contend with a rate below 5%!
Mind you, I did my time in the trenches, I produce product to deadlines, and I understand what I do. I have a Engineering degree, not a CS degree. I might have done CS, but there were way to many of those cookbook.com'ers in CS when I looked at it - people wanting to program for the money, not because it was what they were good at. That devalues the degree in the workplace. I suspect it's these people that are screwed.
Those who can do things will never have a problem finding work. If you can't do anything, then you're in big trouble - and you should be.
Another few words of wisdom are to make sure you have at least a few month's bills worth of cash in the bank. If you don't, then you're spending too much money. Having debt is one thing (ah, I love my student loans..), as long as you're able to service that debt through a dry spell.
Thirty years ago, I learned machine code to program the PDP-8. Why not teach that today? Or why not go further down and teach VLSI processor design, or semiconductor physics?
There can't be that many electrical / computer engineers out there, because 30 years later, we learn all this stuff and more, including semiconductor physics (albeit, that IS an elective). While I would argue that the VLSI stuff has no part in a CS program, as that's more of an implementation / engineering thing (although the lanugages used to develop such designs would be fair play), no CS person should be able to get through a program without some understanding of machine code and assembler. There's no way you're going to get as clear a picture about how the heap and stack work in modern compilers, or how a data bus operates, or information about contention issues, bandwidth, interrupt design (how many CS people would never learn what an interrupt vector table does!), memory architectures, all sorts of good stuff.
That's from the engineering side, I suppose. Having been there and done that, the people I work with that come from pure CS degrees often do not have a good understanding why things like this are bad news:
MyObject* myFunction()
{
MyObject object;
return
}
(yes, there are compilers out there that will let you (try) and run that!)
There is NO excuse for not exposing every CS and Engineering graduate to some to-the-metal assembly. If the professors know how to use the tools, it is very simple. The course I took in VLSI however was a nightmare (Ugh, cadence, ugh, bad unix admins, bad combo). Even that, with knoweldgeable profs, isn't that hard. Give students some credit!
Programming is not Java. Or C. Or assembly. Programming is about abstract problem solving. CS isn't about Visual Basic. It's about COMPUTING THEORY. E.g. APPLIED MATHEMATICS. CS is supposed to be the lang of O-Notation and proving functions can be solved and that there are infinite integers. Etc. The actual practical stuff you're (supposed) to pick up on your own time, or at least, that's how it should be. Teaching tools is dumb. Teaching the theory and background to make those tools is smart, and that comes from an understanding of the architectures you're working with.
Don't get me started on CS people who don't understand OS scheduling and process synchronization!
What do you expect to get out of a MBA? Just more money? There are other routes to doing that. Unless your ambition is to aspire to a top-level executive position in a large, established corporation (haha) then I wouldn't bother with it, unless you want more pretty letters after your name.
I have my engineering degree now, and at this juncture, I can't see going back to school aside from learning something really technical and exotic that required signifigant lab time and resources. If I was to go into business, most of the people here have witnessed how NOT to manage, if you haven't, then you're a lucky soul indeed. Most of that managerial crap can be picked up through reading the textbooks - it REALLY isn't rocket science. The only benefit to doing a MBA will be to make contacts - and again, in a technical field, I'm not sure how valuable those MBA contacts are going to be.
YMMV. The subject pretty much sums up my analysis of (most) MBA's..
I don't understand what the problem with coughin up a few pesos for a site like Sourceforge or Freshmeat is. Slashdot I doubt I'd pay money for now, there's lots of good alternatives available currently. Lots more starting up all the time, too. Themes.org being down does indeed suck, and it does worry me that all these (companies??) run under on corporate flag.
That said, I also find it hard to believe you couldn't run a sourceforge-like project on considerably less dollars than LNUX-Q is spending. What do I know though:).
I write code all day for the Motorola StreamMaster (tm) (r) (whatever) line of set top boxes, and I consider this FAR from irrelevant. Getting access to all the nice linux development tools would make me one happy camper. Motorola has a heavy involvement in the actual production of STB's, which suprise suprise run PPC chips:).
Sun makes servers.. but all the backend billing code for those STB's runs on - you guessed it - great big honkin' servers like Sun makes. So if they sign on, you get backend compatibility too, which is important - RPC et al.
ATI makes a LOT of video chips, and they do so cheaply. Their support matters from a driver perspective, and if companies like TiVo and other software producers for STBs (like the company I work for) don't sign on to develop for Linux, then your standard base won't mean much. More company support is always a good thing!
Notice Microsoft wasn't listed.. heh, this game is going to be Microsoft vs. Everybody else:).
There is another point of view (which I believe is more adequate) which boils down to mind and intellect as fairly sophisticated adaptation function (or tool), so to implement AI we have to start with very simple machine capable of interacting with its environment, learning, adapting, and evolving.
This point of view is missed by a lot of AI researchers, I think, because they're thinking in terms of numbers and theorms, and not the actual human experience. Seperating mind from the body is IMHO a big mistake, and I absoulutely agree with you it's wrong.
Those of you who aren't involved with Neural Networks might find it interesting that almost all research into computerized neural nets stopped when it was proven that a basic perceptron (what you typically visualize when you think of a "neuron") couldn't distingush an XOR function, e.g. nonlinearly seperable data. Of course, this was a pretty simplistic way of looking at it, and growth in the field is exploding now.
I had a big relevation in terms of working with neural nets when I stopped thinking about the math a little bit, and asked myself: If I was this little robot/program/whatever, what would I see? How would I find a pattern in the data I was presented through my senses? (e.g. a Analog-Digital converter connected to a light meter).
We might not be on the ball for 2001, but give it a year or two.:)
If Microsoft controls how you see the Internet (browser), they then can easily control how it is displayed (web server), then they can easily limit who can display it (server OS). It's not a huge jump. These are big Open Source/Free Software projects that are threatened by Microsoft
So use Mozilla/Apache, and they don't do what you want, add the functionality. Nobody forces you at gunpoint (since we're talking about ESR:) to use MS information architecture products. (BackOffice, whatever)
Katz is simply responding like anyone that supports open or free software. He, as I do, feel that someone is trying to steal our homes.
What? I use, support, and develop open source software. I still see the need for Microsoft or companies like them to provide software for the masses, though. Nobody makes you use windows when you get a new PC - liscencing issues aside, which is one of the issues the DoJ has. Going from that to the possibility of a grand paranoia scheme where MS controls the internet through their servers is silly, when the architecture of the network is well standardized and many browser/server alternatives exist. Your decision to participate in the conspiracy at that point is volantary.
You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if Microsoft has a dominant share of the OS market. If for some reason you feel constrained by Microsoft, be it in the OS, Browser, Office Software, Development Tools, Gaming, whatever, arena, go write your own stuff. If enough people dislike what MS is doing, then your stuff will get better and have more features, like linux.
For most people, Microsoft is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Antitrust issues aside, most people just want a simple OS that they can use to do a few things. I want a complicated OS that gives me a lot of power, and I want nice development tools. You might want somthing different.
It's about choice. You're free to choose to not use MS stuff, and use something else instead, or write that "something else" from scratch. Contrary to what most people thing, programming is not rocket science. It's more time consuming than anything else.
I'm sick of people whining about MS dominating this and dominating that. Spend less time whining and more time working on things you wouldn't like to see dominated by MS, like Mozilla. Nobody said the choice had to be easy.
Get a grip, Katz. I can't handle this drivel much longer. Bill Gates is not the frigging antichrist, and Microsoft is not the only point of contact between business and the web. Companies may choose to make microsoft their only point of contact with the internet, just like they might chose to use nothing but custom developed IBM systems. If it's cost effective, all the power to you.
The internet can't be "taken over" by Microsoft. That's just stupid. If you want to use the services and products provided by Microsoft, then do so, but there's lots of alternatives, and if there aren't alternatives, then go write your own! Maybe it won't have all the bells and whistles, and it might cost an arm and a leg, but you can do what you want. Microsoft has a long way to go before you have no choice - and the open source movement has come a long way towards guaranteeing that.
Nobody said computing has to be easy. Bah. Microsoft fills a need just like linux. Get over it.
I just apply a blast of compressed air once every couple months.. no dust problems anymore:). Helps to disconnect the case and move it to another room (e.g. the one with the big blue ceiling) though. Getting a ionizing or other air filtration system helps too, just put it in the room w/the comps.
I haven't bothered with the ducting yet. Having the side off and the fan blowing in works great.
If you really want quiet, and don't care about looks, get a small desk fan. I paid about $15 for a high-quality one that is whisper quiet and flows a LOT of air. I just popped the side off the case and blow the air in, my Duron 600@900Mhz runs at 45C instead of ~60C with the stock heat sink. I had 2 exhaust and one intake fan, and disconnecting those got rid of most of the noise.
When I get around to it, I'll properly connect the fan with some ducting and reconnect the side of the case up. This works great because it cools my horribly overclocked video card and hard drives / DVD / burner as well.
Think big fan, low RPM for quiet.
Other tricks to reduce noise:
Use rubber washers to connect the fan to the case. Where the fan touches the case there will be some vibration and noise transferred. Putting the rubber washer in reduces that.
If your case just has a pattern of holes, get out the dremel and cut a big circle. Those holes introduce turbulence which can cause noise.
Put your fans on a switch for when you don't need mega-cooling. This works well, and my ultra-quiet desk fan has three settings. On the first one, you don't even know it's on.
Another tip: Rather than a intake in the front and an exhaust in the back, try a single, large, low RPM fan -cut in the top of the case- blowing out. Heat rises, and this works well from what a friend of mine has reported.
Would all this shit be going on if there was another vietnam, requisite with napalming the enenmy, drafting of young people, and lots of government-mandated death for everyone?
Now you've got a company that holds patents on every viable memory type for personal computers. You know that PC's are selling like hotcakes and that means memory is too, which all boils down to huge royalties for Rambus.
Except that it's also obvious their patents were completely out to lunch and their behaviour bordered on (and may have been) criminal. However, I do see that RAM is more and more important, and processor speed is becoming less so - might I be more interested in companies that produce RAM, very likely! Betting the farm on one company is stupid, and so is falling in love with a stock. I'm not talking about either. If I see a product I use everyday, see lots of other people using, I like it, the company is doing well - but their price is down - then I'm going to buy. Just like I'll sell it when I think the price is too high. Example, Honda Motor Co, or 3M.
It makes sense to limit your individual stock purchases to those areas you have some special knowledge about, but if you fall in love with a stock like PALM or RHAT or LNUX because they mirror what you think, you may be screwing yourself
Or maybe not. Nobody's saying that's all you should invest in. My point is that if Mandrake offered stock to raise money, and you bought it because you liked mandrake, there's nothing wrong with that. If you expect to be a millionaire, well, that's going to bite you in the ass. It's about making an informed desision, and that's one of the key ideas. It's easier when you know the product and the company. I stayed the hell away from Nortel because they hired the most clueless idiots for YEARS from my university. I didn't like that, so I shyed away for companies I knew good things about.
LNUX is a bad example. Ick. Not enough valued-added there for me to bet my money on right now. Palm and Redhat are different, IMHO, although Redhat might be getting back up into overvalued territory now. Redhat's getting close to profitability, and if linux is going anywhere, it'll probably be through them or IBM.
Remember, there are a lot of people making money on MSFT stock.
Hell yeah! Monopolies are great places to invest. I know lots of people making money off of a nice divendend-paying stock - Aliant, the local telco here. Whether or not the microsoft one will last is a matter of debate, personally I don't think it will long term, or more correctly: the high profits their current price is based on will not hold in the long term, so I see no incentive to buy.
If Mandrake has a economic outlook that suits you, then buy it! But don't just contribute money to alleviate guilt! Keep in mind this is a for-profit firm. Invest if you want, but don't contribute.
Scared of us dirty hippies undermining the stock market with altruistic motives for investing? They are a for profit company, but they are different in that the end product is something that I'm free to do whatever I want with. That can't be said for any closed-source software company, and the same metrics don't apply IMHO.
If I buy the stock, I reduce the supply, and hence will raise the price (maybe not noticably, but in volume...). By keeping the price up, you keep the companies shareholders - of which you are now one - motivated and optimistic. Mandrake would be issuing the stock to raise money afterall! (and you would be buying in hopes of getting SOMETHING back). If that something is another version or two (or dozen) of the software, what's wrong with that? You got good utility for your money. Maybe mandrake will turn a nice profit, and the company and price will grow even more, too.
Nothing wrong with that. Even if you're not a dirty linux hippie. Heh.
There are a million methods of choosing stocks, but the questions you asked at the end of your post are the wrong ones. They lead investors down the dark path of falling in love with their stock.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Why would I invest in something that I have absolutely no clue about? (If I was buying stock that is - bonds, mutual funds, etc would be different). I invest in industries that I have extra information about - industries in my field. Palm is an example of this - they were horribly overpriced, and I identified that. They're not so overpriced now, and their APIs and programming support are above board. I've used them in many projects. So I buy the stock because I expect the product to grow and hence the stock price to raise, making me money. I'd be stupid not to take advantage of any specialized knowledge I might have as an engineer.
The question that I've found useful is not those that you mentioned, but this simple one: "If money wasn't an issue, would I buy this entire company (Price x # of shares) at this price?"
Obviously, that's a good metric, and one that I use. But I don't invest in companies that I don't understand, either. The point of me investing money myself is to capitalize on technologies or fields that I have specialized knowledge in. Other people might argue that.
Palm, RedHat, Amazon.. yes, at their highs, they sure did. But at a few bucks a share (and slashed market caps), I'm willing to gamble a couple thousand on my gut instinct and experience. It's only money:). (Well, I wouldn't TOUCH amazon, because I think online selling is crap, I like buying stuff and getting my paws on it right away:). But that's my opinion. I made out like a bandit on AMD - I bought them when they dropped because I knew their chips were the best out there, and they were what I used, and everyone I knew used - and I've been rewarded for that.
This assumes you're a programmer will skill in the area. If, for example, I'm an embedded systems guy (which I am), I might not have time to learn what mandrake needs. However, if I'm very successful, I'll command a high salary and make lots of money. I can help buy providing resources to hire someone who does have the expertise to aid in the development of the project, with the results of the $ going back out into the open source community. This seems to work really well - why would it go against the model? Obviously, this assumes you use the product and provide feedback, or you wouldn't know about it or that it needed work.
To use another classic example: If you're a lawyer and make $150/hr, and you need your house painted. The job will cost $500 and take 16 hours. You'd be stupid to save the $500 by working those 16 hours; you could do what you do best, and pay the specialist to do the work. Same applies to car repairs, etc. If painting is your hobby - like coding is for myself and others - that might be different, but for most people, that's not the case.
The stock market per se is just a way to target a more general (and much bigger) audience of investors, some (most) of which who have absolutely no idea what you do, how your product works or is engineered, etc. If you read the all time classic (in what, it's 18th printing?) How to Buy Stocks, back in the day, you knew the people who invested and ran the company.Stocks were a way to measure the amount of the investment to judge who gets what share of the profits/rewards. This has been missed by the markets, somewhere.
Would it work? Well, I'd buy some redhat if I had spare money, because I like the product. I bought a lot of Palm when the stock went down, because I like that product, too, and work with it. Same thing for AMD. Mandrake is just the same thing continued, although I'm not a mandrake user.
People are kinda supposed to understand what they're investing in, which is why I find the market insanity amusing. I buy products I use and like, and I haven't been clobbered for it e.g., 3M car wax.. 3M stickies.. 3M abrasives.. hrmm... 3M.
My advise to investors is, ask yourself: "Do I use this product? Do I like it? Do I understand it? Would I pay money for it? Would anyone else? Does that matter?", and you'll find the answer quite clear. This looks like a good idea to me, though - support a product you use and like to development continue, and you might see a return on it someday.
Slashdot Mirror
It WILL end up being a slave to pro-government interest groups as the CBC is.
Do you ever listen to CBC radio? CBC television is another issue - I'd be more in favour of getting rid of that some of that rubbish - but CBC Radio and Radio Canada, along with snow removal, are one of the few things my near 50% effective income tax rate buys me in this country. The news reporting is actually good and insightful, more importantly, it's the most balanced reporting you hear anywhere IMHO. Their programs are excellent, and they actually play music that isn't top 40. Wow! I won't even get into nifty things like internet streaming, which anyone can tune into - even you Americans. (I highly recommend a good shortwave reciever and Radio Canada tho..)
This has to be a troll.. oh well, IHBT.
Maybe internet access should be entirely funded by the government just like public roads and highways. After all, it is called the information superhighway. Besides, society benefits as a whole from increased communication.
If it wasn't in the government's red book from before the election, I could have more liscence with this. But their timing is something else. Who do you think is going to profit heavily from this expansion? I'll give you a hint. They've got a blue logo, located in Ottawa, and no, it's not IBM. Methinks the boys in Ottawa are a little concerned their RRSP's went south in a hurry because of said-unnamed company. In my humble opinion, anyhow.
Is this a good thing? Maybe. On the surface it's great, but most of the time in Canada (and yes, I am Canadian) private-public partnerships usually mean that the little guy (e.g. mom and pop ISP's) take it up the a$$ because they don't have the political connections, and that makes me sick.
Don't worry about it. I used to develop GIS applications, and we did a lot of projects with GPS recievers. They're touchy as all hell, and you always lose connections here and there. It would be EXTREMELY EASY to disable the (requrired) antenna, either with a switch or via electronic means (coupling noise, etc). This makes it unfeasible. You could even get slicker than that and spoof your signal, anyhow.
I don't think it'll ever happen. I wouldn't stand for it, that infringes on my freedom to the point where I'm willing to stand up in front of a judge, and I think a lot of other people (in North America) feel the same way. Safe speeds on freeways are often 20-30km/h above posted in traffic.
Used to think like that until I dropped my leather bound notebook in a mudpuddle in Spring. 4 years of contact information ruined. Gone. Went out and bought a Palm Pro the next day (this was 1997). Last month I gave the Pro to my GF and bought a IIIxe for $200cdn. Hands down, get the palm, yeah, no fancy features you don't use anyhow. It's $200cdn. 8meg. Works great.
And most importantly it backs up in a few seconds.
Of course, that's gunna cost you..
Maybe in the USA. I have an engineering degree and can't call myself an engineer for another 3 years (Although I can call myself a EIT, Engineer in Training). In Canada the engineering profession agressively defends it's trademark on the engineer title (yes, by law, they have domain). The reason they do that is exactly what you described above: There is a difference in skillset and responsibility between a technician, e.g. "Techie", with practical technical knowledge and an engineer with theoretical and design experience.
New Brunswick.. Saint John actually.. yeah, it is pretty nice an area. I'm originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, but had to MOVE, because there aren't any jobs there (Fancy that :). SJ is pretty industrial, but it's nice out of the city. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would move to Cali - traffic pisses me off. :)
Heh, if you're living in a homeless shelter, then that should be a big, red, blinking sign that your life is not on track and you're not following a sustainable path for employment in the future. Learn how to do something else. Go back to school. Assess what you're trying to do with your life. I think anyone paying $3 grand US a month for rent in Cali is insane. Move somewhere else. Reality-check time.
Nobody - but nobody - that I know who legitimately understands technology, has good qualifications, and most importantly, can do something besides useless "process meetings" and powerpoint slides - is worried about getting a job, or keeping a job. I still get cold calls, and a quick scan of monster.ca lists loads of jobs in technology. This is in CANADA! Our unemployement rate is more like ~8-10%, and in my area (Atlantic Canada) it's more like ~20%. Most americans need to contend with a rate below 5%!
Mind you, I did my time in the trenches, I produce product to deadlines, and I understand what I do. I have a Engineering degree, not a CS degree. I might have done CS, but there were way to many of those cookbook .com'ers in CS when I looked at it - people wanting to program for the money, not because it was what they were good at. That devalues the degree in the workplace. I suspect it's these people that are screwed.
Those who can do things will never have a problem finding work. If you can't do anything, then you're in big trouble - and you should be.
Another few words of wisdom are to make sure you have at least a few month's bills worth of cash in the bank. If you don't, then you're spending too much money. Having debt is one thing (ah, I love my student loans..), as long as you're able to service that debt through a dry spell.
Thirty years ago, I learned machine code to program the PDP-8. Why not teach that today? Or why not go further down and teach VLSI processor design, or semiconductor physics?
There can't be that many electrical / computer engineers out there, because 30 years later, we learn all this stuff and more, including semiconductor physics (albeit, that IS an elective). While I would argue that the VLSI stuff has no part in a CS program, as that's more of an implementation / engineering thing (although the lanugages used to develop such designs would be fair play), no CS person should be able to get through a program without some understanding of machine code and assembler. There's no way you're going to get as clear a picture about how the heap and stack work in modern compilers, or how a data bus operates, or information about contention issues, bandwidth, interrupt design (how many CS people would never learn what an interrupt vector table does!), memory architectures, all sorts of good stuff.
That's from the engineering side, I suppose. Having been there and done that, the people I work with that come from pure CS degrees often do not have a good understanding why things like this are bad news:
MyObject* myFunction() { MyObject object; return } (yes, there are compilers out there that will let you (try) and run that!)
There is NO excuse for not exposing every CS and Engineering graduate to some to-the-metal assembly. If the professors know how to use the tools, it is very simple. The course I took in VLSI however was a nightmare (Ugh, cadence, ugh, bad unix admins, bad combo). Even that, with knoweldgeable profs, isn't that hard. Give students some credit!
Programming is not Java. Or C. Or assembly. Programming is about abstract problem solving. CS isn't about Visual Basic. It's about COMPUTING THEORY. E.g. APPLIED MATHEMATICS. CS is supposed to be the lang of O-Notation and proving functions can be solved and that there are infinite integers. Etc. The actual practical stuff you're (supposed) to pick up on your own time, or at least, that's how it should be. Teaching tools is dumb. Teaching the theory and background to make those tools is smart, and that comes from an understanding of the architectures you're working with.
Don't get me started on CS people who don't understand OS scheduling and process synchronization!
What do you expect to get out of a MBA? Just more money? There are other routes to doing that. Unless your ambition is to aspire to a top-level executive position in a large, established corporation (haha) then I wouldn't bother with it, unless you want more pretty letters after your name.
I have my engineering degree now, and at this juncture, I can't see going back to school aside from learning something really technical and exotic that required signifigant lab time and resources. If I was to go into business, most of the people here have witnessed how NOT to manage, if you haven't, then you're a lucky soul indeed. Most of that managerial crap can be picked up through reading the textbooks - it REALLY isn't rocket science. The only benefit to doing a MBA will be to make contacts - and again, in a technical field, I'm not sure how valuable those MBA contacts are going to be.
YMMV. The subject pretty much sums up my analysis of (most) MBA's..
All these CS graduates with no idea about machine internals are inflating my EE salary! More java! Yeah! VB too!
Embedded programmers rule :).
I don't understand what the problem with coughin up a few pesos for a site like Sourceforge or Freshmeat is. Slashdot I doubt I'd pay money for now, there's lots of good alternatives available currently. Lots more starting up all the time, too. Themes.org being down does indeed suck, and it does worry me that all these (companies??) run under on corporate flag.
That said, I also find it hard to believe you couldn't run a sourceforge-like project on considerably less dollars than LNUX-Q is spending. What do I know though :).
I write code all day for the Motorola StreamMaster (tm) (r) (whatever) line of set top boxes, and I consider this FAR from irrelevant. Getting access to all the nice linux development tools would make me one happy camper. Motorola has a heavy involvement in the actual production of STB's, which suprise suprise run PPC chips :).
Sun makes servers.. but all the backend billing code for those STB's runs on - you guessed it - great big honkin' servers like Sun makes. So if they sign on, you get backend compatibility too, which is important - RPC et al.
ATI makes a LOT of video chips, and they do so cheaply. Their support matters from a driver perspective, and if companies like TiVo and other software producers for STBs (like the company I work for) don't sign on to develop for Linux, then your standard base won't mean much. More company support is always a good thing!
Notice Microsoft wasn't listed.. heh, this game is going to be Microsoft vs. Everybody else :).
There is another point of view (which I believe is more adequate) which boils down to mind and intellect as fairly sophisticated adaptation function (or tool), so to implement AI we have to start with very simple machine capable of interacting with its environment, learning, adapting, and evolving.
This point of view is missed by a lot of AI researchers, I think, because they're thinking in terms of numbers and theorms, and not the actual human experience. Seperating mind from the body is IMHO a big mistake, and I absoulutely agree with you it's wrong.
Those of you who aren't involved with Neural Networks might find it interesting that almost all research into computerized neural nets stopped when it was proven that a basic perceptron (what you typically visualize when you think of a "neuron") couldn't distingush an XOR function, e.g. nonlinearly seperable data. Of course, this was a pretty simplistic way of looking at it, and growth in the field is exploding now.
I had a big relevation in terms of working with neural nets when I stopped thinking about the math a little bit, and asked myself: If I was this little robot/program/whatever, what would I see? How would I find a pattern in the data I was presented through my senses? (e.g. a Analog-Digital converter connected to a light meter).
We might not be on the ball for 2001, but give it a year or two. :)
If Microsoft controls how you see the Internet (browser), they then can easily control how it is displayed (web server), then they can easily limit who can display it (server OS). It's not a huge jump. These are big Open Source/Free Software projects that are threatened by Microsoft
So use Mozilla/Apache, and they don't do what you want, add the functionality. Nobody forces you at gunpoint (since we're talking about ESR :) to use MS information architecture products. (BackOffice, whatever)
Katz is simply responding like anyone that supports open or free software. He, as I do, feel that someone is trying to steal our homes.
What? I use, support, and develop open source software. I still see the need for Microsoft or companies like them to provide software for the masses, though. Nobody makes you use windows when you get a new PC - liscencing issues aside, which is one of the issues the DoJ has. Going from that to the possibility of a grand paranoia scheme where MS controls the internet through their servers is silly, when the architecture of the network is well standardized and many browser/server alternatives exist. Your decision to participate in the conspiracy at that point is volantary.
You're missing my point. It doesn't matter if Microsoft has a dominant share of the OS market. If for some reason you feel constrained by Microsoft, be it in the OS, Browser, Office Software, Development Tools, Gaming, whatever, arena, go write your own stuff. If enough people dislike what MS is doing, then your stuff will get better and have more features, like linux.
For most people, Microsoft is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Antitrust issues aside, most people just want a simple OS that they can use to do a few things. I want a complicated OS that gives me a lot of power, and I want nice development tools. You might want somthing different.
It's about choice. You're free to choose to not use MS stuff, and use something else instead, or write that "something else" from scratch. Contrary to what most people thing, programming is not rocket science. It's more time consuming than anything else.
I'm sick of people whining about MS dominating this and dominating that. Spend less time whining and more time working on things you wouldn't like to see dominated by MS, like Mozilla. Nobody said the choice had to be easy.
Get a grip, Katz. I can't handle this drivel much longer. Bill Gates is not the frigging antichrist, and Microsoft is not the only point of contact between business and the web. Companies may choose to make microsoft their only point of contact with the internet, just like they might chose to use nothing but custom developed IBM systems. If it's cost effective, all the power to you.
The internet can't be "taken over" by Microsoft. That's just stupid. If you want to use the services and products provided by Microsoft, then do so, but there's lots of alternatives, and if there aren't alternatives, then go write your own! Maybe it won't have all the bells and whistles, and it might cost an arm and a leg, but you can do what you want. Microsoft has a long way to go before you have no choice - and the open source movement has come a long way towards guaranteeing that.
Nobody said computing has to be easy. Bah. Microsoft fills a need just like linux. Get over it.
I just apply a blast of compressed air once every couple months.. no dust problems anymore :). Helps to disconnect the case and move it to another room (e.g. the one with the big blue ceiling) though. Getting a ionizing or other air filtration system helps too, just put it in the room w/the comps.
I haven't bothered with the ducting yet. Having the side off and the fan blowing in works great.
If you really want quiet, and don't care about looks, get a small desk fan. I paid about $15 for a high-quality one that is whisper quiet and flows a LOT of air. I just popped the side off the case and blow the air in, my Duron 600@900Mhz runs at 45C instead of ~60C with the stock heat sink. I had 2 exhaust and one intake fan, and disconnecting those got rid of most of the noise.
When I get around to it, I'll properly connect the fan with some ducting and reconnect the side of the case up. This works great because it cools my horribly overclocked video card and hard drives / DVD / burner as well.
Think big fan, low RPM for quiet.
Other tricks to reduce noise:
Another tip: Rather than a intake in the front and an exhaust in the back, try a single, large, low RPM fan -cut in the top of the case- blowing out. Heat rises, and this works well from what a friend of mine has reported.
Would all this shit be going on if there was another vietnam, requisite with napalming the enenmy, drafting of young people, and lots of government-mandated death for everyone?
Now you've got a company that holds patents on every viable memory type for personal computers. You know that PC's are selling like hotcakes and that means memory is too, which all boils down to huge royalties for Rambus.
Except that it's also obvious their patents were completely out to lunch and their behaviour bordered on (and may have been) criminal. However, I do see that RAM is more and more important, and processor speed is becoming less so - might I be more interested in companies that produce RAM, very likely! Betting the farm on one company is stupid, and so is falling in love with a stock. I'm not talking about either. If I see a product I use everyday, see lots of other people using, I like it, the company is doing well - but their price is down - then I'm going to buy. Just like I'll sell it when I think the price is too high. Example, Honda Motor Co, or 3M.
It makes sense to limit your individual stock purchases to those areas you have some special knowledge about, but if you fall in love with a stock like PALM or RHAT or LNUX because they mirror what you think, you may be screwing yourself
Or maybe not. Nobody's saying that's all you should invest in. My point is that if Mandrake offered stock to raise money, and you bought it because you liked mandrake, there's nothing wrong with that. If you expect to be a millionaire, well, that's going to bite you in the ass. It's about making an informed desision, and that's one of the key ideas. It's easier when you know the product and the company. I stayed the hell away from Nortel because they hired the most clueless idiots for YEARS from my university. I didn't like that, so I shyed away for companies I knew good things about.
LNUX is a bad example. Ick. Not enough valued-added there for me to bet my money on right now. Palm and Redhat are different, IMHO, although Redhat might be getting back up into overvalued territory now. Redhat's getting close to profitability, and if linux is going anywhere, it'll probably be through them or IBM.
Remember, there are a lot of people making money on MSFT stock.
Hell yeah! Monopolies are great places to invest. I know lots of people making money off of a nice divendend-paying stock - Aliant, the local telco here. Whether or not the microsoft one will last is a matter of debate, personally I don't think it will long term, or more correctly: the high profits their current price is based on will not hold in the long term, so I see no incentive to buy.
If Mandrake has a economic outlook that suits you, then buy it! But don't just contribute money to alleviate guilt! Keep in mind this is a for-profit firm. Invest if you want, but don't contribute.
Scared of us dirty hippies undermining the stock market with altruistic motives for investing? They are a for profit company, but they are different in that the end product is something that I'm free to do whatever I want with. That can't be said for any closed-source software company, and the same metrics don't apply IMHO.
If I buy the stock, I reduce the supply, and hence will raise the price (maybe not noticably, but in volume...). By keeping the price up, you keep the companies shareholders - of which you are now one - motivated and optimistic. Mandrake would be issuing the stock to raise money afterall! (and you would be buying in hopes of getting SOMETHING back). If that something is another version or two (or dozen) of the software, what's wrong with that? You got good utility for your money. Maybe mandrake will turn a nice profit, and the company and price will grow even more, too.
Nothing wrong with that. Even if you're not a dirty linux hippie. Heh.
There are a million methods of choosing stocks, but the questions you asked at the end of your post are the wrong ones. They lead investors down the dark path of falling in love with their stock.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Why would I invest in something that I have absolutely no clue about? (If I was buying stock that is - bonds, mutual funds, etc would be different). I invest in industries that I have extra information about - industries in my field. Palm is an example of this - they were horribly overpriced, and I identified that. They're not so overpriced now, and their APIs and programming support are above board. I've used them in many projects. So I buy the stock because I expect the product to grow and hence the stock price to raise, making me money. I'd be stupid not to take advantage of any specialized knowledge I might have as an engineer.
The question that I've found useful is not those that you mentioned, but this simple one: "If money wasn't an issue, would I buy this entire company (Price x # of shares) at this price?"
Obviously, that's a good metric, and one that I use. But I don't invest in companies that I don't understand, either. The point of me investing money myself is to capitalize on technologies or fields that I have specialized knowledge in. Other people might argue that.
Palm, RedHat, Amazon.. yes, at their highs, they sure did. But at a few bucks a share (and slashed market caps), I'm willing to gamble a couple thousand on my gut instinct and experience. It's only money :). (Well, I wouldn't TOUCH amazon, because I think online selling is crap, I like buying stuff and getting my paws on it right away :). But that's my opinion. I made out like a bandit on AMD - I bought them when they dropped because I knew their chips were the best out there, and they were what I used, and everyone I knew used - and I've been rewarded for that.
Ymmv, of course.
This assumes you're a programmer will skill in the area. If, for example, I'm an embedded systems guy (which I am), I might not have time to learn what mandrake needs. However, if I'm very successful, I'll command a high salary and make lots of money. I can help buy providing resources to hire someone who does have the expertise to aid in the development of the project, with the results of the $ going back out into the open source community. This seems to work really well - why would it go against the model? Obviously, this assumes you use the product and provide feedback, or you wouldn't know about it or that it needed work.
To use another classic example: If you're a lawyer and make $150/hr, and you need your house painted. The job will cost $500 and take 16 hours. You'd be stupid to save the $500 by working those 16 hours; you could do what you do best, and pay the specialist to do the work. Same applies to car repairs, etc. If painting is your hobby - like coding is for myself and others - that might be different, but for most people, that's not the case.
The stock market per se is just a way to target a more general (and much bigger) audience of investors, some (most) of which who have absolutely no idea what you do, how your product works or is engineered, etc. If you read the all time classic (in what, it's 18th printing?) How to Buy Stocks, back in the day, you knew the people who invested and ran the company.Stocks were a way to measure the amount of the investment to judge who gets what share of the profits/rewards. This has been missed by the markets, somewhere.
Would it work? Well, I'd buy some redhat if I had spare money, because I like the product. I bought a lot of Palm when the stock went down, because I like that product, too, and work with it. Same thing for AMD. Mandrake is just the same thing continued, although I'm not a mandrake user.
People are kinda supposed to understand what they're investing in, which is why I find the market insanity amusing. I buy products I use and like, and I haven't been clobbered for it e.g., 3M car wax.. 3M stickies.. 3M abrasives.. hrmm... 3M.
My advise to investors is, ask yourself: "Do I use this product? Do I like it? Do I understand it? Would I pay money for it? Would anyone else? Does that matter?", and you'll find the answer quite clear. This looks like a good idea to me, though - support a product you use and like to development continue, and you might see a return on it someday.