There were WAY fewer programmers back in the 80's than now. I'm willing to bet the number of software developers have grown exponentially over the years, which means that there simply aren't that many older programmers (compared to the number of younger ones). I honestly think that's a big part of it.
Also, I definitely know some older developers, usually they're some sort of senior architects or other, with incredible expertise within one or two products. They definitely exist, there just aren't that many.
It also seems heavily tilted towards web development. There are no options that fit "firmware", "embedded", "device software", "OS", or anything else that fits my skill-set.
As has been pointed out, Google is an advertising company cubed and won't do this unless they're forced to. But Mozilla and Firefox (and it's descendants) could, and I hope they will. All the more reason to switch (back) to Firefox.
Seconded - I've used Sonic for about 12 years - couldn't be happier. They've also gotten the big thumbs up from EFF for their privacy practices.
When I switched my service to DSL2 (should give up to 20Mb / second down) some years ago, they sent a technician to my place. He found that even though the building was close enough to their CO, the old copper wiring in the building meant I wouldn't be able to use the full 20Mb. So instead they suggested a cheaper and slower plan. I gotta say, an ISP who sends out a guy who explains they will take less money from me is pretty rare.
So, my connection is on paper fairly slow - 6Mbit down and 1 up. But on the other hand, I actually get that speed. It's enough to watch Netflix in HD. If I'm downloading something large (say, a linux image) I see my DL speed top out at about 650Kb/second, which means I am getting the whole 6 MBit. Day or night. (And again, that 6Mbit is because of my building, not because of Sonic!).
Always always check if you can get Sonic where you live.
It's an honest question. I am a programmer of embedded systems and microcontrollers, my expertise is at the other end of the computing spectrum.
As much as I like to blame Oracle, the state may have added serious requirements at the last minute that complicated everything. These articles doesn't say anything about it. Same seems to go for all the troubled exchanges - so what's the problem?
The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded "significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio," adding that it planned to "take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims."
Samsung used to license these patents, then stopped paying. They knew a lawsuit was coming, and decided it was a fight worth taking. I have no clue whether the fees requested by Ericsson are unreasonable or not - but there's no need for conspiracy theories or ulterior motives on this one.
Ericsson no longer makes phones. They're a highly profitable company building cell phone networks with lots of patents in the wireless tech-sphere. Samsung and Ericsson are not, in other words, direct competitors and this is not a case of competing through the courts. Key part from TFA:
"The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
"Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded 'significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio,' adding that it planned to 'take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims.'"
This is purely about the money. The two companies stopped negotiating, Samsung is betting that going to court (they must have known a lawsuit was coming) will end up better for them than paying Ericsson's fee.
The business models, as the grand-parent suggest, are not heavy at all. Kinda expensive, yes, but tougher than most and freakishly light.
The CF-T series has a 12" screen, core 2 duo processor, no optical drive, and clocks in around 1.2kg. The W series is very similar but adds an optical drive, at less than 1.5kg. (that's about 3 lbs).
All of those laptops have water proof keyboards, should be able to survive a drop from 1 meter and take 100kg of pressure. There are videos on Youtube of people testing these claims (seems to be true).
Maybe the article is badly written, but it appears as if the scientists are jumping conclusions. The test subjects were asked to pick a symbol, they got feedback in the form of a smiley face or an angry face. Some short time later they were asked to pick a symbol again. If they now picked the happy face, the scientists assumed they had learned.
Somehow, I doubt that seeing a smiley face is enough of a reward to make the subject avoid making the same choice again. I mean, the angry face might look more interesting, or the subject might just wonder what happens if the takes the other card (given that he took the happy one first).
I'm just saying - there could be many reasons other than "not learning" why a person picks the symbol that gives an unhappy face as a result. Hopefully, the scientists thought of this, but it's not in the article (as far as I can tell).
Panasonic has a series of amazing laptops that's mostly sold in Japan, although one model (the Y series) has made it to the US. I'm using an R6 that I got through geekstuff4u, a company in Tokyo that exports stuff for geeky foreigners... The R6, the smallest model, has a 10" screen, core 2 duo processor, 4+ hours of battery time, 80gb harddrive, weighs about 2 pounds - and can withstand a drop from 2.5 feet, 200 pounds of pressure and the keyboard is waterproof. (No, I haven't tried it myself... but there are videos on Youtube with people confirming this.)
The Y is the largest in the series. It has the same durability specs (drop, water et.c.) as the smaller ones, but it comes with a built in optical drive and a 14" screen, and weighs about 3 pounds. That one is officially for sale in the US.
Oh, and I've been told that this Panasonic series is all manufactured in Japan. In the US, the Y5 (latest model, I believe) is sold as part of the toughbook series, but in Japan the series is called "Let's note!".
That machine you linked to is a 15.4" widescreen monster. I'd ruin my back carrying that around.
I'm definitely buying a 10" Eee when it comes out - for me the ultra small form factor is a basic requirement. Then it also has a video-camera, it's quiet, decent battery-time, compact flash reader...
I refuse to even consider any laptops over 3 pounds. Since I mostly program in Emacs, browse the web or read emails, speed is not all that important - most any computer available today can do what I need.
I know a lot of non-geeks who reason in a similar way.
Now, first I thought the poster was clueless, but then I saw some of the replies here, and jeez, guys, you're usually sharper than this.
I'm European, but I'm currently living in the US (San Francisco) and I've also lived in Japan for six months. Let me dispel some myths for you.
First, this is not a new phenomenon, these outdated cell-phones in the US. When I first came here in 2000, people looked at my phone (an Ericsson T28 World) like it was from outer space. Tiny, and with a standby time that lasted for two days. I stayed at a hostel the first few weeks, and the other room-mate there with a cell was amazed that I didn't need to recharge my phone every night... In general, the phones on sale in the US are two years behind Europe.
Second, the cell phone market in the US and Japan is very different from the one in Europe. In Japan and the US there are several different technologies used, in Europe it's all GSM, mandated by law. This means that in Europe you can almost always bring your phone from one provider to the next - all you need to do is change the little sim-card inside the phone. This is much harder, and in many cases impossible, in the US and Japan.
Third, in Japan, people have horrendously long commutes on public transport systems. This is why internet on tiny phone displays took off first there. Many people have 12-hour work days (or, at least, 12 hours away from home) - there isn't really time to sit down at a desktop computer and browse for fun in the evening. Americans, in contrast, commute by car. Maybe it's not such a hot idea to be reading your emails or checking out the latest slashdot story there...
Fourth, just a side comment - I've seen several people here comment that "Europe is more densely populated, that's why cell phone coverage is better". To this I say: BS. Sweden or Finland are two of the least densely populated countries in Europe, way less populated than California, and still the cell phones are a couple years ahead of whats available here.
I was also fascinated by that... but the articles actually diverge a bit later. The difference seems to be WaitForSingleObject in Win32 (in the older article, apparently it's not a good thing) which has been replaced by WaitForMultipleObject in the newer one (according to the author, a good thing).
The two articles mentioned in the summary are only identical in the first paragraph - then he starts talking about WaitForSingleObject (in the older article) and WaitForMultipleObject (in the newer one). He also mentions how to accomplish the same thing in pthreads. I think.
Didn't read it too closely, I was just looking for what the difference was.:-)
There's a big difference there. The rascist Tiger Woods remark is very well documented (heck, someone posted a youtube link to a video clip of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWS0StFM5I ). It is hard to claim libel when you actually did it.
Then again, obviously he doesn't want to add to that by untrue statements. The things that were entered in Wikipedia were, indeed, pretty nasty.
You're right on target. This is exactly where the whole confusion comes from - it's like an Abbott and Costello routine. The verizon rep is (well, half the time at least) saying "sent", as in, 0.002 / kb sent, while George is consistently saying "cent". So the rep gets confused on and off, but he doesn't really understand why - there's logic to what George is saying, he realizes that, but at the same time, his computer screen seems right too... and neither one of them seems to realize what the misunderstanding is.
If you have got an election with only three eligible voters and five candidates, of course things get messed up. And then you got a weird ranking system, too.
The multiple candidates model that I've seen (I believed they use it for some local elections in San Francisco) would do an instant runoff, like this: First tally the first hand picks. If there's no candidate with more than 50%, the one who got the least gets removed. Now, count the first hand votes again. Repeat procedure until one candidate with more than 50% is found.
Al wins the election right away, since he is the first hand pick of 2/3 of the voting population, no matter how many Daves and Eds are added to the lists.
Very elegant - it means that you can put your favorite guy first, the one where you'd be afraid to "waste your vote" on, and then put someone more "electable" further down on the list.
Actually, that's what I thought at first when they showed up in Sweden too - but I've come to the conclusion that "Pirate Party" is pretty darn clever. It's provocative and attention grabbing... with the "Copyright Reform Party" or your other suggestions, all we're getting is another EFF. Who are doing an amazing job, of course, but they're not exactly well known (beyond slashdot circles).
These guys are trying to throw a wrench into the machinery; calling themselves "The Pirate Party" helps.
If they can get themselves sued over the name, all the better. They need all the mainstream attention they can get.
I can't speak for ZipCar, but I've been using City Car Share for about three years now. It's really smooth - there's a garage a couple blocks from my place, it costs $10 a month to be a member, renting a car is about $4 per hour and $0.4 per mile. This includes everything - gas, insurance, all.
If you return the car late you get charged a pretty hefty late fee. You ca extend a reservation over the phone, provided that no-one else has reserved that car after you already. If you're running late and notify the office, you get a smaller late fee than you would have if you were just "missing".
It's cost effective if you just need a car for a couple hours, or an evening. If you need it for a day or more, go to a car rental place.
That article (if the summary is correct, which is a dangerous assumption to make on/. ) is real far behind.
SuperAudio (it had some other names too) were a Sony technology for higher quality sound than CDs, basically, a DVD where all the capacity were used for high quality sound.
Never took off - CDs are "good enough", nobody bothered to upgrade. No customers meant that record companies outside of Sony didn't bother releasing content on the format... which died a quiet death after a couple years.
The same will happen to these high definition video disks. You'll see.
Google's price did not go down as some sort of personal punishment, it went down because the people who put money in realized they wouldn't get as much out as they expected. They're taking their money elsewhere to make it grow better. Why Google didn't make as much money as the investors were estimating is irrelevant - their estimates were off, they have been putting too much money into the company, now they're going somewhere else.
Any which way we take energy out of our environment, we will be changing it from it's "normal" state. Solar power turns the sun's rays into electricity rather than heat, making the world cooler, and wind power takes it's energy from the speed of the wind, thereby slowing the wind down.
I agree that these are both extremely marginal, but I suspect the effect on the ocean temperature is equally marginal.
That said, it'd be really interesting to see some hard math on the impact of solar and wind power... Just out of pure curiousity.
Slashdot Mirror
There were WAY fewer programmers back in the 80's than now. I'm willing to bet the number of software developers have grown exponentially over the years, which means that there simply aren't that many older programmers (compared to the number of younger ones). I honestly think that's a big part of it.
Also, I definitely know some older developers, usually they're some sort of senior architects or other, with incredible expertise within one or two products. They definitely exist, there just aren't that many.
Definitely.
It also seems heavily tilted towards web development. There are no options that fit "firmware", "embedded", "device software", "OS", or anything else that fits my skill-set.
As has been pointed out, Google is an advertising company cubed and won't do this unless they're forced to. But Mozilla and Firefox (and it's descendants) could, and I hope they will. All the more reason to switch (back) to Firefox.
Seconded - I've used Sonic for about 12 years - couldn't be happier. They've also gotten the big thumbs up from EFF for their privacy practices.
When I switched my service to DSL2 (should give up to 20Mb / second down) some years ago, they sent a technician to my place. He found that even though the building was close enough to their CO, the old copper wiring in the building meant I wouldn't be able to use the full 20Mb. So instead they suggested a cheaper and slower plan. I gotta say, an ISP who sends out a guy who explains they will take less money from me is pretty rare.
So, my connection is on paper fairly slow - 6Mbit down and 1 up. But on the other hand, I actually get that speed. It's enough to watch Netflix in HD. If I'm downloading something large (say, a linux image) I see my DL speed top out at about 650Kb/second, which means I am getting the whole 6 MBit. Day or night. (And again, that 6Mbit is because of my building, not because of Sonic!).
Always always check if you can get Sonic where you live.
It's an honest question. I am a programmer of embedded systems and microcontrollers, my expertise is at the other end of the computing spectrum.
As much as I like to blame Oracle, the state may have added serious requirements at the last minute that complicated everything. These articles doesn't say anything about it. Same seems to go for all the troubled exchanges - so what's the problem?
Is there anyone on here with some insight?
From TFA:
The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded "significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio," adding that it planned to "take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims."
Samsung used to license these patents, then stopped paying. They knew a lawsuit was coming, and decided it was a fight worth taking. I have no clue whether the fees requested by Ericsson are unreasonable or not - but there's no need for conspiracy theories or ulterior motives on this one.
Ericsson no longer makes phones. They're a highly profitable company building cell phone networks with lots of patents in the wireless tech-sphere. Samsung and Ericsson are not, in other words, direct competitors and this is not a case of competing through the courts. Key part from TFA:
"The suits were filed because Ericsson said it could not reach a license agreement for its patents with Samsung on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms after two years of negotiations. Samsung was asked to pay the same rate as its competitors, but Samsung refused, according to Ericsson.
"Samsung had licensed Ericsson patents before. However, according to a statement released by Samsung last week, Ericsson demanded 'significantly higher royalty rates for the same patent portfolio,' adding that it planned to 'take all necessary legal measures to protect against Ericsson's excessive claims.'"
This is purely about the money. The two companies stopped negotiating, Samsung is betting that going to court (they must have known a lawsuit was coming) will end up better for them than paying Ericsson's fee.
The business models, as the grand-parent suggest, are not heavy at all. Kinda expensive, yes, but tougher than most and freakishly light.
The CF-T series has a 12" screen, core 2 duo processor, no optical drive, and clocks in around 1.2kg. The W series is very similar but adds an optical drive, at less than 1.5kg. (that's about 3 lbs).
All of those laptops have water proof keyboards, should be able to survive a drop from 1 meter and take 100kg of pressure. There are videos on Youtube of people testing these claims (seems to be true).
http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/products.asp
Maybe the article is badly written, but it appears as if the scientists are jumping conclusions. The test subjects were asked to pick a symbol, they got feedback in the form of a smiley face or an angry face. Some short time later they were asked to pick a symbol again. If they now picked the happy face, the scientists assumed they had learned.
Somehow, I doubt that seeing a smiley face is enough of a reward to make the subject avoid making the same choice again. I mean, the angry face might look more interesting, or the subject might just wonder what happens if the takes the other card (given that he took the happy one first).
I'm just saying - there could be many reasons other than "not learning" why a person picks the symbol that gives an unhappy face as a result. Hopefully, the scientists thought of this, but it's not in the article (as far as I can tell).
So now, Mac OS X has grown by about 75%, and the Linux market share has grown more than 100% during the same time?
... how? By making it grow 100%?
Apple is killing Linux exactly
Maybe the article isn't as stupid as the summary. But based on this summary, I got better things to do than to read it.
No, they're fingerprinted and photographed when they get their green card instead... No need to repeat the process. :-)
Panasonic has a series of amazing laptops that's mostly sold in Japan, although one model (the Y series) has made it to the US. I'm using an R6 that I got through geekstuff4u, a company in Tokyo that exports stuff for geeky foreigners... The R6, the smallest model, has a 10" screen, core 2 duo processor, 4+ hours of battery time, 80gb harddrive, weighs about 2 pounds - and can withstand a drop from 2.5 feet, 200 pounds of pressure and the keyboard is waterproof. (No, I haven't tried it myself ... but there are videos on Youtube with people confirming this.)
The Y is the largest in the series. It has the same durability specs (drop, water et.c.) as the smaller ones, but it comes with a built in optical drive and a 14" screen, and weighs about 3 pounds. That one is officially for sale in the US.
Oh, and I've been told that this Panasonic series is all manufactured in Japan. In the US, the Y5 (latest model, I believe) is sold as part of the toughbook series, but in Japan the series is called "Let's note!".
Good luck.
That machine you linked to is a 15.4" widescreen monster. I'd ruin my back carrying that around.
I'm definitely buying a 10" Eee when it comes out - for me the ultra small form factor is a basic requirement. Then it also has a video-camera, it's quiet, decent battery-time, compact flash reader...
I refuse to even consider any laptops over 3 pounds. Since I mostly program in Emacs, browse the web or read emails, speed is not all that important - most any computer available today can do what I need.
I know a lot of non-geeks who reason in a similar way.
Now, first I thought the poster was clueless, but then I saw some of the replies here, and jeez, guys, you're usually sharper than this.
:-)
I'm European, but I'm currently living in the US (San Francisco) and I've also lived in Japan for six months. Let me dispel some myths for you.
First, this is not a new phenomenon, these outdated cell-phones in the US. When I first came here in 2000, people looked at my phone (an Ericsson T28 World) like it was from outer space. Tiny, and with a standby time that lasted for two days. I stayed at a hostel the first few weeks, and the other room-mate there with a cell was amazed that I didn't need to recharge my phone every night... In general, the phones on sale in the US are two years behind Europe.
Second, the cell phone market in the US and Japan is very different from the one in Europe. In Japan and the US there are several different technologies used, in Europe it's all GSM, mandated by law. This means that in Europe you can almost always bring your phone from one provider to the next - all you need to do is change the little sim-card inside the phone. This is much harder, and in many cases impossible, in the US and Japan.
Third, in Japan, people have horrendously long commutes on public transport systems. This is why internet on tiny phone displays took off first there. Many people have 12-hour work days (or, at least, 12 hours away from home) - there isn't really time to sit down at a desktop computer and browse for fun in the evening. Americans, in contrast, commute by car. Maybe it's not such a hot idea to be reading your emails or checking out the latest slashdot story there...
Fourth, just a side comment - I've seen several people here comment that "Europe is more densely populated, that's why cell phone coverage is better". To this I say: BS. Sweden or Finland are two of the least densely populated countries in Europe, way less populated than California, and still the cell phones are a couple years ahead of whats available here.
Hope that helps.
I was also fascinated by that ... but the articles actually diverge a bit later. The difference seems to be WaitForSingleObject in Win32 (in the older article, apparently it's not a good thing) which has been replaced by WaitForMultipleObject in the newer one (according to the author, a good thing).
addresses this.
:-)
The two articles mentioned in the summary are only identical in the first paragraph - then he starts talking about WaitForSingleObject (in the older article) and WaitForMultipleObject (in the newer one). He also mentions how to accomplish the same thing in pthreads. I think.
Didn't read it too closely, I was just looking for what the difference was.
There's a big difference there. The rascist Tiger Woods remark is very well documented (heck, someone posted a youtube link to a video clip of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aWS0StFM5I ). It is hard to claim libel when you actually did it.
Then again, obviously he doesn't want to add to that by untrue statements. The things that were entered in Wikipedia were, indeed, pretty nasty.
At one point he even says "It's not dollars, it's kilobytes". The guys are talking straight past each other.
You're right on target. This is exactly where the whole confusion comes from - it's like an Abbott and Costello routine. The verizon rep is (well, half the time at least) saying "sent", as in, 0.002 / kb sent, while George is consistently saying "cent". So the rep gets confused on and off, but he doesn't really understand why - there's logic to what George is saying, he realizes that, but at the same time, his computer screen seems right too ... and neither one of them seems to realize what the misunderstanding is.
Halfway through, I couldn't take it any more.
Friggin' silly example.
2 69
If you have got an election with only three eligible voters and five candidates, of course things get messed up. And then you got a weird ranking system, too.
The multiple candidates model that I've seen (I believed they use it for some local elections in San Francisco) would do an instant runoff, like this: First tally the first hand picks. If there's no candidate with more than 50%, the one who got the least gets removed. Now, count the first hand votes again. Repeat procedure until one candidate with more than 50% is found.
Al wins the election right away, since he is the first hand pick of 2/3 of the voting population, no matter how many Daves and Eds are added to the lists.
Very elegant - it means that you can put your favorite guy first, the one where you'd be afraid to "waste your vote" on, and then put someone more "electable" further down on the list.
More here:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_page.asp?id=24
Actually, that's what I thought at first when they showed up in Sweden too - but I've come to the conclusion that "Pirate Party" is pretty darn clever. It's provocative and attention grabbing ... with the "Copyright Reform Party" or your other suggestions, all we're getting is another EFF. Who are doing an amazing job, of course, but they're not exactly well known (beyond slashdot circles).
These guys are trying to throw a wrench into the machinery; calling themselves "The Pirate Party" helps.
If they can get themselves sued over the name, all the better. They need all the mainstream attention they can get.
I can't speak for ZipCar, but I've been using City Car Share for about three years now. It's really smooth - there's a garage a couple blocks from my place, it costs $10 a month to be a member, renting a car is about $4 per hour and $0.4 per mile. This includes everything - gas, insurance, all.
/. ) is real far behind.
If you return the car late you get charged a pretty hefty late fee. You ca extend a reservation over the phone, provided that no-one else has reserved that car after you already. If you're running late and notify the office, you get a smaller late fee than you would have if you were just "missing".
It's cost effective if you just need a car for a couple hours, or an evening. If you need it for a day or more, go to a car rental place.
That article (if the summary is correct, which is a dangerous assumption to make on
SuperAudio (it had some other names too) were a Sony technology for higher quality sound than CDs, basically, a DVD where all the capacity were used for high quality sound.
... which died a quiet death after a couple years.
Never took off - CDs are "good enough", nobody bothered to upgrade. No customers meant that record companies outside of Sony didn't bother releasing content on the format
The same will happen to these high definition video disks. You'll see.
Sorry, that's all nonsense.
Google's price did not go down as some sort of personal punishment, it went down because the people who put money in realized they wouldn't get as much out as they expected. They're taking their money elsewhere to make it grow better. Why Google didn't make as much money as the investors were estimating is irrelevant - their estimates were off, they have been putting too much money into the company, now they're going somewhere else.
That's all there is to it.
Any which way we take energy out of our environment, we will be changing it from it's "normal" state. Solar power turns the sun's rays into electricity rather than heat, making the world cooler, and wind power takes it's energy from the speed of the wind, thereby slowing the wind down.
I agree that these are both extremely marginal, but I suspect the effect on the ocean temperature is equally marginal.
That said, it'd be really interesting to see some hard math on the impact of solar and wind power... Just out of pure curiousity.