J Random Codemonkey is a fungible commodity. Your task, should you accept it, is to stand out from the crowd. One could do things like be able to say: "When I wrote sendmail...". One might have some singular projects on the resume (one line in mine which *always* got a comment was "Designed Graphics for B1-B Cockpit Procedure Trainer"). One could even specialize in something relatively uncommon such as digital signal processing or bioinformatics, but make sure the field isn't a flash in the pan.
I learned this during the last Great Tech Recession (1990-1993), when folks with 15 years of VMS experience got punted into the street, with no hope of making the mortgage flipping burgers (compare with Solaris admins now). Managing your career is an _active_ task, just like looking at your 401K, and if you're not thinking 10 years out you're gonna become roadkill.
"Before he was elected to the legislature, Barnhart was a member of a local school board that was threatened with a software audit by Microsoft. Barnhart says, "It would have cost $60,000 just to perform the audit."
It looks like MS just made a New Friend. Licence 6.0 is making similar friends in the corporate world, too.
We're talking about phone spammers here, so Rule 1 applies: "Spammers lie".
That number, if it's not entirely pulled from the DMA's collective ass, is probably the _entire_ gross of companies or divisions which happened to engage in telemarketing. In other words, if Scumbag Telco got you to switch to their overpriced long distance plan over the phone, then the direct marketing whorebags would claim that division's total long distance sales as due to telemarketing.
Uh-huh. Riiiiight. I worked at VMLabs (since defunct) where I did a spot of audio work on their CPU (VLIW vector processor with delayed branches, yum yum). I read through his source for some effects used in the Virtual Light Machine. It fucking *rocked*. That guy could make the machine do any-damn-thing he wanted, and give out a side order of vindaloo.
Francois, charter member of the Weird British Assembler Programming Cult.
Repeat after me: "Poor planning on your part does not imply any urgency on my part."
I've done my fair share of balls-to-the-wall coding, and invariably, without exception, it's turned out to be a synthetic emergency. Either the customer was prepared to wait for a solid piece of code, or the other parts of engineering didn't need the thing until well after I shipped it. This was compounded, in one particularly egregious example, by a dimwitted manager who promised a six week task to be handed over to a third party in eighteen days. The vast importance of meeting the date was underscored by the careful scrutiny given the output: none. I almost quit on the spot - homie doesn't do 100 hour weeks on a whim.
More to the point, delivery schedules are determined far more by proper design instead of engineering death marches. Anyone who tries telling you differently should remove their copy of "Soul of a New Machine" from their ass and consider the fate of Data General. Another point to consider: who's gonna maintain the code base when everyone quits out of disgust at being squeezed like so many lemons?
The author says: "But be aware that the AC-3 file on a DVD is recorded at 48 kHz. rather than the 44.1 kHz needed for playback from a CD player. And I don't know of any way to convert one from 48 to 44.1 without going through a lengthy decode/sample-rate-convert/encode process which would suffer a lot of fidelity loss."
Resampling is a solved problem. One can do it with any desired fidelity by lengthening the filters to reduce aliasing distortion, although once you get below the least significant bit further improvements become academic.
SSE or Altivec (vector math instructions for Pentium III and Motorola G4 respectively) would absolutely shine in this application - you could probably get resampling rates an order of magnitude better than real-time, modulo some assembly code and a custom app for the job.
Smoove move. Wonder if the RIAA has a nullroute in its future?
Registrant: RIAA (RIAA-DOM)
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW #300
Washington, DC 20036
US
Domain Name: RIAA.COM
Administrative Contact:
McCaffrey, Howard (HM66) hmccaffrey@RIAA.COM
Recording Industry Association of America, Inc.
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
202-857-9618 (FAX) 202-775-7253
Technical Contact:
Global Network Management Center (GNMC) rm-hostmaster@EMS.ATT.COM
AT&T DNS Service
3324 Hollenberg
Bridgeton, MO 63044
USA
314-264-9672
Fax- 314-264-9647
Record expires on 28-Oct-2002.
Record created on 27-Oct-1994.
Database last updated on 16-Aug-2002 13:01:18 EDT.
This is the oldest trick in the book: propose some heinous piece of legislation that hasn't a hope in hell of passing, get shot down by irate citizens, then craft a "compromise" which is really what you wanted in the first place, plus 10% for chutzpah. That way your whore (read PAC-paid pol) gets to look statesmanlike while your objectives are met.
Meanwhile, no-one (apart from some computer geeks, and who listens to them anyway?) notices the RIAA came close to passing their Data Destruction, er, Copyright Protection Amendment through Congress. The Direct Marketing Association almost got away with a similar shenanigan when they tried piggybacking their pro-spam agenda onto the Anti-Slamming Bill a couple of years ago, after similar successes in state legislatures when they defanged junk email laws via midnight amendments by bought & paid for state pols. It looks like the RIAA took a leaf from their book.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." The good news is computer people tend to stay up later than lobbyists, so we can (and should) be keeping an eye on these guys.
Slashdot Mirror
J Random Codemonkey is a fungible commodity. Your task, should you accept it, is to stand out from the crowd. One could do things like be able to say: "When I wrote sendmail...". One might have some singular projects on the resume (one line in mine which *always* got a comment was "Designed Graphics for B1-B Cockpit Procedure Trainer"). One could even specialize in something relatively uncommon such as digital signal processing or bioinformatics, but make sure the field isn't a flash in the pan.
I learned this during the last Great Tech Recession (1990-1993), when folks with 15 years of VMS experience got punted into the street, with no hope of making the mortgage flipping burgers (compare with Solaris admins now). Managing your career is an _active_ task, just like looking at your 401K, and if you're not thinking 10 years out you're gonna become roadkill.
Francois.
...reap the freakin' whirlwind.
"Before he was elected to the legislature, Barnhart was a member of a local school board that was threatened with a software audit by Microsoft. Barnhart says, "It would have cost $60,000 just to perform the audit."
It looks like MS just made a New Friend. Licence 6.0 is making similar friends in the corporate world, too.
Francois.
We're talking about phone spammers here, so Rule 1 applies: "Spammers lie".
That number, if it's not entirely pulled from the DMA's collective ass, is probably the _entire_ gross of companies or divisions which happened to engage in telemarketing. In other words, if Scumbag Telco got you to switch to their overpriced long distance plan over the phone, then the direct marketing whorebags would claim that division's total long distance sales as due to telemarketing.
It's a standard lie.
Uh-huh. Riiiiight. I worked at VMLabs (since defunct) where I did a spot of audio work on their CPU (VLIW vector processor with delayed branches, yum yum). I read through his source for some effects used in the Virtual Light Machine. It fucking *rocked*. That guy could make the machine do any-damn-thing he wanted, and give out a side order of vindaloo.
Francois, charter member of the Weird British Assembler Programming Cult.
Repeat after me:
"Poor planning on your part does not imply any urgency on my part."
I've done my fair share of balls-to-the-wall coding, and invariably, without exception, it's turned out to be a synthetic emergency. Either the customer was prepared to wait for a solid piece of code, or the other parts of engineering didn't need the thing until well after I shipped it. This was compounded, in one particularly egregious example, by a dimwitted manager who promised a six week task to be handed over to a third party in eighteen days. The vast importance of meeting the date was underscored by the careful scrutiny given the output: none. I almost quit on the spot - homie doesn't do 100 hour weeks on a whim.
More to the point, delivery schedules are determined far more by proper design instead of engineering death marches. Anyone who tries telling you differently should remove their copy of "Soul of a New Machine" from their ass and consider the fate of Data General. Another point to consider: who's gonna maintain the code base when everyone quits out of disgust at being squeezed like so many lemons?
The author says:
"But be aware that the AC-3 file on a DVD is recorded at 48 kHz. rather than the 44.1 kHz needed for playback from a CD player. And I don't know of any way to convert one from 48 to 44.1 without going through a lengthy decode/sample-rate-convert/encode process which would suffer a lot of fidelity loss."
Resampling is a solved problem. One can do it with any desired fidelity by lengthening the filters to reduce aliasing distortion, although once you get below the least significant bit further improvements become academic.
SSE or Altivec (vector math instructions for Pentium III and Motorola G4 respectively) would absolutely shine in this application - you could probably get resampling rates an order of magnitude better than real-time, modulo some assembly code and a custom app for the job.
Smoove move. Wonder if the RIAA has a nullroute in its future?
Registrant:
RIAA (RIAA-DOM)
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW #300
Washington, DC 20036
US
Domain Name: RIAA.COM
Administrative Contact:
McCaffrey, Howard (HM66) hmccaffrey@RIAA.COM
Recording Industry Association of America, Inc.
1330 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
202-857-9618 (FAX) 202-775-7253
Technical Contact:
Global Network Management Center (GNMC) rm-hostmaster@EMS.ATT.COM
AT&T DNS Service
3324 Hollenberg
Bridgeton, MO 63044
USA
314-264-9672
Fax- 314-264-9647
Record expires on 28-Oct-2002.
Record created on 27-Oct-1994.
Database last updated on 16-Aug-2002 13:01:18 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
DBRU.BR.NS.ELS-GMS.ATT.NET 199.191.128.106
DMTU.MT.NS.ELS-GMS.ATT.NET 12.127.16.70
This is the oldest trick in the book: propose some heinous piece of legislation that hasn't a hope in hell of passing, get shot down by irate citizens, then craft a "compromise" which is really what you wanted in the first place, plus 10% for chutzpah. That way your whore (read PAC-paid pol) gets to look statesmanlike while your objectives are met.
Meanwhile, no-one (apart from some computer geeks, and who listens to them anyway?) notices the RIAA came close to passing their Data Destruction, er, Copyright Protection Amendment through Congress. The Direct Marketing Association almost got away with a similar shenanigan when they tried piggybacking their pro-spam agenda onto the Anti-Slamming Bill a couple of years ago, after similar successes in state legislatures when they defanged junk email laws via midnight amendments by bought & paid for state pols. It looks like the RIAA took a leaf from their book.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." The good news is computer people tend to stay up later than lobbyists, so we can (and should) be keeping an eye on these guys.
Francois.