The first time I knowingly and deliberately used VM was at NCAR, on the front-end machines to the Cray-1 in 1983.
Each user had a VM, with a specific amount of disk, CPU, and memory allocated. Your copy and even choice of operating system -- MVS, CMS -- ran on that virtual machine. So, like they say, it's been around 20 years or more. I say "knowingly and deliberately" because from 76-82, I'd used VM/CMS on our university's IBM 360, which also used VM -- but student users were barred from actually interacting with VM, so it was just there, use it. (CMS stands for "Conversation Monitoring System" -- scary!)
Back then, when I had a choice (i.e. had an application that didn't require the Cray!), I preferred the far less structured environment of our 4.2 BSD Vax 11/750.
For a mainframe, multiuser or server environment where you need control over everything, and records of everything -- VM the ticket. For your desktop, it's a bit much, really.
To turn your desktop into a server, hmmm. Not a bad idea to run VM on it, and run various services in their own virtual machines. A bit more secure than a chroot, since even a buffer overflow bug wouldn't be able to get at the other processes -- they're running in a completely different address space and controlled by, well, a different operating system --or at least an entirely different instance of the same operating system configured differently.
But VM itself is hardly news. Plus ca change, plus ca change pas.
DUH OF COURSE I READ THE FUCKING EXAMPLES.
So Aunt Tilly has to get her nephew Melvyn to recompile the kernel and Penelope Power User doesn't know how to configure or use the tools of her own research projects. Pretty fucking pathetic. SEXIST BULLSHIT
What makes this sexist bullshit is its characterization of females as being less than able to master stupid programmer tricks. Including uh...opening up the box and seeing Wtf is printed on the boards. Or WTF is printed on the
box you got your new device in--the one with the buggy linux driver that needs fixed (to answer your first question). Or Wtf is in the "help" messages you can
click on in "make xconfig" (BTW, it would actually be better easier to adapt to
and more robust to simply have more complete text documentation there--rather than writing a whole new config.)
So why is it always the female depicted as the techno-illiterate? Why not use the
example of "Joey the Dot-Bombed Suit WinDoze luser"? Or "Billy the totally rooted
IIS guy"? Guys like that are far more dangerous to themselves and others than
"Aunt Tilly" or "Penelope Power User" -- mostly because these GUYS have the misconception that they already know something about computers because they got paid to actually have something to do with IT for a few years.
Flying an airplane simple ain't that hard. I mean, its generally just a
flight yoke, some rudder peddles and that's about it... So why shouldn't Aunt Tille fly her own plane?
Actually, This Auntie is a licensed pilot, and I know plenty of others. Check out Zonta and the 99's if you don't believe me. Flying is quite popular among businesswomen in WA (Western Australia), Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, since there's SFA commercial service, yet we need to visit clients, customers and suppliers all over the American SW and WA in a timely manner. It also enables us to provide valuable public services through organisations like Angel Flight .
So, no, flying a plane ain't that hard, either. And it ain't that uncommon either, not where I come from.
Configuring a kernel from source simply ain't that hard. That's why so many pimply-faced youngsters do it. For Eric Raymond to characterize the prospective users of his "make config with training wheels" as something that is needed to get kernel updates to females (his examples are Aunt Tillie and Penelope Power User) is just sexist bullshit.
Then fix the driver to get the app to work properly/faster/more reliably/to spec.
You'll soon find yourself in kernel space, and start to wonder what all the fuss was about. Often there's several levels of drivers to contend with, e.g. PCMCIA, CardBus, 1394 -- to get, say, a progressive scan camera to talk to a laptop.
Working for a DoD (or DARPA or AFOSR or ARO or ONR) contractor is totally different from working directly for the government.
First of all, the gov't can wait (and hurry along) your clearance, whereas the contractor doesn't have the time or the resources for that. So the clearance is the price of admission, and you'll need to find a company that will sponsor that.
Second of all, they offer rates of pay that, while not competetive with the private sector, it's not the peanuts you get as a civil serpent either. Third, in a small "weapons boutique" there's often minimal bureaucracy. Even top management at these places often came up from Engineering, not sales or finance or HR or marketing or sleeping-with-the-boss. In fact sales and marketing in these places are often also dominated by people with an engineering background and considerable experience -- because even understanding the customer's requirements, reading and responding to RFP's -- I'd like to see some of these boom dot bomber suits do it!
Fourth, the technology is light years ahead of anything you've ever seen in the boom dot bust.
And no we probably won't upgrade our documentation machines (WinBlows) because some pimply little slashdotter thinks they should--we're busy designing VME bus devices, writing custom device drivers and image processing applications for ahem real computers,
Oddly enough, military contractors can be the best places for women to work as programmers -- since the social atmosphere is so crusty and conservative, they wouldn't dream of playing some of the stupid grab-ass games that dot bomb suits seem to think is appropriate in the workplace (maybe they get their ideas of what women do at work from their mothers ?)
Also, because it involves typing at a keyboard, programming still has the aura of being "women's work" in the minds of management. So we can just get on with it, rather than having our right to be doing our jobs questioned at every turn.
Working directly for a government agency might be a bit like the scene in SnowCrash , as might be working for a very large FFRDC, but in my experience, small military technology contractors are GREAT to work for.
1st 2.4.x install was on a laptop with a 1394 PCMCIA cardbus card + device I had to get running. As in *had* *to* -- not to be fancy, it was a requirement. No dice under 2.2.x. 2.4.x
Has been running great for over 6 months.
2nd 2.4 install on a server, had to get a USB ATM device running on it -- so again, 2.4 was the only choice. No problems whatsoever, and am driving it pretty hard. Upgraded from source after applying some ATM specific patches written for a different patch-level. Had to add them one by one, mostly because the stuff the patches added was...already in there. The only thing I don't really get about it is, with all the ATM kernel support and the plethora of ATM device drivers available in it, why do we have to scrounge around for a PPPoA that works? I hear it's in 2.5...wow, *that* helps.
On the desktop, StarOffice 5.2 has no problem with.doc stuff, but freezes up on occasion when trying to draw simple diagrams---well, lots -- under 2.4.x. This is just about the worst thing it can do if you're trying to convince WinDoze users to switch to Linux. But Python, wxPython, gcc and SWIG all work great, so who cares?
When I was a TA at a prestigious private university that had recently decided to change its admissions policy to take into account the parents' ability to pay, we were told that any cases of suspected cheating would need to be referred to the prof. We were told that the incoming class would have certain students that might not be as well prepared as the others--but certainly better connected.
I suggested in the meeting where I was introduced to this unique view of academic integrity, "So hy don't we just grade on the basis of how much the kids parents make?" I was sooo popular with the faculty after that. Not.
Write READMEs and and a few HTML documents for the benefit of other programmers
if you want to get fancy, make the code is self-documenting with Doxygen. Again, for the benefit of other programmers
If they really need userland documentation, suggest they hire a technical writer.
A Technical Writer is someone with a degree in English or Communications. It's not particularly cost-effective to have a programmer doing what an english or communications major can do better, and for less money. After all, for user-level documentation, the english major is going to be much better at knowing what kind of information and format is going to communicate effectively to a non-technical audience. And a technical audience can bloody well read the code.
Yeah, but I've never saw her name in the original Sun source (when it was open source), and certainly don't remember any postings from a Danese Cooper on net.unix-wizards. So who cares what she looks like? A marketroid in nerd drag (check out those glasses!). BFD.
The mixing of news features and advertising is nothing new, although I must say the New York Times Tolkein Archives "Sponsored Feature" is a much classier treatment than Yahoo's use of banners as news stories particularly in the way it handled two other movies, Monsters Inc and Harry Potter, which was worse than misleading -- it was ugly and devoid of interesting content.
The nice thing about the NYT Sponsored Feature, by contrast, is that they have a great deal of good content in their archives, and presumably the sponsorship goes into getting the stuff off microfilm and out of file drawers and onto their web pages.
The first Sun Workstation I used, a Sun 1, Serial number 184, had an OS very close to vanilla BSD and, in order to put an Ethernet card and a slip line on it (so it could be used as a router) we could modify the drivers and recompile the kernel.
So, Sun was an Open Source leader in the 1980's -- before the term was even coined.
Could you give us any insight as to why Sun decided to close its OS' source? And start charging extra money for its compilers? (Why, so SUN could have $$ to devote to developing NeWS?)
It seems to me that the reason SUN needs an "open source advocate" at all is their fall from grace
15 years ago. You had it right the first time.
UCSD PASCAL IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM NOT A COMPILER. If any of you people commenting on it had EVER ACTUALLY USED IT, you'd have a frigging CLUE. But you don't, so you're completely confused, thinking UCSD Pascal is a compiler, and that it's the same thing as the p-code generator which was used to build it on most systems. Which is not the same thing as the compiler WHICH WAS USED TO PORT UCSD PASCAL TO THE MAC AND LISA.
Professor Peter Fragobritz and University of Northern South Dakota in 1979 developed a computer program on the C64 to model the human behaviour exhibited by catatonics. No matter what you typed into the programme, it wouldn't respond.
He found he could port his programme to an IBM Selectric, and indeed even to manual typewriters. Proves a lot, doesn't it?
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac.
"What are you talking about?"
I'm talking about the UCSD ***>PASCAL not the p-System! SHEESH!
Apple DID NOT EVER port the UCSD p-System to...
You know darned well that they first ported the UCSD Pascal system to the Lisa then the Mac, which is why suddenly the topic is the p-system? Sorry, Charlie.
When you compile the source of an OS to a different machine using a different compiler, that is called a PORT of the operating system.
"Apple never ported an OS to Mac or Lisa."
Even into the late 80's, you could get the "Trident" UCSD Pascal logo to come up, complete with copyright notices from the Reagents of the State of California. The Lisa and Mac OS'se were based on a port of the original OS of UCSD ***>PASCAL
So Let's take a closer look at your long list of Apple's so-called innovations
SOS on Apple/// had a hierarchical file system. A year later when MS-DOS 2 came out, PC Magazine proclaimed MS-DOS 2 as the first microcomputer OS ever to have a tree structured file system.
And XENIX had hierarchical file systems before that, and Unix had hierarchical file systems before that. Your point is?
GUI on an affordable microcomputer (Mac)
AND NO COMPILER! I had one of the first macs, and I couldn't even write a 10-page paper on it without discovering their wonderful disk-deadlock bug! Perfectly AWFUL!
QuickDraw, an amazing 23K raster graphics package capable of amazing feats on hardware of the day
GUESS YOU NEVER HEARD OF EVANS AND SOUTHERLAND.
MacPaint OH PLEASE. No scientist in their right mind would have anything to do with it. It was years before they came out with a simple XY plotting package.
Apple Human Interface Guidelines -- product of much research Most of it done by the Human Factors group in Yorktown Heights and that other lab at...XEROX PARC
first to use 3-1/2" hard shell floppies
you mean A-buse them. "Please insert floppy" No, not THAT one! The other one! No not that one! The other one! It's called deadlock, and obviously the Apple SW engineers were asleep during that lecture in their CS training
sound and clock standard (not afterthought as PC)
User friendliness in HARDWARE, not just software. The hardware was designed to be friendly. Thus no IRQ conflicts, which com port for my mouse?, etc. user friendliness in hardware...you mean like not even being able to open the bleeding thing up?
first to implement SCSI on a cheap microcomputer Which I had on my Sun workstation for years before that.
Laser Printer with Postscript which kicked off the entire Desktop Publishing revolution
Hey now what a bright idea. Use Adobe's language combined with HP's hardware...oh wait, those were HP printers all along with the apple logo on them
AppleTalk protocol, which could run on cheap twisted pair wire. AppleTalk was more than just a "fileserver". Lots of other network applications. Later, in the PC world, the word "network" was synonomous with "fileserver".
And for their appletalk printers, hey, maybe we can put on an RS-232 port as well, but make it impossible to switch between running the thing in RS232 mode and Appletalk mode. Real Bright.
High quality color graphics on Mac II designed by videophiles
Which were better on my Sun, better on my SGI, better on my E&S, better on...just about everything.
HyperCard
C. C++. MacSyma. Maple. Matlab.
Cheap easy sound input
not for a loooong time.
Self-configuring expansion slots. [Texas Instrument's NuBus in 1987 Mac II.] When the Mac finally got expansion slots, they did it right. Nothing to configure, nothing to go wrong. How long did it take PC's to get PCI?
How long did it take any of them to get a VME bus and 64-bit processing? And since when was a bus standard that nobody else uses a good thing (tm)?
TrueType scalable fonts, subsequently licensed by Microsoft, quashed Adobe's extortionate licensing of Type-1 fonts.
...when they all could have been using MetaFont scalable fonts and TeX for free. Pity. Pathetic, even.
MultiFinder (run multiple applications at the same time on the computer) [but first there had been Switcher to do the same]
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Run multiple applications at the same time on the computer! You mean like what you could do in UNIX -- ALL ALONG? For over a decade before the first Lisa ever brought up its first UCSD Pascal Trident Logo you mean??? God this is funny!
AppleTalk protocol running on Ethernet frames in addition to their cheapo twisted pair
Which was responsible for packet storms on University networks across the country. Thanks. Thanks A LOT. I think we had to implement some special fu in GateD just for that. Cripes.
QuickTime (which was way ahead of its time -- for hardware of the day) Not interesting when you've got an SGI on your desk, and a 128 bitplane image processing system in the lab. Sorry.
MacTCP, a tcp/ip implementation before Microsoft was even aware such a thing existed. (Compare when apple.com and microsoft.com were first registered.)
And when did BSD have TCP/IP? Httpd? Well before the Mac. You call this an innovation?
PowerBooks. Later, PC's would become available in a new form called a "laptop". Prior to the PowerBook, there was an even earlier portable Mac called the MacPortable. (Should have been called the ClunkyMacPortable.)
The PowerBook was the first laptop you say? How *old* are you?
CD-ROM drives (how many more years was it until PC's started getting this feature? Then eventually PC's figured out that they also needed to make their CD's bootable, in a clunky el-torito way.)
So your definition of "innovation" is that Apple did it before Microsloth? Sad. Suns and SGIs had CDROM drivers before Apple. Sorry.
PowerPC risc architecture microprocessor, with seamless backward compatibility through emulation, but no noticable performance penalty for emulated software (much of the OS ran under emulation for a long time)
Both IBM and Sun had RISC processors before Apple. So it's not an innovation, it's an imitation. As usual from Apple.
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system, IIRC, SoftTech owned the commerical rights to UCSD Pascal (from U.C. San Diego, where it was developed) and licensed it to Apple for the ][ and///. Apple probably licensed the source code as well. For those of you too young to remember, UCSD Pascal was the Java of it's day. I first used it iin '76 on a DEC LSI 11-based desktop machine whose name I now forget.
And I first used UCSD Pascal in '77 on a TERAK, and developed scientific applications software on it for three years. In the 70's UCSD Pascal it was being made freely available. It was one of the attractions of using it as a development platform--that, and the fact that the p-code would run on other UCSD Platforms. This was all fine and dandy until APPLE OFFERED THEM MONEY FOR IT. In exclusive licensing deals which made other companies unable to obtain and implement UCSD Pascal on their machines afterwards.
Now, MacJerry, If I offer you money for an apple, and you give me the apple, and I eat that apple, thus denying the use of that apple to anybody else -- it's not "buying" the apple if we call the deal a "license arrangement" ? Get Real! You're playing semantic games!
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac Apple actually bought a compiler from a 3rd party that generated 68000 code from UCSD Pascal source. This included the wonderful segment manager from UCSD Pascal that all Mac programmers love to hate. UCSD Pascal was never ported to either system AFAIK.
There you go again, MacJerry. When you compile the source of an OS to a different machine using a different compiler, that is called a PORT of the operating system. How is it not?
and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN Windows
Jef Raskin was the original proponent of the Lisa and Mac at Apple and it was he who convinced Jobs to start development on these projects. His PHD thesis was called "A Quick Draw Engine" and laid out the basis for the UI that was later developed at Xerox Parc. So in reality, Xerox Parc took the ideas from his thesis and he later took them back. See this search [google.com] at google for more details.
...is it MacJerry or MacJef? So why weren't these ideas developed directly into a GUI for the Lisa then Mac? If Apple was supporting the project, as you say, why did they allow them to be published in a thesis for the enrichment of PARC rather than keeping it to themselves? All kinds of ideas are published as theses and subsequently "stolen" by private companies. If the project was being supported by Apple from the get go and prior to PARC's development of it into actual running code, Apple wouldn't have had to steal these "ideas" back.
Face it, MacJef, Apple paints itself as the big innovator here, but it's not. They're just big rip-off artists, and they're ruining a bad BSD rip-off now just like they ruined a bad UCSD Pascal rip-off.
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system, which had a UI, and which ran on a variety of microcomputers, and which (until Apple bought it) was for all intents and purposes open source. This was the late 70's, BUB. Remember turtle graphics? No you don't because you were still in diapers.
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN
Windows -- back when SUN stood for Stanford University, where the first models were developed.
So Apple isn't quite the innovator you're making them out to be. PARC was definitely there first, not Apple, and SUN at least had a real operating system under the hood-- BSD.
And sorry, but Linux' the UI
is X windows, developed at MIT well before Microsloth was out of *its* DOS diapers.
Of course, the problem is that most *children* didn't have access to the first Macs, or the first Suns, or machines running on the OS's theirs were derived from--UCSD Pascal and Berkley Standard Distribution. Which MAC has finally come around to with OS/X.:-)
The objectionable thing about the article is that it lumps together widespread legitimate grievances--including pregnancy discrimination, which is highly illegal and rampantly practiced -- with the blundering manner in which these fools from Intel handled their comparatively petty grievances (and the high-handed manner in which the company dealt with it--tells you something right there, doesn't it?).
Lame newspaper articles like this misrepresent how widespread serious wrongdoing on the part of employers can be successfully reduced. Yes, keeping notes on what people actually say and do, and when they say and do things, backed up by tape recordings if possible--these are extremely important. IANAL but it is legal in many states to tape someone without their knowledge--you only need the permission of *one* party to the call in certain states.
Why not tape/video managers engaging in illegal discrimination (e.g. recommending hiring and promotion decisions on the basis of a female candidate's marital status or potential for childbearing, telling racist jokes, etc.), put it up on an overseas page anonymously, and publicize its whereabouts anonymously?
Then it's not "badmouthing"--it's just letting the perpetrators of the real injustices speak for themselves.
Oh, by the way, the jurisdiction that applies in taping phone conversations is the state from which the call was made. So if you want to catch them on tape...so make the call from New York, not Maryland, eh? If Susie in marketing calls you crying that she's about to get canned because her boyfriend started beating her, and she broke up with him, but he's the Big-ass VP of somethingorother and now he wants to get rid of her because she's left him, and she's in Maryland and you're in New York? Tell her you'll call her right back, and get your tape recorder ready, because you is about to gather some EVIDENCE. Bob calls you in the NY office from Chicago and wants you to look for a replacement for Charlene "black and pregnant...AGAIN" whom you KNOW hasn't announced any intention to resign (and whom you know definitely can't *afford* to lose her programming job, which she does admirably) tell Bob, "I'll call you right back"
and get out your tape recorder, because guess what? You're about to get him to incriminate himself and probably about three or four of his higher-ups.
But AAWWWW stuff like this goes on all the TIME! you say. Yeah. THAT'S THE POINT. It shouldn't.
Obviously, retaliation for objection to an unlawful practice is itself also illegal -- it will not stop them trying, however. If you've ever observed the "we've got deep pockets and you don't" yawning response large companies have to grievants, you'll realize that for every case that even gets mentioned to your union rep, hundreds of cases with merit have been quashed. Make no mistake: even the way these incidents are reported are intended to put a chilling effect on the legitimately aggrieved.
This is what they're *really* scared of: You can get more with a kind word, an incriminating tape recording and a kick-ass lawyer than you can get with just a kind word.
Especially if you are able to put up an MP3 of their company's proudest moments up on the web.
So it's not about whether one loose cannon has the right to tell lies on the internet.
It's whether the vast majority of the legitimately aggrieved will be empowered against companies which can and do discriminate unlawfully (and rarely even in their own best interests!). Obviously, in the face of this kind of closing ranks among the private sector, the courts, and the fourth estate, anyone attempting to face down a serious injustice needs to work smarter not harder.
If DN is a gal, it's not going to matter WHAT degree she gets, how many degrees, or how many years of professional programming experience she has prior during or after getting the degrees.
As the most qualified applicant, HR will force her on the team she'd best contribute to, and then be lucky to even get computer accounts.
Her Ph.D. and 25 years of programming experience will qualify her to write user-level documentation for systems written by men 20 years her junior.
Oh, unless her degree's in ENGLISH and she's sleeping with somebody -- then she can be manager in charge of some lightweight nonsense like marketing.
wass:Does anyone else out there think that instead of squashing FOTR into one 3 hour movie with cut scenes and modifications, it might have been better to break it up into 2 movies based on the two distinct books within FOTR?
Absolutely! It works better structurally, it works better dramatically.
At the end of each book there's a real cliffhanger. (nb there are SIX books, not three in The Lord of The Rings , with two books bound in each *part*, the first *part* being The Fellowship of the Ring).
An even easier way to "package" the six books as three movies would be to have three four-hour movies, with an *intermission* (remember those?) between two two-hour features. Sell more popcorn that way.
Going to the movies used to be a big festive occasion, where you planned to spend the whole evening or afternoon enjoying the entire experience -- the music, the big ornate theatre itself, the stage-show (kept only at Radio City Music Hall anymore), the cartoons, the travelogue shorts, the "A" feature, the intermission, the "B" feature...(Here in New Zealand, you can't even get the big movie-sized boxes of Milk Duds and Jordan Almonds! How can you watch a movie without Milk Duds and Jordan Almonds, I ask? Sno-Ccaps? Not a chance. Junior Mints? Good Luck. Not Even REESES PEANUTBUTTER CUPS? No. Not even Reeses Peanutbutter Cups. Not even at the MOVIES? Not even at the Movies. It's a hard land, New Zealand, a hard land she be....)
Uneconomical you say? Consider the simple old-fashioned double feature. They used to charge nearly double! With derrierres in seats guaranteed for the second feature, already paid for! The true test of a really good theatre was when they'd do brilliant pairings of movies for double-features. You know, like M*A*S*H* and Catch-22. Take the Money and Run ("I have a gub") with Bananas.
One theatre I used to go to when I was growing up in New York put on the entire Apu Trilogy in a day, with a local Indian restaurant providing snacks during the two intermissions.
With a double feature, theatres have so much more latitude in making it a memorable event -- rather than just being packed into a shoebox in a cineplex after being stuck in traffic and paying a whole pile of money just to see something on a marginally bigger screen with a marginally better sound-system than I can do at home with a DVD player--with more footage.
Agreed. But you meant MADISON Avenue Marketing .
But...why would you have to hit the gym prior to going nude for the rest of your life? Could it be that Madison Avenue has already gotten to you in telling you what you're body is supposed to look like prior to going 'round nekkid?
IBM's vision of what wearable computers would be good for reminds me of the "Smart Refrigerator" idea that came and went -- supposedly it was going keep track of what was in it (by barcode) and automatically learn what stuff you eat (and drink) and then automatically order more.
I can just see the BirdsEye people wondering what all those geeks are doing with all those...Pringles!
Whiz-bang graphics goes over great with the majors and generals in times of peace, when VR training is the only kinda combat experience the kids are going to see (thank god).
But even then Duke Nukem beat the pants off of Army MODSAF running on an SGI for urban combat training. Why was that? Big cushy military contracts don't necessarily create the best product for the job, that's why.
Now SGI thinks it's going to return to the good old days of impressing majors and generals with wiz-bang graphics, and being able to charge through the nose -- but that's not what's going to happen.
Why? Two reasons:
Nobody's impressed with SGI's graphics any more. They get good enough realism and 3D on a PC -- good enough for government work -- even for flight simulators.
What the War On Terror needs isn't wiz-bang graphics: it's Database Integration and Biometrics . The name of the game is "Where's Waldo," not "The Red Baron."
Anyway, what killed SGI wasn't so much their market position -- it was their shite compilers that *never* kept up with gcc, and complete lack of compatibility with *anything* else in the *nix world.
You can have 20 years of programming experience in the languages used, 5 years DBA experience and a Ph.D. in physics--and every new employer will still start you out with the entry level crap writing *documentation* instead of code. It takes a big deadline emergency and 6-10 months of persistently insisting that yes, you *CAN* WRITE PROGRAMMES to be *allowed* to do so. And then every line of code you write is supervised by someone 15 years your junior who doesn't even know what the f**k a BNF grammar is. And who was still in *diapers* for crissake when you installed your first BSD system from 1600 BPI tapes on a VAX 11/750.
Slashdot Mirror
The first time I knowingly and deliberately used VM was at NCAR, on the front-end machines to the Cray-1 in 1983.
Each user had a VM, with a specific amount of disk, CPU, and memory allocated. Your copy and even choice of operating system -- MVS, CMS -- ran on that virtual machine. So, like they say, it's been around 20 years or more. I say "knowingly and deliberately" because from 76-82, I'd used VM/CMS on our university's IBM 360, which also used VM -- but student users were barred from actually interacting with VM, so it was just there, use it. (CMS stands for "Conversation Monitoring System" -- scary!)
Back then, when I had a choice (i.e. had an application that didn't require the Cray!), I preferred the far less structured environment of our 4.2 BSD Vax 11/750.
For a mainframe, multiuser or server environment where you need control over everything, and records of everything -- VM the ticket. For your desktop, it's a bit much, really. To turn your desktop into a server, hmmm. Not a bad idea to run VM on it, and run various services in their own virtual machines. A bit more secure than a chroot, since even a buffer overflow bug wouldn't be able to get at the other processes -- they're running in a completely different address space and controlled by, well, a different operating system --or at least an entirely different instance of the same operating system configured differently.
But VM itself is hardly news. Plus ca change, plus ca change pas.
DUH OF COURSE I READ THE FUCKING EXAMPLES. So Aunt Tilly has to get her nephew Melvyn to recompile the kernel and Penelope Power User doesn't know how to configure or use the tools of her own research projects. Pretty fucking pathetic. SEXIST BULLSHIT
What makes this sexist bullshit is its characterization of females as being less than able to master stupid programmer tricks. Including uh...opening up the box and seeing Wtf is printed on the boards. Or WTF is printed on the box you got your new device in--the one with the buggy linux driver that needs fixed (to answer your first question). Or Wtf is in the "help" messages you can click on in "make xconfig" (BTW, it would actually be better easier to adapt to and more robust to simply have more complete text documentation there--rather than writing a whole new config.)
So why is it always the female depicted as the techno-illiterate? Why not use the example of "Joey the Dot-Bombed Suit WinDoze luser"? Or "Billy the totally rooted IIS guy"? Guys like that are far more dangerous to themselves and others than "Aunt Tilly" or "Penelope Power User" -- mostly because these GUYS have the misconception that they already know something about computers because they got paid to actually have something to do with IT for a few years.
Flying an airplane simple ain't that hard. I mean, its generally just a flight yoke, some rudder peddles and that's about it... So why shouldn't Aunt Tille fly her own plane?
Actually, This Auntie is a licensed pilot, and I know plenty of others. Check out Zonta and the 99's if you don't believe me. Flying is quite popular among businesswomen in WA (Western Australia), Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, since there's SFA commercial service, yet we need to visit clients, customers and suppliers all over the American SW and WA in a timely manner. It also enables us to provide valuable public services through organisations like Angel Flight .
So, no, flying a plane ain't that hard, either. And it ain't that uncommon either, not where I come from.
Configuring a kernel from source simply ain't that hard. That's why so many pimply-faced youngsters do it. For Eric Raymond to characterize the prospective users of his "make config with training wheels" as something that is needed to get kernel updates to females (his examples are Aunt Tillie and Penelope Power User) is just sexist bullshit.
Then fix the driver to get the app to work properly/faster/more reliably/to spec. You'll soon find yourself in kernel space, and start to wonder what all the fuss was about. Often there's several levels of drivers to contend with, e.g. PCMCIA, CardBus, 1394 -- to get, say, a progressive scan camera to talk to a laptop.
Working for a DoD (or DARPA or AFOSR or ARO or ONR) contractor is totally different from working directly for the government.
First of all, the gov't can wait (and hurry along) your clearance, whereas the contractor doesn't have the time or the resources for that. So the clearance is the price of admission, and you'll need to find a company that will sponsor that.
Second of all, they offer rates of pay that, while not competetive with the private sector, it's not the peanuts you get as a civil serpent either. Third, in a small "weapons boutique" there's often minimal bureaucracy. Even top management at these places often came up from Engineering, not sales or finance or HR or marketing or sleeping-with-the-boss. In fact sales and marketing in these places are often also dominated by people with an engineering background and considerable experience -- because even understanding the customer's requirements, reading and responding to RFP's -- I'd like to see some of these boom dot bomber suits do it! Fourth, the technology is light years ahead of anything you've ever seen in the boom dot bust.
And no we probably won't upgrade our documentation machines (WinBlows) because some pimply little slashdotter thinks they should--we're busy designing VME bus devices, writing custom device drivers and image processing applications for ahem real computers,
Oddly enough, military contractors can be the best places for women to work as programmers -- since the social atmosphere is so crusty and conservative, they wouldn't dream of playing some of the stupid grab-ass games that dot bomb suits seem to think is appropriate in the workplace (maybe they get their ideas of what women do at work from their mothers ?)
Also, because it involves typing at a keyboard, programming still has the aura of being "women's work" in the minds of management. So we can just get on with it, rather than having our right to be doing our jobs questioned at every turn.
Working directly for a government agency might be a bit like the scene in SnowCrash , as might be working for a very large FFRDC, but in my experience, small military technology contractors are GREAT to work for.
1st 2.4.x install was on a laptop with a 1394 PCMCIA cardbus card + device I had to get running. As in *had* *to* -- not to be fancy, it was a requirement. No dice under 2.2.x. 2.4.x Has been running great for over 6 months.
2nd 2.4 install on a server, had to get a USB ATM device running on it -- so again, 2.4 was the only choice. No problems whatsoever, and am driving it pretty hard. Upgraded from source after applying some ATM specific patches written for a different patch-level. Had to add them one by one, mostly because the stuff the patches added was...already in there. The only thing I don't really get about it is, with all the ATM kernel support and the plethora of ATM device drivers available in it, why do we have to scrounge around for a PPPoA that works? I hear it's in 2.5...wow, *that* helps.
On the desktop, StarOffice 5.2 has no problem with .doc stuff, but freezes up on occasion when trying to draw simple diagrams---well, lots -- under 2.4.x. This is just about the worst thing it can do if you're trying to convince WinDoze users to switch to Linux. But Python, wxPython, gcc and SWIG all work great, so who cares?
It Works For Me
When I was a TA at a prestigious private university that had recently decided to change its admissions policy to take into account the parents' ability to pay, we were told that any cases of suspected cheating would need to be referred to the prof. We were told that the incoming class would have certain students that might not be as well prepared as the others--but certainly better connected.
I suggested in the meeting where I was introduced to this unique view of academic integrity, "So hy don't we just grade on the basis of how much the kids parents make?" I was sooo popular with the faculty after that. Not.
Do what every good programmer does:
- Comment your code
- Write READMEs and and a few HTML documents for the benefit of other programmers
- if you want to get fancy, make the code is self-documenting with Doxygen. Again, for the benefit of other programmers
- If they really need userland documentation, suggest they hire a technical writer.
A Technical Writer is someone with a degree in English or Communications. It's not particularly cost-effective to have a programmer doing what an english or communications major can do better, and for less money. After all, for user-level documentation, the english major is going to be much better at knowing what kind of information and format is going to communicate effectively to a non-technical audience. And a technical audience can bloody well read the code.Yeah, but I've never saw her name in the original Sun source (when it was open source), and certainly don't remember any postings from a Danese Cooper on net.unix-wizards. So who cares what she looks like? A marketroid in nerd drag (check out those glasses!). BFD.
The mixing of news features and advertising is nothing new, although I must say the New York Times Tolkein Archives "Sponsored Feature" is a much classier treatment than Yahoo's use of banners as news stories particularly in the way it handled two other movies, Monsters Inc and Harry Potter, which was worse than misleading -- it was ugly and devoid of interesting content.
The nice thing about the NYT Sponsored Feature, by contrast, is that they have a great deal of good content in their archives, and presumably the sponsorship goes into getting the stuff off microfilm and out of file drawers and onto their web pages.
The first Sun Workstation I used, a Sun 1, Serial number 184, had an OS very close to vanilla BSD and, in order to put an Ethernet card and a slip line on it (so it could be used as a router) we could modify the drivers and recompile the kernel.
So, Sun was an Open Source leader in the 1980's -- before the term was even coined.
Could you give us any insight as to why Sun decided to close its OS' source? And start charging extra money for its compilers? (Why, so SUN could have $$ to devote to developing NeWS?)
It seems to me that the reason SUN needs an "open source advocate" at all is their fall from grace 15 years ago. You had it right the first time.
UCSD PASCAL IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM NOT A COMPILER. If any of you people commenting on it had EVER ACTUALLY USED IT, you'd have a frigging CLUE. But you don't, so you're completely confused, thinking UCSD Pascal is a compiler, and that it's the same thing as the p-code generator which was used to build it on most systems. Which is not the same thing as the compiler WHICH WAS USED TO PORT UCSD PASCAL TO THE MAC AND LISA.
Professor Peter Fragobritz and University of Northern South Dakota in 1979 developed a computer program on the C64 to model the human behaviour exhibited by catatonics. No matter what you typed into the programme, it wouldn't respond. He found he could port his programme to an IBM Selectric, and indeed even to manual typewriters. Proves a lot, doesn't it?
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac.
"What are you talking about?"
I'm talking about the UCSD ***>PASCAL not the p-System! SHEESH!Apple DID NOT EVER port the UCSD p-System to ...
You know darned well that they first ported the UCSD Pascal system to the Lisa then the Mac, which is why suddenly the topic is the p-system? Sorry, Charlie.
When you compile the source of an OS to a different machine using a different compiler, that is called a PORT of the operating system.
"Apple never ported an OS to Mac or Lisa."
Even into the late 80's, you could get the "Trident" UCSD Pascal logo to come up, complete with copyright notices from the Reagents of the State of California. The Lisa and Mac OS'se were based on a port of the original OS of UCSD ***>PASCAL
So Let's take a closer look at your long list of Apple's so-called innovations
And XENIX had hierarchical file systems before that, and Unix had hierarchical file systems before that. Your point is?
AND NO COMPILER! I had one of the first macs, and I couldn't even write a 10-page paper on it without discovering their wonderful disk-deadlock bug! Perfectly AWFUL!
GUESS YOU NEVER HEARD OF EVANS AND SOUTHERLAND.
OH PLEASE. No scientist in their right mind would have anything to do with it. It was years before they came out with a simple XY plotting package.
Most of it done by the Human Factors group in Yorktown Heights and that other lab at...XEROX PARC
you mean A-buse them. "Please insert floppy" No, not THAT one! The other one! No not that one! The other one! It's called deadlock, and obviously the Apple SW engineers were asleep during that lecture in their CS training
user friendliness in hardware...you mean like not even being able to open the bleeding thing up?
Which I had on my Sun workstation for years before that.
Hey now what a bright idea. Use Adobe's language combined with HP's hardware...oh wait, those were HP printers all along with the apple logo on them
And for their appletalk printers, hey, maybe we can put on an RS-232 port as well, but make it impossible to switch between running the thing in RS232 mode and Appletalk mode. Real Bright.
Which were better on my Sun, better on my SGI, better on my E&S, better on...just about everything.
C. C++. MacSyma. Maple. Matlab.
not for a loooong time.
How long did it take any of them to get a VME bus and 64-bit processing? And since when was a bus standard that nobody else uses a good thing (tm)?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Run multiple applications at the same time on the computer! You mean like what you could do in UNIX -- ALL ALONG? For over a decade before the first Lisa ever brought up its first UCSD Pascal Trident Logo you mean??? God this is funny!
Which was responsible for packet storms on University networks across the country. Thanks. Thanks A LOT. I think we had to implement some special fu in GateD just for that. Cripes.
Not interesting when you've got an SGI on your desk, and a 128 bitplane image processing system in the lab. Sorry.
And when did BSD have TCP/IP? Httpd? Well before the Mac. You call this an innovation?
The PowerBook was the first laptop you say? How *old* are you?
So your definition of "innovation" is that Apple did it before Microsloth? Sad. Suns and SGIs had CDROM drivers before Apple. Sorry.
Both IBM and Sun had RISC processors before Apple. So it's not an innovation, it's an imitation. As usual from Apple.
GL. OpenGL. PEX.
RealityEngine. PIXAR.
Is there a -5 for "playing semantics badly"?
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system, ///. Apple probably licensed the source code as well. For those of you too young to remember, UCSD Pascal was the Java of it's day. I first used it iin '76 on a DEC LSI 11-based desktop machine whose name I now forget.
And I first used UCSD Pascal in '77 on a TERAK, and developed scientific applications software on it for three years. In the 70's UCSD Pascal it was being made freely available. It was one of the attractions of using it as a development platform--that, and the fact that the p-code would run on other UCSD Platforms. This was all fine and dandy until APPLE OFFERED THEM MONEY FOR IT. In exclusive licensing deals which made other companies unable to obtain and implement UCSD Pascal on their machines afterwards.IIRC, SoftTech owned the commerical rights to UCSD Pascal (from U.C. San Diego, where it was developed) and licensed it to Apple for the ][ and
Now, MacJerry, If I offer you money for an apple, and you give me the apple, and I eat that apple, thus denying the use of that apple to anybody else -- it's not "buying" the apple if we call the deal a "license arrangement" ? Get Real! You're playing semantic games!
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac
Apple actually bought a compiler from a 3rd party that generated 68000 code from UCSD Pascal source. This included the wonderful segment manager from UCSD Pascal that all Mac programmers love to hate. UCSD Pascal was never ported to either system AFAIK.
There you go again, MacJerry. When you compile the source of an OS to a different machine using a different compiler, that is called a PORT of the operating system. How is it not?
and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN Windows
Jef Raskin was the original proponent of the Lisa and Mac at Apple and it was he who convinced Jobs to start development on these projects. His PHD thesis was called "A Quick Draw Engine" and laid out the basis for the UI that was later developed at Xerox Parc. So in reality, Xerox Parc took the ideas from his thesis and he later took them back. See this search [google.com] at google for more details.
Face it, MacJef, Apple paints itself as the big innovator here, but it's not. They're just big rip-off artists, and they're ruining a bad BSD rip-off now just like they ruined a bad UCSD Pascal rip-off.
or perhaps short memory.
Apple *bought* the UCSD Pascal system, which had a UI, and which ran on a variety of microcomputers, and which (until Apple bought it) was for all intents and purposes open source. This was the late 70's, BUB. Remember turtle graphics? No you don't because you were still in diapers.
Apple took UCSD Pascal and ported it to the Lisa then Mac and further developed the UI using ideas copied from Xerox PARC and SUN Windows -- back when SUN stood for Stanford University, where the first models were developed.
So Apple isn't quite the innovator you're making them out to be. PARC was definitely there first, not Apple, and SUN at least had a real operating system under the hood-- BSD.
And sorry, but Linux' the UI is X windows, developed at MIT well before Microsloth was out of *its* DOS diapers.
Of course, the problem is that most *children* didn't have access to the first Macs, or the first Suns, or machines running on the OS's theirs were derived from--UCSD Pascal and Berkley Standard Distribution. Which MAC has finally come around to with OS/X. :-)
The objectionable thing about the article is that it lumps together widespread legitimate grievances--including pregnancy discrimination, which is highly illegal and rampantly practiced -- with the blundering manner in which these fools from Intel handled their comparatively petty grievances (and the high-handed manner in which the company dealt with it--tells you something right there, doesn't it?).
Lame newspaper articles like this misrepresent how widespread serious wrongdoing on the part of employers can be successfully reduced. Yes, keeping notes on what people actually say and do, and when they say and do things, backed up by tape recordings if possible--these are extremely important. IANAL but it is legal in many states to tape someone without their knowledge--you only need the permission of *one* party to the call in certain states.
Why not tape/video managers engaging in illegal discrimination (e.g. recommending hiring and promotion decisions on the basis of a female candidate's marital status or potential for childbearing, telling racist jokes, etc.), put it up on an overseas page anonymously, and publicize its whereabouts anonymously?
Then it's not "badmouthing"--it's just letting the perpetrators of the real injustices speak for themselves.
Oh, by the way, the jurisdiction that applies in taping phone conversations is the state from which the call was made. So if you want to catch them on tape...so make the call from New York, not Maryland, eh? If Susie in marketing calls you crying that she's about to get canned because her boyfriend started beating her, and she broke up with him, but he's the Big-ass VP of somethingorother and now he wants to get rid of her because she's left him, and she's in Maryland and you're in New York? Tell her you'll call her right back, and get your tape recorder ready, because you is about to gather some EVIDENCE. Bob calls you in the NY office from Chicago and wants you to look for a replacement for Charlene "black and pregnant...AGAIN" whom you KNOW hasn't announced any intention to resign (and whom you know definitely can't *afford* to lose her programming job, which she does admirably) tell Bob, "I'll call you right back" and get out your tape recorder, because guess what? You're about to get him to incriminate himself and probably about three or four of his higher-ups.
But AAWWWW stuff like this goes on all the TIME! you say. Yeah. THAT'S THE POINT. It shouldn't.
Obviously, retaliation for objection to an unlawful practice is itself also illegal -- it will not stop them trying, however. If you've ever observed the "we've got deep pockets and you don't" yawning response large companies have to grievants, you'll realize that for every case that even gets mentioned to your union rep, hundreds of cases with merit have been quashed. Make no mistake: even the way these incidents are reported are intended to put a chilling effect on the legitimately aggrieved.
This is what they're *really* scared of: You can get more with a kind word, an incriminating tape recording and a kick-ass lawyer than you can get with just a kind word. Especially if you are able to put up an MP3 of their company's proudest moments up on the web.
So it's not about whether one loose cannon has the right to tell lies on the internet. It's whether the vast majority of the legitimately aggrieved will be empowered against companies which can and do discriminate unlawfully (and rarely even in their own best interests!). Obviously, in the face of this kind of closing ranks among the private sector, the courts, and the fourth estate, anyone attempting to face down a serious injustice needs to work smarter not harder.
[the RFP was] issued to a set of prequalified vendors...
"Prequalified" must mean they have the ability to raise the dead on election day.
"Remember, kids, this is Chicago, the most democratic city in the world...so vote early and often!"
If DN is a gal, it's not going to matter WHAT degree she gets, how many degrees, or how many years of professional programming experience she has prior during or after getting the degrees.
As the most qualified applicant, HR will force her on the team she'd best contribute to, and then be lucky to even get computer accounts.
Her Ph.D. and 25 years of programming experience will qualify her to write user-level documentation for systems written by men 20 years her junior.
Oh, unless her degree's in ENGLISH and she's sleeping with somebody -- then she can be manager in charge of some lightweight nonsense like marketing.
wass:Does anyone else out there think that instead of squashing FOTR into one 3 hour movie with cut scenes and modifications, it might have been better to break it up into 2 movies based on the two distinct books within FOTR?
Absolutely! It works better structurally, it works better dramatically.
At the end of each book there's a real cliffhanger. (nb there are SIX books, not three in The Lord of The Rings , with two books bound in each *part*, the first *part* being The Fellowship of the Ring).
An even easier way to "package" the six books as three movies would be to have three four-hour movies, with an *intermission* (remember those?) between two two-hour features. Sell more popcorn that way.
Going to the movies used to be a big festive occasion, where you planned to spend the whole evening or afternoon enjoying the entire experience -- the music, the big ornate theatre itself, the stage-show (kept only at Radio City Music Hall anymore), the cartoons, the travelogue shorts, the "A" feature, the intermission, the "B" feature...(Here in New Zealand, you can't even get the big movie-sized boxes of Milk Duds and Jordan Almonds! How can you watch a movie without Milk Duds and Jordan Almonds, I ask? Sno-Ccaps? Not a chance. Junior Mints? Good Luck. Not Even REESES PEANUTBUTTER CUPS? No. Not even Reeses Peanutbutter Cups. Not even at the MOVIES? Not even at the Movies. It's a hard land, New Zealand, a hard land she be....)
Uneconomical you say? Consider the simple old-fashioned double feature. They used to charge nearly double! With derrierres in seats guaranteed for the second feature, already paid for! The true test of a really good theatre was when they'd do brilliant pairings of movies for double-features. You know, like M*A*S*H* and Catch-22. Take the Money and Run ("I have a gub") with Bananas.
One theatre I used to go to when I was growing up in New York put on the entire Apu Trilogy in a day, with a local Indian restaurant providing snacks during the two intermissions.
With a double feature, theatres have so much more latitude in making it a memorable event -- rather than just being packed into a shoebox in a cineplex after being stuck in traffic and paying a whole pile of money just to see something on a marginally bigger screen with a marginally better sound-system than I can do at home with a DVD player--with more footage.
IBM's vision of what wearable computers would be good for reminds me of the "Smart Refrigerator" idea that came and went -- supposedly it was going keep track of what was in it (by barcode) and automatically learn what stuff you eat (and drink) and then automatically order more.
I can just see the BirdsEye people wondering what all those geeks are doing with all those...Pringles!
Whiz-bang graphics goes over great with the majors and generals in times of peace, when VR training is the only kinda combat experience the kids are going to see (thank god).
But even then Duke Nukem beat the pants off of Army MODSAF running on an SGI for urban combat training. Why was that? Big cushy military contracts don't necessarily create the best product for the job, that's why.
Now SGI thinks it's going to return to the good old days of impressing majors and generals with wiz-bang graphics, and being able to charge through the nose -- but that's not what's going to happen.
Why? Two reasons:
Anyway, what killed SGI wasn't so much their market position -- it was their shite compilers that *never* kept up with gcc, and complete lack of compatibility with *anything* else in the *nix world.
You can have 20 years of programming experience in the languages used, 5 years DBA experience and a Ph.D. in physics--and every new employer will still start you out with the entry level crap writing *documentation* instead of code. It takes a big deadline emergency and 6-10 months of persistently insisting that yes, you *CAN* WRITE PROGRAMMES to be *allowed* to do so. And then every line of code you write is supervised by someone 15 years your junior who doesn't even know what the f**k a BNF grammar is. And who was still in *diapers* for crissake when you installed your first BSD system from 1600 BPI tapes on a VAX 11/750.
then why is it so hard to reverse the sign on it?