... but he did apparently say things that could be interpreted as intimidating a witness, which is potentially a crime (I don't know if he got charged with that or not.) Witness tampering is most definitely a crime, and carries a maximum penalty of 10 years for a threat, and 20 years if physical force was used or attempted.
Right out of college (four years ago), I actually interviewed with them and received a job offer at their KC office. It was tempting (the pay was nearly what I'm currently making now), but I ultimately turned them down since I didn't want to relocate to Kansas City.
Right afterwards, I found that infamous memo, and it affirmed my decision.
I still shudder whenever I think about how close I was to accept a position there.
"Now mayhap the OP is writing about Direct3D... in that case, even DirectX 9.x's version of Direct3d features a LOT more functionality than OpenGL's most recent revision contains."
Depends on what you mean by "most recent revision", and also depends on "functionality". If you include vendor-specific extensions, then OpenGL exposes more hardware functionality than Direct3D9- effectively allowing one to use the geometry shader without resorting to vista. If by "functionality" you mean software, direct3D includes tools to help with scene management, loading models, animation, etc. OpenGL just provides a simpler hardware interface for fast 2D/3D rendering and leaves much of the tiny details
They have different goals, so it's really difficult to compare the two. The performance differences are negligible IMO- both are equally capable in the hands of experienced, knowledgeable developers.
"Aureal more or less bankrupted themselves with some new tech that didn't pan out. They were sueing Creative over core 3d sound patents and won (not the other way around) but not until they were pretty much out of business."
The Vortex2 was quite successful, so I didn't understand how "it didn't pan out". In fact, A3D 2.0 had a much bigger market penetration than EAX at the time. It was Creative that sued Aureal for patent infringement in 1998 and subsequently lost. By the time Aureal could countersue (to recoup legal costs), their private investors had pulled out, leaving Aureal dry, thus forcing them to declare bankruptcy.
Aureal's assets were then bought by Creative, and eventually made their way into EAX. Much of the technology behind CMSS3D Virtual Surround is due to Aureal's research.
In short, Creative is the one responsible for Aureal's demise.
In the Gulf of Sidra, the planes those F-14s shot down were Su-22s- cheap fighter-bombers that were really no match to any air interceptor employed by the US Navy (F-4 Phantom II included) at the time. It wasn't too impressive for a kill, other than the fact that the Tomcats were close enough to use heat-seeking sidewinders (about a 10 mi range).
If you recall the Tomcat's history, it was designed to carry the (expensive, but long range) AIM-54 Phoenix missile, and use it against a much more technologically-capable Soviet Air Force. The grandparent post just pointed out that US has only used it for engagements with small dictatorships in the Middle East and northern Africa.
Searching for "Tiananmen Square massacre" on yahoo.cn yielded about 2,000 results.
Searching for "Tiananmen Square massacre" on yahoo.com yielded about 185,000 results.
Yahoo's filtering isn't perfect, but it did remove 98.8% of the results, many of which were probably very critical of China. The Chinese Government isn't trying to erase history, but rather keep a pro-PRC or neutral spin on search results.
"The state highways are not free - those that are not toll roads are allocated a proportion of gas taxes, related to measured use of the road. Guess what? That means heavier users (like say, trucking companies, the equivalent of Google on the internet) pay... wait for it; MORE!"
Your analogy doesn't apply to the tiered internet model. In fact, your analogy better describes the internet we use today. The "gas tax" is a pretty fair way of explaining how we would pay extra for faster speed (such as a high-performance V12 supercar) or higher bandwidth (trucks)- such as it is we get charged a lot more to have a T3 line than a DSL line.
The analogy would be better suited if you were to tax the destinations which cause the higher traffic; it would be akin to making you pay for your gas tax, and then turning around and forcing your destination to pay for your gas tax as well. And if the destination refused, the government would lower the speed limit to all roads leading toward that destination.
Simply stated, the telcos are just being greedy, and want to extort more money from existing customers. They don't seem to be struggling, nor do they appear to be innovating much as of late, so I don't see why the government needs to interfere and bail them out.
I hate to break it to you, but much of the spam I've been receiving lately are phishing scams, including those infamous 419 scams as well as realistic-looking "update your paypal/bank account/credit card info" scams.
These scams are felony offenses. Illegally downloading an mp3 through bittorrent isn't.
By "weeding out those who shouldn't be studying CS", I didn't mean those who weren't intelligent enough to grasp computer science. I meant those who lacked the interest and dedication to stick around.
"More importantly, the math that is presented to comp sci majors is presented by people who only learn math a certain way and as such only teach math a certain way."
I actually had this problem too. At my first college, I was CompSci/Engineering double major and it seemed that the math teachers just didn't get it. The math department was separated from the school of engineering. Thus, many of the math instructors were too focused on the theoretical aspects of calculus and not enough on how to present it to someone who just managed to get by on a lackluster high school math program (college algebra and trig). I didn't get proofs then, nor could I keep my head above water in those courses for very long. I actually had to take both calculus I and II twice.
I then transferred to a university whose CS and math were integrated (pardon the pun) into the same department. I had more reasonable teachers (career lecturers, not grad students or research professors) and I started getting tutoring, and it finally just clicked. Within a couple years, I was a math TA myself, grading papers and tutoring other students who were stuck in the same situation. Since I could relate, I was pretty successful at explaining calculus to students who had no clue before.
I'm now convinced that it doesn't take much intelligence to get a math degree, but rather perseverance and good instruction.
I have degrees in math and CS also, but I had to learn additional math once I got my current job. I deal with graphics (lots of matrices) and physics computations on an everyday basis (the software in question is a 3D user interface for medical doctors).
True, many software engineers don't need math. But it helps anyway, and it also proves to your employer and other engineers that you're a critical thinker and thus you deserve a respectable salary. It also helps weed out those who shouldn't be studying CS, so that's a good thing for you.
In college, I had a few guys be shocked by how good they thought Lacuna Coil's album Comalies was. They had the money to buy it, but they insisted that I just burn them CD-to-CD copies instead. They never went to the shows, never bought the merchandise, but hey Lacuna Coil kicks ass and damned if they can't eat off of good will from non-paying fans!
In college, sure. Maybe when the kids graduated, and they are less poor and have slightly more free time on weekends, they'll find the time and funds to go out and enjoy a live performance.
Your friends might also be an exception... you'll always have free riders. But sharing music provides exposure.
It was only after college when I started attending concerts of local bands. Oddly enough, I got started after hearing some of the free music on Myspace. Sure, most local bands on there suck, but some are pretty talented. And as a bonus, lots of single women around my area seem to love the local music scene...
But the slick 3D interface is one of the primary selling points of Vista. Without a visual difference, casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.
"The main issue is that, from what I have seen, most students place into Algebra, and need 2 Algrbra courses and 2 Pre-Calc courses to get up to where they can start taking the real math and science courses."
You're right. I made the assumption that most CS students start out in pre-calc or calculus I. After a placement test, I started in calc I my first semester, and ended up wishing that I had retaken trig and pre-calc/algebra. Needless to say, I survived with a C- (a big 5-credit hour C-, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone concerned about their GPA).
Now that I think about it, the number of average semesters for a CS degree vary from institution to institution as curriculum requirements, department leadership, and course prerequisites can have an impact on the duration of completing one's degree. I admit that my original post was out of my own experience at my school.
Incidently, I remember that a friend of mine transferred from an institution where the prereq for the first CS class (intro to programming) was calculus I, and certain core classes were only offered once every 2-3 semesters (this is where large universities have an advantage over smaller schools). He transferred as a senior, yet had only about 21 hours of CS credits.
"...and one university wanted me to retake a year and a half of CS courses before I could even be admitted into the department! (needless to say I am NOT going to that university! It used the semester system, thus the long period of time to get ANYTHING done, yuck!)"
When I was a senior in hs, I was interested in attending Univ of Ill at Urbana-Champaign, which has a top-quality CompSci/CompEng program. A student told me that I should apply to the university as a liberal arts major, and then transfer to CS once I'm attending UIUC, as I'll have a better chance of getting into the program. Somehow I got accepted to UIUC, but the competitiveness of their CS department was too intimidating, so I opted out and attended Mizzou instead.
"On the plus side, the HUGE math background I was required to get means I can easily get a dual degree in Mathematics with just a few extra courses."
I highly recommend going through and doing it. Most of my favorite courses have been upper-level (anything higher than diff eq) math courses, like numerical analysis and abstract algebra. Besides, the extra math made certain CS courses seem easier (theory of computation, algorithm analysis, etc), and the addition of a math degree makes you more attractive to potential employers- I've already received a couple very nice job offers for when I graduate.;)
"Yah, umm, getting a CS degree now takes between 5 and 6 years for a BS. . . . time my man, TIME."
I'm currently on my 9th, and final, semester, and I'm finishing up my Bachelor of Science degrees in both Computer Science and Math at a good state university (Univ of Missouri). Though I took a summer class whenever possible and entered college with 12 hours (from AP credit). However, my average semester workload was about 12-14 hours.
5 or 6 years for just one BS? Yeah, maybe if one parties or screws around during the schoolweek and continues flunking classes, or maybe working fulltime and taking less than 9 credit hours a semester.
If you put any honest effort into a CS degree, you will receive it in four years. I've actually known some ambitious, hardworking students who received their masters in CS within 5 years.
"by the way, how well does doom 3 run under wine?"
id software promised that a linux binary for Doom3 will be available pretty soon, so all that time pretty much spent tweaking Wine for Doom3 would be a waste.
"Only unimportant jobs such as secretaries and the like get their own "appreciation days".
If I were a sysadmin, I'd be insulted."
Actually, secretaries and sys admins fall into a line of work that requires them to work their asses off and receive little to no recognition for hard work when their users/bosses become successful.
I'd actually feel that appreciating them one day out of the year is a step in the right direction. Now for the other 364 days...
"(note: I know I've played a DVD on a 466Mhz machine, but there are some "complicated" DVDs that take just a little bit more horsepower, so that's why I chose 500Mhz as the cutoff point)"
My PentiumII/266 played DVDs fine. Then again, I was using a hardware DVD decoder.
Slashdot Mirror
... but he did apparently say things that could be interpreted as intimidating a witness, which is potentially a crime (I don't know if he got charged with that or not.) Witness tampering is most definitely a crime, and carries a maximum penalty of 10 years for a threat, and 20 years if physical force was used or attempted."From my experience with personal users, almost nobody has bothered. So who is driving all these incredible sales?"
OEM sales. New PCs shipped from the likes of Dell, hp, etc come equipped with Vista. It's rare to find a new PC with XP pre-installed anymore.
Right out of college (four years ago), I actually interviewed with them and received a job offer at their KC office. It was tempting (the pay was nearly what I'm currently making now), but I ultimately turned them down since I didn't want to relocate to Kansas City.
Right afterwards, I found that infamous memo, and it affirmed my decision.
I still shudder whenever I think about how close I was to accept a position there.
"Now mayhap the OP is writing about Direct3D... in that case, even DirectX 9.x's version of Direct3d features a LOT more functionality than OpenGL's most recent revision contains."
Depends on what you mean by "most recent revision", and also depends on "functionality". If you include vendor-specific extensions, then OpenGL exposes more hardware functionality than Direct3D9- effectively allowing one to use the geometry shader without resorting to vista. If by "functionality" you mean software, direct3D includes tools to help with scene management, loading models, animation, etc. OpenGL just provides a simpler hardware interface for fast 2D/3D rendering and leaves much of the tiny details
They have different goals, so it's really difficult to compare the two. The performance differences are negligible IMO- both are equally capable in the hands of experienced, knowledgeable developers.
"Aureal more or less bankrupted themselves with some new tech that didn't pan out. They were sueing Creative over core 3d sound patents and won (not the other way around) but not until they were pretty much out of business."
The Vortex2 was quite successful, so I didn't understand how "it didn't pan out". In fact, A3D 2.0 had a much bigger market penetration than EAX at the time. It was Creative that sued Aureal for patent infringement in 1998 and subsequently lost. By the time Aureal could countersue (to recoup legal costs), their private investors had pulled out, leaving Aureal dry, thus forcing them to declare bankruptcy.
Aureal's assets were then bought by Creative, and eventually made their way into EAX. Much of the technology behind CMSS3D Virtual Surround is due to Aureal's research.
In short, Creative is the one responsible for Aureal's demise.
In the Gulf of Sidra, the planes those F-14s shot down were Su-22s- cheap fighter-bombers that were really no match to any air interceptor employed by the US Navy (F-4 Phantom II included) at the time. It wasn't too impressive for a kill, other than the fact that the Tomcats were close enough to use heat-seeking sidewinders (about a 10 mi range).
If you recall the Tomcat's history, it was designed to carry the (expensive, but long range) AIM-54 Phoenix missile, and use it against a much more technologically-capable Soviet Air Force. The grandparent post just pointed out that US has only used it for engagements with small dictatorships in the Middle East and northern Africa.
Searching for "Tiananmen Square massacre" on yahoo.cn yielded about 2,000 results.
Searching for "Tiananmen Square massacre" on yahoo.com yielded about 185,000 results.
Yahoo's filtering isn't perfect, but it did remove 98.8% of the results, many of which were probably very critical of China. The Chinese Government isn't trying to erase history, but rather keep a pro-PRC or neutral spin on search results.
Your analogy doesn't apply to the tiered internet model. In fact, your analogy better describes the internet we use today. The "gas tax" is a pretty fair way of explaining how we would pay extra for faster speed (such as a high-performance V12 supercar) or higher bandwidth (trucks)- such as it is we get charged a lot more to have a T3 line than a DSL line.
The analogy would be better suited if you were to tax the destinations which cause the higher traffic; it would be akin to making you pay for your gas tax, and then turning around and forcing your destination to pay for your gas tax as well. And if the destination refused, the government would lower the speed limit to all roads leading toward that destination.
Simply stated, the telcos are just being greedy, and want to extort more money from existing customers. They don't seem to be struggling, nor do they appear to be innovating much as of late, so I don't see why the government needs to interfere and bail them out.
I hate to break it to you, but much of the spam I've been receiving lately are phishing scams, including those infamous 419 scams as well as realistic-looking "update your paypal/bank account/credit card info" scams.
These scams are felony offenses. Illegally downloading an mp3 through bittorrent isn't.
I actually had this problem too. At my first college, I was CompSci/Engineering double major and it seemed that the math teachers just didn't get it. The math department was separated from the school of engineering. Thus, many of the math instructors were too focused on the theoretical aspects of calculus and not enough on how to present it to someone who just managed to get by on a lackluster high school math program (college algebra and trig). I didn't get proofs then, nor could I keep my head above water in those courses for very long. I actually had to take both calculus I and II twice.
I then transferred to a university whose CS and math were integrated (pardon the pun) into the same department. I had more reasonable teachers (career lecturers, not grad students or research professors) and I started getting tutoring, and it finally just clicked. Within a couple years, I was a math TA myself, grading papers and tutoring other students who were stuck in the same situation. Since I could relate, I was pretty successful at explaining calculus to students who had no clue before.
I'm now convinced that it doesn't take much intelligence to get a math degree, but rather perseverance and good instruction.
I have degrees in math and CS also, but I had to learn additional math once I got my current job. I deal with graphics (lots of matrices) and physics computations on an everyday basis (the software in question is a 3D user interface for medical doctors).
True, many software engineers don't need math. But it helps anyway, and it also proves to your employer and other engineers that you're a critical thinker and thus you deserve a respectable salary. It also helps weed out those who shouldn't be studying CS, so that's a good thing for you.
In college, sure. Maybe when the kids graduated, and they are less poor and have slightly more free time on weekends, they'll find the time and funds to go out and enjoy a live performance.
Your friends might also be an exception... you'll always have free riders. But sharing music provides exposure.
It was only after college when I started attending concerts of local bands. Oddly enough, I got started after hearing some of the free music on Myspace. Sure, most local bands on there suck, but some are pretty talented. And as a bonus, lots of single women around my area seem to love the local music scene...
Then how come my Dell monitor has an LG on it?
Intel has already stated that the Conroe will be dual-core only. The quad-core chip is called the Clovertown, and is due out next year (early 2007).
But the slick 3D interface is one of the primary selling points of Vista. Without a visual difference, casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.
"Maybe I should file a patent for delivering virus programs with a USB or other plug-in computer device ... then Creative would owe me money ..."
;)
Great idea, except that Creative has prior art
Damn, IronChefMorimoto... that's two +5, Funny posts in a day!
Mind if I befriend you?
"I think you missed the point of the commercial."
I think you missed the point of the parent's post.
"The main issue is that, from what I have seen, most students place into Algebra, and need 2 Algrbra courses and 2 Pre-Calc courses to get up to where they can start taking the real math and science courses."
;)
You're right. I made the assumption that most CS students start out in pre-calc or calculus I. After a placement test, I started in calc I my first semester, and ended up wishing that I had retaken trig and pre-calc/algebra. Needless to say, I survived with a C- (a big 5-credit hour C-, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone concerned about their GPA).
Now that I think about it, the number of average semesters for a CS degree vary from institution to institution as curriculum requirements, department leadership, and course prerequisites can have an impact on the duration of completing one's degree. I admit that my original post was out of my own experience at my school.
Incidently, I remember that a friend of mine transferred from an institution where the prereq for the first CS class (intro to programming) was calculus I, and certain core classes were only offered once every 2-3 semesters (this is where large universities have an advantage over smaller schools). He transferred as a senior, yet had only about 21 hours of CS credits.
"...and one university wanted me to retake a year and a half of CS courses before I could even be admitted into the department! (needless to say I am NOT going to that university! It used the semester system, thus the long period of time to get ANYTHING done, yuck!)"
When I was a senior in hs, I was interested in attending Univ of Ill at Urbana-Champaign, which has a top-quality CompSci/CompEng program. A student told me that I should apply to the university as a liberal arts major, and then transfer to CS once I'm attending UIUC, as I'll have a better chance of getting into the program. Somehow I got accepted to UIUC, but the competitiveness of their CS department was too intimidating, so I opted out and attended Mizzou instead.
"On the plus side, the HUGE math background I was required to get means I can easily get a dual degree in Mathematics with just a few extra courses."
I highly recommend going through and doing it. Most of my favorite courses have been upper-level (anything higher than diff eq) math courses, like numerical analysis and abstract algebra. Besides, the extra math made certain CS courses seem easier (theory of computation, algorithm analysis, etc), and the addition of a math degree makes you more attractive to potential employers- I've already received a couple very nice job offers for when I graduate.
Good luck!
"Yah, umm, getting a CS degree now takes between 5 and 6 years for a BS. . . . time my man, TIME."
I'm currently on my 9th, and final, semester, and I'm finishing up my Bachelor of Science degrees in both Computer Science and Math at a good state university (Univ of Missouri). Though I took a summer class whenever possible and entered college with 12 hours (from AP credit). However, my average semester workload was about 12-14 hours.
5 or 6 years for just one BS? Yeah, maybe if one parties or screws around during the schoolweek and continues flunking classes, or maybe working fulltime and taking less than 9 credit hours a semester.
If you put any honest effort into a CS degree, you will receive it in four years. I've actually known some ambitious, hardworking students who received their masters in CS within 5 years.
My PII/266 with a RivaTNT handled Half-Life just fine. And I had that system before HL even came out.
I think the only game that came out then that would choke my system was Trespasser.
Google's already trademarked. I suggest writing Windows.com instead.
"by the way, how well does doom 3 run under wine?"
id software promised that a linux binary for Doom3 will be available pretty soon, so all that time pretty much spent tweaking Wine for Doom3 would be a waste.
I can wait a few more weeks.
"Only unimportant jobs such as secretaries and the like get their own "appreciation days".
If I were a sysadmin, I'd be insulted."
Actually, secretaries and sys admins fall into a line of work that requires them to work their asses off and receive little to no recognition for hard work when their users/bosses become successful.
I'd actually feel that appreciating them one day out of the year is a step in the right direction. Now for the other 364 days...
"(note: I know I've played a DVD on a 466Mhz machine, but there are some "complicated" DVDs that take just a little bit more horsepower, so that's why I chose 500Mhz as the cutoff point)"
My PentiumII/266 played DVDs fine. Then again, I was using a hardware DVD decoder.