Actually, Cigna healthcare uses Access as an interface to their databases. Yes, it's dumb, and anyone using Access as part of their job has _two_ computers. One for Access queries, which render the system useless until the data is returned, and one for regular work.
No, they are not using Access as the db, but they are using it.
While a fun idea, it's not possible. The main reason for the old technology is that only approved(by the government) systems can be used.
There is plenty of innovation going on, it just isn't talked about a large amount outside of the contractor's circles.
The primary reason for the "rigid and structured environment" is because that environment is necessary to produce quality Safety Critical and Security Critical systems.
If you look through the Risks archive you can see examples of why this is necessary.
I think the main reason that 'techies' don't want to work for Gov't Contractors is the strict development environment. Think of this in terms of an open source project. Generally there is no strict QA, no extensive version control, no set requirements, etc.
Now this, the general OSS development model, doesn't represent all techies, but I think many programmers, esp. the dot-commers, don't want to deal with all this crap. It's not that they can't deal with it, it is just that they don't want to.
The software development programs are many year long projects that have continual reviews: Design reviews, code reviews, SEI CMM(Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model) or some other model reviews, documentation reviews, etc. These projects have *MASSIVE* code basses, and track *ALL* changes made. No one programmer can just decide to re-write a large portion of code. There are entire sections devoted to testing the software. Some employees do that, and only that. No bug fixing, no looking at the source, just testing.
Also time accounting is exact. You can't just decide to leave 15 minutes early and not report it. You must record all time worked, if you leave 15 minutes early, you must report it, then report again when you make up that time.
Sound fun? Some enjoy this model of work/development(me), but it is not for everyone, i.e.someone who is used to the dot-com lifestyle.
That's an interesting point. Wouldn't companies like Universal want newer release of Windows to be incompatable with their software? Then everytime you update Windows, you have to go out an buy a new CD. Hrmm...
Additionally, many people are actively developing hardware drivers for Linux, but not so many for BSD.
Regardless of your other points, this is simply not true. There is a large amount of driver development happening in the FreeBSD project. Most hardware that people actually use is supported. Even the nVidia binary module for linux is being ported(in some obscure way) to FreeBSD.
Also, why would you want a linux kernel module running on a FreeBSD kernel?
See this link and scroll down a bit for this quote from linus:
"Which, btw, explains why I don't consider you a kernel maintainer, Rik, and I don't tend to apply any patches at all from you. It's just not worth my time to worry about people who aren't willing to sustain their patches."
Yeah, I know this is several days late, but the Vi included with FreeBSD is nvi, which is a good thing, as it works much better than vi. You can find it in the source tree as nvi.
What many traditional companies do is just lease computers from a 3rd party company. After the term is up, ship it back and get a shiny new box(which is why I now have an Ultra10 instead of an old Ultra30 on my desk). This avoids having to invest sooooo heavily on machines, and selling them for really really cheap on ebay.
--xphase
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
I think that the true limiting factor are the mp3's themselves. mp3's are not very high quality. If you're really serious about listening to music on a quality audio system, I'd go for a higher quality media.
Of course your suggestions would prevent the quality from being worse, but, personally, I'd rather use something better than mp3's.
Here and Here
But you'll notice that both of these links seem to agree(as do I) with the points that you make in your comments, not the person you are responding to.
It seems Moshe has spoken with Rik about the VM many times:
Rik van Riel and I have variously discussed another approach, called "reverse mapping," which implements a reverse-lookup between the page and process table. Once you have reverse-mapped pages, the VM can simply scan the pages for the ones to be freed. Naturally, some extra fields need to be added to the appropriate control tables to allow this reverse mapping. My own implementation has an overhead of 14 bytes and is therefore certainly a lesser solution than Rik's - his overhead is just 8 bytes.
I'm aware that this doesn't mean they've met in person, but it shows that Moshe has discussed things with Rik before AA's VM was written.
So I think he holds nothing agains Rik, he just likes aa's VM better
No, but it means that you paid for it, and I think most people would rather not have to pay for XP just so they can get rid of it to install something else.
*sigh* Those were the days, but the problem is bandwidth. Back in the *old* days when the internet wasn't quite so popular, a news(or other free info) page could afford the bandwidth, now I'm sure the costs are prohibitive to have a large number of hits on a non-commercial page.
Bandwidth costs are the biggest problem for small independant websites. They get too many visitors and cannot afford to serve them all without income, so they shutdown. *poof* Many good websites have shutdown due to this, as there are only a few ways to pay for the increased bandwidth: get donors/investors, get bought out by a larger company(ie slashdot), win the lottery, or various illegal things.
Imagine if slashdot lost all financial backing right now, how long do you think the site could survive?
I know this reply is a little late, but I just wanted to say that many.edu domains are involved in interstate commerce. Many offer the ability to purchase textbooks on-line, and use local(to the domain) shopping carts/CC transactions, which are then actually processed by places like amazon.com or bn.com.
That's pure film. Anything using an optical printer(used for special effects, titles, CG stuff) or other method for combining film and computer effects needs to be at least twice as fast.
There was something linked from solaris central about how the Ultra III was for massively multi-processor machines, not workstations. The Ultra IIIi will be the workstation processor clocking in(I think) at well over 1GHz. I'd provide the link, but I can't remember it.
The patents for Machine Vision and Bar Codes are crap. They are extremely vague, and were actually filed to patent different devices, and modified after the technology was developed by others.
Also, since this wonderful copy protection prevents piracy, will the cost of a CD go down because of the increase in revenue on more sales of "originals"?
Nope, this is the RIAA, they will probably charge more per CD, so they can "Protect the consumers and Artists via this copy protection."
You should buy at least one copy, as the proceeds go to support the FreeBSD project. I own 4 copies of the CD sets, and I've only installed off of one of them. I generally do an ftp install, or a cvsup update, then buy the CD anyway. The CD's are not very expensive, and they support a good cause.
Well, you got me, I guess you're right, I mean 2 out of 5 is enough to make that definition true. Of course points 3 through 5 are not true in the US, but that's not really my point.
The concept of democracy was developed by the Ancient greeks, Plato, Aristotle, and the like, and their definition is each person has a vote. This definition has been the actual definition of democracy since then, including when the US was formed, well, the actual meaning was that every person could vote, provided that you were white, owned land, weren't a women, and weren't crazy. A pure democracy was considered by the founders of the US, as were many other types of government. They choose a constitutional republic, and every US History/Politics/etc. course I've taken in school(elementary, middle, high school, and University) has identified the US government as a a Constitutional Republic.
So pardon me if I don't agree with dictionary.com, because as we all know books/dictionaries/the internet/all other published works are right 100% of the time.
The US is a Constitutional Republic, which means that we elect others to make decisions for us within the boundaries of the Constitution. A democracy is where every individual would vote on every issue. There would be not congress if this was a democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Cigna healthcare uses Access as an interface to their databases. Yes, it's dumb, and anyone using Access as part of their job has _two_ computers. One for Access queries, which render the system useless until the data is returned, and one for regular work.
No, they are not using Access as the db, but they are using it.
--xPhase
I'm sorry but those monkeys are illegal under the DMCA, as they are a circumvention device, So I'll have to confiscate them now.
--xPhase
My town had the same thing a bit ago, but I haven't noticed if they've changed.
While a fun idea, it's not possible. The main reason for the old technology is that only approved(by the government) systems can be used.
There is plenty of innovation going on, it just isn't talked about a large amount outside of the contractor's circles.
The primary reason for the "rigid and structured environment" is because that environment is necessary to produce quality Safety Critical and Security Critical systems.
If you look through the Risks archive you can see examples of why this is necessary.
--xPhaseI think the main reason that 'techies' don't want to work for Gov't Contractors is the strict development environment. Think of this in terms of an open source project. Generally there is no strict QA, no extensive version control, no set requirements, etc.
Now this, the general OSS development model, doesn't represent all techies, but I think many programmers, esp. the dot-commers, don't want to deal with all this crap. It's not that they can't deal with it, it is just that they don't want to.
The software development programs are many year long projects that have continual reviews: Design reviews, code reviews, SEI CMM(Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model) or some other model reviews, documentation reviews, etc. These projects have *MASSIVE* code basses, and track *ALL* changes made. No one programmer can just decide to re-write a large portion of code. There are entire sections devoted to testing the software. Some employees do that, and only that. No bug fixing, no looking at the source, just testing.
Also time accounting is exact. You can't just decide to leave 15 minutes early and not report it. You must record all time worked, if you leave 15 minutes early, you must report it, then report again when you make up that time.
Sound fun? Some enjoy this model of work/development(me), but it is not for everyone, i.e.someone who is used to the dot-com lifestyle.
--xPhase
Actually, they are not. I don't know how she got through her interview, but you actually need skills to work for a contractor.
Also, if she needs security clearance, she can't lie on that application.
I happen to work for a DoD contractor, and we are not currently hiring. We were hiring, but mainly very experienced people.
--xPhase
That's an interesting point. Wouldn't companies like Universal want newer release of Windows to be incompatable with their software? Then everytime you update Windows, you have to go out an buy a new CD. Hrmm...
--xPhase
Additionally, many people are actively developing hardware drivers for Linux, but not so many for BSD.
Regardless of your other points, this is simply not true. There is a large amount of driver development happening in the FreeBSD project. Most hardware that people actually use is supported. Even the nVidia binary module for linux is being ported(in some obscure way) to FreeBSD.
Also, why would you want a linux kernel module running on a FreeBSD kernel?
--xPhase
See this link and scroll down a bit for this quote from linus:
"Which, btw, explains why I don't consider you a kernel maintainer, Rik, and I don't tend to apply any patches at all from you. It's just not worth my time to worry about people who aren't willing to sustain their patches."
--xPhase
Yeah, I know this is several days late, but the Vi included with FreeBSD is nvi, which is a good thing, as it works much better than vi. You can find it in the source tree as nvi.
--xPhase
What many traditional companies do is just lease computers from a 3rd party company. After the term is up, ship it back and get a shiny new box(which is why I now have an Ultra10 instead of an old Ultra30 on my desk). This avoids having to invest sooooo heavily on machines, and selling them for really really cheap on ebay.
--xphase
I think that the true limiting factor are the mp3's themselves. mp3's are not very high quality. If you're really serious about listening to music on a quality audio system, I'd go for a higher quality media.
Of course your suggestions would prevent the quality from being worse, but, personally, I'd rather use something better than mp3's.
--xPhase
and
Here
But you'll notice that both of these links seem to agree(as do I) with the points that you make in your comments, not the person you are responding to.
--xPhase
Rik van Riel and I have variously discussed another approach, called "reverse mapping," which implements a reverse-lookup between the page and process table. Once you have reverse-mapped pages, the VM can simply scan the pages for the ones to be freed. Naturally, some extra fields need to be added to the appropriate control tables to allow this reverse mapping. My own implementation has an overhead of 14 bytes and is therefore certainly a lesser solution than Rik's - his overhead is just 8 bytes.
I'm aware that this doesn't mean they've met in person, but it shows that Moshe has discussed things with Rik before AA's VM was written. So I think he holds nothing agains Rik, he just likes aa's VM better
--xPhase
No, but it means that you paid for it, and I think most people would rather not have to pay for XP just so they can get rid of it to install something else.
--xPhase
*sigh* Those were the days, but the problem is bandwidth. Back in the *old* days when the internet wasn't quite so popular, a news(or other free info) page could afford the bandwidth, now I'm sure the costs are prohibitive to have a large number of hits on a non-commercial page.
Bandwidth costs are the biggest problem for small independant websites. They get too many visitors and cannot afford to serve them all without income, so they shutdown. *poof* Many good websites have shutdown due to this, as there are only a few ways to pay for the increased bandwidth: get donors/investors, get bought out by a larger company(ie slashdot), win the lottery, or various illegal things.
Imagine if slashdot lost all financial backing right now, how long do you think the site could survive?
--xPhase
I know this reply is a little late, but I just wanted to say that many .edu domains are involved in interstate commerce. Many offer the ability to purchase textbooks on-line, and use local(to the domain) shopping carts/CC transactions, which are then actually processed by places like amazon.com or bn.com.
blah!
That's pure film. Anything using an optical printer(used for special effects, titles, CG stuff) or other method for combining film and computer effects needs to be at least twice as fast.
There was something linked from solaris central about how the Ultra III was for massively multi-processor machines, not workstations. The Ultra IIIi will be the workstation processor clocking in(I think) at well over 1GHz. I'd provide the link, but I can't remember it.
-blah
There's a good article on fortune:
See here
There are on-going lawsuits to break the Machine Vision and Bar Code patents.
-blah
Nope, this is the RIAA, they will probably charge more per CD, so they can "Protect the consumers and Artists via this copy protection."
-blah
I have never bought a FreeBSD CD.
You should buy at least one copy, as the proceeds go to support the FreeBSD project. I own 4 copies of the CD sets, and I've only installed off of one of them. I generally do an ftp install, or a cvsup update, then buy the CD anyway. The CD's are not very expensive, and they support a good cause.
blah!
Well, you got me, I guess you're right, I mean 2 out of 5 is enough to make that definition true. Of course points 3 through 5 are not true in the US, but that's not really my point.
The concept of democracy was developed by the Ancient greeks, Plato, Aristotle, and the like, and their definition is each person has a vote. This definition has been the actual definition of democracy since then, including when the US was formed, well, the actual meaning was that every person could vote, provided that you were white, owned land, weren't a women, and weren't crazy. A pure democracy was considered by the founders of the US, as were many other types of government. They choose a constitutional republic, and every US History/Politics/etc. course I've taken in school(elementary, middle, high school, and University) has identified the US government as a a Constitutional Republic.
So pardon me if I don't agree with dictionary.com, because as we all know books/dictionaries/the internet/all other published works are right 100% of the time.
blah!
The U.S. is primarily a democracy
The US is a Constitutional Republic, which means that we elect others to make decisions for us within the boundaries of the Constitution. A democracy is where every individual would vote on every issue. There would be not congress if this was a democracy.
blah!
Put G4's with OS X in all CS labs, and teach Objective C.