What you're talking about (the slowing down of light in glass, etc.) is the effect of light hitting a molecule of something, being absorbed by it, and then being reemitted out the other end.
Light's speed is a constant, c. It's the speed of absorbtion and reemission that changes it's apparent speed through substances.
The requirements for a database today aren't too much different from those twenty years ago - except for what we want to get out of them.
Now that data mining is a $[insert large number here]million industry, databases are being asked to do a lot more processing with this data than before. For example: old database query = get these attributes from tuples that match this pattern. New database query = determine how likely a user who has accessed 30 or more times this last month is to subscribe to the second-level pay service within the next ninety days, with or without an email advertising said service.
Quotes from one of these 'once-in-a-millennium minds' (Thomas Jefferson) -
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
"What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."
And, more to the point of this article:
"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
"I think, the answer has partly to do with ego's... some do not really bother, or think it's to dificult to get to learn an already existing codebase... sourceforge sucks in finding projects that are similar to others"
Another reason, especially here on Slashdot, is that some programmers just want to do something because they can. They host it on Sourceforge because it's a good, free hosting solution, and later lose interest in the project. I've done this several times, but I try to always notify Sourceforge that they can remove the project (save them some storage space, and allow someone else to use the project name).
I'm actually about to do this next week - I'm writing an assembler, about 70% of the code is done (it scans, it parses, it just doesn't "assemble" yet), and when I get to a working assembler, I'll start a project and put it up.
A lot of those dead projects are just people that start a project whenever they think of a cool idea, and then later lose interest or give up. (Or never get out of the planning stage...)
Anyone else remember having a computer 10, 20 years ago that could do plain text editing? I could drag out my old 80486, put a scaled-down version of *nix on it, and I've got [insert editor here]. Sad that people spend $400 for the Professional version of MS Office just for some fonts.
Eh. To the point: I get 15 thin clients (note how Gates calls them 'dumb terminals'? synonyms might mean the same thing, but the connotations are different...) at about $100 each, one central server for them at about $2000, and I'm out $3500.
I get 15 PCs, think around $1000 each (or even $300, as Gates seems to think), and I'm out $4500 ($300/pc) to $15,000 ($1000/pc).
For low-performance tasks (office, solitaire, etc.), thin clients make a lot of sense. For high-performance tasks, PCs make a lot of sense.
To the "nobody said how long the 7 days were" comment:
Most of the time, old-earth people pull up bible verses like Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 (both with references like: "to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years"). Note that those include both new and old testaments.
Which makes me think - as a Christian, or anyone who believes the historical accuracy of the gospels, fundamentalism seems to have switched religions: Christ himself criticized the Pharisees of His time, who were basically the "fundamentalists" of their time.
The entire thing makes me angry. Any Christian that has actually read up on the "Good Book" would know that the fundamentalist mindset is a completely hypocritical one to take...
"In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers -- two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven't had to compensate artists."
Um, wait just a second there - so there are people out there that buy a new computer and get the Internet PURELY to download music free? Yeah, right.
Even if - the music industry doesn't need to be subsidized by the gov't. That's just wrong, on so many levels...
...but I don't think Jo public does. What they see is something that isn't finished and therefore not worth using. Joe public has a hard time understanding the major number let alone the minor number and doesn't have a clue what a revision number is which is exactly why the beast dropped version numbers...
I'm currently adminning several Linux boxes that we keep pretty current: they're running the 2.6.10 kernel.
Yes, that's right. The kernel version numbers can get bigger than nine.
Also, there's no reason to go to three: have you read about the version numbers? It goes Major.Minor.Revision.
Have you ever run a 1.x.y kernel? It's, shall we say,... slightly different.
In a massive, let's-rewrite-half-the-operating-system kind of way.
Have you ever run 2.4.x and 2.6.y close enough to tell the difference? It's about the minor changes (thus, minor version number change); mostly feature enhancements. Some extremely cool stuff, but nothing to get too excited over.
Revision used to be what Linus is moving to two numbers. I don't agree with the change, but then I haven't read the article yet. Considering this man is slightly more intelligent than I, I'm pretty sure that by the end of the article, I'll agree with him.
On that note, a lot of open source programs DO have a problem with moving the major version number, because they haven't defined when it should change. You get programs that say "it'll be 1.0 when it's FINISHED," and if you're a coder, you know that it's hard to say when you're really finished with anything - always a little more feature creep that wants out.
People should hit 1.0 when the required functionality is there and works. Look at Firefox. Don't look at Google's services...
They seem really scared to leave beta with anything...
"Certainly you can never underestimate the level of malicious people out there who are going to try to take advantage of whatever things there are." - Mr. Gates
If you can "never underestimate" said level, it drops to zero... I think he means that you can never OVERESTIMATE the level - which means that no matter how many people you think will try to break your stuff, there will always be a couple more, or their skill will always be a little greater.
If he honestly thinks that the level of malicious crackers in the world is so low as to be unable to underestimate it, he shouldn't be in the computing business (yes, yes, I know - he shouldn't be in it at all, but whatever).
If he means level like "stoop to their level"-type level, well, perhaps, but you don't have to be "evil" to be good at breaking things...
Check the P.O. box for one thing: 286-DOS? Yeah, right.
For another, Lotus 1-2-3 was a competing product, and wouldn't have been "included" with Windows at all. (In fact, the only programs included were MS-DOS Executive, Calendar, Cardfile, Notepad, Terminal, Calculator, Clock, Reversi, Control Panel, PIF (Program Information File) Editor, Print Spooler, Clipboard, RAMDrive, Windows Write, Windows Paint - some of which were featured.)
The price is right, however, at $100 or so, but when Mr. Ballmer was hired in June of 1980, he was hired as a finance/org/resource person, not a marketer or salesman at all. (He wasn't moved to "Office of the President" 'til 1992)
I can understand the confusion, though - it's pretty-well put together...
I guess...
If you're implementing designs that others give you, or even making some of your own:
HTML is a must. Learn it from the w3schools website - their tutorial rocks. Also check out XHTML, and see if you can conform to the standard in everything you write, whether it is required by your job or not. Standard conformity is a good way to save yourself when all the browsers in the world render differently.
CSS is good to know, BUT: most of the time, a company will have a CSS template that they use over all their web pages. Sometimes you'll just have to include this template in your HTML (a one tag thing), and sometimes you'll have to edit it a bit. If you ever have to make your own, a quick look at the above website will help you do it immediately (if you can already do HTML, CSS makes a lot of sense), although I wouldn't focus on it initially.
ASP (& VB), JSP (& Java), PHP (& Perl). Most companies are going to be tied to one of these three. The best thing to do is be a beginner at all of them - take a look at sample code from all six - and then become an expert on the job. My current employers (a university) are tied into Microsoft products, and politics (and other interesting financial things) keep them from changing. However much I would like them to move over to LAMP, I'm not going to sit and mope and lose my job. THUS, I code in ASP with Microsoft SQL-Server, and write VB programs for another section of my department. Be flexible. Don't assume you'll get to use your language of choice, wherever you work. Sometimes conditions prohibit it.
Learn SQL. Forget all this "learn MySQL" stuff. The connection to the database is generally something you'll write in 30 secs - with some template somewhere - and the SQL code to actually query and update that database is going to be the important, life-changing stuff. Learn SQL. On that note, if you're planning on being more of a back-end web developer (like me), learn database management. Learn how relational databases work. Learn how JOINs are your friend, and multiple relations (or tables) are a good thing. Ugly database code kills me.
And, to take a note from Joelyesterday, know how to communicate. Most web designers - the people who will be giving you changes that you absolutely must make or they'll die of horror at that color scheme - are art or design majors who have the elite thing going just like most of us programmers. Learn how to talk, how to listen, how to accept someone else's decisions when you don't have the power to make them - yet.
If you're planning on being back-end, there's a lot of other stuff you might need to know: how virtual directories work, how IIS sets up ASP applications, how Apache's configuration file works, how home directories are transferred over, how server scripting actually works, how to lock down a web server, etc. But if you have a good grasp on the above, and you stay flexible, you should be ok in the job market.
(That, and having all those acronyms on your resume will get people hooked if you can actually confirm your knowledge!)
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't there a WinAmp plugin with the same sort of functionality?
This is neither the composer Dvorak nor the keyboard Dvorak.
This is the idiot Dvorak.
TTFA (Try the fine [web] app)?
I like.
Ever heard of 'views'?
What you're talking about (the slowing down of light in glass, etc.) is the effect of light hitting a molecule of something, being absorbed by it, and then being reemitted out the other end.
Light's speed is a constant, c. It's the speed of absorbtion and reemission that changes it's apparent speed through substances.
The requirements for a database today aren't too much different from those twenty years ago - except for what we want to get out of them.
Now that data mining is a $[insert large number here]million industry, databases are being asked to do a lot more processing with this data than before. For example: old database query = get these attributes from tuples that match this pattern. New database query = determine how likely a user who has accessed 30 or more times this last month is to subscribe to the second-level pay service within the next ninety days, with or without an email advertising said service.
Quotes from one of these 'once-in-a-millennium minds' (Thomas Jefferson) -
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
"What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."
And, more to the point of this article:
"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
"I think, the answer has partly to do with ego's ... some do not really bother, or think it's to dificult to get to learn an already existing codebase ... sourceforge sucks in finding projects that are similar to others"
:)
Another reason, especially here on Slashdot, is that some programmers just want to do something because they can. They host it on Sourceforge because it's a good, free hosting solution, and later lose interest in the project. I've done this several times, but I try to always notify Sourceforge that they can remove the project (save them some storage space, and allow someone else to use the project name).
I'm actually about to do this next week - I'm writing an assembler, about 70% of the code is done (it scans, it parses, it just doesn't "assemble" yet), and when I get to a working assembler, I'll start a project and put it up.
A lot of those dead projects are just people that start a project whenever they think of a cool idea, and then later lose interest or give up. (Or never get out of the planning stage...)
It's an interesting system, I'll give you that.
Anyone else remember having a computer 10, 20 years ago that could do plain text editing? I could drag out my old 80486, put a scaled-down version of *nix on it, and I've got [insert editor here]. Sad that people spend $400 for the Professional version of MS Office just for some fonts.
Eh. To the point: I get 15 thin clients (note how Gates calls them 'dumb terminals'? synonyms might mean the same thing, but the connotations are different...) at about $100 each, one central server for them at about $2000, and I'm out $3500.
I get 15 PCs, think around $1000 each (or even $300, as Gates seems to think), and I'm out $4500 ($300/pc) to $15,000 ($1000/pc).
For low-performance tasks (office, solitaire, etc.), thin clients make a lot of sense. For high-performance tasks, PCs make a lot of sense.
R is only 1 point. :D
<plug>Also check out http://www.itsyourturn.com/ for "Jamble", a non-Scrabble Scrabble game</plug>
To the "nobody said how long the 7 days were" comment:
Most of the time, old-earth people pull up bible verses like Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 (both with references like: "to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years"). Note that those include both new and old testaments.
Which makes me think - as a Christian, or anyone who believes the historical accuracy of the gospels, fundamentalism seems to have switched religions: Christ himself criticized the Pharisees of His time, who were basically the "fundamentalists" of their time.
The entire thing makes me angry. Any Christian that has actually read up on the "Good Book" would know that the fundamentalist mindset is a completely hypocritical one to take...
Click here
I think this sounds like the game I've been waiting for all my life...
That is all.
"In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers -- two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven't had to compensate artists."
Um, wait just a second there - so there are people out there that buy a new computer and get the Internet PURELY to download music free? Yeah, right.
Even if - the music industry doesn't need to be subsidized by the gov't. That's just wrong, on so many levels...
...but I don't think Jo public does. What they see is something that isn't finished and therefore not worth using. Joe public has a hard time understanding the major number let alone the minor number and doesn't have a clue what a revision number is which is exactly why the beast dropped version numbers...
I completely agree.
I'm currently adminning several Linux boxes that we keep pretty current: they're running the 2.6.10 kernel.
Yes, that's right. The kernel version numbers can get bigger than nine.
Also, there's no reason to go to three: have you read about the version numbers? It goes Major.Minor.Revision.
Have you ever run a 1.x.y kernel? It's, shall we say,... slightly different.
In a massive, let's-rewrite-half-the-operating-system kind of way.
Have you ever run 2.4.x and 2.6.y close enough to tell the difference? It's about the minor changes (thus, minor version number change); mostly feature enhancements. Some extremely cool stuff, but nothing to get too excited over.
Revision used to be what Linus is moving to two numbers. I don't agree with the change, but then I haven't read the article yet. Considering this man is slightly more intelligent than I, I'm pretty sure that by the end of the article, I'll agree with him.
On that note, a lot of open source programs DO have a problem with moving the major version number, because they haven't defined when it should change. You get programs that say "it'll be 1.0 when it's FINISHED," and if you're a coder, you know that it's hard to say when you're really finished with anything - always a little more feature creep that wants out.
People should hit 1.0 when the required functionality is there and works. Look at Firefox. Don't look at Google's services...
They seem really scared to leave beta with anything...
"Certainly you can never underestimate the level of malicious people out there who are going to try to take advantage of whatever things there are." - Mr. Gates
If you can "never underestimate" said level, it drops to zero... I think he means that you can never OVERESTIMATE the level - which means that no matter how many people you think will try to break your stuff, there will always be a couple more, or their skill will always be a little greater.
If he honestly thinks that the level of malicious crackers in the world is so low as to be unable to underestimate it, he shouldn't be in the computing business (yes, yes, I know - he shouldn't be in it at all, but whatever).
If he means level like "stoop to their level"-type level, well, perhaps, but you don't have to be "evil" to be good at breaking things...
Check the P.O. box for one thing: 286-DOS? Yeah, right. For another, Lotus 1-2-3 was a competing product, and wouldn't have been "included" with Windows at all. (In fact, the only programs included were MS-DOS Executive, Calendar, Cardfile, Notepad, Terminal, Calculator, Clock, Reversi, Control Panel, PIF (Program Information File) Editor, Print Spooler, Clipboard, RAMDrive, Windows Write, Windows Paint - some of which were featured.) The price is right, however, at $100 or so, but when Mr. Ballmer was hired in June of 1980, he was hired as a finance/org/resource person, not a marketer or salesman at all. (He wasn't moved to "Office of the President" 'til 1992) I can understand the confusion, though - it's pretty-well put together... I guess...
Can we vote?
"It's Funny, Laugh" category?
+eleventy-hundred insightful.
HTML is a must. Learn it from the w3schools website - their tutorial rocks. Also check out XHTML, and see if you can conform to the standard in everything you write, whether it is required by your job or not. Standard conformity is a good way to save yourself when all the browsers in the world render differently.
CSS is good to know, BUT: most of the time, a company will have a CSS template that they use over all their web pages. Sometimes you'll just have to include this template in your HTML (a one tag thing), and sometimes you'll have to edit it a bit. If you ever have to make your own, a quick look at the above website will help you do it immediately (if you can already do HTML, CSS makes a lot of sense), although I wouldn't focus on it initially.
ASP (& VB), JSP (& Java), PHP (& Perl). Most companies are going to be tied to one of these three. The best thing to do is be a beginner at all of them - take a look at sample code from all six - and then become an expert on the job. My current employers (a university) are tied into Microsoft products, and politics (and other interesting financial things) keep them from changing. However much I would like them to move over to LAMP, I'm not going to sit and mope and lose my job. THUS, I code in ASP with Microsoft SQL-Server, and write VB programs for another section of my department. Be flexible. Don't assume you'll get to use your language of choice, wherever you work. Sometimes conditions prohibit it.
Learn SQL. Forget all this "learn MySQL" stuff. The connection to the database is generally something you'll write in 30 secs - with some template somewhere - and the SQL code to actually query and update that database is going to be the important, life-changing stuff. Learn SQL. On that note, if you're planning on being more of a back-end web developer (like me), learn database management. Learn how relational databases work. Learn how JOINs are your friend, and multiple relations (or tables) are a good thing. Ugly database code kills me.
And, to take a note from Joel yesterday, know how to communicate. Most web designers - the people who will be giving you changes that you absolutely must make or they'll die of horror at that color scheme - are art or design majors who have the elite thing going just like most of us programmers. Learn how to talk, how to listen, how to accept someone else's decisions when you don't have the power to make them - yet.
If you're planning on being back-end, there's a lot of other stuff you might need to know: how virtual directories work, how IIS sets up ASP applications, how Apache's configuration file works, how home directories are transferred over, how server scripting actually works, how to lock down a web server, etc. But if you have a good grasp on the above, and you stay flexible, you should be ok in the job market.
(That, and having all those acronyms on your resume will get people hooked if you can actually confirm your knowledge!)
run everything Microsoft (although they should ;)
Watch out - that kinda talk 'll get you killed 'round these parts!HAH - only half?
You mean we aren't? Whoa.