I'm told that when it's officially launched Whitetooth will feature full backwards compatability with Bluetooth. Whitetooth features higher bandwith and increased range.
I recently feild tested Bluetooth and Whitetooth in a few clubs and bars. Whitetooth fared better client responsiveness than Bluetooth or even the ubiquitous Yellowtooth. Clients which were signaled with the Whitetooth "grin" responded far more frequently than when presented with the Bluetooth "grin". The experimental Yellowtooth would often cause a total loss of communications with client devices in the vacinity.
I would say that Whitetooth has a much brighter future than Bluetooth from these informal feild tests. I personally would avoid use of Yellowtooth until it gets cleaned up. If you don't have a Whitetooth vendor in your particular market, Bluetooth is still a good solution...
As always, the correct choice depends directly on the consequences of each possibility. Which is worse? Getting the contract and dealing with a Quick and Dirty solution... or not getting the contract? Using terms like "rapid prototype" and "more robust solutions" help for explaining why you have to take more time to accomplish the same thing you just accomplished a second time.
Sometimes a "Quick and Dirty" (tm) solution is the best solution since the customer may be planning on "upgrading" (tm) in the future anyway. I have a feeling that your particular issues, however, relate to longer "product lifecycle", and "more cost effective maintenance" issues. Something like : "spend more now so you save money later" just might work with your particular PHB.
I'll finally get rid of this mass of cables resembling a 'Borg cube's innards behind my desk running to my KVMs. I'll replace them all with a mass of CAT5 that will look much nicer won't it?
Well, at least it will be about half the number of cables to keep track of.
Let me see here:
A bug exists in the system that can't be solved. Eventually the bug becomes so large that it will crash the system unless the system is rebooted.
Sounds like Windows to me.
Oh no! They really did take over the world! I knew they had monopoly power but nothing like this!
At least they have tons of drivers and great hardware support... *gasp*...I just realized there is no spoon!
I suppose that's the big "outcome" of doing what you suggested. Back at the old company they had to hire a bunch of new people whom (I assume) they paid less than they had paid us. Nobody knows what happened after that because we all had quit.
I hope I've helped to shed some light on situations like this for you... nobody really wins or loses in these kinds of situations.
That is the past-perfect-tense of Screwed. You are so completely screwed that it crosses into a whole new dimension of being screwed. You are now SCROD.
It's like wanting to put on your seat belts after you've had the accident.
Unless your ex-coworker has morals that forbade him from doing you harm your best defense is to warm up the lawyers and get them all nice an toasty just in case. There is precedent for ex-employees who leave "easter-eggs" for their employers getting sued for damages. That's all you got in the final analysis to keep the Scrod at bay... assuming your ex-coworker really is as golden as you say.
*LOL* try reading some RFC's that'll put you to sleep. Better yet, any book on UML. But if you try and read anything about MS security or bugs then that'll give you nightmares!
If your system is robust enough to actually display this text and not lock up, well, congratulations!
Yay for me! BTW: Go to the top of the dir (
http://www.acme.com/jef/killer/) first 'cuz the web master very wisely put "referrer protection" on the page and you can't get to it from an outside link. My version of Mozilla handles this page fine but my version of Konqueror got a little bogged down trying to render the page. I'll bet there are browsers out there that would indeed totally choke on that teeny tiny little gif... only 33k file size and I watched it consume nearly 200MB of memory to get rendered in Mozilla. Now that's entertainment!
BTW: for those of you whose browsers can't render the image... it's a black gif background image of 7000 by 7000 pixels.
Doesn't more experience make a difference or do employers look for pieces of paper that say
I complete some courses dealing with particular hardware/software?
If you can get certifications but not experience which should you go and get? Wait? didn't I just premise that you couldn't get experience? So that would mean... if you can get a certification it won't hurt. If it turns out to hurt... leave it off the resume. If you can't afford a certification then you can't get it can you? If you can't afford certification I bet you can't afford college either since a lot of the same monies can be used for both. (Personally if it's real education versus certification I think a real education wins hands down... but not for job getting reasons.)
What do employers look for? Depends on the employers. Remember employers are the same people that ask for crazy things like "5 years experience programming in VB, printer drivers in C, and IPL with Ada95"
True personal experience:
I was trying to get a Unix job hacking PERL and the second interviewer said:
"Do you have an MCSE?"
I answered no.
She said, "Well, there are plenty of applicants with MCSE's for this job."
"I have a four year college degree in computer science."
She replied rather miffed, "Well, I don't even think we should be talking to people without MCSE's."
I graduated with a CS degree and had a steady job for 4 years and now am a mail clerk.
I've met scads of fellas because of my new job who were computer guys... at least they claim they were in the 70's and now they're paper-pushers for the government. I talk to these fellas about very basic computing concepts and many of them are utterly and hopelessly lost. I get the feeling that many of these blokes just simply didn't use their skills and so they lost them.
Is that what's going to happen to all the unlucky fellas who didn't land on their feet? Will it make a difference if you continue to study, code, and obtain certifications on your own? Or, is this the new "lost generation" of programmers? I think you don't have to be lost if you don't want to be.
I find the parent article encouraging and I hope it encourages you to stick with it. If you can get a second degree... get one that will be well complimented by your existing computer degree. Virtually any hard-science degree or engineering degree is well served by a thorough understanding of computers. If you don't feel up for engineering you could be a Nurse... a computing Nurse... or a computing MD... a computer lawyer... ooh! The possibilities! You really are in a good position if you can consider more schooling right now.
Now, what about the person who has just gotten a CS degree and there's not a snowballs chance they'll get to go back to school ever? What about them? What do they do? Study? Certify? OpenSource at night and run a cash-register by day? Now, there's a real tough position but not a completely impossible one.
I've thought about this as well. The problem is would it +1 Sarcastic or -1 Sarcastic? I think it should be something along the lines of
+1 Sarcastic(Funny) and -1 Sarcastic(Asshole). Or how about a 0 Sarcastic that just adds "Sarcastic(" and ")" to the original
modifier name?
In my book Sarcastic would always be a +1. I would, however, like a "-1 poster is an idiot" while we're at it. Oh I suppose that's the Friend vs. Foe system.
She's kinda
cute and she kinda understands computers... and she's got a job that kinda makes sense.
Kinda. I mean if you need that data off the laptop at the bottom of the Amazon river enough to fish it out, send it to SF and have these guys try and get the data... you just might be kinda nuts.
Kinda nuts for not having backups of data that would be that valuable... and kinda nuts for then having toted it around the Amazon. I can imagine reasons for this nuttiness... kinda... but nothing too realistic.
I thought that after the sale of Xenix to SCO, MS made a non-competition agreement stating that they could not develop or sell UNIX type systems....
And that will cause them to put the screeching halt on their plans for world domination. Screee! Deary me, we forgot that Non-Compete agreement we signed! Well, I guess we'll just have to sulk and not try to make more money.
If this move really happens it amounts to a "don't lose the sale" move. The sales staff can quietly and noiselessly state: "Yes we can work with your existing Linux platforms." and then cry "Embrace and Extend!" to lever products in the door in places that would normally say just: "Well, we're a Unix shop" and hangup.
...releasing C# and at least some portion of.Net into the wild...
This is exactly what Sun should have done to begin with. But, why the hell didn't they? Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt.
Even so, MS is in a much better position to be giving away the farm than Sun is.
Java represents too much of Sun's shirt to be just giving it away without a twinge.
Linux doesn't have a single company with office buildings and lawyers defending it. Linux is built from a community. I was thinking of that game.
You get companies supporting linux and potentially making money. That's the kind of take-over-the-board move I was thinking of. Sun has definately tried it. Java is supposed to do something like that... but well...
Naturally, Sun can't win this game it's playing with Microsoft so they want to change the rules in their favor. They can't seem to win this current game so they want a new game. That's all any of these lawsuits are, attempts to change the game.
It won't work. If you play on Microsoft's game board at all you'll end up playing a version of their game that they will win. You need to take over the board. You need to shift the fundamentals of what an Operating System is and what Software is. No other strategy other than Open Source and GNU/Linux model* really does that. Change the game.
It's a pity no one has figured out how to become filthy stinking rich at it yet. I mean, Linus should be one of the richest men in Tech... and...he just isn't.
* (nods to the BSDs too I'm talking about the OS model as a whole not a specific kernel)
I don't know the guy but the "stardate" bit was a dead give-away to me that he wasn't serious. Without the "stardate" bit then he sounds like the neo-hippie Slashdotter... who is anything but average anywhere but on slashdot.
... moderating myself down one point because I'm off topic...
I had this idea that I called "podular" living. The idea is my house could be dismantled and re-assembled in new configurations as a family's needs changed. The modules would have "pod-like" ports that could be plugged together like Hamster-Habi-Trail tubes.
Ofcourse I was going to make the pods more stuble than Hamster tubes. The interfaces would be large rectangular sections on the sides of octagonal modules. Floor and ceiling ports for stacking would be octagonal and house spiral staircases.
A typical pod could be unsegmented, segmented in quarters, configured as classic living room/dining room/artic entry way with an optional balcony. Basically the starter pod would be an efficiency house/apartment in a geodisc. Additional geodiscs could be attached or a garage pod added. A basement pod could be buried... ect. The whole thing would be easily disconnected and mounted on earthquake resistant foundational pylons.
The "landing gear" supporting the pod would fit into coaster like ports on the foundational pylons to provide more earthquake resistance. The exterior frame would be steel girders and wood paneling since they hold up to earthquake stresses better. The walls would be curved and very thick for heating efficiency. Think tomato shape with window steeples around the top.
The pods would also be independantly heated so that when a pod was not in use you could seal it off and turn off the heat. Think blast doors. Squat sturdy construction would help them withstand hurricane force winds and storms. All metal versions could withstand wave forces and be constructed to be nearly water proof.
*LOL* guess where I'm from. All that thought about earthquake and weather resistance... heh.
After reading the article and deciding to ignore the already made point that this is an invasion of privacy:
This kind of data if collected well could very well help in profiling online trends and giving subscribers to this data a "leg-up" on their competitors. That's True. BUT, I doubt that this data can be used for predicting meat-world trends. The only people you are dealing with are the ones who are both willing to buy online and are willing to allow spyware on their boxen. I'd guess that the fact that you're talking about a select group of unsophisticated users, who are yet sophisticated enough to research and/or purchase online, would mean that the data is self-censoring.
It's sort of like surveying people who hate telemarketers over the phone. You'll only talk to a very few people and likely have a useless data set. It would be like a survey on invasion of privacy issues only from people willing to report to the surveyor thier SSN.
Catch my drift?
The resultant data would influence an investor house to make an unwise decision and bet on the wrong dog in the grand dog-race called the Stock market. The data provider can dope up the right dogs to make itself some money. That's what I think of whenever I read about these "trend" predicting companies. That's just me though.
VW/Audi has a history of being a leader in creating super fuel
efficient vehicles.
Since fuel costs 1.10 euro a liter here they definately have an incentive! 3.78 liters in a Gallon, 1 dollar is 0.98 euro... That's roughly $4.25 a gallon. Hellyah, I'd want some fuel efficient friggin' cars!
802.11a/b? Of course, that would take significant carelessness on the part of the classified network's administrator.
Good point. I'd forgotten about wireless. But then again we're not even supposed to have cell phones or wireless phones inside the "secure" environment. I say "supposed to" because the boss allows a lot of stuff that we're not "supposed" to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Whitetooth is like bluetooth only without as much IBM in it.
I'm told that when it's officially launched Whitetooth will feature full backwards compatability with Bluetooth. Whitetooth features higher bandwith and increased range.
I recently feild tested Bluetooth and Whitetooth in a few clubs and bars. Whitetooth fared better client responsiveness than Bluetooth or even the ubiquitous Yellowtooth. Clients which were signaled with the Whitetooth "grin" responded far more frequently than when presented with the Bluetooth "grin". The experimental Yellowtooth would often cause a total loss of communications with client devices in the vacinity.
I would say that Whitetooth has a much brighter future than Bluetooth from these informal feild tests. I personally would avoid use of Yellowtooth until it gets cleaned up. If you don't have a Whitetooth vendor in your particular market, Bluetooth is still a good solution...
As always, the correct choice depends directly on the consequences of each possibility. Which is worse? Getting the contract and dealing with a Quick and Dirty solution... or not getting the contract? Using terms like "rapid prototype" and "more robust solutions" help for explaining why you have to take more time to accomplish the same thing you just accomplished a second time.
Sometimes a "Quick and Dirty" (tm) solution is the best solution since the customer may be planning on "upgrading" (tm) in the future anyway. I have a feeling that your particular issues, however, relate to longer "product lifecycle", and "more cost effective maintenance" issues. Something like : "spend more now so you save money later" just might work with your particular PHB.
Just remember... Software Engineering is... HELL.
I'll finally get rid of this mass of cables resembling a 'Borg cube's innards behind my desk running to my KVMs. I'll replace them all with a mass of CAT5 that will look much nicer won't it?
Well, at least it will be about half the number of cables to keep track of.
Let me see here: A bug exists in the system that can't be solved. Eventually the bug becomes so large that it will crash the system unless the system is rebooted. Sounds like Windows to me.
...I just realized there is no spoon!
Oh no! They really did take over the world! I knew they had monopoly power but nothing like this!
At least they have tons of drivers and great hardware support... *gasp*
and we all were unemployed for a while.
I suppose that's the big "outcome" of doing what you suggested. Back at the old company they had to hire a bunch of new people whom (I assume) they paid less than they had paid us. Nobody knows what happened after that because we all had quit.
I hope I've helped to shed some light on situations like this for you... nobody really wins or loses in these kinds of situations.
That is the past-perfect-tense of Screwed. You are so completely screwed that it crosses into a whole new dimension of being screwed. You are now SCROD.
It's like wanting to put on your seat belts after you've had the accident.
Unless your ex-coworker has morals that forbade him from doing you harm your best defense is to warm up the lawyers and get them all nice an toasty just in case. There is precedent for ex-employees who leave "easter-eggs" for their employers getting sued for damages. That's all you got in the final analysis to keep the Scrod at bay... assuming your ex-coworker really is as golden as you say.
*LOL* try reading some RFC's that'll put you to sleep. Better yet, any book on UML. But if you try and read anything about MS security or bugs then that'll give you nightmares!
The "default: crash():" is the case statement inside the Switch block.
Except that the "crash" part isn't necessary... it can be set to any number of things and still cause the crash.
:) I'm off to try it out on Windows XP now with a whole mess of windows open called with the Ctrl+N command...
How much you wanna bet this is due to an improperly coded case statement? tee hee!
Whee! I'm having so much fun with this!
If your system is robust enough to actually display this text and not lock up, well, congratulations!
Yay for me! BTW: Go to the top of the dir ( http://www.acme.com/jef/killer/) first 'cuz the web master very wisely put "referrer protection" on the page and you can't get to it from an outside link. My version of Mozilla handles this page fine but my version of Konqueror got a little bogged down trying to render the page. I'll bet there are browsers out there that would indeed totally choke on that teeny tiny little gif... only 33k file size and I watched it consume nearly 200MB of memory to get rendered in Mozilla. Now that's entertainment!
BTW: for those of you whose browsers can't render the image... it's a black gif background image of 7000 by 7000 pixels.
Doesn't more experience make a difference or do employers look for pieces of paper that say I complete some courses dealing with particular hardware/software?
... leave it off the resume. If you can't afford a certification then you can't get it can you? If you can't afford certification I bet you can't afford college either since a lot of the same monies can be used for both. (Personally if it's real education versus certification I think a real education wins hands down... but not for job getting reasons.)
If you can get certifications but not experience which should you go and get? Wait? didn't I just premise that you couldn't get experience? So that would mean... if you can get a certification it won't hurt. If it turns out to hurt
What do employers look for? Depends on the employers. Remember employers are the same people that ask for crazy things like "5 years experience programming in VB, printer drivers in C, and IPL with Ada95"
True personal experience:
I was trying to get a Unix job hacking PERL and the second interviewer said:
"Do you have an MCSE?"
I answered no.
She said, "Well, there are plenty of applicants with MCSE's for this job."
"I have a four year college degree in computer science."
She replied rather miffed, "Well, I don't even think we should be talking to people without MCSE's."
Now put that in your bonnet and soak for a while!
I graduated with a CS degree and had a steady job for 4 years and now am a mail clerk.
I've met scads of fellas because of my new job who were computer guys... at least they claim they were in the 70's and now they're paper-pushers for the government. I talk to these fellas about very basic computing concepts and many of them are utterly and hopelessly lost. I get the feeling that many of these blokes just simply didn't use their skills and so they lost them.
Is that what's going to happen to all the unlucky fellas who didn't land on their feet? Will it make a difference if you continue to study, code, and obtain certifications on your own? Or, is this the new "lost generation" of programmers? I think you don't have to be lost if you don't want to be.
I find the parent article encouraging and I hope it encourages you to stick with it. If you can get a second degree... get one that will be well complimented by your existing computer degree. Virtually any hard-science degree or engineering degree is well served by a thorough understanding of computers. If you don't feel up for engineering you could be a Nurse... a computing Nurse... or a computing MD... a computer lawyer... ooh! The possibilities! You really are in a good position if you can consider more schooling right now.
Now, what about the person who has just gotten a CS degree and there's not a snowballs chance they'll get to go back to school ever? What about them? What do they do? Study? Certify? OpenSource at night and run a cash-register by day? Now, there's a real tough position but not a completely impossible one.
I've thought about this as well. The problem is would it +1 Sarcastic or -1 Sarcastic? I think it should be something along the lines of +1 Sarcastic(Funny) and -1 Sarcastic(Asshole). Or how about a 0 Sarcastic that just adds "Sarcastic(" and ")" to the original modifier name?
In my book Sarcastic would always be a +1. I would, however, like a "-1 poster is an idiot" while we're at it. Oh I suppose that's the Friend vs. Foe system.
She's kinda cute and she kinda understands computers... and she's got a job that kinda makes sense.
Kinda. I mean if you need that data off the laptop at the bottom of the Amazon river enough to fish it out, send it to SF and have these guys try and get the data... you just might be kinda nuts.
Kinda nuts for not having backups of data that would be that valuable... and kinda nuts for then having toted it around the Amazon. I can imagine reasons for this nuttiness... kinda... but nothing too realistic.
I thought that after the sale of Xenix to SCO, MS made a non-competition agreement stating that they could not develop or sell UNIX type systems....
And that will cause them to put the screeching halt on their plans for world domination. Screee! Deary me, we forgot that Non-Compete agreement we signed! Well, I guess we'll just have to sulk and not try to make more money.
If this move really happens it amounts to a "don't lose the sale" move. The sales staff can quietly and noiselessly state: "Yes we can work with your existing Linux platforms." and then cry "Embrace and Extend!" to lever products in the door in places that would normally say just: "Well, we're a Unix shop" and hangup.
A science may say that, but they can't prove it!
...releasing C# and at least some portion of .Net into the wild...
This is exactly what Sun should have done to begin with. But, why the hell didn't they? Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Even so, MS is in a much better position to be giving away the farm than Sun is. Java represents too much of Sun's shirt to be just giving it away without a twinge.
I think we're talking about different games.
Linux doesn't have a single company with office buildings and lawyers defending it. Linux is built from a community. I was thinking of that game.
You get companies supporting linux and potentially making money. That's the kind of take-over-the-board move I was thinking of. Sun has definately tried it. Java is supposed to do something like that... but well...
If you can't win the game, play a different game.
...he just isn't.
Naturally, Sun can't win this game it's playing with Microsoft so they want to change the rules in their favor. They can't seem to win this current game so they want a new game. That's all any of these lawsuits are, attempts to change the game.
It won't work. If you play on Microsoft's game board at all you'll end up playing a version of their game that they will win. You need to take over the board. You need to shift the fundamentals of what an Operating System is and what Software is. No other strategy other than Open Source and GNU/Linux model* really does that. Change the game.
It's a pity no one has figured out how to become filthy stinking rich at it yet. I mean, Linus should be one of the richest men in Tech... and
* (nods to the BSDs too I'm talking about the OS model as a whole not a specific kernel)
I don't know the guy but the "stardate" bit was a dead give-away to me that he wasn't serious. Without the "stardate" bit then he sounds like the neo-hippie Slashdotter... who is anything but average anywhere but on slashdot.
... moderating myself down one point because I'm off topic ...
Has someone already made that joke?
I had this idea that I called "podular" living. The idea is my house could be dismantled and re-assembled in new configurations as a family's needs changed. The modules would have "pod-like" ports that could be plugged together like Hamster-Habi-Trail tubes.
Ofcourse I was going to make the pods more stuble than Hamster tubes. The interfaces would be large rectangular sections on the sides of octagonal modules. Floor and ceiling ports for stacking would be octagonal and house spiral staircases.
A typical pod could be unsegmented, segmented in quarters, configured as classic living room/dining room/artic entry way with an optional balcony. Basically the starter pod would be an efficiency house/apartment in a geodisc. Additional geodiscs could be attached or a garage pod added. A basement pod could be buried... ect. The whole thing would be easily disconnected and mounted on earthquake resistant foundational pylons.
The "landing gear" supporting the pod would fit into coaster like ports on the foundational pylons to provide more earthquake resistance. The exterior frame would be steel girders and wood paneling since they hold up to earthquake stresses better. The walls would be curved and very thick for heating efficiency. Think tomato shape with window steeples around the top.
The pods would also be independantly heated so that when a pod was not in use you could seal it off and turn off the heat. Think blast doors. Squat sturdy construction would help them withstand hurricane force winds and storms. All metal versions could withstand wave forces and be constructed to be nearly water proof.
*LOL* guess where I'm from. All that thought about earthquake and weather resistance... heh.
After reading the article and deciding to ignore the already made point that this is an invasion of privacy:
This kind of data if collected well could very well help in profiling online trends and giving subscribers to this data a "leg-up" on their competitors. That's True. BUT, I doubt that this data can be used for predicting meat-world trends. The only people you are dealing with are the ones who are both willing to buy online and are willing to allow spyware on their boxen. I'd guess that the fact that you're talking about a select group of unsophisticated users, who are yet sophisticated enough to research and/or purchase online, would mean that the data is self-censoring.
It's sort of like surveying people who hate telemarketers over the phone. You'll only talk to a very few people and likely have a useless data set. It would be like a survey on invasion of privacy issues only from people willing to report to the surveyor thier SSN.
Catch my drift?
The resultant data would influence an investor house to make an unwise decision and bet on the wrong dog in the grand dog-race called the Stock market. The data provider can dope up the right dogs to make itself some money. That's what I think of whenever I read about these "trend" predicting companies. That's just me though.
VW/Audi has a history of being a leader in creating super fuel efficient vehicles.
Since fuel costs 1.10 euro a liter here they definately have an incentive! 3.78 liters in a Gallon, 1 dollar is 0.98 euro... That's roughly $4.25 a gallon. Hellyah, I'd want some fuel efficient friggin' cars!
I just hope none of the Back Street Boys or ?NSYNC are on the same Space Ship I am on.
I believe that they are on the second ship, which we are sending first. That would be the "B" ark.
802.11a/b? Of course, that would take significant carelessness on the part of the classified network's administrator.
Good point. I'd forgotten about wireless. But then again we're not even supposed to have cell phones or wireless phones inside the "secure" environment. I say "supposed to" because the boss allows a lot of stuff that we're not "supposed" to do.