That's pretty good code, but the dollar sign in A$ indicates that the value is a string, not an integer, resulting in an assignment error in line 100. Also, you would need a comma after the literal in each of the print lines, before A$ (or before A, allowing for a correction of the first error.) You could also throw in a quick heuristic analyser to help you profile the character stats based on the stengths and weaknesses of the rolled stats, taking into consideration racial bonuses and the primary stats for all the given classes.
Re:Gmail is to email as...
on
Email Turns 34
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Quite honestly, if GMail let me drag something into a folder and it would disappear from what is effectively the root, it would become the end-all, be-all of email. Yes - I know I can do stupid shit with tags and whatever... but at the end of the day, when I fire up email, I don't want the root of the inbox filled with every damn email I have ever received. For whatever reason, perhaps as simple as not wanting whoever is standing over my shoulder when I fire up email see the last 50 emails I got (subject lines, or senders, or whatever) - let me drag that shit out of the root and when I want to see it, I will go to wherever I dragged it. And no, archive isn't the same.
Hotmail sucks ass, and Outlook Express sucks ass, but despite their being the penultimate of ass-sucking when coupled together - they let me keep the inbox fairly clean so a bunch of incriminating emails aren't on display when I fire up my email.
There exists a point of diminishing returns. At normal driving mileage (1000 miles per month is what all leased cars give you, so I will use that) the difference between 50mpg and 60mpg is about $100 a year in gas savings. That's about three gallons (eight dollars) a month. The difference between 60mpg and 75mpg, for 1000 miles per month, is exactly the same (about three gallons (eight dollars) per month, or about $100 per year.) Even going from 50mpg to 75mpg, which sounds Earth saving, is only worth the sum of those two (about 6 gallons a month, or $200 per year at today's outrageous prices.)
once you HAVE software and hardware, you can learn to use it. You would think so, but based on casual observation in my workplace I assure you that this is not the case.
Actually the OP (and the Indian PM) has a point...
If Al-Queda wanted to cause a complete breakdown in the United States' economy, the most ultimate economy shattering that has been delivered in the history of the world - they would go into India and destroy the tech sector by blowing up the tech parks and computer infrastructure. IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq, Microsoft, all the banks in America, all the airlines in America - they are all heavily over-invested in having moved their tech centers to India - and a few back-pack nukes set off in Bangalore destroying all the tech parks there would bring the US economy to its knees.
Forget the goverment offices, forget doing anything on US soil - all they have to do is send a few dozen Al-Queda guys with AK-47s, grenades and torches into India to burn down 50 or so hi-tech buildings and the US economy would never recover. It would make September 11th look like a picnic, and it would be a heck of a lot easier to coordinate and carry off, Google maps blurring the PM's house or not.
Ironically enough, thanks to GWB, Al-Queda doesn't have the resources or strength to pull off that level of attack (which is a good thing, given how bad doing so would destroy America's economy, and how easy and cheap it would be to accomplish.)
That's the great thing about statistical analysis.
First you make up your mind what you want to demonstrate. Then you gather up a bunch of data. Then you analyse it, slice it up just the right way and apply statistics on it from precisely the right perspective. And then you win.
There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.
The school I went to had an agreement with Microsoft (MSDNAA) wherein each student got a free copy of whatever they wanted. Granted there were some restrictions, but getting a legit copy of Win2000 was about as hard as saying 'Please'.
Actually a big difference between junior programmers and senior programmers is how close their estimates are - and everybody underestimates.
A newbie takes approximately 10x a long to do something as his initial estimate. A hardcore pro might only take 1.5x to 2x as long as he initially estimated.
The reason for this is that newbies quote how long it will take them to write the actual lines of code, uninterrupted, if everything goes right - and the pro's know to include all the bogus wait times for things like setting up new user id's (esp in a secure environment where some other department has to do it), get a new environment set up to do the development, test the code, arrange for a business person to participate in the testing process and sign off on the results, get test cases from the business contact, document the code, properly manage the code in a revision control package, do the final build in an environment that mirrors production, request a data snap from production to the test environment so the code can be tested against a production workload, eat lunch, handle dumb questions from the newbie, and still go home at a reasonable hour each day.
How long does it take to add a new user to the network? In theory it can be done in about 5 minutes, if you have admin rights on the network and all the paperwork describing the level of access for the new user. In reality, it takes about 5 business days. A newbie will estimate 5 minutes, and a seasoned veteran will estimate 3 days (because he knows who to call to expedite the process that normally takes 5 days.)
The problem isn't programmers padding too much - it is programmers not padding their estimate enough.
Ok, I read the entire article - I'm amazed... did they really let that Diamond (in the Rough) go? What a bunch of clueless managers, not to have seen the depth, passion, and wisdom they had in that guy.
Not.
If working your first year out college with immediate exposure and incorporation into a group of top-notch, seasoned veteran developers in a cool technology to do development in the nuclear power industry is your idea of stress, you have lived a sheltered life. Hell, that's my idea of FUN.
Welcome to the real world, kid.
1. Everybody works in a cube. Even the technologists making six figures have cubes. Granted, my team's cubes are up against the window with a beautiful view of the forest, but they are still cubes. And we get some serious work done. Want it quiet? Get some headphones (or earplugs, or both.)
2. Growth - you were only there a year, and it was your first year out of college. How many promotions were you expecting? In fact, you allude to taking that job instead of getting those last two classes in the summer, meaning a) you didn't graduate, and b) were a college dropout. If you are going to be a college dropout, drop out early - don't wait until the last semester. There are plenty of other dropouts out there that made it big, so if you are going to be one, be one. Dropping out with only 6 weeks between you and your degree is going to haunt you for the rest of your life (ie, like not getting the promotions you were expecting the first year, or not 'meeting expectations'. If you stuck it out that summer session, good for you. Put yourself down for one 'meets expectations.'
3. Career advancement. Well, you are right on that one. I just cashed my reimbursement check for last semester's tuition (company is paying for me to get my Masters degree, and sending me to other industry training, and buying me development tools so I can play with them on my own time.)
4. Compensation and OT. The good news is... well programming still pays more than McDonalds. If you can find a job. The bad news is - welcome to reality : everybody puts in OT and nobody gets paid extra for it. The grocery clerk job you had in college is what's known as blue collar, aka grunt work - and the programming job is (was) white collar. It sucks, but the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can be happy with it. Disclaimer - I worked a 12 hour day today, and yesterday, and Monday too. Only worked half a day on Saturday (without extra pay, in case you still haven't gotten over that idea) - but that is what you do during the last few weeks before a production roll-out. The other good news is that very few jobs that pay OT also pay six figures. I'll take a six figure salary over occasional paid overtime any day.
Your write-up did make me evaluate my employer, though, and I'm happy to say that I am pretty happy with them. Got lucky, I guess.
Any college kid that can't come up with a free copy of Windows 2000 doesn't deserve to be working in the radio station, and damn sure isn't worthy of posting a question to Slashdot. Heck, where I went to college the kids acted like they INVENTED software piracy (of course I'm pretty old, so maybe we did.)
Ya - there is a Unix version too (not from the same guys, but following the same exactly layout.)
And I got excited about TC - but alas it is mouse clicky centric. ZTree was designed and implemted to be 100% character based (although I guess you could use the mouse, I haven't actually tried.)
When you can use TC to find the files located somewhere on your hard drive, directory unknown, name unknown, extension unknown, dated somewhere around Christmas of 2003, containing the phrase 'Total Commander' but not containing the phrase 'Midnight Commander', sized between 50k and 53k, excluding.dll,.exe,.js and.html files, including files that are flagged system or hidden but excluding files that are flagged 'system and hidden and read-only', and then create a text file with a list of the full path/name.ext of all the files sorted reverse chronologically - without touching the mouse - in under 20 seconds - and then copy all of those files yet only those files (twice, one including directory structures, and again just dumping all of them into some new directory) to another hard drive... then I will give it another look, maybe even drop ZTree / UnixTree (which run from the command line / command prompt / korn shell w/o a need for any GUI or mouse) for it. Until then, it looks cool, but I'm going to keep on recommending my CUI.
JFC in ZTree - it's a bad ass implementation of diff for use in the DOS world. Heck, get familiar with it and you will be FTPing your files down to your DOS box just to diff them - it's that good.
And the moral of the story is : If your VP of R&D has an excellent working relationship with all the Senior Software Engineers working on the flagship project your company is developing (this guy is known as Enterprise Technologist where I work) - don't piss him off.
Pretty simple.
Lets face it - most hard core tech geeks don't work for a specific company or even a specific technology... we work for a great alpha-technologist. I would follow my alpha-tech into a burning building and not even ask why until after the fact. Those of you that are truly happy at work know the guy I'm talking about - those of you that don't know what I am talking about are either the alpha-tech with a devoted following, or probably pretty unhappy at work.
Sounds like Nuance should have made the guy an executive.
Yea, Though I compute through the user interface of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for ZTree is with me.
No joke - ZTree is a character for character re-write of an old utility called XTree Gold v2.0 or 2.5 - and it is by far the most effective and influential interface between me and my data. The entire file system is but an extension of my mental processes, and I can slice and dice through the multi-dimensional (time, space, attributes, multi-layered directory structure, multi-drive architecture,) in effect creating a virtual directory within which I control the parameters driving what is listed, in what order - then copy, view, move, delete, diff (file compare), view in hex mode (and edit it in hex mode), search for text in lists of files, compare directory trees for like or different files (binary, time stamp, etc.)
It is totally CUI, about like Midnight commander but a ton better. Take time to get fluent in ZTree (UnixTree for Unix / Linux, a bit older with a few quirks, but still pretty damn good) and you will be like the guys in the Matrix sitting at their green screen terminals.
Just so you know - sarcasm doesn't do well on Slashdot. You are going to have to spell it out, or give it up - because you have managed to convince someone in the past that you make credible contributions and now they are going to believe what you say (or at least believe that you believe it.)
Actually, per definition of RAID 5 - no, you *shouldn't* be able to lose 2/5ths of your disks at the same time without losing the array. A RAID 5 array can happily chug along after a single disk dies, but if you lose two drives on the same array at the same time, you are pretty well and good screwed. -- The proof of this, of course, is left up to the reader (with help from Google.)
... and two years from now when the battery is completely dead, I am going to throw away the most beautiful, amazing, scratch free (like new!) iPod known to man.
Hmmm, you are effectively writing from a zero latency unlimited bandwidth device on one machine, sending it over a GigE network to a computer that effectively discards it (another zero latency, unlimited bandwidth device) and only getting 27MB/s?
Check back a few months in my/. journal - I filled up a machine with memory and made a big ramdrive, copied massive files from that ramdrive on one machine to/dev/null on other machines over my GigE network and ran 60MB/s for a single pull from a single machine. I was able to pretty much peg the GigE switch (110MB/s, theoretical max being 125MB/s) by adding in other machines pulling down the same file from the 'server' and copying it to/dev/null.
Consider putting a few more clients on the network and sending streams of data to each of them, if you are interested in your peak throughput from a single machine - you ought to do way better on your GigE network than that.
Disclaimer - I was using Windows networking, not Linux, in case that makes a difference.
Of course at the end of the day, real world constraints (ie, hard drive speed) limit our true throughput so 27MB/s or 110MB/s - doesn't matter as long as it exceeds the sustained throughput of your hard drive (which it does if you have more than one task happening on your network.)
Slashdot Mirror
SuSE 10 (the one we are discussing here today) has a Live DVD also.
I know, I'm using it right now and I love it.
Download the iso here, burn it to DVD, leave it in the DVD drive, and reboot.
Enjoy.
That's pretty good code, but the dollar sign in A$ indicates that the value is a string, not an integer, resulting in an assignment error in line 100.
Also, you would need a comma after the literal in each of the print lines, before A$ (or before A, allowing for a correction of the first error.)
You could also throw in a quick heuristic analyser to help you profile the character stats based on the stengths and weaknesses of the rolled stats, taking into consideration racial bonuses and the primary stats for all the given classes.
Or so I have heard.
Biodiesel is great, until you run out of cats.
Quite honestly, if GMail let me drag something into a folder and it would disappear from what is effectively the root, it would become the end-all, be-all of email. Yes - I know I can do stupid shit with tags and whatever ... but at the end of the day, when I fire up email, I don't want the root of the inbox filled with every damn email I have ever received. For whatever reason, perhaps as simple as not wanting whoever is standing over my shoulder when I fire up email see the last 50 emails I got (subject lines, or senders, or whatever) - let me drag that shit out of the root and when I want to see it, I will go to wherever I dragged it. And no, archive isn't the same.
Hotmail sucks ass, and Outlook Express sucks ass, but despite their being the penultimate of ass-sucking when coupled together - they let me keep the inbox fairly clean so a bunch of incriminating emails aren't on display when I fire up my email.
There exists a point of diminishing returns.
At normal driving mileage (1000 miles per month is what all leased cars give you, so I will use that) the difference between 50mpg and 60mpg is about $100 a year in gas savings. That's about three gallons (eight dollars) a month.
The difference between 60mpg and 75mpg, for 1000 miles per month, is exactly the same (about three gallons (eight dollars) per month, or about $100 per year.)
Even going from 50mpg to 75mpg, which sounds Earth saving, is only worth the sum of those two (about 6 gallons a month, or $200 per year at today's outrageous prices.)
once you HAVE software and hardware, you can learn to use it.
You would think so, but based on casual observation in my workplace I assure you that this is not the case.
$200. They dropped the price a few months ago.
Actually the OP (and the Indian PM) has a point ...
If Al-Queda wanted to cause a complete breakdown in the United States' economy, the most ultimate economy shattering that has been delivered in the history of the world - they would go into India and destroy the tech sector by blowing up the tech parks and computer infrastructure. IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq, Microsoft, all the banks in America, all the airlines in America - they are all heavily over-invested in having moved their tech centers to India - and a few back-pack nukes set off in Bangalore destroying all the tech parks there would bring the US economy to its knees.
Forget the goverment offices, forget doing anything on US soil - all they have to do is send a few dozen Al-Queda guys with AK-47s, grenades and torches into India to burn down 50 or so hi-tech buildings and the US economy would never recover. It would make September 11th look like a picnic, and it would be a heck of a lot easier to coordinate and carry off, Google maps blurring the PM's house or not.
Ironically enough, thanks to GWB, Al-Queda doesn't have the resources or strength to pull off that level of attack (which is a good thing, given how bad doing so would destroy America's economy, and how easy and cheap it would be to accomplish.)
That's the great thing about statistical analysis.
First you make up your mind what you want to demonstrate.
Then you gather up a bunch of data.
Then you analyse it, slice it up just the right way and apply statistics on it from precisely the right perspective.
And then you win.
There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.
The school I went to had an agreement with Microsoft (MSDNAA) wherein each student got a free copy of whatever they wanted.
Granted there were some restrictions, but getting a legit copy of Win2000 was about as hard as saying 'Please'.
Actually a big difference between junior programmers and senior programmers is how close their estimates are - and everybody underestimates.
A newbie takes approximately 10x a long to do something as his initial estimate.
A hardcore pro might only take 1.5x to 2x as long as he initially estimated.
The reason for this is that newbies quote how long it will take them to write the actual lines of code, uninterrupted, if everything goes right - and the pro's know to include all the bogus wait times for things like setting up new user id's (esp in a secure environment where some other department has to do it), get a new environment set up to do the development, test the code, arrange for a business person to participate in the testing process and sign off on the results, get test cases from the business contact, document the code, properly manage the code in a revision control package, do the final build in an environment that mirrors production, request a data snap from production to the test environment so the code can be tested against a production workload, eat lunch, handle dumb questions from the newbie, and still go home at a reasonable hour each day.
How long does it take to add a new user to the network? In theory it can be done in about 5 minutes, if you have admin rights on the network and all the paperwork describing the level of access for the new user. In reality, it takes about 5 business days. A newbie will estimate 5 minutes, and a seasoned veteran will estimate 3 days (because he knows who to call to expedite the process that normally takes 5 days.)
The problem isn't programmers padding too much - it is programmers not padding their estimate enough.
Ok, I read the entire article - I'm amazed ... did they really let that Diamond (in the Rough) go?
... well programming still pays more than McDonalds. If you can find a job. The bad news is - welcome to reality : everybody puts in OT and nobody gets paid extra for it. The grocery clerk job you had in college is what's known as blue collar, aka grunt work - and the programming job is (was) white collar. It sucks, but the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can be happy with it. Disclaimer - I worked a 12 hour day today, and yesterday, and Monday too. Only worked half a day on Saturday (without extra pay, in case you still haven't gotten over that idea) - but that is what you do during the last few weeks before a production roll-out. The other good news is that very few jobs that pay OT also pay six figures. I'll take a six figure salary over occasional paid overtime any day.
What a bunch of clueless managers, not to have seen the depth, passion, and wisdom they had in that guy.
Not.
If working your first year out college with immediate exposure and incorporation into a group of top-notch, seasoned veteran developers in a cool technology to do development in the nuclear power industry is your idea of stress, you have lived a sheltered life. Hell, that's my idea of FUN.
Welcome to the real world, kid.
1. Everybody works in a cube. Even the technologists making six figures have cubes. Granted, my team's cubes are up against the window with a beautiful view of the forest, but they are still cubes. And we get some serious work done. Want it quiet? Get some headphones (or earplugs, or both.)
2. Growth - you were only there a year, and it was your first year out of college. How many promotions were you expecting?
In fact, you allude to taking that job instead of getting those last two classes in the summer, meaning a) you didn't graduate, and b) were a college dropout. If you are going to be a college dropout, drop out early - don't wait until the last semester. There are plenty of other dropouts out there that made it big, so if you are going to be one, be one. Dropping out with only 6 weeks between you and your degree is going to haunt you for the rest of your life (ie, like not getting the promotions you were expecting the first year, or not 'meeting expectations'.
If you stuck it out that summer session, good for you. Put yourself down for one 'meets expectations.'
3. Career advancement. Well, you are right on that one. I just cashed my reimbursement check for last semester's tuition (company is paying for me to get my Masters degree, and sending me to other industry training, and buying me development tools so I can play with them on my own time.)
4. Compensation and OT. The good news is
Your write-up did make me evaluate my employer, though, and I'm happy to say that I am pretty happy with them. Got lucky, I guess.
do they still sell hubs?
Nope.
Then again, they don't sell Windows 98 machines anymore either.
Dear Apple,
Tell Sony they can eat a bag of donkey dicks before Apple will bow down to their DRM pushing asses.
Thanks,
G
Any college kid that can't come up with a free copy of Windows 2000 doesn't deserve to be working in the radio station, and damn sure isn't worthy of posting a question to Slashdot. Heck, where I went to college the kids acted like they INVENTED software piracy (of course I'm pretty old, so maybe we did.)
Ya - there is a Unix version too (not from the same guys, but following the same exactly layout.)
.dll, .exe, .js and .html files, including files that are flagged system or hidden but excluding files that are flagged 'system and hidden and read-only', and then create a text file with a list of the full path/name.ext of all the files sorted reverse chronologically - without touching the mouse - in under 20 seconds - and then copy all of those files yet only those files (twice, one including directory structures, and again just dumping all of them into some new directory) to another hard drive ... then I will give it another look, maybe even drop ZTree / UnixTree (which run from the command line / command prompt / korn shell w/o a need for any GUI or mouse) for it. Until then, it looks cool, but I'm going to keep on recommending my CUI.
And I got excited about TC - but alas it is mouse clicky centric. ZTree was designed and implemted to be 100% character based (although I guess you could use the mouse, I haven't actually tried.)
When you can use TC to find the files located somewhere on your hard drive, directory unknown, name unknown, extension unknown, dated somewhere around Christmas of 2003, containing the phrase 'Total Commander' but not containing the phrase 'Midnight Commander', sized between 50k and 53k, excluding
JFC in ZTree - it's a bad ass implementation of diff for use in the DOS world.
Heck, get familiar with it and you will be FTPing your files down to your DOS box just to diff them - it's that good.
And the moral of the story is : If your VP of R&D has an excellent working relationship with all the Senior Software Engineers working on the flagship project your company is developing (this guy is known as Enterprise Technologist where I work) - don't piss him off.
... we work for a great alpha-technologist. I would follow my alpha-tech into a burning building and not even ask why until after the fact. Those of you that are truly happy at work know the guy I'm talking about - those of you that don't know what I am talking about are either the alpha-tech with a devoted following, or probably pretty unhappy at work.
Pretty simple.
Lets face it - most hard core tech geeks don't work for a specific company or even a specific technology
Sounds like Nuance should have made the guy an executive.
Yea, Though I compute through the user interface of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for ZTree is with me.
No joke - ZTree is a character for character re-write of an old utility called XTree Gold v2.0 or 2.5 - and it is by far the most effective and influential interface between me and my data. The entire file system is but an extension of my mental processes, and I can slice and dice through the multi-dimensional (time, space, attributes, multi-layered directory structure, multi-drive architecture,) in effect creating a virtual directory within which I control the parameters driving what is listed, in what order - then copy, view, move, delete, diff (file compare), view in hex mode (and edit it in hex mode), search for text in lists of files, compare directory trees for like or different files (binary, time stamp, etc.)
It is totally CUI, about like Midnight commander but a ton better. Take time to get fluent in ZTree (UnixTree for Unix / Linux, a bit older with a few quirks, but still pretty damn good) and you will be like the guys in the Matrix sitting at their green screen terminals.
ZTree Don't leave $HOME without it.
Just so you know - sarcasm doesn't do well on Slashdot.
You are going to have to spell it out, or give it up - because you have managed to convince someone in the past that you make credible contributions and now they are going to believe what you say (or at least believe that you believe it.)
Actually, per definition of RAID 5 - no, you *shouldn't* be able to lose 2/5ths of your disks at the same time without losing the array.
A RAID 5 array can happily chug along after a single disk dies, but if you lose two drives on the same array at the same time, you are pretty well and good screwed.
--
The proof of this, of course, is left up to the reader (with help from Google.)
... and two years from now when the battery is completely dead, I am going to throw away the most beautiful, amazing, scratch free (like new!) iPod known to man.
He is looking for a way to back up porn.
For $4,100 he could just hire people to come to his house and fuck each other while he watched.
Hmmm, you are effectively writing from a zero latency unlimited bandwidth device on one machine, sending it over a GigE network to a computer that effectively discards it (another zero latency, unlimited bandwidth device) and only getting 27MB/s?
/. journal - I filled up a machine with memory and made a big ramdrive, copied massive files from that ramdrive on one machine to /dev/null on other machines over my GigE network and ran 60MB/s for a single pull from a single machine. I was able to pretty much peg the GigE switch (110MB/s, theoretical max being 125MB/s) by adding in other machines pulling down the same file from the 'server' and copying it to /dev/null.
Check back a few months in my
Consider putting a few more clients on the network and sending streams of data to each of them, if you are interested in your peak throughput from a single machine - you ought to do way better on your GigE network than that.
Disclaimer - I was using Windows networking, not Linux, in case that makes a difference.
Of course at the end of the day, real world constraints (ie, hard drive speed) limit our true throughput so 27MB/s or 110MB/s - doesn't matter as long as it exceeds the sustained throughput of your hard drive (which it does if you have more than one task happening on your network.)
Linux has adult supervision
Translation :
All the developers live in their parent's basements, and walk the code upstairs to show their mom.