"sync; sync; halt" works for immediate stoppage at minimal risk to your filesystem compared to many other options.
Or just "stop-A", "sync", and leave it hanging at the OK prompt forever:) This has the benefit of a subsequent tech being able to power up again remotely, which just pulling the power cord wouldn't...
My two cents: It doesn't suck to work at Oracle. Pay is fair and above market, benefits are good, employees are treated fairly, and there are a lot of exciting projects going on to choose from as a techie. If you don't like what you're doing for a living, there are numerous opportunities always available in something more suited to your interest, and telecommuting is encouraged in most "talent" positions, so relocation is largely a non-issue. The employees I work with (admittedly, we're a rack-monkey and operating system nerd crowd) are generally optimistic and excited about the merger.
Yes, as part of the M&A process there have been layoffs from time to time. With the exception of hostile takeovers, they are fairly predictable in advance, severance is decent and fair, the door remains open if you decide to rejoin the company later, and as far as a huge Fortune 500 company goes, it's a really decent place to work. If you work in some of the larger locations there are nice benefits on-site for free or at really reduced prices (gyms, cafeterias, massages, to name a few), and there is a lot of employment flexibility.
Of course there are annoyances like paperwork, lengthy project approval processes, ITIL compliance, SOX compliance, and so forth. Welcome to working for any large company. But to say "People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge" is simply false. By and large, it's a good company to work for, and the low turnover rate and lengthy average employment time amongst extremely talented and well-educated people speaks to overall job satisfaction.
The core of your marriage is the same regardless of whether you're a geek, jock, cheerleader, doctor, unemployed, or whatever. Every person has some core emotional needs; if you meet at least the top three to five of these consistently over the years, you'll be happily married for many years to come. If you don't fill them, someone else will. And it's left to chance whether that person has your marriage's interests at heart or not.
Recommended reading: Anything by Dr. Willard Harley. The keys to affair-proofing your marriage are also the keys to having a happy marriage. Identify your spouse's key emotional needs, fill them consistently, and you're on your way to living a long and happy life together.
It's possible that you may have needs that don't fit into the standard template (Affection, Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Honesty & Openness, Physical Attractiveness, Financial Support, Domestic Support, Family Commitment, Admiration). If you do, identify what those are. Dr. Harley publishes an "Emotional Needs Questionnaire" that's really helpful when doing an inventory of what your principal needs are. You need to have your own met, and meet those of your spouse, to make it successfully.
Qualifications: I'm a geek-guy married to jock-girl, 15 years and counting so far.
Then add to that the fact that you need to be God to fully understand the ecosystem of the planet and you you can throw out people really believing in AGW.
You're begging the question on two fronts: 1. That such beings as gods exists. 2. That a full understanding of the ecosystem is necessary to make effective, positive changes.
Humans don't have a full understanding of aerodynamics, though our models are getting better. But we know enough to get going with, hurl aircraft skyward, and operate them safely.
Ditto for climate change. We obviously don't know everything, but we know enough to know that what we're doing right now may be the cause of current global warming; if not the cause, it certainly is exacerbating the issue.
Really? You think people know how big the budget to Serious Sam was?
You got me. That's what I get for writing something without thinking it through first. When I go to a game store and plunk down $60 for a new game, I have an expectation of a certain level of quality. If I don't get it, I'm disappointed. When I pop $15 for an indie or small-publisher game, I'm just happy if the quality is playable and interesting.
I dare say it's more about people getting fed up with high prices. That's your customer as an small dev studio.
I don't think so, exclusively. Small dev studios -- at least those I'm aware of -- seem to be much more about finding under-served niche markets than trying to win away FPS or flight simulator fans. Microsoft's XBox Live Arcade has been a huge boon for indie developers, and I expect Apple's store for the iPhone to be the same. Outpost Kaloki, for instance, has built a huge following through extremely unique gameplay: not winning over people from the latest $60 first-person-shooter clone, but by building a community of devoted players by word-of-mouth.
Then again, we may be kind of saying the same thing. Small-time developers lack the resources to create huge worlds, so they have to compete in innovative gameplay. For me, Bejeweled and its sequels were great indie games not because the gameplay itself was so great, but because I could play to the next bonus during an average amount of time sitting on the crapper:)
Bring on more games playable on PDAs while on the john, Indie developers, plzthxu!
Depends on the studio, team lead, project, timeline, publisher, and your specific position. As one of the system administrators, my hours were pretty well fixed except during crunch time and immediately prior to a release (when I'd sometimes stay overnight to ensure a duplication job or master burn went through successfully). I was salaried at market rate, and worked 45-50 hours per week generally.
If a game development company is requiring too much mandatory overtime for too long a period -- realistically, anything over 6 weeks during any given quarter -- you can be pretty certain that somebody is mis-managing the project. Three-month-long deathmarches are a pretty good signal the company is struggling.
Heroic effort is not a business plan.
Anyway, my point was simply that most competitive game development studios must pay near market to attract reasonable talent. Many of us are aware of companies that abused their workers; there are many others that don't. Stating that pay is "very, very low", comparable to unemployment, is balderdash.
Sucky hours, unpaid overtime, lack of job security, and a high-pressure environment are separate issues.
Another problem Indies face is managing the pricing expectations of the consumer. The days of the $50 video game are OVER, yet people expect to plunk down only $15 or $20 for an Indy game because the development studio is smaller with a lower budget.
Computer game business models do need to evolve, though I'm not sure in what direction. There need to be tangible benefits to paying for your copy of the game. MMO games seem to have a decent model working for them, but so far most other efforts have really met with limited success. Offering improved music or artwork for registered customers seemed like a pretty good idea with Void War, but I don't think that kind of approach is a potent long-term draw.
I now work for UltraMegaCorp (name is changed to protect the guilty) as a UNIX administrator. It's one of the largest software companies in the world. My piece of the pie when it comes to new projects is often to find out that I'm getting shipped some new hardware, and I get to organize deployment. If something goes wrong with the deployment schedule, it's almost always a communication issue, usually something to do with "managing expectations".
When I worked at a startup, I got the whole shooting match. If that project didn't move out on time, I was fully to blame. I was the go-to guy. The hours sucked, the pay was fine, the potentials were limitless, and I lived by my pager or mobile phone.
A part of me really loves that environment. Another part of me really loves the benefits that come with working for a larger company. I compromise: I work a forty-hour week at UltraMegaCorp, then put in 5-10 hours a week on side contracts. For now, it's a good balance. I end up with the same crappy hours, but now I have more control. And I can buy neat toys with the extra income (model airplanes, mostly, but lately it's been motorcycle parts...)
I have routinely gotten exemptions for my part-time development work built into my employment contracts.
Keys: 1. Mention the exact projects you are currently working on. 2. Have the writing vetted by your lawyer to ensure that your ideas are protected and do not become property of the company. 3. Be ready to walk away if they aren't willing to alter their NDA/non-compete to accommodate your efforts.
Seriously, I've worked for a lot of different companies and not once has a company refused to adjust their non-compete based on exhibits I include to document my work on free software projects and my personal IT consulting business.
Jay's arrangements with game development studios have actually gone so far as to include support from the company hiring him in the form of art, programming, and other resources for his independent projects. Seriously. Build some negotiating skills and be confident in your ability to find a job. You'll find one willing to work with you.
Having worked in a computer game development studio for two years and received a job offer at another, I can safely refute your statement. Game development companies pay just a bit under market for the positions they fill, and usually retain people for a number of years.
A lot of studios go under, I admit. But it's not too hard to find your next position, often working alongside the same people you've worked with before. The pay is not "very very bad" or anywhere near unemployment wages. The author of the original cited article (my brother) has had a few rocky times with a few different studios, but manages to be the sole breadwinner for his family of four in a middle-class neighborhood just fine as a developer for a smaller studio.
When there's hidden knowledge, you can't possibly know what you're getting into.
In other words, "Milk Before Meat" is exactly equal to "Bait And Switch".
I often compare Calculus and the LDS church. Absolutely, a new student of mathematics would have difficulty grasping calculus. In fact, it may be utterly incomprehensible to him. Were I teaching him, I'd recommend basic mathematics, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry prior to taking calculus. However, if he says he really, really wants to know all there is about calculus, I'd point him to the books that can teach him about it.
I would not conceal the knowledge of calculus from him. Just because someone won't understand something is no reason to deny them the opportunity to learn for themselves that they don't have the required knowledge to understand yet. This is a key reason why I oppose the "Milk Before Meat" philosophy: it is deceptive.
I just passed their headquarters this morning. There are no cars in the parking lot on a regular workday, and I don't recall any there on Wednesday, either. Perhaps that is an indication of their current position?
I interviewed for a sysadmin job with them several years ago and had done some consulting work on Bugzilla for them in the past, and they seemed like a good place to work. They had plenty of customers and pretty solid technology for managing clusters. But once you've deployed a few dozen supercomputers based on commodity components, and all your customers realize the only value you offer is the very-expensive cluster management software, what's your next plan to make money once they decide to save that money and buy more hardware instead?
I wonder how many of us actually read the brief all the way through? It's clear from the context that "Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies" means it is the act of compressing into MP3 and placing in a Kazaa shared folder that is at issue, not the act of compressing the MP3 itself.
The RIAA makes no claim in the brief regarding the Defendant's possession of MP3 files and pornography on his computer, other than the fact he created a shortcut to said items and admitted to their use constitutes knowledge of their existence which, along with their placement in a shared folder, constitutes willful infringement. There is only one question in the brief in favor of summary judgment related to this question:
2. Does the record in this case show that Defendant Howell possessed an "unlawful copy" of the Plaintiff's copyrighted material, and that he actually disseminated that copy to the public?
According to the Plaintiff, it was the act of converting to MP3 and then placing the recording in a shared folder with the intent to distribute on a peer-to-peer network which was the infringing action... not converting to MP3 itself. The two actions together, they maintain, constitute the creation of an unlawful copy. The title of the article, "RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", is misleading.
I don't see this brief as an attempted reversal, but as testing the waters to clarify exactly at what point copyright infringement occurs. In my opinion, the RIAA finally gets the definition right: if you copy the CD of my music that you purchased, you are not infringing. You can even make a copy to give to friends, and you are not infringing. If you make a copy so that they can make more copies, or perform it publicly or display it, you are infringing.
Disclaimer: I am both a supporter of peer-to-peer networking and an independent musician and author with numerous copyrighted works. I think the RIAA is evil, but that their direction is set by their members and that it is those producers who are accountable for their actions and should exert pressure on their lobbying organization to be socially responsible when performing necessary actions to enforce copyright.
OK, these look nifty, but I've been using a USB-powered battery charger for two years as part of my Kensington Wireless Desktop. It charges two batteries at once, and the mouse and keyboard each require 2 batteries. It does its job well, and only requires a single USB port. And plus it acts as a nifty base station for my wireless keyboard and mouse! I use 2500mAh NiMH batteries, and they go for weeks of 9-hour-a-day usage before needing to be replaced.
I have to give this a big "so, what?" It's like selling a pencil with a clock built into it. I mean, sure, it's nifty, but it's a solution looking for a problem.
This is why the concept (if not the particulars) of ID appeals to me--it articulates the concept that a being with sufficient knowledge could have created not just this planet, but the entire universe as we understand it (thus existing outside of that work, and separate from it).
The fundamental difficulty I have with the concept of intelligent design is that it must presume an "uncaused cause", or Prime Mover. If we were intelligently designed, then who designed the designers? It seems to add unnecessary complexity to evolution, when abiogenesis, while certainly not a complete explanation, offers a simpler explanation.
Kind of like the precocious question I asked my father as a kid. "Who's God's God?" "Well, son, God has no God." "Then where did he come from?" "He's always existed." "Why?"
To (badly) paraphrase a quote from a Firefly episode, "This is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot."
I think the main problem many atheists run into is in figuring out their theological (or lack of theological) position with a particular Christian reference point. From a Christian perspective, Albert Einstein was certainly atheist (and defined himself using that term as compared to Christians). Yet some conjecture he was a Pantheist, and he also referred to himself as perhaps believing in "Spinoza's God", which is simply that "god" is Nature in all its awesome splendor. Many Western atheists choose to regard as highly unlikely an anthropomorphic and brutally vengeful god as recorded by primitive societies, but many also find great depth of spirituality in other forms.
To have a reverence for the beauty and order of nature, though, is not the same as assuming it was intelligently designed. I'm not saying there is no designer, but it sure seems to me that we're better off trying to figure out how we came about, using the resources at our disposal, than ascribing human creation to the supernatural and not investigating it further.
Who knows? Perhaps one day, in our exploration of evidence, we'll find proof of supernatural intervention. But I'm doubting it.
And just because you don't want it to be doesn't mean that there is no God.
Any competent atheist will clarify, at this point, that she neither wants there to be "no God", nor is she attempting to disprove the existence of such a being. We do not yet know of any way to prove or disprove the existence of any kind of supernatural entity except through personal, non-double-blind, subjective experiences.
Scientists believe that the laws of physics break down at the speed of light.
No, scientists do not "believe" any such thing. Einstein's breakthrough in his famous "E equals M * C squared" formula was that of using light as a constant in his equations, rather than time (which had previously been presumed a constant). The ramifications of using light as a constant have been shown to be correct as far as we can currently test it: time appears to be a non-intersecting asymptote to the speed of light. I have little doubt, however, that we'll eventually discover that using the speed of light as a constant, much like a heliocentric view of the universe in celestial navigation, is not entirely correct, and we'll refine the model further.
A relevant quote from Kelvin Throop III: "Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool."
String theorists and others are pushing the limits of Einstein's presumption of using light as a constant in mass/energy calculations, and it's possible the "rule" may change, just as celestial navigation has changed. The speed of light is a practical limitation on current mathematics, and the "facts" of science will continue to change.
Try giving a straight (correct) answer to the question, "Is Light a Partical or a Wave?"
The correct answer is "Yes". Light is a form of high-frequency radiation, which is a phenomenon that does not require an intervening medium to propagate. It is its own wave/particle duality, along with radiation in other spectra, which is being constantly explored and the definition refined. I lack the space, time, or interest to explain further, but much like trying to explain why water is wet and oil isn't, to fully understand it requires a good deal of shared background information.
Science rarely answers "why" things happen, only "how" they happen. It is in the realm of the "why" things happen (the metaphysical) that people find room for belief or faith. And that is an area of questioning that Science, while always closing the gap of understanding, will probably never fully answer.
But with a new technology/project/concept/program, I don't think experience helps that much.
As a systems admin, lightweight programmer (meaning shell scripting, things to get my adminning done, that kind of thing), and professional musician, I see how much writing good programs is like writing good music. There is inspiration, perseverance, and experience.
A good sound engineer can make a humdrum piece sound fantastic, but at the heart, it's still so-so music. A great piece, even if poorly engineered, will stand out as an amazing piece of musicianship even if the recording quality is sub-par.
I consider myself an adequate musician, but a pretty good sound engineer with the tools at my disposal. I love to twiddle the knobs until a piece sounds pretty good. I'm still learning, though, too, as evidenced by the slowly improving quality on my web site.
I can make up for a lot of deficiencies in talent through sound engineering. The songs can do what they are intended to do (provoke emotional responses in listeners) without being amazing.
Programming is similar. At least, when I get "in the zone" writing a script, it's the same zone I get into when I'm writing a piece of music. While I agree that some inexperienced programmers can be more productive than some experienced programmers, experience is still a factor in how quickly they get the job done. Apples to apples: a brilliant programmer with a decade in the business against an equally brilliant rookie will be an interesting contest. I submit that the more experienced one will probably achieve the same results with less time invested.
Of course, it's all a WAG anyway. You can't measure brilliance any more than you can measure stupidity. It's all relative.
True. Correlation doesn't equal causation. If you're thirty-five or forty and still in the business, chances are you have the resolve and skill to do well regardless. Good point.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I count as friends who went into programming straight out of college and stuck with it for over a decade. I can count on two hands and toes the number I know that now work in something else. Lots of management, some sales, and one guy that decided to hang it all and help run a chain of theaters.
My background: I'm a gaming industry veteran, though not a programmer (sysadmin and musician). Credits are here. However, this makes me much more of an "interested outsider who worked for a computer game development company" than a game developer myself. I'm working with a small studio now that just recently release Void War, a 3D multiplayer space shooter that's catching on. We're hosting a trial version competition tonight; download the demo and check it out! 9:00 PM Mountain Time.
Strangely enough I get more respect working shorter hours than I did with the longer.
This isn't strange at all, actually. The usual trend is that younger workers work longer hours in an attempt "to prove themselves" (I did it!). They'll work sixty-hour work weeks without complaint.
The key thing IMHO is that they need to work those longer hours in order to equal the productivity of a more experienced person. Pit a thirty-five-year-old seasoned programmer against most twenty-two-year-old fresh-out-of-college programmers, and that guy with thirteen years more experience will probably produce cleaner code, fewer bugs, and more features in less time than the younger programmer.
There are, obviously, brilliant exceptions to the rule on both sides:) However, in the main, working more hours does not mean more productivity. I have more respect for the guy that puts in his honest days' work and gets the job done, then goes home to his family, then for the person that works seventy-hour weeks to bring the project in due to their lack of competence.
That doesn't mean I don't value the crazy-hour-worker. It just means I value the seasoned veteran who knows how to get the job done quickly more because he's better at the job.
Allow me to take a moment to clarify: there's a huge difference between the game under discussion, called Outwar and the jetpack-based shooter (ala Starship Troopers, the book) called Outwars, which predated Outwar by half a decade. Singletrac the company is now defunct, but were a bunch of game developers having a great time making great games. Unfortunately, Outwars wasn't one of those great games. But it was a pretty fun game that didn't involve spam:)
Disclaimer: I'm listed twice in the credits for Outwars, once as the network admin, and once as a model. The guy we'd planned on shooting didn't show up, so they stuck overweight, slightly-German-looking me in instead.
That deceptive technique for redirecting focus won't work
I just quoted what the grandparent poster said. If indeed the engineer quoted had said the car was "running off batteries and not using gas", he was being disingenuous. Any educated hybrid owner will know that, compared to traditional vehicles, their vehicle excels at city MPG. But when you're driving in the city, you may be running off your battery, but you're still using gas. Yes, you're using gas you've already burned to charge the battery, and you're not going to refill your battery pack until it's either very depleted, or you're driving at a speed where it's more efficient to recharge it than at the low RPMs and stop-and-go of city driving.
But calling it a deceptive technique? I call saying that you're "not using gas" in a hybrid when driving around a city deceptive.
[The real-world numbers]
clearly show outstanding efficiency for city driving
No, the real-world numbers clearly show that you pay later in the Prius. You pay now with the Honda system. Yes, a hybrid is more efficient than a traditional system in the city; there's no question about it. But it's not because you're "not using gas". I'm not interested in any holy war over hybrid systems -- the two top sellers seem to both be good, and I've driven several Prii (? plurl for Prius, Priusses sounds weird) -- but lifetime MPG averages, knowing the type of driving one predominantly does, are the surest indicator the overall efficiency of the vehicle. Stop-and-go, below-35 city driving results in lower MPG than 45MPH no-stops driving. That you pay the penalty in battery leeching later in a Prius is irrelevant. Your MPG may look really great if you reset your trip meter when starting to go around in stealth mode, but your battery meter will be lower at the end, and you still end up paying for it out of the gas tank.
If you're in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area (or any other Prius owners in the SLC area), I'd love to exchange vehicles for a week and do some decent long-term, hard-usage comparisons between the Insight and the Prius. I must admit some ignorance, since I've just driven some test drives in the Prius, and have read extensively regarding plusses and minusses of both systems. But the problem with city "real-world" numbers for a system that allows one to run exclusively off the electric motor in the city is that they simply aren't real-world numbers if they don't take into account the gas spent to replenish the batteries.
THAT IS, unless you're one of the guys that have rigged a system to charge the high-voltage system off the city grid. Now that's pretty cool, and you'll turn in some freaking impressive numbers with lower cost, since grid electricity is much less expensive to produce than electricity from your gas tank... (I think...). And you just can't do that little electrical engineering trick with a Honda:)
As far as complexity: there's no question. The Honda IMA system is considerably less complex than the Toyota system. That complexity doesn't mean Honda hybrids are necessarily any more efficient -- just not as complicated. They use a single electric motor sandwiched between the engine and the transmission. The Toyota system, in contrast, uses two electric motors and three driveshafts, with considerably larger and more powerful electric motors and battery pack. Add to that an elegant, geeky, but more complicated display... you get my drift. Familiarity makes it no less complicated, only better understood. I admit I've not been "under the hood" with a wrench and a manual on any Prius like I have with my Insight, but, still, the Prius seems to have a more complex system. When compared to CVT Hondas, the numbers are quite similar, but manual transmission Honda IMAs are, by nature of fewer frictional losses and reduced complexity, better still in the MPG dep't.
Then again, I probably wouldn't trade my CVT in for a manual. I get stuck in traffic way too often to enjoy a stick shift.
OK, yes, regenerative braking contributes some power back to the battery. Acceleration from a stop drains it again as the battery either assists the engine through the electric motor (IMA/Honda) or accelerates the car by itself with the electric motor (ICE/Toyota); regardless there are massive frictional losses all around:)
Well, Insight sales have been disappointing: it's only sold more than 5,000 units in the US two years out of the five it's been here. And Civic Hybrid and Prius sales have spectacularly blown it away. It's a two-seater, expensive compared to similarly-equipped conventional vehicles, looks a bit odd, and is all-aluminum. Recipe for a low-selling car, particularly when the Prius and Civic Hybrid come in with prices pretty close to similar conventional vehicles.
That said, it's been rumored to have been discontinued since 2002. You can still buy a new 2004, though:) It's just questionable whether there will be a 2005.
At least the law's on our side: manufacturers are required to stock parts for 10 years after the model year (or is it 15?) for parts that don't have a generic replacement. So yeah, I love the car, but it's gonna be rare as hell 10 years from now...
Maybe that would be good if I were collecting it instead of using it for my daily round-trip commute of 88 miles:)
The Toyota Prius uses an ICE system. It involves two electric motors, can
operate "silently" (purely off the electric motor) at low speed, and can only
be used in conjunction with an automatic transmission.
The Honda hybrids use a system called "IMA", that functions more like an
electric turbocharger. If a Honda hybrid is moving, the gasoline engine is
running. Well, OK, there is an exception to this if you're coasting to a stop
at speeds below about 10 MPH (3 MPH in the CVT), with the brake pedal
depressed, the engine goes into "auto idle stop" mode. The Honda design can
be used with a manual transmission (leading to the extraordinary mileage of
certain models) and is less complicated than the Toyota system, but otherwise
seems to be a wash as far as advantages when comparing the two.
I have to admit some bias here: I think the Honda Insight is in a class by
itself. It was a brand-new model introduced in Japan in 1999, engineered from
the ground up to be the MPG king of the mass-produced world. It sacrifices a
lot to be that: no rear seat, "unusual" design (my brother-in-law says "ugly",
but I think it gives the car "character"), all-aluminum construction (painful,
painful body repair bills), high insurance costs (on par with high-end
rear-wheel-drive sports cars), a fairly stiff econo-box-like ride due to
really hard little wheels, a crappy stereo (until 2004, when they put a
much nicer model in), and hardly any selection of "options": if you have an
Insight of a particular year, other than air conditioning and transmission
type, your choices are extremely limited.
But I still love the car:) Now, back to responding to your post!
The engineer that talked about the Prius "running off batteries and not
using gas" must have been off his rocker, if what you describe is correct.
The energy has to come from somewhere, and in the case of these
hybrids, that's from the gas tank. The gasoline motor must run to recharge
those battery cells. And the chemical energy (gas tank) to kinetic energy
(motor) to chemical energy (battery) transition wastes a good deal of that
energy. Add to that kinetic energy to potential energy losses due to
regenerative braking, actual brake pads being used in hard stops, and it's a
recipe for poor efficiency.
The numbers back this up: in city driving, a hybrid frequently turns
in extremely disappointing MPG numbers due to these inefficiencies. The Prius
takes a hit in its highway MPG numbers, because it has to leech power off the
gas engine to recharge the battery it depleted in city driving. The Honda
cars take the hit from the gas motor occasionally idling (rather than going
into auto-idle-stop), and acceleration from a stop draining nearly as much gas
as a "normal" car.
That said, a hybrid will beat the pants off any similarly-driven traditional gasoline-powered vehicle for efficiency in those conditions. But when the EPA rates city mileage higher than highway mileage, it's not taking into account losses in the battery pack: the car ends the test with a battery pack lower than it started.
Slashdot Mirror
"sync; sync; halt" works for immediate stoppage at minimal risk to your filesystem compared to many other options.
Or just "stop-A", "sync", and leave it hanging at the OK prompt forever :) This has the benefit of a subsequent tech being able to power up again remotely, which just pulling the power cord wouldn't...
My two cents: It doesn't suck to work at Oracle. Pay is fair and above market, benefits are good, employees are treated fairly, and there are a lot of exciting projects going on to choose from as a techie. If you don't like what you're doing for a living, there are numerous opportunities always available in something more suited to your interest, and telecommuting is encouraged in most "talent" positions, so relocation is largely a non-issue. The employees I work with (admittedly, we're a rack-monkey and operating system nerd crowd) are generally optimistic and excited about the merger.
Yes, as part of the M&A process there have been layoffs from time to time. With the exception of hostile takeovers, they are fairly predictable in advance, severance is decent and fair, the door remains open if you decide to rejoin the company later, and as far as a huge Fortune 500 company goes, it's a really decent place to work. If you work in some of the larger locations there are nice benefits on-site for free or at really reduced prices (gyms, cafeterias, massages, to name a few), and there is a lot of employment flexibility.
Of course there are annoyances like paperwork, lengthy project approval processes, ITIL compliance, SOX compliance, and so forth. Welcome to working for any large company. But to say "People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge" is simply false. By and large, it's a good company to work for, and the low turnover rate and lengthy average employment time amongst extremely talented and well-educated people speaks to overall job satisfaction.
The core of your marriage is the same regardless of whether you're a geek, jock, cheerleader, doctor, unemployed, or whatever. Every person has some core emotional needs; if you meet at least the top three to five of these consistently over the years, you'll be happily married for many years to come. If you don't fill them, someone else will. And it's left to chance whether that person has your marriage's interests at heart or not.
Recommended reading: Anything by Dr. Willard Harley. The keys to affair-proofing your marriage are also the keys to having a happy marriage. Identify your spouse's key emotional needs, fill them consistently, and you're on your way to living a long and happy life together.
It's possible that you may have needs that don't fit into the standard template (Affection, Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Honesty & Openness, Physical Attractiveness, Financial Support, Domestic Support, Family Commitment, Admiration). If you do, identify what those are. Dr. Harley publishes an "Emotional Needs Questionnaire" that's really helpful when doing an inventory of what your principal needs are. You need to have your own met, and meet those of your spouse, to make it successfully.
Qualifications: I'm a geek-guy married to jock-girl, 15 years and counting so far.
--Matt B.
You're begging the question on two fronts:
1. That such beings as gods exists.
2. That a full understanding of the ecosystem is necessary to make effective, positive changes.
Humans don't have a full understanding of aerodynamics, though our models are getting better. But we know enough to get going with, hurl aircraft skyward, and operate them safely.
Ditto for climate change. We obviously don't know everything, but we know enough to know that what we're doing right now may be the cause of current global warming; if not the cause, it certainly is exacerbating the issue.
--Matt B.
What's it take to be considered a low UID?
You got me. That's what I get for writing something without thinking it through first. When I go to a game store and plunk down $60 for a new game, I have an expectation of a certain level of quality. If I don't get it, I'm disappointed. When I pop $15 for an indie or small-publisher game, I'm just happy if the quality is playable and interesting.
I don't think so, exclusively. Small dev studios -- at least those I'm aware of -- seem to be much more about finding under-served niche markets than trying to win away FPS or flight simulator fans. Microsoft's XBox Live Arcade has been a huge boon for indie developers, and I expect Apple's store for the iPhone to be the same. Outpost Kaloki, for instance, has built a huge following through extremely unique gameplay: not winning over people from the latest $60 first-person-shooter clone, but by building a community of devoted players by word-of-mouth.
Then again, we may be kind of saying the same thing. Small-time developers lack the resources to create huge worlds, so they have to compete in innovative gameplay. For me, Bejeweled and its sequels were great indie games not because the gameplay itself was so great, but because I could play to the next bonus during an average amount of time sitting on the crapper :)
Bring on more games playable on PDAs while on the john, Indie developers, plzthxu!
Depends on the studio, team lead, project, timeline, publisher, and your specific position. As one of the system administrators, my hours were pretty well fixed except during crunch time and immediately prior to a release (when I'd sometimes stay overnight to ensure a duplication job or master burn went through successfully). I was salaried at market rate, and worked 45-50 hours per week generally.
If a game development company is requiring too much mandatory overtime for too long a period -- realistically, anything over 6 weeks during any given quarter -- you can be pretty certain that somebody is mis-managing the project. Three-month-long deathmarches are a pretty good signal the company is struggling.
Heroic effort is not a business plan.
Anyway, my point was simply that most competitive game development studios must pay near market to attract reasonable talent. Many of us are aware of companies that abused their workers; there are many others that don't. Stating that pay is "very, very low", comparable to unemployment, is balderdash.
Sucky hours, unpaid overtime, lack of job security, and a high-pressure environment are separate issues.
Another problem Indies face is managing the pricing expectations of the consumer. The days of the $50 video game are OVER, yet people expect to plunk down only $15 or $20 for an Indy game because the development studio is smaller with a lower budget.
Computer game business models do need to evolve, though I'm not sure in what direction. There need to be tangible benefits to paying for your copy of the game. MMO games seem to have a decent model working for them, but so far most other efforts have really met with limited success. Offering improved music or artwork for registered customers seemed like a pretty good idea with Void War, but I don't think that kind of approach is a potent long-term draw.
I now work for UltraMegaCorp (name is changed to protect the guilty) as a UNIX administrator. It's one of the largest software companies in the world. My piece of the pie when it comes to new projects is often to find out that I'm getting shipped some new hardware, and I get to organize deployment. If something goes wrong with the deployment schedule, it's almost always a communication issue, usually something to do with "managing expectations".
When I worked at a startup, I got the whole shooting match. If that project didn't move out on time, I was fully to blame. I was the go-to guy. The hours sucked, the pay was fine, the potentials were limitless, and I lived by my pager or mobile phone.
A part of me really loves that environment. Another part of me really loves the benefits that come with working for a larger company. I compromise: I work a forty-hour week at UltraMegaCorp, then put in 5-10 hours a week on side contracts. For now, it's a good balance. I end up with the same crappy hours, but now I have more control. And I can buy neat toys with the extra income (model airplanes, mostly, but lately it's been motorcycle parts...)
I have routinely gotten exemptions for my part-time development work built into my employment contracts.
Keys:
1. Mention the exact projects you are currently working on.
2. Have the writing vetted by your lawyer to ensure that your ideas are protected and do not become property of the company.
3. Be ready to walk away if they aren't willing to alter their NDA/non-compete to accommodate your efforts.
Seriously, I've worked for a lot of different companies and not once has a company refused to adjust their non-compete based on exhibits I include to document my work on free software projects and my personal IT consulting business.
Jay's arrangements with game development studios have actually gone so far as to include support from the company hiring him in the form of art, programming, and other resources for his independent projects. Seriously. Build some negotiating skills and be confident in your ability to find a job. You'll find one willing to work with you.
Having worked in a computer game development studio for two years and received a job offer at another, I can safely refute your statement. Game development companies pay just a bit under market for the positions they fill, and usually retain people for a number of years.
A lot of studios go under, I admit. But it's not too hard to find your next position, often working alongside the same people you've worked with before. The pay is not "very very bad" or anywhere near unemployment wages. The author of the original cited article (my brother) has had a few rocky times with a few different studios, but manages to be the sole breadwinner for his family of four in a middle-class neighborhood just fine as a developer for a smaller studio.
In other words, "Milk Before Meat" is exactly equal to "Bait And Switch".
I often compare Calculus and the LDS church. Absolutely, a new student of mathematics would have difficulty grasping calculus. In fact, it may be utterly incomprehensible to him. Were I teaching him, I'd recommend basic mathematics, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry prior to taking calculus. However, if he says he really, really wants to know all there is about calculus, I'd point him to the books that can teach him about it.
I would not conceal the knowledge of calculus from him. Just because someone won't understand something is no reason to deny them the opportunity to learn for themselves that they don't have the required knowledge to understand yet. This is a key reason why I oppose the "Milk Before Meat" philosophy: it is deceptive.
I just passed their headquarters this morning. There are no cars in the parking lot on a regular workday, and I don't recall any there on Wednesday, either. Perhaps that is an indication of their current position?
I interviewed for a sysadmin job with them several years ago and had done some consulting work on Bugzilla for them in the past, and they seemed like a good place to work. They had plenty of customers and pretty solid technology for managing clusters. But once you've deployed a few dozen supercomputers based on commodity components, and all your customers realize the only value you offer is the very-expensive cluster management software, what's your next plan to make money once they decide to save that money and buy more hardware instead?
The RIAA makes no claim in the brief regarding the Defendant's possession of MP3 files and pornography on his computer, other than the fact he created a shortcut to said items and admitted to their use constitutes knowledge of their existence which, along with their placement in a shared folder, constitutes willful infringement. There is only one question in the brief in favor of summary judgment related to this question:
According to the Plaintiff, it was the act of converting to MP3 and then placing the recording in a shared folder with the intent to distribute on a peer-to-peer network which was the infringing action... not converting to MP3 itself. The two actions together, they maintain, constitute the creation of an unlawful copy. The title of the article, "RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", is misleading.
I don't see this brief as an attempted reversal, but as testing the waters to clarify exactly at what point copyright infringement occurs. In my opinion, the RIAA finally gets the definition right: if you copy the CD of my music that you purchased, you are not infringing. You can even make a copy to give to friends, and you are not infringing. If you make a copy so that they can make more copies, or perform it publicly or display it, you are infringing.
Disclaimer: I am both a supporter of peer-to-peer networking and an independent musician and author with numerous copyrighted works. I think the RIAA is evil, but that their direction is set by their members and that it is those producers who are accountable for their actions and should exert pressure on their lobbying organization to be socially responsible when performing necessary actions to enforce copyright.
OK, these look nifty, but I've been using a USB-powered battery charger for two years as part of my Kensington Wireless Desktop. It charges two batteries at once, and the mouse and keyboard each require 2 batteries. It does its job well, and only requires a single USB port. And plus it acts as a nifty base station for my wireless keyboard and mouse! I use 2500mAh NiMH batteries, and they go for weeks of 9-hour-a-day usage before needing to be replaced.
I have to give this a big "so, what?" It's like selling a pencil with a clock built into it. I mean, sure, it's nifty, but it's a solution looking for a problem.
Kind of like the precocious question I asked my father as a kid. "Who's God's God?" "Well, son, God has no God." "Then where did he come from?" "He's always existed." "Why?"
To (badly) paraphrase a quote from a Firefly episode, "This is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot."
I think the main problem many atheists run into is in figuring out their theological (or lack of theological) position with a particular Christian reference point. From a Christian perspective, Albert Einstein was certainly atheist (and defined himself using that term as compared to Christians). Yet some conjecture he was a Pantheist, and he also referred to himself as perhaps believing in "Spinoza's God", which is simply that "god" is Nature in all its awesome splendor. Many Western atheists choose to regard as highly unlikely an anthropomorphic and brutally vengeful god as recorded by primitive societies, but many also find great depth of spirituality in other forms.
To have a reverence for the beauty and order of nature, though, is not the same as assuming it was intelligently designed. I'm not saying there is no designer, but it sure seems to me that we're better off trying to figure out how we came about, using the resources at our disposal, than ascribing human creation to the supernatural and not investigating it further.
Who knows? Perhaps one day, in our exploration of evidence, we'll find proof of supernatural intervention. But I'm doubting it.
A relevant quote from Kelvin Throop III: "Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool."
String theorists and others are pushing the limits of Einstein's presumption of using light as a constant in mass/energy calculations, and it's possible the "rule" may change, just as celestial navigation has changed. The speed of light is a practical limitation on current mathematics, and the "facts" of science will continue to change.
The correct answer is "Yes". Light is a form of high-frequency radiation, which is a phenomenon that does not require an intervening medium to propagate. It is its own wave/particle duality, along with radiation in other spectra, which is being constantly explored and the definition refined. I lack the space, time, or interest to explain further, but much like trying to explain why water is wet and oil isn't, to fully understand it requires a good deal of shared background information.Science rarely answers "why" things happen, only "how" they happen. It is in the realm of the "why" things happen (the metaphysical) that people find room for belief or faith. And that is an area of questioning that Science, while always closing the gap of understanding, will probably never fully answer.
As a systems admin, lightweight programmer (meaning shell scripting, things to get my adminning done, that kind of thing), and professional musician, I see how much writing good programs is like writing good music. There is inspiration, perseverance, and experience.
A good sound engineer can make a humdrum piece sound fantastic, but at the heart, it's still so-so music. A great piece, even if poorly engineered, will stand out as an amazing piece of musicianship even if the recording quality is sub-par.
I consider myself an adequate musician, but a pretty good sound engineer with the tools at my disposal. I love to twiddle the knobs until a piece sounds pretty good. I'm still learning, though, too, as evidenced by the slowly improving quality on my web site.
I can make up for a lot of deficiencies in talent through sound engineering. The songs can do what they are intended to do (provoke emotional responses in listeners) without being amazing.
Programming is similar. At least, when I get "in the zone" writing a script, it's the same zone I get into when I'm writing a piece of music. While I agree that some inexperienced programmers can be more productive than some experienced programmers, experience is still a factor in how quickly they get the job done. Apples to apples: a brilliant programmer with a decade in the business against an equally brilliant rookie will be an interesting contest. I submit that the more experienced one will probably achieve the same results with less time invested.
Of course, it's all a WAG anyway. You can't measure brilliance any more than you can measure stupidity. It's all relative.
True. Correlation doesn't equal causation. If you're thirty-five or forty and still in the business, chances are you have the resolve and skill to do well regardless. Good point.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I count as friends who went into programming straight out of college and stuck with it for over a decade. I can count on two hands and toes the number I know that now work in something else. Lots of management, some sales, and one guy that decided to hang it all and help run a chain of theaters.
My background: I'm a gaming industry veteran, though not a programmer (sysadmin and musician). Credits are here. However, this makes me much more of an "interested outsider who worked for a computer game development company" than a game developer myself. I'm working with a small studio now that just recently release Void War, a 3D multiplayer space shooter that's catching on. We're hosting a trial version competition tonight; download the demo and check it out! 9:00 PM Mountain Time.
The key thing IMHO is that they need to work those longer hours in order to equal the productivity of a more experienced person. Pit a thirty-five-year-old seasoned programmer against most twenty-two-year-old fresh-out-of-college programmers, and that guy with thirteen years more experience will probably produce cleaner code, fewer bugs, and more features in less time than the younger programmer.
There are, obviously, brilliant exceptions to the rule on both sides :) However, in the main, working more hours does not mean more productivity. I have more respect for the guy that puts in his honest days' work and gets the job done, then goes home to his family, then for the person that works seventy-hour weeks to bring the project in due to their lack of competence.
That doesn't mean I don't value the crazy-hour-worker. It just means I value the seasoned veteran who knows how to get the job done quickly more because he's better at the job.
Allow me to take a moment to clarify: there's a huge difference between the game under discussion, called Outwar and the jetpack-based shooter (ala Starship Troopers, the book) called Outwars, which predated Outwar by half a decade. Singletrac the company is now defunct, but were a bunch of game developers having a great time making great games. Unfortunately, Outwars wasn't one of those great games. But it was a pretty fun game that didn't involve spam :)
Disclaimer: I'm listed twice in the credits for Outwars, once as the network admin, and once as a model. The guy we'd planned on shooting didn't show up, so they stuck overweight, slightly-German-looking me in instead.
I just quoted what the grandparent poster said. If indeed the engineer quoted had said the car was "running off batteries and not using gas", he was being disingenuous. Any educated hybrid owner will know that, compared to traditional vehicles, their vehicle excels at city MPG. But when you're driving in the city, you may be running off your battery, but you're still using gas. Yes, you're using gas you've already burned to charge the battery, and you're not going to refill your battery pack until it's either very depleted, or you're driving at a speed where it's more efficient to recharge it than at the low RPMs and stop-and-go of city driving.
But calling it a deceptive technique? I call saying that you're "not using gas" in a hybrid when driving around a city deceptive.
No, the real-world numbers clearly show that you pay later in the Prius. You pay now with the Honda system. Yes, a hybrid is more efficient than a traditional system in the city; there's no question about it. But it's not because you're "not using gas". I'm not interested in any holy war over hybrid systems -- the two top sellers seem to both be good, and I've driven several Prii (? plurl for Prius, Priusses sounds weird) -- but lifetime MPG averages, knowing the type of driving one predominantly does, are the surest indicator the overall efficiency of the vehicle. Stop-and-go, below-35 city driving results in lower MPG than 45MPH no-stops driving. That you pay the penalty in battery leeching later in a Prius is irrelevant. Your MPG may look really great if you reset your trip meter when starting to go around in stealth mode, but your battery meter will be lower at the end, and you still end up paying for it out of the gas tank.
If you're in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area (or any other Prius owners in the SLC area), I'd love to exchange vehicles for a week and do some decent long-term, hard-usage comparisons between the Insight and the Prius. I must admit some ignorance, since I've just driven some test drives in the Prius, and have read extensively regarding plusses and minusses of both systems. But the problem with city "real-world" numbers for a system that allows one to run exclusively off the electric motor in the city is that they simply aren't real-world numbers if they don't take into account the gas spent to replenish the batteries.
THAT IS, unless you're one of the guys that have rigged a system to charge the high-voltage system off the city grid. Now that's pretty cool, and you'll turn in some freaking impressive numbers with lower cost, since grid electricity is much less expensive to produce than electricity from your gas tank... (I think...). And you just can't do that little electrical engineering trick with a Honda :)
As far as complexity: there's no question. The Honda IMA system is considerably less complex than the Toyota system. That complexity doesn't mean Honda hybrids are necessarily any more efficient -- just not as complicated. They use a single electric motor sandwiched between the engine and the transmission. The Toyota system, in contrast, uses two electric motors and three driveshafts, with considerably larger and more powerful electric motors and battery pack. Add to that an elegant, geeky, but more complicated display... you get my drift. Familiarity makes it no less complicated, only better understood. I admit I've not been "under the hood" with a wrench and a manual on any Prius like I have with my Insight, but, still, the Prius seems to have a more complex system. When compared to CVT Hondas, the numbers are quite similar, but manual transmission Honda IMAs are, by nature of fewer frictional losses and reduced complexity, better still in the MPG dep't.
Then again, I probably wouldn't trade my CVT in for a manual. I get stuck in traffic way too often to enjoy a stick shift.
OK, yes, regenerative braking contributes some power back to the battery. Acceleration from a stop drains it again as the battery either assists the engine through the electric motor (IMA/Honda) or accelerates the car by itself with the electric motor (ICE/Toyota); regardless there are massive frictional losses all around :)
Well, Insight sales have been disappointing: it's only sold more than 5,000 units in the US two years out of the five it's been here. And Civic Hybrid and Prius sales have spectacularly blown it away. It's a two-seater, expensive compared to similarly-equipped conventional vehicles, looks a bit odd, and is all-aluminum. Recipe for a low-selling car, particularly when the Prius and Civic Hybrid come in with prices pretty close to similar conventional vehicles.
:) It's just questionable whether there will be a 2005.
:)
That said, it's been rumored to have been discontinued since 2002. You can still buy a new 2004, though
At least the law's on our side: manufacturers are required to stock parts for 10 years after the model year (or is it 15?) for parts that don't have a generic replacement. So yeah, I love the car, but it's gonna be rare as hell 10 years from now...
Maybe that would be good if I were collecting it instead of using it for my daily round-trip commute of 88 miles
The Toyota Prius uses an ICE system. It involves two electric motors, can operate "silently" (purely off the electric motor) at low speed, and can only be used in conjunction with an automatic transmission.
The Honda hybrids use a system called "IMA", that functions more like an electric turbocharger. If a Honda hybrid is moving, the gasoline engine is running. Well, OK, there is an exception to this if you're coasting to a stop at speeds below about 10 MPH (3 MPH in the CVT), with the brake pedal depressed, the engine goes into "auto idle stop" mode. The Honda design can be used with a manual transmission (leading to the extraordinary mileage of certain models) and is less complicated than the Toyota system, but otherwise seems to be a wash as far as advantages when comparing the two.
I have to admit some bias here: I think the Honda Insight is in a class by itself. It was a brand-new model introduced in Japan in 1999, engineered from the ground up to be the MPG king of the mass-produced world. It sacrifices a lot to be that: no rear seat, "unusual" design (my brother-in-law says "ugly", but I think it gives the car "character"), all-aluminum construction (painful, painful body repair bills), high insurance costs (on par with high-end rear-wheel-drive sports cars), a fairly stiff econo-box-like ride due to really hard little wheels, a crappy stereo (until 2004, when they put a much nicer model in), and hardly any selection of "options": if you have an Insight of a particular year, other than air conditioning and transmission type, your choices are extremely limited.
But I still love the car :) Now, back to responding to your post!
The engineer that talked about the Prius "running off batteries and not using gas" must have been off his rocker, if what you describe is correct. The energy has to come from somewhere, and in the case of these hybrids, that's from the gas tank. The gasoline motor must run to recharge those battery cells. And the chemical energy (gas tank) to kinetic energy (motor) to chemical energy (battery) transition wastes a good deal of that energy. Add to that kinetic energy to potential energy losses due to regenerative braking, actual brake pads being used in hard stops, and it's a recipe for poor efficiency.
The numbers back this up: in city driving, a hybrid frequently turns in extremely disappointing MPG numbers due to these inefficiencies. The Prius takes a hit in its highway MPG numbers, because it has to leech power off the gas engine to recharge the battery it depleted in city driving. The Honda cars take the hit from the gas motor occasionally idling (rather than going into auto-idle-stop), and acceleration from a stop draining nearly as much gas as a "normal" car.
That said, a hybrid will beat the pants off any similarly-driven traditional gasoline-powered vehicle for efficiency in those conditions. But when the EPA rates city mileage higher than highway mileage, it's not taking into account losses in the battery pack: the car ends the test with a battery pack lower than it started.
Sadly, you can't beat the laws of thermodynamics:
- You can't create or destroy energy
- You can't hope to ever do better than break even
- You can only break even at absolute zero
Sounds like my life sometimes...