1It was the late 70s. I was working for New York Life Insurance Company at 51 Madison Avenue, programming in PL/I on an IBM 370 via TSO (Time Sharing Option) and an IBM 3278 terminal. I was using a new-fangled "full-screen editor" called FSE to edit my source code. At one point I pressed the Backspace key and instead of the cursor moving backwards as is normal, the entire screen moved left one character, including the frame of the editor, with the beginning of each line wrapping to the end of the preceding line. It was as if the entire frame buffer shifted. I pressed the Backspace key a couple more times, and it did the same thing. Then it started going by itself, with the lines circling around the screen and right up through the top until the screen was entirely clear. Then we called the IBM repair guy. I was very eager to tell him what happened and hear his diagnosis, but that's not they repaired 3278s. Instead, the repair guy had a box full of spare circuit boards. He swapped them in and out of the machine until the terminal worked again.
IANAL, but should this argument go through: that the source code has to be opened for review on the grounds that the piece of equipment is used to make decisions with legal implications for the general public, and that it should be able to be reviewed by those which may possibly use it - I think that this could be a wonderful starting place for the opening of source code for items like voting machines. It would set a precedence which, in the case of voting machines, would probably travel to the Supreme Court to be tested. Not to say that it would still hold up (I don't know much about constitutional law, not that many people do), but it would definitely be interesting to see the results of such a case.
This is completely different from Google Wallpaper - this is overlaying visual map data over 3D scans of the same physical map locations. Google Wallpaper is...er...was "stitching" together images provided by Google Maps. Interesting in application, not all that difficult in implementation. Google's 3D service will be much more involved that simply stitching images together. Granted I'm thinking that there are several quick ways of doing it (OGL textures and whatnot) - but that's a lot of data to load over the web.
And Google Wallpaper wasn't a competitor - they were using Google's servers, and their data (which they payed for) to provide a service which violated the terms of service of Google Maps - and had the possibility of becoming a business for the guy. Obviously Google would have had to take legal action against the guy if he started making money off of the google maps data & service.
512MB Quadro cards have been out for some time. It always amazes me that when the consumer versions of a card comes out its BIG news that there's now a card with XXXMB of ram, and blah, blah, blah. "Professional" graphics applications such as high-end CAD systems (the ones that do simulations and everything too, not auto-cad) and countless scientific apps will continue to need the cards with bigger and better features first. They will also come at a higher price, because that's where they are seen first, and where it really is something new!
I've been using the C++ eclipse plugin for a while now. Its useable, but I don't know how the build system works, because we wrote up our own makefiles (I'm sure there's some way of telling it to use those makefiles, but I just haven't taken the time to find it). Autocompletion works pretty well most of the time - I'm using it mostly for the cvs integration!
Yes! Thank you! I've never liked java all that much - not because the coding is difficult, I just don't like the vm interface to things. I can write something up in perl, and run it wherever I like!
I don't particularly like the idea of many colleges wanting to move to Java as the language of choice. Sure it hides a lot of things from a new programmer, but if someone is going to college in computer science - they shouldn't have it hidden from them! Not to mention that C++ is somewhat of a 'standard' language. Learn it and you can move to other languages REALLY easily. Just my $0.02....
Exactly! I always tell the people looking into the university that the 'game programmers' with stable jobs and making good money are the ones with a vast array of knowledge in both math and physics in addition to the programming parts of things! I didn't mean to make it sound like game programming was simple, but it's another one of the jobs in a field that is largely misunderstood!
I'm going into my senoir year in CS this fall at a university who has their CS degree in the engineering college. I help out with some of the college recruiting things and you wouldn't believe the number of people who want to come to a CS degree for game programming. Just because there isn't the big $$ involved all the time doesn't mean people are still coming to CS degrees for the wrong reasons.
Those that do come into the program for this usually end up dropping out or switching to a non-engineering major because they want to PLAY games all the time and not do the stuff like algorithm design and analysis that the CS degree requires.
I was reading through the posts thinking exactly that. Someone above posted that telling everyone to 'go jabber' would kill the jabber servers...But, if google were to step into the mix some sort of distributed jabber server system running on a bunch of their servers - then the reliability would definately be there, from a name trusted by the masses.
Maybe this is in the works for post-IPO! We can only hope...
Actually, I've read most of the technical papers that the teams were required to submit, and many of them did use a "track and assign danger levels" as a way of finding a best path (most used this as a way of keeping the vehicle inside the boundaries of the course - assign the off-course sections with infinite danger and the vehicle will never go there).
Overall, the majority of the problems that people were with unplanned problems, such as going up a hill and not switching down gears, stopping to check terrain, and then not being able to start back up again. Or getting a wheel stuck in a small ditch and not being able to get out (no friends to jump out of the car and push ya know).
I think that someone will win next year - or at least make it far enough that the logic part of the system will be proven effective. Sure there will be some little things that will hit just about every team, but I hope someone does a good enough job preparing that it will take a lot of little things to bring them down.
Same here! We've used T-Mobile and AT&T and everytime we get a call at home, we have to go outside into the front or back yard to get a reasonable signal! I'm trying to figure out a way to get a repeater in my house....
Agreed! Here Here! And all other sorts of props! I am preparing to enter my senior year in a CS degree program, and have trouble convincing my classmates that the fact we've taken less math than all the other engineering majors is a bad thing. I wish more schools would focus the CS degree on the how & why things in programs work, and leave the coding practice (a skill in my opinion, not a science) to the software engineering type degrees. Now before someone screams blasphemer - I think that CS people should know coding like the back of their hand, even though it's not the focus of the major. Code is simply the tool to perform the task.
I'm gonna have to go buy Knuth's book now, after realizing that I don't own a copy....
I agree completely, perl is just fun to code in! I've had to use asp at work here for the past month or so, and while it was incredibly easy to learn, I kept finding myself digging through books/websites to find something that I could have done in perl very quickly. Part of that is definately due to me haveing much more experience with perl though. But it just wasn't fun to use, as it seemed incredibly backwards in some cases. Though other things were very nice (and much like PHP). I've tried ruby, and looked at python, but I'll stick to perl, C, and C++ to get my work done.
Regular expressions are also cool...not a way to impress the ladies though...but imagine a world in which it were! How cool would perl coders be then? All of these people would be the Hugh Hefner's of the world!
Sure they're retail stores aren't really 'tech' based, but you have to think higher up in the corporation. For one thing, there is probably a nice corporate office where everyone sits in cubes (and offices) and deals with all of the typical IT functions of any enterprise. Add onto that the need to reamin connected to each of their branch offices to monitor inventory to make sure new supplies are delivered when needed (don't know if they actually do this, but wouldn't surprise me). Then look at the transactions that need to be processed every day/hour/minute so they know how much $$ they are making. Then there's all the supply chain management things to look at. All-in-all, I'd bet they have a nice big data warehouse that their business relies on!
I agree - I see Itanium in a completely different class from Xeon and Opteron. In know a lot of people around here complain about how AMD is getting screwed by Intel and what-not (this is/. after all), but I think the competition can do nothing but provide us consumers with better processors!
Intel won't kill off AMD or buy them because that would basically mean that Intel would OWN the x86 market. So, with AMD out there to continue pushing the development edge, Intel will have to keep up with the advances that are made by AMD, IBM, and all other peers in their market.
I think it will be very interesting to see what happens to processor technology in the next few years - 64-bit computing will become the norm (AMD and Apple already delivering products, and Intel getting ready to...no where to go but up). It's what follows the 64-bit jump that will be really cool. Can anyone say Qubits?
I really like the idea of proximity browsing - being able to walk up to a resturant for example, see reviews, read the menu before going in and sitting down. Or going on a road trip, and going through a town and being notified of a place that you may have missed visiting. But, think of how annoying pop-up ads would become!
The concert idea is a good one too - unless it's means a drasctically higher ticket price...
Slackware! I seem to put slackware and debian on the same level as far as stability for some reason. No research or tests to back that up, though. I will say that I've had little luck getting Debian to a useable state on a box - though I should mention that I cannot connect the box to the interweb to pull packages...
Slashdot Mirror
It was at the bottom of the page as a footnote:
1It was the late 70s. I was working for New York Life Insurance Company at 51 Madison Avenue, programming in PL/I on an IBM 370 via TSO (Time Sharing Option) and an IBM 3278 terminal. I was using a new-fangled "full-screen editor" called FSE to edit my source code. At one point I pressed the Backspace key and instead of the cursor moving backwards as is normal, the entire screen moved left one character, including the frame of the editor, with the beginning of each line wrapping to the end of the preceding line. It was as if the entire frame buffer shifted. I pressed the Backspace key a couple more times, and it did the same thing. Then it started going by itself, with the lines circling around the screen and right up through the top until the screen was entirely clear. Then we called the IBM repair guy. I was very eager to tell him what happened and hear his diagnosis, but that's not they repaired 3278s. Instead, the repair guy had a box full of spare circuit boards. He swapped them in and out of the machine until the terminal worked again.
IANAL, but should this argument go through: that the source code has to be opened for review on the grounds that the piece of equipment is used to make decisions with legal implications for the general public, and that it should be able to be reviewed by those which may possibly use it - I think that this could be a wonderful starting place for the opening of source code for items like voting machines. It would set a precedence which, in the case of voting machines, would probably travel to the Supreme Court to be tested. Not to say that it would still hold up (I don't know much about constitutional law, not that many people do), but it would definitely be interesting to see the results of such a case.
Did you notice the line right below the OSnews title:
/. being behind OSNews by a few hours, or days....but this article is from January!
Written by special contributor Stéphane Rieppi on 2005-01-15 04:36:21 UTC
I'm used to
And Google Wallpaper wasn't a competitor - they were using Google's servers, and their data (which they payed for) to provide a service which violated the terms of service of Google Maps - and had the possibility of becoming a business for the guy. Obviously Google would have had to take legal action against the guy if he started making money off of the google maps data & service.
512MB Quadro cards have been out for some time. It always amazes me that when the consumer versions of a card comes out its BIG news that there's now a card with XXXMB of ram, and blah, blah, blah. "Professional" graphics applications such as high-end CAD systems (the ones that do simulations and everything too, not auto-cad) and countless scientific apps will continue to need the cards with bigger and better features first. They will also come at a higher price, because that's where they are seen first, and where it really is something new!
I've been using the C++ eclipse plugin for a while now. Its useable, but I don't know how the build system works, because we wrote up our own makefiles (I'm sure there's some way of telling it to use those makefiles, but I just haven't taken the time to find it). Autocompletion works pretty well most of the time - I'm using it mostly for the cvs integration!
Not to mention, scientists will set up reserves with massive attempts to create offspring!
Yes! Thank you! I've never liked java all that much - not because the coding is difficult, I just don't like the vm interface to things. I can write something up in perl, and run it wherever I like!
I don't particularly like the idea of many colleges wanting to move to Java as the language of choice. Sure it hides a lot of things from a new programmer, but if someone is going to college in computer science - they shouldn't have it hidden from them! Not to mention that C++ is somewhat of a 'standard' language. Learn it and you can move to other languages REALLY easily. Just my $0.02....
Just goes to show, that most universities are behind the times when compared to most industries.
Exactly! I always tell the people looking into the university that the 'game programmers' with stable jobs and making good money are the ones with a vast array of knowledge in both math and physics in addition to the programming parts of things! I didn't mean to make it sound like game programming was simple, but it's another one of the jobs in a field that is largely misunderstood!
I'm going into my senoir year in CS this fall at a university who has their CS degree in the engineering college. I help out with some of the college recruiting things and you wouldn't believe the number of people who want to come to a CS degree for game programming. Just because there isn't the big $$ involved all the time doesn't mean people are still coming to CS degrees for the wrong reasons.
Those that do come into the program for this usually end up dropping out or switching to a non-engineering major because they want to PLAY games all the time and not do the stuff like algorithm design and analysis that the CS degree requires.
I was reading through the posts thinking exactly that. Someone above posted that telling everyone to 'go jabber' would kill the jabber servers...But, if google were to step into the mix some sort of distributed jabber server system running on a bunch of their servers - then the reliability would definately be there, from a name trusted by the masses.
Maybe this is in the works for post-IPO! We can only hope...
Actually, I've read most of the technical papers that the teams were required to submit, and many of them did use a "track and assign danger levels" as a way of finding a best path (most used this as a way of keeping the vehicle inside the boundaries of the course - assign the off-course sections with infinite danger and the vehicle will never go there).
Overall, the majority of the problems that people were with unplanned problems, such as going up a hill and not switching down gears, stopping to check terrain, and then not being able to start back up again. Or getting a wheel stuck in a small ditch and not being able to get out (no friends to jump out of the car and push ya know).
I think that someone will win next year - or at least make it far enough that the logic part of the system will be proven effective. Sure there will be some little things that will hit just about every team, but I hope someone does a good enough job preparing that it will take a lot of little things to bring them down.
Same here! We've used T-Mobile and AT&T and everytime we get a call at home, we have to go outside into the front or back yard to get a reasonable signal! I'm trying to figure out a way to get a repeater in my house....
Agreed! Here Here! And all other sorts of props! I am preparing to enter my senior year in a CS degree program, and have trouble convincing my classmates that the fact we've taken less math than all the other engineering majors is a bad thing. I wish more schools would focus the CS degree on the how & why things in programs work, and leave the coding practice (a skill in my opinion, not a science) to the software engineering type degrees. Now before someone screams blasphemer - I think that CS people should know coding like the back of their hand, even though it's not the focus of the major. Code is simply the tool to perform the task.
I'm gonna have to go buy Knuth's book now, after realizing that I don't own a copy....
I agree completely, perl is just fun to code in! I've had to use asp at work here for the past month or so, and while it was incredibly easy to learn, I kept finding myself digging through books/websites to find something that I could have done in perl very quickly. Part of that is definately due to me haveing much more experience with perl though. But it just wasn't fun to use, as it seemed incredibly backwards in some cases. Though other things were very nice (and much like PHP). I've tried ruby, and looked at python, but I'll stick to perl, C, and C++ to get my work done.
Regular expressions are also cool...not a way to impress the ladies though...but imagine a world in which it were! How cool would perl coders be then? All of these people would be the Hugh Hefner's of the world!
s/branch offices/retail stores/ should of hit that preview button....
Sure they're retail stores aren't really 'tech' based, but you have to think higher up in the corporation. For one thing, there is probably a nice corporate office where everyone sits in cubes (and offices) and deals with all of the typical IT functions of any enterprise. Add onto that the need to reamin connected to each of their branch offices to monitor inventory to make sure new supplies are delivered when needed (don't know if they actually do this, but wouldn't surprise me). Then look at the transactions that need to be processed every day/hour/minute so they know how much $$ they are making. Then there's all the supply chain management things to look at. All-in-all, I'd bet they have a nice big data warehouse that their business relies on!
It was also on PBS a while back...at least here in Cincinnati
Itanium still holds the top spot - it's just a clustered system, and has been held since 12/08/03: TPC full results
I agree - I see Itanium in a completely different class from Xeon and Opteron. In know a lot of people around here complain about how AMD is getting screwed by Intel and what-not (this is /. after all), but I think the competition can do nothing but provide us consumers with better processors!
Intel won't kill off AMD or buy them because that would basically mean that Intel would OWN the x86 market. So, with AMD out there to continue pushing the development edge, Intel will have to keep up with the advances that are made by AMD, IBM, and all other peers in their market.
I think it will be very interesting to see what happens to processor technology in the next few years - 64-bit computing will become the norm (AMD and Apple already delivering products, and Intel getting ready to...no where to go but up). It's what follows the 64-bit jump that will be really cool. Can anyone say Qubits?
Unless they were going to do something like stop using the "windows" term...switching instead to a name of a kind of bull. But that's just crazy talk.
I really like the idea of proximity browsing - being able to walk up to a resturant for example, see reviews, read the menu before going in and sitting down. Or going on a road trip, and going through a town and being notified of a place that you may have missed visiting. But, think of how annoying pop-up ads would become!
The concert idea is a good one too - unless it's means a drasctically higher ticket price...
I'm surprised no one else mentioned this, but...
Slackware! I seem to put slackware and debian on the same level as far as stability for some reason. No research or tests to back that up, though. I will say that I've had little luck getting Debian to a useable state on a box - though I should mention that I cannot connect the box to the interweb to pull packages...
They did pay SCO licensing...what better way to "ensure compatibility with UNIX and UNIX services" than to stick a *NIX microkernel in windows?