I work as a contraact programmer in the City, London, and over the last year have taken on extra work in C, C++, VB, PHP, JSP, ASP, Oracle, SQL Server and shell scripting as a result of other guys leaving.
Over the same period I've had four ten percent "take it or leave us" pay cuts, leaving me with a huge dent in my take-home pay.
How are other programmers faring? What's your plan? I'm sticking where I am for the time being and DEFINITELY plan to move on as soon as the market picks up.
Well, go ahead and make wisecracks... but I think this is cool. He's given me several ideas already. That small PC & his modified distro could make a rather cool in-car computer... play OGGs, read position from the GPS, whatever.
The outcome from experiments like this would be interesting for us with respect to digital music.
People (well, HiFi geeks) have been lambasting CDs since they came out because digital music doesn't contain the "whole picture" and now with MP3 and OGG we are chucking out even more of the sounds which we can't hear.
This is interesting. The reproduction of your OGG file played through your streaming device on your LAN may sound excellent, but does it have the same power to challenge the emotions?
I can't get so excited about music these days (compared to when I used vinyl), but maybe I'm just getting old...
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 I believe cellular communication was impossible; all the networks were completely swamped with worried relatives and friends trying to communicate with each other.
I think having an extra communication channel, e.g. wireless would be a useful extra in times of emergency.
I see this debate being fired up time and again. How are we going to cure spam?
Everyone has ideas, but who is doing anything about it?
There are plenty of people reading this who are dedicated to the Open Source movement. Can we not make a start? I'm sure there are plenty of worthy projects on FreshMeat etc. What we need to do is ENDORSE one of them and start using it. If all/.ers were to start using a secondary method of email communication, perhaps others might start to take notice.
There's no-one who's going to one day say, OK, we're now going to use some other protocol. This is going to be driven by the grass roots.
Anyone got any sensible ideas on how we make a start?
Hmmm... a glass mouse mat?? Am I the only person who slams his mouse down in frustration when everything in Windows suddenly stops? Hey! Bonus! Automatic wrist slitting when using Windows. It would certainly force me onto my Linux box more frequently.
3D Scanning and Object replication
on
More 3D Printer News
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This prompts some interesting questions for the future, with implications are worth considering.
Imagine a 3D scanner, capable of determining how an object is made (let's say, a Rolex watch). The technology presumably is feasible, what with Xrays, NMR etc. Given sufficiently advanced technology, this scanning could go to the molecular level.
After having scanned it, and stored the 40Tb "image" on my hard disk, with a *more advanced* 3D printer, I could theoretically churn out exact replicas.
Are we going to see the crackdown we're currently seeing with Digital Media extended to solid objects?
And what would happen if you scanned a live animal? Would the copy you create live?
I always regretted getting rid of my original IBM XT when it was just slow, not archaic. So when I saw one going relatively cheap on eBay a while back, I bought it.
After playing with it for about 10 minutes and realising how incredibly useless it is nowadays, it got me thinking... being just text-based, it would make a pretty cool terminal for my Linux boxes, and it would be nice to be able to use it rather than just look at it.
Now the XT is not connected to my network, and I certainly don't have an ethernet card that would work with it. Let alone any drivers or SSH software (:-) man, would that be slow or what).
Anyone got any suggestions on how this could be done? Serial port directly onto the Linux machine maybe?
Oh, and interestingly, in answer to your other question, for xterms and shells, I usually have the colours set to something like light green on a dark green background, looking like an old mono green screen (that I used to stare at a lot 20 years ago). That doesn't bother me at all. It's just white on black web sites that's the main problem. Probably the high contrast as someone pointed out.
I've been staring at screens for the last 20 years... and yes, I'm sensitive to flicker. If the monitor refresh is set to 60 Hz or lower, that's pretty vomit-inducing to me as well. But I still find black on white (at higher Hertz, or on an LCD) the most natural. I suspect it's because that's what we are used to with the real printed page.
I don't know whether any other/.ers have this reaction, but WHITE text on a BLACK background makes me want to puke (quite literally) after I've been reading it for a couple minutes.
Black on white (or at least dark on light) is the only way to go as far as I'm concerned.
This article strikes me as odd. We've evolved a user interface which most people are comfortable with (or at least are FAMILIAR with). This was not Microsoft's invention. Why should Linux suddenly break with something that works? Linux is not trying to be Windows, it's just building on generally accepted methods for working with computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Over the same period I've had four ten percent "take it or leave us" pay cuts, leaving me with a huge dent in my take-home pay.
How are other programmers faring? What's your plan? I'm sticking where I am for the time being and DEFINITELY plan to move on as soon as the market picks up.
How do these things work? Do you really have to fill 'em up or are they sealed, disposable units?
People (well, HiFi geeks) have been lambasting CDs since they came out because digital music doesn't contain the "whole picture" and now with MP3 and OGG we are chucking out even more of the sounds which we can't hear.
This is interesting. The reproduction of your OGG file played through your streaming device on your LAN may sound excellent, but does it have the same power to challenge the emotions?
I can't get so excited about music these days (compared to when I used vinyl), but maybe I'm just getting old...
I think having an extra communication channel, e.g. wireless would be a useful extra in times of emergency.
Anyone got any sure-fire techniques?
My point is that there has been FOUR changes instead of what could have been one if someone had had a bit or foresight.
Originally, the code for London was 01 so a number would be 01-xxx-xxxx
Then they changed it to 071-xxx-xxxx for Inner London and 081-xxx-xxxx for Outer London. Confusion and expensive re-printing of stationery followed.
Then they changed it AGAIN to 0171-xxx-xxxx and 0181-xxx-xxxx. Confusion/expense etc.
THEN THEY CHANGED IT *AGAIN* (doh). It's now 0207-xxx-xxxx and 0208-xxx-xxxx
Anyone get the impression that someone hasn't got a clue? This country sucks.
Everyone has ideas, but who is doing anything about it?
There are plenty of people reading this who are dedicated to the Open Source movement. Can we not make a start? I'm sure there are plenty of worthy projects on FreshMeat etc. What we need to do is ENDORSE one of them and start using it. If all /.ers were to start using a secondary method of email communication, perhaps others might start to take notice.
There's no-one who's going to one day say, OK, we're now going to use some other protocol. This is going to be driven by the grass roots.
Anyone got any sensible ideas on how we make a start?
Imagine a 3D scanner, capable of determining how an object is made (let's say, a Rolex watch). The technology presumably is feasible, what with Xrays, NMR etc. Given sufficiently advanced technology, this scanning could go to the molecular level.
After having scanned it, and stored the 40Tb "image" on my hard disk, with a *more advanced* 3D printer, I could theoretically churn out exact replicas.
Are we going to see the crackdown we're currently seeing with Digital Media extended to solid objects?
And what would happen if you scanned a live animal? Would the copy you create live?
Oh my brain hurts with the implications
* * *
After playing with it for about 10 minutes and realising how incredibly useless it is nowadays, it got me thinking... being just text-based, it would make a pretty cool terminal for my Linux boxes, and it would be nice to be able to use it rather than just look at it.
Now the XT is not connected to my network, and I certainly don't have an ethernet card that would work with it. Let alone any drivers or SSH software (:-) man, would that be slow or what).
Anyone got any suggestions on how this could be done? Serial port directly onto the Linux machine maybe?
Oh, and interestingly, in answer to your other question, for xterms and shells, I usually have the colours set to something like light green on a dark green background, looking like an old mono green screen (that I used to stare at a lot 20 years ago). That doesn't bother me at all. It's just white on black web sites that's the main problem. Probably the high contrast as someone pointed out.
I've been staring at screens for the last 20 years... and yes, I'm sensitive to flicker. If the monitor refresh is set to 60 Hz or lower, that's pretty vomit-inducing to me as well. But I still find black on white (at higher Hertz, or on an LCD) the most natural. I suspect it's because that's what we are used to with the real printed page.
Interesting. Thanks for that, maybe I *should* get the old peepers checked out... 8-I
I don't know whether any other /.ers have this reaction, but WHITE text on a BLACK background makes me want to puke (quite literally) after I've been reading it for a couple minutes.
Black on white (or at least dark on light) is the only way to go as far as I'm concerned.
This article strikes me as odd. We've evolved a user interface which most people are comfortable with (or at least are FAMILIAR with). This was not Microsoft's invention. Why should Linux suddenly break with something that works? Linux is not trying to be Windows, it's just building on generally accepted methods for working with computers.