My experience has been different. Some Indian programmers I have worked with have been good, some have not. Pretty much the same spectrum of difference as in the American and European programmers I have worked with.
More of the Indians seem to still be gaining mainframe Cobol experience. This makes them attractive to the financial and insurance industry. Other than that no boig difference in quality.
How do you suggest developers promote the good, legal aspects of file sharing and p2p networks?
Groups like the RIAA and the MPAA want to paint all file sharing software with the same brush, and have lawmakers think of "piracy" and "theft" when they see the term file sharing. There are many legitimate uses for file sharing p2p software that may never be explored because of the over-zealous efforts of the RIAA and MPAA.
Large corporations could use p2p file sharing software to implement the next genration of group ware, or load balance 'batch' processing of files using the techniques employed by kazaa and Gnutella. Many legitimate investors are probably scared away by the bad name that groups like the RIAA and MPAA try to give to p2p file sharing.
I know that it might be hard to see the whole forest from your day to day work in the trenches fighting copyright infringement, but I'd appreciate it if you took the time to think about and comment on the long term damage being done to the competitiveness of American corporations by the short sighted tactics used by some lobbying groups.
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.
The article refutes the idea of solar sails designed to use momentum from photons to move a sail through space. The article seems to confuse thermodynamics and mechanics, ignoring the conservation of momentum to make its point. The article makes points out the fact that a perfect reflector would not drop the photons temperature, so it cannot be used as an engine (no temperature drop in a Carnot cycle).
Since a photon's 'temperature' is proportional to its frequency, I guess this is true. If there is no frequency change when the photon is reflected back in the opposite direction from a perfect reflector there is no 'temperature' change. But the direction of the photon is changed by reflection, and momentum must be conserved. an imperfect reflector would probably result in some 'temperature' change. How you could use this in a Carnot cycle I don't know.
The article quotes a Steven Soter:
"Steven Soter, an astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, is open to Gold's idea. He says applying conservation of momentum to photons could be a mistake. 'Light is very different from matter, and one may wonder if the momentum rules are also different.'"
Soter works at Hayden planetarium and was a collaborator with the late Carl Sagan. I don't know his background or credentials.
His statement shows a lack of understanding. The momentum of the photons should be p=hf/c. Where p is momentum, h is planck's constant, f is frequency, and c is the speed of light. If the photon is reflected perfectly the sail must pick up twice the original momentum in order to balance out. Momentum has both direction and magnitude. If you start out with one photon moving away fron the sun (call it one unit of momentum) and a stationary sail. After reflection you have one photon moving torwards the sun. The reflected photon has the same magnitude, but opposite direction, or -1 unit of momentum.
But conservation of momentum means that the total system should be the same before as after or one unit (positive direction) total. So to get a total of one positive unit the sail must have two positive units of momentum.
before collision the photon has one positive unit, and the stationary sail has zero units for a total of one positive unit. After collision the photon has one negative unit, the sail has two positive units for a total of one positive units. I think that the conservation of momentum has been tested for photons.
The article also states that the first flight of a solar sail will take place this fall, but the Russians have already launched.
The article also incorrectly explains why most crooke's radiometers move in the direction of the white side, and are propelled by the black side, here is a good link that explains why.
Whew! Both Steven Soter and Thomas Gold seem to have good reputations. I think Gold's arguments about a sail not being a carnot engine are accurate, and are being applied out of context. It does not matter if a solar sail is not a good Carnot engine, any more than it matters if a wind sail on a ship is a good Carnot engine. It does matter that a steamship have a good Carnot engine.
You are very correct. They would send the Men In Blue!
IBM is an anagram of MIB. Actor 'Smith' plays an MIB agent.
Oh boy, the conspiracy generating perl scripts I archived a few years back need to be dusted off ; )
Oh, I think they are trying out a new Business model. In the 70's IBM was hated and feared, and was the most profitable computer software company. In the 90's Microsoft was hated and feared, and was the most profitable computer software company.
If you look a few lines below your second quote you will see:
"Of course, I only do this when the company is paying me to do so."
So he targets specific companies when he has a contract. So why does he have to hide with the -D option. I dunno, maybe he just wants to re-create a real attack scenario.
In many years developing software in corporate settings, I have seen many bugs (not just security related) not being found before production release. Many companies shy away from rigorous testing procedures because of beauracratic idiocy. these company's tests are not simulations of real use, but controlled and watered down, like fake demos.
Some PHB's don't get that finding errors in tests is good. They fear all failure, and shun people who find bugs. The modern corporate world is in love with the Emporer's new clothes, and the young minds that see the truth are shunned.
Gee, I must be really old but there seem to be a lot of people who have no clue. A pc is not a mainframe. There are many computer architectures in the world, not just Apple and IBM clones. calling an NT box a mainframe is as appropriate as calling a VW bug a super tanker. They both move stuff from place to place and are mostly metal, but just about everything else about them is different.
I don't want to sound angry here, I guess I just take it for granted that people know that 'mainframe' means the giant big-iron business computers sold by IBM (and clones from Amdahl/Fujitsu). So its my fault for not recognizing something I take as obvious.
The computer Obiwan called a "maniframe" was not in any way, shape, or form a mainframe computer. Anything that ran NT was a microcomputer. This is about the smallest weakest class of computers (above apliances like PDA's and Cell phones and calculators).
The mainframe is near the top when it comes to computing horsepower. Super computers are the next step up.
I guess the 64-bit Alpha machines might be classed with their Vax brothers as 'minicomputers'. They could run NT 3.5x. The new IA-64 may be in this class if it is linked to a more powerfull motherboard architecture.
This link will take you to an IBM webpage that shows some of IBM's current mainframe hardware. MicroSoft has never written any commercial software that runs on these. The Z-series can process millions of records a second. The I/O throughput on these beasts is mindboggling. almost everthing in them has automatic fail-over and hot-swap ability, even the CPU's! They are not very good at floating point math. I have never seen a mainframe 'crash'.
Linux does run on these machines as an alternative to the native IBM Z/OS, or along side it. IBM has a version of its own UNIX, AIX that can run on these machines as well. Yes they can run multiple operating systems at the same time. Java and perl and many other open software programs have been ported to the various mainframe OS's.
Links like this say that about 75% of the program source code in the world is COBOL on mainframes. Some programs currently running where I work predate the founding of Microsoft and Apple!
I wouldn't be suprised if there are programs running in a bank or a government agency somewhere that predates Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak.
mainframe n. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year's run twice as fast as last year's.
And some critics said "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" relied heavily on the account of Christ's passion - a suggestion that director Steven Spielberg, who is Jewish, rejected.
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" wasn't a remake of a religious passion play. It was a remake of those Disney films from the 50's and 60's where the kids would go hunting or camping and bring home a racoon, or an otter, or a crow (or whatever). Mayhem and maddness would ensue, and the new found animal friend would eventually be returned home.
E.T. follows the old Disney plot lines perfectly. Why re-invent the wheel?
"The worst fad has been these stupid little robots," said Minsky. "Graduate students are wasting 3 years of their lives soldering and repairing robots, instead of making them smart. It's really shocking."
Maybe if MIT had lazy grad students, they would get tired of soldering and repairing stupid little robots, and build some smart little robots to do the soldering ond repairing.
Those MIT guys are too smart for their own good, let some people at New Mexico Tech do it instead!
Search enterprise linux.com has a four part series on open source support that might help.
For well known software just call it "industry standard software". This would include things like EMACS, CVS, GNUmake, gcc, Apache. Tell the management you would suggest using the Industry Standard Apache web server, or the Industry standard revision control tool CVS.
You could list examples of companies that use these tools already. You can get some examples of current corporate users at the home pages, or by e-mailing the support team. Concentrate on listing Fortune 500 companies, your company's competitors, and well regarded high tech companies.
Instead of defragging, just change the disk i/o sub sytems to work smarter. Microsoft OS's from MS/DOS on have all written data in pretty much the same way:
An Application hands the OS a file to write to disk.
The OS goes to FAT and finds the first free spot on the disk, and writes out as many blocks as it can. If the file fits within the free space, no fragmentation, else...
Find the next free disk space in the FAT and start writing the rest of the file.
Repeat until end of file.
Other OS's implemented a better way back in the 70's:
Keep a list of free space on the disk in order of size.
Go to the first available free space that will hold the file.
Write the file.
No fragmentation, and faster read/write operations (heads don't have to be repositioned).
Because disk i/o should be hidden in system calls, it should be easy to add this to MS OS's and still use the current method for reading disks. This would keep backwards compatibility.
Just a thought...
Social security numbers are not guaranteed to be unique! In the early days it was allowed for an individual to share their number with a non-working spouse. The spouse recieves reduced benefits after the primary has died.
I've contracted at several major health insurance companies. That's where I first encountered records of two individuals with the same number. This is no longer allowed.
I believe the numbers could be re-used after death, but I haven't seen this my self. Maybe someone out there in/.-land has better info on that.
"... , and thus it's impossible (ceteris paribus) to make any bets on short-term stock performance."
Its not impossible to make bets on the short term. You can place all the bets you want. You will win some and lose some.
Malkiel makes the point that it is highly improbable that you will accurately predict the outcome of your bets. You are more likely to be able to predict the long term perfomance (over 30 + years) of the market.
the best part is the location (slightly off topic)
on
Review: Illegal Art
·
· Score: 1
The exhibit is at 2040 N Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, les than two Blocks from Margie's candies (1960 N Western Ave.). Margie's is a local Business that has been making some of the best homemade ice cream and homemade candy since 1921.
I was thinking of dropping by the art show but after seeing the location on the website, this is a must see:)
Interpreted languages like perl or python could highlight bad syntax by running the code you are typing through parts of their own interpreter at given intervals. Kind of like an 'autocorrect' feature in some word processors.
I think I would find it more annoying than helpful.
I used to always lint my C code from Emacs when I was using C all the time. Does that count?
Do any other Techies remember raiding the boneyard for raw material?
New Mexico Tech was a fun place at times, but the most explosive exploits were usually done out in the middle of the desert, not on campus. If you put a bunch of bright people together in a small town in the middle of nowhere, they will create their own fun.
B. Bunny: Maybe I shouldn't 'ave taken that left toin at Albuquerque?
The parent of my comment said this: "Only when we inform the MPAA of the contributions made by the Open Source developer community can we disbang region-encoded DVDs."
I was merely following up on something said in the parent. I apologize if this was off topic.
when you talk to the <grin> good folks </grin> at the MPAA, make sure to point out that by accepting the lates Microsoft(r) EULA's they are granting permission to Microsoft(r) to examine the data on the MPAA's computers. That includes copyrighted movies and music.
If the MPAA is using WinXP(r), WinXP(r) Pro(r), or the latest service pack for Win2000(r) Pro(r); Microsoft(r) may already be examining upcoming blockbusters before they are released!
Please Jack Valenti, put a stop to this piracy, and sue Microsoft(r) for violations of the DMCA. </soapbox>
Slashdot Mirror
My experience has been different. Some Indian programmers I have worked with have been good, some have not. Pretty much the same spectrum of difference as in the American and European programmers I have worked with. More of the Indians seem to still be gaining mainframe Cobol experience. This makes them attractive to the financial and insurance industry. Other than that no boig difference in quality.
How do you suggest developers promote the good, legal aspects of file sharing and p2p networks?
Groups like the RIAA and the MPAA want to paint all file sharing software with the same brush, and have lawmakers think of "piracy" and "theft" when they see the term file sharing. There are many legitimate uses for file sharing p2p software that may never be explored because of the over-zealous efforts of the RIAA and MPAA.
Large corporations could use p2p file sharing software to implement the next genration of group ware, or load balance 'batch' processing of files using the techniques employed by kazaa and Gnutella. Many legitimate investors are probably scared away by the bad name that groups like the RIAA and MPAA try to give to p2p file sharing.
I know that it might be hard to see the whole forest from your day to day work in the trenches fighting copyright infringement, but I'd appreciate it if you took the time to think about and comment on the long term damage being done to the competitiveness of American corporations by the short sighted tactics used by some lobbying groups.
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.
The article refutes the idea of solar sails designed to use momentum from photons to move a sail through space. The article seems to confuse thermodynamics and mechanics, ignoring the conservation of momentum to make its point. The article makes points out the fact that a perfect reflector would not drop the photons temperature, so it cannot be used as an engine (no temperature drop in a Carnot cycle).
Since a photon's 'temperature' is proportional to its frequency, I guess this is true. If there is no frequency change when the photon is reflected back in the opposite direction from a perfect reflector there is no 'temperature' change. But the direction of the photon is changed by reflection, and momentum must be conserved. an imperfect reflector would probably result in some 'temperature' change. How you could use this in a Carnot cycle I don't know.
The article quotes a Steven Soter: "Steven Soter, an astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, is open to Gold's idea. He says applying conservation of momentum to photons could be a mistake. 'Light is very different from matter, and one may wonder if the momentum rules are also different.'" Soter works at Hayden planetarium and was a collaborator with the late Carl Sagan. I don't know his background or credentials.
His statement shows a lack of understanding. The momentum of the photons should be p=hf/c. Where p is momentum, h is planck's constant, f is frequency, and c is the speed of light. If the photon is reflected perfectly the sail must pick up twice the original momentum in order to balance out. Momentum has both direction and magnitude. If you start out with one photon moving away fron the sun (call it one unit of momentum) and a stationary sail. After reflection you have one photon moving torwards the sun. The reflected photon has the same magnitude, but opposite direction, or -1 unit of momentum.
But conservation of momentum means that the total system should be the same before as after or one unit (positive direction) total. So to get a total of one positive unit the sail must have two positive units of momentum.
before collision the photon has one positive unit, and the stationary sail has zero units for a total of one positive unit. After collision the photon has one negative unit, the sail has two positive units for a total of one positive units. I think that the conservation of momentum has been tested for photons.
The article also states that the first flight of a solar sail will take place this fall, but the Russians have already launched.
The article also incorrectly explains why most crooke's radiometers move in the direction of the white side, and are propelled by the black side, here is a good link that explains why.
Whew! Both Steven Soter and Thomas Gold seem to have good reputations. I think Gold's arguments about a sail not being a carnot engine are accurate, and are being applied out of context. It does not matter if a solar sail is not a good Carnot engine, any more than it matters if a wind sail on a ship is a good Carnot engine. It does matter that a steamship have a good Carnot engine.
Mr. Soter's quote is disturbingly inaccurate.
You are very correct. They would send the Men In Blue! IBM is an anagram of MIB. Actor 'Smith' plays an MIB agent. Oh boy, the conspiracy generating perl scripts I archived a few years back need to be dusted off ; )
So the new business model is:
1)Become hated.
2)Become feared.
3)????
4)profit.
If you look a few lines below your second quote you will see:
"Of course, I only do this when the company is paying me to do so."
So he targets specific companies when he has a contract. So why does he have to hide with the -D option. I dunno, maybe he just wants to re-create a real attack scenario.
In many years developing software in corporate settings, I have seen many bugs (not just security related) not being found before production release. Many companies shy away from rigorous testing procedures because of beauracratic idiocy. these company's tests are not simulations of real use, but controlled and watered down, like fake demos.
Some PHB's don't get that finding errors in tests is good. They fear all failure, and shun people who find bugs. The modern corporate world is in love with the Emporer's new clothes, and the young minds that see the truth are shunned.
My fault again, no offense intended. "Spo", that's before my time :)
Gee, I must be really old but there seem to be a lot of people who have no clue. A pc is not a mainframe. There are many computer architectures in the world, not just Apple and IBM clones. calling an NT box a mainframe is as appropriate as calling a VW bug a super tanker. They both move stuff from place to place and are mostly metal, but just about everything else about them is different.
I don't want to sound angry here, I guess I just take it for granted that people know that 'mainframe' means the giant big-iron business computers sold by IBM (and clones from Amdahl/Fujitsu). So its my fault for not recognizing something I take as obvious.
The computer Obiwan called a "maniframe" was not in any way, shape, or form a mainframe computer. Anything that ran NT was a microcomputer. This is about the smallest weakest class of computers (above apliances like PDA's and Cell phones and calculators).
The mainframe is near the top when it comes to computing horsepower. Super computers are the next step up.
I guess the 64-bit Alpha machines might be classed with their Vax brothers as 'minicomputers'. They could run NT 3.5x. The new IA-64 may be in this class if it is linked to a more powerfull motherboard architecture.
This link will take you to an IBM webpage that shows some of IBM's current mainframe hardware. MicroSoft has never written any commercial software that runs on these. The Z-series can process millions of records a second. The I/O throughput on these beasts is mindboggling. almost everthing in them has automatic fail-over and hot-swap ability, even the CPU's! They are not very good at floating point math. I have never seen a mainframe 'crash'.
Linux does run on these machines as an alternative to the native IBM Z/OS, or along side it. IBM has a version of its own UNIX, AIX that can run on these machines as well. Yes they can run multiple operating systems at the same time. Java and perl and many other open software programs have been ported to the various mainframe OS's.
Links like this say that about 75% of the program source code in the world is COBOL on mainframes. Some programs currently running where I work predate the founding of Microsoft and Apple! I wouldn't be suprised if there are programs running in a bank or a government agency somewhere that predates Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak.
mainframe n. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year's run twice as fast as last year's.
pretty accurate.And some critics said "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" relied heavily on the account of Christ's passion - a suggestion that director Steven Spielberg, who is Jewish, rejected.
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" wasn't a remake of a religious passion play. It was a remake of those Disney films from the 50's and 60's where the kids would go hunting or camping and bring home a racoon, or an otter, or a crow (or whatever). Mayhem and maddness would ensue, and the new found animal friend would eventually be returned home.
E.T. follows the old Disney plot lines perfectly. Why re-invent the wheel?
"The worst fad has been these stupid little robots," said Minsky. "Graduate students are wasting 3 years of their lives soldering and repairing robots, instead of making them smart. It's really shocking."
Maybe if MIT had lazy grad students, they would get tired of soldering and repairing stupid little robots, and build some smart little robots to do the soldering ond repairing.
Those MIT guys are too smart for their own good, let some people at New Mexico Tech do it instead!
Search enterprise linux.com has a four part series on open source support that might help.
For well known software just call it "industry standard software". This would include things like EMACS, CVS, GNUmake, gcc, Apache. Tell the management you would suggest using the Industry Standard Apache web server, or the Industry standard revision control tool CVS.
You could list examples of companies that use these tools already. You can get some examples of current corporate users at the home pages, or by e-mailing the support team. Concentrate on listing Fortune 500 companies, your company's competitors, and well regarded high tech companies.
Good Luck in your effort!
Instead of defragging, just change the disk i/o sub sytems to work smarter. Microsoft OS's from MS/DOS on have all written data in pretty much the same way:
An Application hands the OS a file to write to disk.
The OS goes to FAT and finds the first free spot on the disk, and writes out as many blocks as it can. If the file fits within the free space, no fragmentation, else...
Find the next free disk space in the FAT and start writing the rest of the file.
Repeat until end of file.
Other OS's implemented a better way back in the 70's:
Keep a list of free space on the disk in order of size.
Go to the first available free space that will hold the file.
Write the file.
No fragmentation, and faster read/write operations (heads don't have to be repositioned).
Because disk i/o should be hidden in system calls, it should be easy to add this to MS OS's and still use the current method for reading disks. This would keep backwards compatibility. Just a thought...
Social security numbers are not guaranteed to be unique! In the early days it was allowed for an individual to share their number with a non-working spouse. The spouse recieves reduced benefits after the primary has died.
I've contracted at several major health insurance companies. That's where I first encountered records of two individuals with the same number. This is no longer allowed.
I believe the numbers could be re-used after death, but I haven't seen this my self. Maybe someone out there in /.-land has better info on that.
Its not impossible to make bets on the short term. You can place all the bets you want. You will win some and lose some.
Malkiel makes the point that it is highly improbable that you will accurately predict the outcome of your bets. You are more likely to be able to predict the long term perfomance (over 30 + years) of the market.
Unless space rocks are magically different, any rock within the Earth's atmosphere could pick up living material here on Earth.
You would have to find a 'virgin' rock in space, and never expose it to any sources of contamination, cut it open and look inside.
You might want to wine it and dine it a little first, but I think that would be contamination. Let me know what you find ;)
Right in the first line.
The exhibit is at 2040 N Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, les than two Blocks from Margie's candies (1960 N Western Ave.). Margie's is a local Business that has been making some of the best homemade ice cream and homemade candy since 1921.
I was thinking of dropping by the art show but after seeing the location on the website, this is a must see :)
Interpreted languages like perl or python could highlight bad syntax by running the code you are typing through parts of their own interpreter at given intervals. Kind of like an 'autocorrect' feature in some word processors.
I think I would find it more annoying than helpful.
I used to always lint my C code from Emacs when I was using C all the time. Does that count?
Do any other Techies remember raiding the boneyard for raw material? New Mexico Tech was a fun place at times, but the most explosive exploits were usually done out in the middle of the desert, not on campus. If you put a bunch of bright people together in a small town in the middle of nowhere, they will create their own fun.
B. Bunny: Maybe I shouldn't 'ave taken that left toin at Albuquerque?
Someone wrote a Yakov-bot in perl and let it loose on slashdot. Probably based it on the old sweedish chef script ;)
The parent of my comment said this:
"Only when we inform the MPAA of the contributions made by the Open Source developer community can we disbang region-encoded DVDs."
I was merely following up on something said in the parent. I apologize if this was off topic.
when you talk to the <grin> good folks </grin> at the MPAA, make sure to point out that by accepting the lates Microsoft(r) EULA's they are granting permission to Microsoft(r) to examine the data on the MPAA's computers. That includes copyrighted movies and music.
If the MPAA is using WinXP(r), WinXP(r) Pro(r), or the latest service pack for Win2000(r) Pro(r); Microsoft(r) may already be examining upcoming blockbusters before they are released!
Please Jack Valenti, put a stop to this piracy, and sue Microsoft(r) for violations of the DMCA.
</soapbox>