Interesting. I learned C, Unix and RDBMSes back in the early 80s. I only use C at home for hobby projects, but I still use Unix and SQL professionally. I learned Java back around the turn of the century and it's still paying my mortgage. Franky, I'm disappointed I can't seem to find any new positions that use any of the technologies I've learned lately (like OSGi, SOA or NoSQL databases). It's different if you're a front-end guy, I guess — I have seen some places looking for jQuery and HTML5 experience, but there's nearly as many that still want Struts or MFC. Hell, there are still shops that haven't migrated to Java 6 yet, and that's five years old!
If you're obsessed with the latest shiny, then yeah you'll probably only get two years out of it. I know all the extJS guys I work with moved to Silverlight, and they're bitching that MS has abandoned it so now they'll all have to learn HTML5...
That might work for the Best Buy crowd, but don't forget that HP's real target market is the business sector. There, you really do need separate sub-brands (can't have secretaries using the same machines as the sales guys, y'know!) Dell does a decent job with this (e.g. their "Vostro", "Latitude" and "Precision" lines).
I dunno, I'm with the OP on this one. Both the Fire and the iPod are small enough to carry together (especially when you carry a purse or bag all the time anyway), and not everyone wants to have every possible function integrated into one device. I have an iPhone, but I still carry my iPod because I don't want to run the battery in my phone dead listening to music. That, and I hate not being able to listen to something I want simply because my phone doesn't have enough space to hold the bulk of my music collection.
I ordered a Fire for my wife, all she really wants is an e-book reader with a web browser for e-mail, although I'm sure she'll find plenty of other uses for it once she gets it.
Heh, I think half the average consumers for this type of device would be satisfied with a tablet with two functions: a web browser, and Angry Birds. Bonus for a basic MP3 player. Bring that in for around US$125 and you've got a killer product.
those crappy Polaroid photos won't be around in 10 or 20 years
Which is a good thing, if you go to the kind of parties I used to. The last thing I need is crystal-clear shots of me engaged in "questionable" (or "indictable") activities. I always thought that was kind of the idea of Polaroids -- you can be sure that you have the only copy. None of this "Of course I'll never show anyone these pictures, they'll never leave my phone."
And this must be a new thing - Apple traditionally does not go seeking product-placement anywhere. They let the production company come to them, and even then they refuse any requests for money. They may provide some hardware, but no money.
Nope, they've been doing it longer than just about any other tech company. At least, that's what The Washington Post claimed back in 2006...
Apple has a whole branch of their marketing department dedicated to encouraging and supplying free Apple gear to production companies. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've noticed that MacBooks always have the distinctive Apple logo, but everything else has some generic symbol or simply a blank spot on the lid where the logo used to be. I don't think I've ever seen a MacBook with its logo removed or covered.
Yep. We did some quick calculations a couple years ago when our service contracts came up for renewal and discovered that it would be cheaper to scrap a dozen of our oldest servers and just virtualize them on a new 16-core box with 64G of RAM. Since then, as machines have come off maintenance, we virt 'em up and host 'em on the megaserver. Worked especially well for several servers we kept around for support purposes -- they ran outdated software and were rarely needed. Now they're virtualized and we can spin 'em up, let the techs do their job for a couple of days, then spin them back down until next time. We just installed another megaserver, and I think we only have five physical "single-use" servers left. I think there are two that will always have dedicated hardware (licensing issues), but I imagine that within a year that's all that will be left. I already have dibs on one of the old racks...
Do any of the Hondas do this? I had a Civic hybrid, and I think the only way to charge the battery was via the electric motor; i.e., the wheels had to be turning. That was a 2004 model, I'm sure they're on their third or fourth generation of hybrid systems by now. Anyone know?
a typical house running electric heat or A/C and a fully electric kitchen.
I'm sure if your power's out you're not going to be blasting the A/C or making Thanksgiving dinner. You'll crank the thermostat to the edge of comfortable, put on some shorts or a sweater (as appropriate) and live off of sandwiches and cereal for a couple of days. Likewise, you won't be playing video games in 5.1 surround sound on the 65" plasma, or spending an hour in the shower every morning. It's just common sense.
That, or it was built better. I had a couple of old receivers from the early- to mid-80s, and they both developed grungy pots and eventually died when (I assume) the electrolytics faded. Nothing you couldn't fix, but they didn't offer anything I couldn't get new for a reasonable price. OTOH, I do have an old Fisher 400 that still works (and would be worth the money to fix if it didn't). I also have a Carver integrated amp from the early 90s that's still pulling its weight, but I'm wondering now how much longer it's going to last.
Actually, tubes weren't that common even as far back as 30 years ago. I started college in 1980 and almost nobody had any tube gear (except my roommate, who had a McIntosh pre-amp). Interestingly, my old Carver amp from that era sounds better than most of the stuff I hear today too.
As you add more and more complexity to a device there are power drains and voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issues to be worked out.
Not to disagree, but I think the problem is almost exactly the opposite. Audio devices are being simplified in an effort to control cost, and a lot of the components that mitigate sonic issues (e.g., filter caps) are being eliminated or minimized to the point of uselessness. Nobody who cares about music would want a Class D amp, but they're incredibly popular (or at least prevalent) because they're cheap and to most people today they're "good enough".
Handling-wise, the closer the engine is to the center of the vehicle, the better.
Depends on what kind of handling you like. Cars like my 944 have a higher polar moment of inertia, so they turn in slower but it's easier to provoke a little oversteer if you need it. Mid-engine cars turn in faster, but it's pretty difficult to get them to oversteer in a useful fashion. At least, we were never able to really swing my friend's MR-2 around like that, while neither of us had any problem doing it in the Porsche.
Understeering? A rear-engine car? Not likely. Maybe you're thinking of the New Beetle? Rear-engine cars oversteer. Especially if you lift off the gas or tap the brakes in a corner when you're carrying any speed. This accident sounds more like a tie rod or other steering-related failure to me.
I had the chance to play with a couple of 9845s in college in the early 80s, and they were definitely superior to the original PC. Their tape drives might have been a bit slower, but not enough to make a difference (maybe 2s to save a file vs. 1s). And their display and graphics library were far superior, not to mention the fact that the ones I used had a bit-mapped thermal printer that could print anything on the display. To get anything comparable on a PC was practically impossible ($-wise) until the Epson came out with the MX-80 (which still couldn't print to the same resolution as the 9845-B).
Heh. That's the way it was up until recently. Every plane still had a magnetic compass and an artificial horizon and a couple of other basic instruments that were fairly crude and simple and ALWAYS WORKED. Now airliners all have "glass cockpits" with virtual instruments. Which are much more accurate and can be scaled and highlighted and are almost always better than the old ones. Except when they fail, which they can now do for a couple of hundred reasons instead of just two or three.
Gotta go, those damn kids are on my runway again...
NYC is so far away from Dallas it might as well be in another country.
Translation: NYC isn't in Texas, therefore it's in another country.
Dallas, Houston and Chicago are huge, international cities.
Unlike, of course, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or San Francisco. What's going to be the second wave of the rollout --- Des Moines, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Cleveland?
I really liked the old "Roentgen" unit, it's so much easier to remember:
I'd be happy if they could just be consistent. I can't tell you how confused most of the people in my area were when listening to the early reports. If you aren't listening closely and don't routinely work with SI units, it's very easy to miss the fact that one report gives radiation levels in microSieverts, and the other in milliSieverts. And especially when these reports get passed on by mainstream media who may miss (or misread) the units, you wind up with misleading information (like people thinking things are getting better because the radiation levels are now 0.5 mSv/h, whereas before they were 300 uSv/h). It'd be nice if everyone could agree to publicize normalized results using uSv/h, even if it leads to non-standard figures like 3500 uSv/h.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if I want it on my eyeglasses?
Interesting. I learned C, Unix and RDBMSes back in the early 80s. I only use C at home for hobby projects, but I still use Unix and SQL professionally. I learned Java back around the turn of the century and it's still paying my mortgage. Franky, I'm disappointed I can't seem to find any new positions that use any of the technologies I've learned lately (like OSGi, SOA or NoSQL databases). It's different if you're a front-end guy, I guess — I have seen some places looking for jQuery and HTML5 experience, but there's nearly as many that still want Struts or MFC. Hell, there are still shops that haven't migrated to Java 6 yet, and that's five years old!
If you're obsessed with the latest shiny, then yeah you'll probably only get two years out of it. I know all the extJS guys I work with moved to Silverlight, and they're bitching that MS has abandoned it so now they'll all have to learn HTML5...
That might work for the Best Buy crowd, but don't forget that HP's real target market is the business sector. There, you really do need separate sub-brands (can't have secretaries using the same machines as the sales guys, y'know!) Dell does a decent job with this (e.g. their "Vostro", "Latitude" and "Precision" lines).
I dunno, I'm with the OP on this one. Both the Fire and the iPod are small enough to carry together (especially when you carry a purse or bag all the time anyway), and not everyone wants to have every possible function integrated into one device. I have an iPhone, but I still carry my iPod because I don't want to run the battery in my phone dead listening to music. That, and I hate not being able to listen to something I want simply because my phone doesn't have enough space to hold the bulk of my music collection.
I ordered a Fire for my wife, all she really wants is an e-book reader with a web browser for e-mail, although I'm sure she'll find plenty of other uses for it once she gets it.
Heh, I think half the average consumers for this type of device would be satisfied with a tablet with two functions: a web browser, and Angry Birds. Bonus for a basic MP3 player. Bring that in for around US$125 and you've got a killer product.
those crappy Polaroid photos won't be around in 10 or 20 years
Which is a good thing, if you go to the kind of parties I used to. The last thing I need is crystal-clear shots of me engaged in "questionable" (or "indictable") activities. I always thought that was kind of the idea of Polaroids -- you can be sure that you have the only copy. None of this "Of course I'll never show anyone these pictures, they'll never leave my phone."
And this must be a new thing - Apple traditionally does not go seeking product-placement anywhere. They let the production company come to them, and even then they refuse any requests for money. They may provide some hardware, but no money.
Nope, they've been doing it longer than just about any other tech company. At least, that's what The Washington Post claimed back in 2006...
Apple has a whole branch of their marketing department dedicated to encouraging and supplying free Apple gear to production companies. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I've noticed that MacBooks always have the distinctive Apple logo, but everything else has some generic symbol or simply a blank spot on the lid where the logo used to be. I don't think I've ever seen a MacBook with its logo removed or covered.
Yep. We did some quick calculations a couple years ago when our service contracts came up for renewal and discovered that it would be cheaper to scrap a dozen of our oldest servers and just virtualize them on a new 16-core box with 64G of RAM. Since then, as machines have come off maintenance, we virt 'em up and host 'em on the megaserver. Worked especially well for several servers we kept around for support purposes -- they ran outdated software and were rarely needed. Now they're virtualized and we can spin 'em up, let the techs do their job for a couple of days, then spin them back down until next time. We just installed another megaserver, and I think we only have five physical "single-use" servers left. I think there are two that will always have dedicated hardware (licensing issues), but I imagine that within a year that's all that will be left. I already have dibs on one of the old racks...
HairyFeet's customer however, lost a load of work when their drive broke without warning.
HairyFeet stated the customer was a gamer. I doubt they had a lot of "work" on their machine.
Do any of the Hondas do this? I had a Civic hybrid, and I think the only way to charge the battery was via the electric motor; i.e., the wheels had to be turning. That was a 2004 model, I'm sure they're on their third or fourth generation of hybrid systems by now. Anyone know?
a typical house running electric heat or A/C and a fully electric kitchen.
I'm sure if your power's out you're not going to be blasting the A/C or making Thanksgiving dinner. You'll crank the thermostat to the edge of comfortable, put on some shorts or a sweater (as appropriate) and live off of sandwiches and cereal for a couple of days. Likewise, you won't be playing video games in 5.1 surround sound on the 65" plasma, or spending an hour in the shower every morning. It's just common sense.
That, or it was built better. I had a couple of old receivers from the early- to mid-80s, and they both developed grungy pots and eventually died when (I assume) the electrolytics faded. Nothing you couldn't fix, but they didn't offer anything I couldn't get new for a reasonable price. OTOH, I do have an old Fisher 400 that still works (and would be worth the money to fix if it didn't). I also have a Carver integrated amp from the early 90s that's still pulling its weight, but I'm wondering now how much longer it's going to last.
But with the badger, at least you can run Linux on it!
Actually, tubes weren't that common even as far back as 30 years ago. I started college in 1980 and almost nobody had any tube gear (except my roommate, who had a McIntosh pre-amp). Interestingly, my old Carver amp from that era sounds better than most of the stuff I hear today too.
As you add more and more complexity to a device there are power drains and voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issues to be worked out.
Not to disagree, but I think the problem is almost exactly the opposite. Audio devices are being simplified in an effort to control cost, and a lot of the components that mitigate sonic issues (e.g., filter caps) are being eliminated or minimized to the point of uselessness. Nobody who cares about music would want a Class D amp, but they're incredibly popular (or at least prevalent) because they're cheap and to most people today they're "good enough".
Handling-wise, the closer the engine is to the center of the vehicle, the better.
Depends on what kind of handling you like. Cars like my 944 have a higher polar moment of inertia, so they turn in slower but it's easier to provoke a little oversteer if you need it. Mid-engine cars turn in faster, but it's pretty difficult to get them to oversteer in a useful fashion. At least, we were never able to really swing my friend's MR-2 around like that, while neither of us had any problem doing it in the Porsche.
Understeering? A rear-engine car? Not likely. Maybe you're thinking of the New Beetle? Rear-engine cars oversteer. Especially if you lift off the gas or tap the brakes in a corner when you're carrying any speed. This accident sounds more like a tie rod or other steering-related failure to me.
I had the chance to play with a couple of 9845s in college in the early 80s, and they were definitely superior to the original PC. Their tape drives might have been a bit slower, but not enough to make a difference (maybe 2s to save a file vs. 1s). And their display and graphics library were far superior, not to mention the fact that the ones I used had a bit-mapped thermal printer that could print anything on the display. To get anything comparable on a PC was practically impossible ($-wise) until the Epson came out with the MX-80 (which still couldn't print to the same resolution as the 9845-B).
But...isn't Robotic Capital an employee-owned corporation?
Heh. That's the way it was up until recently. Every plane still had a magnetic compass and an artificial horizon and a couple of other basic instruments that were fairly crude and simple and ALWAYS WORKED. Now airliners all have "glass cockpits" with virtual instruments. Which are much more accurate and can be scaled and highlighted and are almost always better than the old ones. Except when they fail, which they can now do for a couple of hundred reasons instead of just two or three.
Gotta go, those damn kids are on my runway again...
I learned the word 'snaffled.'
I'm not even sure that they used it correctly. The common term over here is "snarfed". I think "snaffled" is a Brit thing.
NYC is so far away from Dallas it might as well be in another country.
Translation: NYC isn't in Texas, therefore it's in another country.
Dallas, Houston and Chicago are huge, international cities.
Unlike, of course, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or San Francisco. What's going to be the second wave of the rollout --- Des Moines, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Cleveland?
I really liked the old "Roentgen" unit, it's so much easier to remember:
I'd be happy if they could just be consistent. I can't tell you how confused most of the people in my area were when listening to the early reports. If you aren't listening closely and don't routinely work with SI units, it's very easy to miss the fact that one report gives radiation levels in microSieverts, and the other in milliSieverts. And especially when these reports get passed on by mainstream media who may miss (or misread) the units, you wind up with misleading information (like people thinking things are getting better because the radiation levels are now 0.5 mSv/h, whereas before they were 300 uSv/h). It'd be nice if everyone could agree to publicize normalized results using uSv/h, even if it leads to non-standard figures like 3500 uSv/h.