I second that notion. My primary computer at home is a powermac g5. Of course most of the time I'm using it for web surfing, email, instant messaging, managing digital music, and it is silent. I often make home dvds on it, write design docs and presentations, and occasionally do some C++ or Java programming for work. Some of the programming or home dvds can get the fans to sound occasionally, but it is rare enough to always surprise me. Of course maybe I just can't hear the g5 because of the blaring sound of P4 across the room...
Re:Won't the (free) markets sort this out?
on
SBC's VoIP End Run
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately there's very little about the home-telephone market that is free. One of the reasons that VOIP providers can charge so little is because they don't have to pay all the regulatory fees that everybody else does. A regulated market is the opposite of a free market. It's regulated because they have a government-endorsed monopoly.
Whoa, I'm not advocating EA-style work hours or anything like that. Let me explain better what I'm talking about.
Employee A is a programmer I manage who is good at what they do. I give him a task, and he gets it done on time. He writes quality codes and follows the architecture I design. He does what is asked, but no more. That is fine. He gets good evaluations for his work.
Employee B is another programmer I manage who is also good at what he does. He executes his tasks on time, writes quality code, follows architecture, etc. However, Employee B does more than just what is asked. He notices a flaw in an existing, functional piece of code, suggests an improvement to me, and executes the improvement on his own, without me telling him to do any of this. He helps other programmers with bugs, without being asked. He writes extra documentation on his implementations to help other programmers. Again, he does this without being asked. He volunteers to take on other people's tasks if they are behind, or become ill, or whatever.
So am I supposed to treat these two programmers the same? They both do their jobs, but one clearly has more initiative and is taking greater pride in what they do. He is doing more than "just do my job and leave." So of course he is going to be better rewarded than the other programmer. Now if this 1999, Employee A might receive a huge raise and Employee B might receive an even bigger raise. But during this past recession, Employee A would get a nominal raise, maybe every 18 months, and Employee B would get a more substaintial raise, and maybe more often. Actually, I've given Employee A a 5% raise over the last 18 months, and Employee B a 25% raise over that same time. If Employee A wants a 25%, then they would have to do more than "just my job and leave." This is not communism/union work!
Here's how things have changed over the past couple of years, at least for one Silicon Valley company that I used to work for...
Two years ago, the company laid off a few programmers, then six months later, gave everyone a 7% paycut so that they didn't have to lay off more programmers. People took the paycuts in stride.
A year ago, many of the people who took paycuts, left the company. The company hired people to replace them. Lots of qualified candidates applied for the open positions, but the company actually had to pay the new people more than the people who had left the company. It took about two weeks to fill the positions.
This past year, the company saw a huge upswing in business and needed to hire more people. The were two hiring phases, one in the spring and one in the fall. In the spring, there were lots of candidates again, but few qualified ones. The ones that were hired demanded a salary that was ~10% greater than people hired for the same position a year before. It took about six weeks to fill the positions. In the fall hiring, there were far fewer candidates and very few qualified ones. Salaries were still about 10% higher than the previous year. Not all positions have been filled after eight weeks.
maybe I'm an exception, but I'm at work to *work*, I want to get my work done and leave. I'm working so I can afford to have a life outside of work
Maybe there's a correlation between the above the statement and the next one?
I've been more or less in limbo in terms of pay. Despite adding considerably to my skillset, I've gotten extremely modest raises that have more or less kept up with inflation if you don't count in gas prices.
I've managed employees who "just wanted to get their work done and leave" and I've managed employees who took great pride in not only their work, but the success of the company/project. I've tended to reward the latter more than the former.
Gotta call bullshit on this one. There is no "maximum" bitrate. You can go as high as you want, and get it extremely close to beig lossless. A lot of people (maybe even Apple?) claim that a 128 kbps AAC file sounds "as good" as a 256 kbps MP3, but I don't know if there's any factual basis for this. And all MP3s are not created equal. Not only can using VBR make a big difference, but the encoding algorithm itself can make for noticeable differences, especially at lower bitrates. Listen to equal bitrate MP3 rips using Real player and Lame. Very big difference, in my opinion (this is totally subjective, though I would suspect there would be a way to quantify these differences since they are so significant.)
Sometimes data flow is necessary such as in the example you give. However, that does not mean that the only way to solve such a problem is a procedural solution. There are object oriented solutions to such a problem as well.
The key concept is encapsulation. If you expose your attribute (price) to the whole world, then an unlimited number of clients can couple themselves to this, creating brittle code. So use a
Builder pattern . Define an interface for exporting information about your Item object. For something like a Cart, define an interface for importing information (building) a Cart. Create a concrete class(es) that implements these interfaces.
Notice that I'm not writing code here, I am designing. To most programmers (myself included!) that kind of statement seems pompous, but there really is a big difference in these two difficult tasks. This may also seem like too much work, too difficult, etc. It is definitely not the easiest/quickest way to solve the immediate problem. That's not the point of object oriented programming. The point is that it makes for code that is more robust and easier to maintain.
Re:Getters/setters bad?
on
Holub on Patterns
·
· Score: 1, Informative
By using get/set all the time, you can add the new functionality with affecting other code.
Actually by having accessors and then using them in other parts of your code you will have to refactor tons of code anytime the data behind the accessors changes. If you have other objects that need to manipulate data from another object ("data object"), then your these manipulations should be done by the "data object." If that's not possible (like your the manipulation needs data from multiple objects) then your design is flawed and you need to encapsulate the data better.
Re:Getters/setters bad?
on
Holub on Patterns
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Your "data object" is not an object at all. Read the most basic
definition. Your "data object" is exactly what Holub is talking about as being "evil." Your "data object" is a struct, and you are being procedural, not object oriented. The whole point of OO is to combine these two things into an object. Accessors violate this paradigm. In a good OO system, other objects never ask for information about other objects, they simply ask the other object to perform tasks.
Gotta disagree with you on this. I used to think the UI on Firefox/OSX sucked, but since 0.8 I think it's pretty good. That was *always* the only thing Safari had going for it over Firefox. Safari's vaunted rendering speed is actually pretty bad. Try out a
Javascript speed test or an
image rendering speed test to see for yourself. Safari is significantly slower than Firefox. It does seem to handle image layering manipulation better, but that is it. Everything else is much faster in Firefox. Of course I should point out that Opera (especially the 7.6 beta) is much faster than either.
How you want to dish out blame to Carter, LBJ, and the like, and give credit to Reagan, all based on "this happened when this guy was in office", then you have to use the same principle even when it doesn't support your case (see The Bushes.) How much does a particular president's policies influence the economy at the time of those policies? That's a good question. I don't know the answer, and it could very well be "not much." But anybody can hand-pick data like you (and the guy you were responding to) were doing, and make a case for anything.
Hey let's not forget the recession that came after Reagan and the sky-high interest rates created by a huge national deficit. The there was that Clinton guy who raised income taxes to drive down the debt (and thus interest rates) and lowered capital gains taxes to increase investment. That went pretty well, don't you think?
Haven't I been talking about this for a long time? This could be a great thing, if it is sustainable. The key is there being enough technically skilled people in middle America. Working with colleges could work. It will be interesting to see. If there is a good enough supply of skilled workers in these areas, then the economics will do the rest. The only problem could be keeping people in these areas. Just as jobs might flow there, the skilled workers might flow to places that pay better. Nonetheless, having more educated, skilled people in middle America could be a really good thing.
Have you heard of a place called Silicon Valley? Here, the companies are spread out, with business parks mixed in with subdevelopments and strip malls. We've got Apple in Cupertino, Google and Yahoo in Mountain View, AMD in Sunnyvale, Oracle in Redwood Shores, just to name a few. There is a lot of public transit, but it is a complete alternative to using a car. No driving to a train station then riding it into town. Of course houses are crazy expensive in the area, but that's another topic. Maybe other places will follow the trend of Silicon Valley, like in Virginia and New Jersey.
You have an excellent point. I have had a DirecTV/TiVo for several years and I have an HDTV, and thus I am screwed. My only HD option costs $800+. Plus I think I might have to replace my dual-lnb dish as well. Well of course I have choices, but suddenly there is a huge premium. And just to make things worse,
the NFL has re-signed with DirecTV. Time to look on eBay...
you seem to assume that "Free Market > Socialism, therefore if a benefit is derived from a Socialist system, it must be inferior to the one derived from the Free Market system, even if that is demonstratably false.
Quite to the contrary. I (unlike you and the article's author) am not passing judgement, merely stating the reason for the difference. I am not saying one way is better than the other, just explaining the reason for the difference since the reason is NOT (purely) a function of techniological advancement.
Now, to refute your socialism comment, consider: we have social public transportation in the US (with the admitted exception of taxis, but then those companies are private in China too, surprise, surprise) and yet we have no public transport cards, though it would be easy to do and convenient to boot (at least, there are none in Silicon Valley, but I can't speak for the rest of the US)
Here you show your ignorace of history and economic theory. The reason your flash pass does not work on Caltrain is because Caltrain and your bus are not run by the same organization. We have a history in America of giving power and control to local government, not ruling with a central government. So the state of California provides Caltrain, but not your bus. That is provided by your county (either San Mateo or Santa Clara depending on where you live.) Of course a place like Hong Kong would have a unified system since it is a single municipality. And of course China would have a unified system, because everything is run by a central government.
Miss Wong is clearly comparing China to Canada. Her article failed to impress me with China, just made me glad I'm in Silicon Valley, not in Canada. Let's take a look at her list :
1. Cellphones
My cellphone works in elevators, subways, and parking garages too. The no cell phones in hospitals is a safety issue, not an issue of technology. And doctors here break the rule all the time, too. The docotor who delivered my son got a call from his wife (she was going to Taco Bell and wanted to know if he wanted anything) right in the middle of delivery.
2. Informative stop lights
As others have alrady pointed out, this is not the safest thing to do for cars. Most crosswalks where I live do the same thing, except they actually count down the number of seconds (how novel.)
3. Transit debit cards
This is a trivial (though very convenient) "innovation." It's really a product of government. When you have a centralized government that controls everything, you can standardize everything. When you have more freedoms, then different municipalities will do things differently.
4. Adult playgrounds
This is just another product of socialization, and has nothing to do with technologies.
5. Anti-theft slipcovers
A useful innovation when you have problems with crime.
6. Daily banking
My bank is open six days a week. If people demanded it be open seven, it would be open seven so that it could do more business and make more money. This has nothing to do with technology, and is simply an example of free people choosing how businesses operate via a free market vs. a government mandating how businesses operate.
7. Wireless service bells
This has little to do with technology and is much more a cultural issues. This would NOT be desirable at most upscale resteraunts in the west, where good service is expected and rewarded. Now it might be desireable at low-end resteraunts, but in the west, you get what you pay for.
8. Parking data
This is interesting. Do you really need to know how many empty spots there are? Isn't it really just a boolean, i.e. there is at least one empty spot or there are no empty spots? Any paid parking lot is going to keep track of this, and is also going to advertise so that you can find it. So I guess this is talking about free lots. Again it's a function of a free market vs. socialism.
9. Computer seating maps
When I buy tickets to a SF Giants game, I have this exact kind of technology. I don't have this for movies, but movie theaters here are not assigned seating.
10. Free hemming
Again, not technology, but cultural.
I've had my iPod since 2001 and have often used to transfer songs. It's really quite simple. Just open up a Terminal (on OSX) or Cygwin (on Windows) and browse to your iPod (usually something like/Volumes/"My iPod" or/cygdrive/f.) Then it's just one line :
find . -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {}/temp_folder \;
That will copy all the MP3 files to some temporary place. Then just drop the folder on iTunes (make sure you have the "let iTunes keep your music organized" option turned on) and it will copy everything nice and neatly to your music library.
Not sure why you would expect
The Second Best Science & Technology School to be The Most Connected. I wasn't surprised that The Best Science & Technology School wasn't at the top of this list -- just look at some of the criteria. Online classes (good schools have small classes with lots of student/teacher interatction)? Online registration (students at good schools have advisors who talk to them about what classes they are going to take) ? Require students to own a computer? These aren't the kind of things that I would expect out of a Top Two school.
Slashdot Mirror
I second that notion. My primary computer at home is a powermac g5. Of course most of the time I'm using it for web surfing, email, instant messaging, managing digital music, and it is silent. I often make home dvds on it, write design docs and presentations, and occasionally do some C++ or Java programming for work. Some of the programming or home dvds can get the fans to sound occasionally, but it is rare enough to always surprise me. Of course maybe I just can't hear the g5 because of the blaring sound of P4 across the room...
Unfortunately there's very little about the home-telephone market that is free. One of the reasons that VOIP providers can charge so little is because they don't have to pay all the regulatory fees that everybody else does. A regulated market is the opposite of a free market. It's regulated because they have a government-endorsed monopoly.
Whoa, I'm not advocating EA-style work hours or anything like that. Let me explain better what I'm talking about.
Employee A is a programmer I manage who is good at what they do. I give him a task, and he gets it done on time. He writes quality codes and follows the architecture I design. He does what is asked, but no more. That is fine. He gets good evaluations for his work.
Employee B is another programmer I manage who is also good at what he does. He executes his tasks on time, writes quality code, follows architecture, etc. However, Employee B does more than just what is asked. He notices a flaw in an existing, functional piece of code, suggests an improvement to me, and executes the improvement on his own, without me telling him to do any of this. He helps other programmers with bugs, without being asked. He writes extra documentation on his implementations to help other programmers. Again, he does this without being asked. He volunteers to take on other people's tasks if they are behind, or become ill, or whatever.
So am I supposed to treat these two programmers the same? They both do their jobs, but one clearly has more initiative and is taking greater pride in what they do. He is doing more than "just do my job and leave." So of course he is going to be better rewarded than the other programmer. Now if this 1999, Employee A might receive a huge raise and Employee B might receive an even bigger raise. But during this past recession, Employee A would get a nominal raise, maybe every 18 months, and Employee B would get a more substaintial raise, and maybe more often. Actually, I've given Employee A a 5% raise over the last 18 months, and Employee B a 25% raise over that same time. If Employee A wants a 25%, then they would have to do more than "just my job and leave." This is not communism/union work!
Here's how things have changed over the past couple of years, at least for one Silicon Valley company that I used to work for...
Two years ago, the company laid off a few programmers, then six months later, gave everyone a 7% paycut so that they didn't have to lay off more programmers. People took the paycuts in stride.
A year ago, many of the people who took paycuts, left the company. The company hired people to replace them. Lots of qualified candidates applied for the open positions, but the company actually had to pay the new people more than the people who had left the company. It took about two weeks to fill the positions.
This past year, the company saw a huge upswing in business and needed to hire more people. The were two hiring phases, one in the spring and one in the fall. In the spring, there were lots of candidates again, but few qualified ones. The ones that were hired demanded a salary that was ~10% greater than people hired for the same position a year before. It took about six weeks to fill the positions. In the fall hiring, there were far fewer candidates and very few qualified ones. Salaries were still about 10% higher than the previous year. Not all positions have been filled after eight weeks.
Sometimes data flow is necessary such as in the example you give. However, that does not mean that the only way to solve such a problem is a procedural solution. There are object oriented solutions to such a problem as well.
The key concept is encapsulation. If you expose your attribute (price) to the whole world, then an unlimited number of clients can couple themselves to this, creating brittle code. So use a Builder pattern . Define an interface for exporting information about your Item object. For something like a Cart, define an interface for importing information (building) a Cart. Create a concrete class(es) that implements these interfaces.
Notice that I'm not writing code here, I am designing. To most programmers (myself included!) that kind of statement seems pompous, but there really is a big difference in these two difficult tasks. This may also seem like too much work, too difficult, etc. It is definitely not the easiest/quickest way to solve the immediate problem. That's not the point of object oriented programming. The point is that it makes for code that is more robust and easier to maintain.
Your "data object" is not an object at all. Read the most basic definition. Your "data object" is exactly what Holub is talking about as being "evil." Your "data object" is a struct, and you are being procedural, not object oriented. The whole point of OO is to combine these two things into an object. Accessors violate this paradigm. In a good OO system, other objects never ask for information about other objects, they simply ask the other object to perform tasks.
Gotta disagree with you on this. I used to think the UI on Firefox/OSX sucked, but since 0.8 I think it's pretty good. That was *always* the only thing Safari had going for it over Firefox. Safari's vaunted rendering speed is actually pretty bad. Try out a Javascript speed test or an image rendering speed test to see for yourself. Safari is significantly slower than Firefox. It does seem to handle image layering manipulation better, but that is it. Everything else is much faster in Firefox. Of course I should point out that Opera (especially the 7.6 beta) is much faster than either.
How you want to dish out blame to Carter, LBJ, and the like, and give credit to Reagan, all based on "this happened when this guy was in office", then you have to use the same principle even when it doesn't support your case (see The Bushes.) How much does a particular president's policies influence the economy at the time of those policies? That's a good question. I don't know the answer, and it could very well be "not much." But anybody can hand-pick data like you (and the guy you were responding to) were doing, and make a case for anything.
Ch-ching. If people understood common logical fallacies ... there would be a lot less posting on here!
Hey let's not forget the recession that came after Reagan and the sky-high interest rates created by a huge national deficit. The there was that Clinton guy who raised income taxes to drive down the debt (and thus interest rates) and lowered capital gains taxes to increase investment. That went pretty well, don't you think?
Haven't I been talking about this for a long time? This could be a great thing, if it is sustainable. The key is there being enough technically skilled people in middle America. Working with colleges could work. It will be interesting to see. If there is a good enough supply of skilled workers in these areas, then the economics will do the rest. The only problem could be keeping people in these areas. Just as jobs might flow there, the skilled workers might flow to places that pay better. Nonetheless, having more educated, skilled people in middle America could be a really good thing.
Have you heard of a place called Silicon Valley? Here, the companies are spread out, with business parks mixed in with subdevelopments and strip malls. We've got Apple in Cupertino, Google and Yahoo in Mountain View, AMD in Sunnyvale, Oracle in Redwood Shores, just to name a few. There is a lot of public transit, but it is a complete alternative to using a car. No driving to a train station then riding it into town. Of course houses are crazy expensive in the area, but that's another topic. Maybe other places will follow the trend of Silicon Valley, like in Virginia and New Jersey.
That should be litigious bastards and check out the RIAA at #8.
Except for features such as "hassle free" and "easy to use"...
You have an excellent point. I have had a DirecTV/TiVo for several years and I have an HDTV, and thus I am screwed. My only HD option costs $800+. Plus I think I might have to replace my dual-lnb dish as well. Well of course I have choices, but suddenly there is a huge premium. And just to make things worse, the NFL has re-signed with DirecTV. Time to look on eBay...
Here you show your ignorace of history and economic theory. The reason your flash pass does not work on Caltrain is because Caltrain and your bus are not run by the same organization. We have a history in America of giving power and control to local government, not ruling with a central government. So the state of California provides Caltrain, but not your bus. That is provided by your county (either San Mateo or Santa Clara depending on where you live.) Of course a place like Hong Kong would have a unified system since it is a single municipality. And of course China would have a unified system, because everything is run by a central government.
Miss Wong is clearly comparing China to Canada. Her article failed to impress me with China, just made me glad I'm in Silicon Valley, not in Canada. Let's take a look at her list :
1. Cellphones
My cellphone works in elevators, subways, and parking garages too. The no cell phones in hospitals is a safety issue, not an issue of technology. And doctors here break the rule all the time, too. The docotor who delivered my son got a call from his wife (she was going to Taco Bell and wanted to know if he wanted anything) right in the middle of delivery.
2. Informative stop lights
As others have alrady pointed out, this is not the safest thing to do for cars. Most crosswalks where I live do the same thing, except they actually count down the number of seconds (how novel.)
3. Transit debit cards
This is a trivial (though very convenient) "innovation." It's really a product of government. When you have a centralized government that controls everything, you can standardize everything. When you have more freedoms, then different municipalities will do things differently.
4. Adult playgrounds
This is just another product of socialization, and has nothing to do with technologies.
5. Anti-theft slipcovers
A useful innovation when you have problems with crime.
6. Daily banking
My bank is open six days a week. If people demanded it be open seven, it would be open seven so that it could do more business and make more money. This has nothing to do with technology, and is simply an example of free people choosing how businesses operate via a free market vs. a government mandating how businesses operate.
7. Wireless service bells
This has little to do with technology and is much more a cultural issues. This would NOT be desirable at most upscale resteraunts in the west, where good service is expected and rewarded. Now it might be desireable at low-end resteraunts, but in the west, you get what you pay for.
8. Parking data
This is interesting. Do you really need to know how many empty spots there are? Isn't it really just a boolean, i.e. there is at least one empty spot or there are no empty spots? Any paid parking lot is going to keep track of this, and is also going to advertise so that you can find it. So I guess this is talking about free lots. Again it's a function of a free market vs. socialism.
9. Computer seating maps
When I buy tickets to a SF Giants game, I have this exact kind of technology. I don't have this for movies, but movie theaters here are not assigned seating.
10. Free hemming
Again, not technology, but cultural.
I've had my iPod since 2001 and have often used to transfer songs. It's really quite simple. Just open up a Terminal (on OSX) or Cygwin (on Windows) and browse to your iPod (usually something like /Volumes/"My iPod" or /cygdrive/f.) Then it's just one line :
/temp_folder \;
find . -name "*.mp3" -exec cp {}
That will copy all the MP3 files to some temporary place. Then just drop the folder on iTunes (make sure you have the "let iTunes keep your music organized" option turned on) and it will copy everything nice and neatly to your music library.
Not sure why you would expect The Second Best Science & Technology School to be The Most Connected. I wasn't surprised that The Best Science & Technology School wasn't at the top of this list -- just look at some of the criteria. Online classes (good schools have small classes with lots of student/teacher interatction)? Online registration (students at good schools have advisors who talk to them about what classes they are going to take) ? Require students to own a computer? These aren't the kind of things that I would expect out of a Top Two school.