How do you know the source is safe without analyzing the code line by line?
Re:2 things keeping market share down
on
G5s Start Shipping
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· Score: 1
Everytime I build a new PC I wind up not only salvaging parts from older PCs (floppy drives, CD drives primarily) and I spend about $1800 making the box. And I have to put it all together.
Yes, I price around and I'm not building ultra cheap, ultra low performance boxes. I do not build the highest end possible, since that's not where the price/performance sweet spot is. But I do shoot for good performance.
I don't get where people say PCs are cheaper when in my experience Macs and PCs are priced similarly. The only PCs that are cheaper than macs are the 700 Mhz Celeron, 64mb, 4mb video card type systems for $500. Those boxes are obsolete before you take them out of the box!
Macs have changed alot since 1984. Whenever I hear a PC user say Macs are slow, they are basing this on a comparison of their 2GHz PC at home and the crusty IIci in the school's Career Center. That IIci is 15 years old!
Macs aren't more expensive than PCs, UNLESS you want the absolute cheapest possible PC you can get. You won't get a Mac for $499.00. But you can get alot of Mac for $999 or even less. Mac laptops are often a couple hundred dollars less than comparable PC laptops. And Mac desktops and tower units are competitively priced. The only difference is that Apple doesn't make the ultra cheap, bottom line computers. Most people wouldn't be happy with a KMart special anyways (at least I wouldn't).
Macs have networked over TCP by default for 5 years. Macs have supported TCP/IP networking for over 10 years. The current Macs running OS X use standard Unix networking technologies. It's really easy to set up and configure, even on Wi-Fi. As a matter of fact, it's easier to set up than a PC for networking.
AppleTalk was great in the early days, easy to set up and all, but once networks went corporate, it's chattiness didn't make friends with IT. AppleTalk runs OVER TCP/IP now and it's not actively chatty. The old method still works (for printers and such), but that isn't passed by most routers or bridges anyways, limiting that traffic to the local network segment. I use Gimp-Print to print over TCP/IP on Wi-Fi since my WAP doesn't bridge AppleTalk. Works great.
Essentially what you get with Mac OS X is two operating systems. You can fire up Terminal and do all the Unix stuff, but you've also got a rich GUI there as well. Some things are easier to do in the GUI, and sometimes you want to reach for the power of some classic unix commands. Mac OS X lets you do both, without the clunkiness of X.
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job and am devoutly multi-platform. I think every IT department should install a Mac in their office and use it. People fear the unknown, but what they know is less scary. Any good IT person should strive to learn as much about as many platforms as possible. It makes you more valuable. Anyone that knows only Windows is only limiting themselves in my book. Windows and Unix is better and Windows, Unix, Mac is even better.
It's stupid for companies to force Windows on people that use Macs and are productive. Let the accounting folks use PCs and let the Art Dept use their Macs. And the IT guys can use Linux boxes or whatever they want. The machines chosen should be whatever the people using them can be most productive with, not whatever is cheapest or whatever is most convenient for the IT guys. Use the right tool for each job and hire the appropriately skilled IT personnel to support that.
It's possible one of the creditors snapped it up during the fire sales held by the court after the company folded.
That's what happened to the code for a company I worked for. This big company no one's heard of was going to invest, reneged, we folded, and they swooped in. Instead of a license, they got it all, and on the cheap, too. However, they are doing NOTHING with it, which is sad as end users would like to Open Source it or at least support some company to bring it back to life.
I'd recommend contacting the former company's CFO if you can. They are usually in the loop on what happened to a company's assets.
You're going to need a lawyer most likely if you manage to find out who owns it, but you probably don't need a lawyer to find the owner.
Just install switches instead of hubs. Kiss CSMA/CD collision issues goodbye with a dedicated switch port for every system/device.
In days past, it was cost prohibitive to do this, but with cheap switches these days, why not? I run a switched net at home, not that I really need to, but if I happen to be doing a 2 gig file copy from one box to another, at least I can surf the net without any slowdowns.
There is precedent... A burglar broken into someone's house, injured themselves some how on a kitchen knife, sued the owner of the house and won.
Kids climing the fence to swim and drowning, many cases of this have been to court and won.
Just because it is private property doesn't make you immune from legal responsibility. In my opinion it SHOULD in most cases, but that's not the law in most states.
You mean we're supposed to READ the article before replying to the thread here? How are we supposed to whore up karma points that way? Only Evelyn Wood speed readers will have karma to spare! Screw that!
Seriously, though... 250kbps is better than my upstream on my DSL line. With a 95ft range more or less, that covers your entire house. This could be VERY useful.
Bluetooth is only 4x the speed, but IIRC much shorter range. This sounds like some great technology that may well become ubiquitous (god knows if I spelled THAT right) in the not too distant future.
It's good to see that there are people that are never satisfied with what's available and are always looking for alternatives. I think in many cases I'd give up 4x speed for increased range, lower cost and significantly longer battery life.
You're not going to dogfight your way out of a missile on your ass without SIGNIFICANT advance warning. And you don't get that with rebooting systems. Murphy's Law says your system will need to reboot at the worse possible time (with a bogey on your tail).
Zero defect can and is done on complex projects.
"write code for multiple distributed computers on a MIL-STD-1553B bus that never crashes even when all environmental parameters are exceeded"
Sounds like the spec is inadequate for the task at hand if the environmental parameters are being EXCEEDED. But then, I think that was just a line of bullshit you spewed out to sound like you knew what you were talking about (and clearly don't).
Never worked on an IM client, myself. I work on supercomputers. Not zero tolerance, to be sure, but at least I'm familiar with the basics of the zero tolerance processes.
It's all a matter of committment. If they set the goal for no in-flight rebooting, they could achieve it. The problem is they are willing to accept mediocrity.
Re:It may be normal...
on
In-Flight Reboot?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm a Senior QA Engineer by trade, having worked at a couple major names in the valley, several startups and a few dot coms.
You're just used to not being given enough time to do your job really well. Everything in the industry is rush, rush, rush these days. And the end products show that. I don't blame you or fellow engineers, I blame senior management for all the rush jobs.
To do zero defect development requires alot more design time, alot more coding time and massively longer test cycles. It's usually cost prohibitive for most companies, but for a $220 million fighter and the life of the pilot I think the extra time and costs are justified. But then, I'm not a bean counter making the decisions.
for flight systems to reboot 'on the fly' but I consider that unacceptable for mission critical systems.
It's the mentality that feels that 'good enough' is good enough that brings us this type of warm and comfy software.
Good enough isn't. Stable code can be written. It merely takes talented engineers, design time to conceptualize and architech the product up front before coding it and giving QA what they need to test and committment to FIXING the issues that QA identifies. It's not the cheapest or fastest way to deliver a product, but if I want cheap and fast I'll go to Taco Bell, not a jet fighter.
Given how expensive these planes are, does it make sense to go cheap on the software and risk crashing not only the software but the multi million/billion dollar plane too?
I just set my target for unity gain no matter what I'm recording. That way it's as clean as you can get given the source material.
What annoys me is the poor audio engineering in movies and DVDs today. I have fine hearing, but I often have to turn on the subtitles because if I turn up to hear alot of the dialog, other sections of the movie will fry the voice coils on my speakers. I like dynamic range and all, but there's such a thing as a signal that is too low.
First, quit saying "*nix." It isn't cute or funny. If you mean UNIX, say it.
Well, technically the term UNIX doesn't include Linux. The * is used to include that, since for most purposes, you can lump them all together. It's not meant to be cute or funny, it's meant to be inclusive and accurate.
The Go To Server function has been able to find local servers since before Apple implemented Rendezvous.
With all the red tape, it's amazing anything ever gets done these days. It took them a year to bring OJ to freaking trial for god's sake. I can tell you that if I was the accused in that case I'd have been on trail within 90 days AND I'd have been convicted (assuming identical circumstances - we ALL know OJ was guilty as sin).
I'm rather sick of hearing about SCO's whining bullshit case. It's all trumped up garbage and I really wish someone would just kick the shit out of them and get this over with. Maybe IBM is ready to do that, I dunno.
Perhaps the only way is to put Linus Torvalds and SCO's CEO in a ring and let em duke it out. Give them 90 days to prepare.
And the Open Souce community can fund martial arts courses for Linus and SCO's side can struggle to fund free boxing classes at the Y for him. 8)
Apple doesnt' even really use AppleTalk anymore. It uses AFP over TPC, which is the AppleTalk Filing Protocol over TCP.
There is minimal support for this on *nix, but good luck getting it configured and working well.
*nix really needs some kind of GUI client for AFP/TCP much like the Go To Server window in OS X. That is, something that scans the LAN for servers as well as allows direct IP entry of the server if you know it.
NFS sure is convenient but it's a security nightmare and no sysadmin worth his pay will let you set up and use NFS on a network.
I'm no Windows fan, but let's face it, getting rid of the Windows boxes/network is not an acceptable solution to the majority of the world. Windows is there, running, and working well enough for them to not seriously consider migration at this point or they WOULD be migrating.
So any OS needs to work WITH Windows. Of course, to play fair, Windows should work will WITH others, too. The general demeanor is that SMB networking isn't proprietary. It is, very much so. The only OS that uses it natively is Windows and the only reason someone would want to use it is to work WITH Windows boxes. SMB as a general networking technology sucks. With absolutely no physical changes what is shown in Network Neighborhood varies at the whim of the OS and... Bill Gates? The box is there, the box is gone? It's online and can be reached by \\servername, but not in the neighborhood? What's up with that?
What we REALLY need is a platform agnostic networking solution that works well, is fast, is reliable and works the same everywhere.
If sending up a Shuttle to re-establish a fresh orbit for Hubble would be cheaper than building a new and improved Hubble and launching it?
Not that 're-deployment' would be easy, mind you, but unless there's some kind of fuel issue, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible (bearing in mind I'm far from an expert on the subject).
On one hand, it would develop skills for astronauts that would be needed on the Space Stations, on the other, it's not cheap and doesn't provide advancement in deployed equipment.
Then again, maybe in 50 years, retrofitting sattelites for technology upgrades by Space Station personnel might become a regular thing.
"Gotta do an EVA to install an upgrade on the Hubble, back in about half an hour. Want me to pick up anything while I'm out?"
Well, if you refuse to pay for anything, then you need to:
Return your computer to the store, you paid for it. Empty your fridge and dump all your food, you paid for it. Toss your fridge, you or someone paid for THAT. Move out of your house/apartment, you pay for that.
Slashdot Mirror
I only know about 2 people that use MSN anyways and I hated having to make an account just to IM them.
I guess it's time to send them a message saying I'll no longer be using Messenger and that they can get me on ICQ or AIM.
This will also remove the one reason I've been reluctant to try iChat A/V (no MSN support).
You can use GAIM on OSX, but you have to fire up X11 (can DL from Apple's site).
The drawback: an extra 80 megs of RAM for X.
Great if you want to use alot of X based apps, but if you only want to use one or two...
I use Proteus in OS X. It's not as nice as GAIM, but I save alot of RAM.
How do you know the source is safe without analyzing the code line by line?
Everytime I build a new PC I wind up not only salvaging parts from older PCs (floppy drives, CD drives primarily) and I spend about $1800 making the box. And I have to put it all together.
Yes, I price around and I'm not building ultra cheap, ultra low performance boxes. I do not build the highest end possible, since that's not where the price/performance sweet spot is. But I do shoot for good performance.
I don't get where people say PCs are cheaper when in my experience Macs and PCs are priced similarly. The only PCs that are cheaper than macs are the 700 Mhz Celeron, 64mb, 4mb video card type systems for $500. Those boxes are obsolete before you take them out of the box!
Macs have changed alot since 1984. Whenever I hear a PC user say Macs are slow, they are basing this on a comparison of their 2GHz PC at home and the crusty IIci in the school's Career Center. That IIci is 15 years old!
Macs aren't more expensive than PCs, UNLESS you want the absolute cheapest possible PC you can get. You won't get a Mac for $499.00. But you can get alot of Mac for $999 or even less. Mac laptops are often a couple hundred dollars less than comparable PC laptops. And Mac desktops and tower units are competitively priced. The only difference is that Apple doesn't make the ultra cheap, bottom line computers. Most people wouldn't be happy with a KMart special anyways (at least I wouldn't).
Macs have networked over TCP by default for 5 years. Macs have supported TCP/IP networking for over 10 years. The current Macs running OS X use standard Unix networking technologies. It's really easy to set up and configure, even on Wi-Fi. As a matter of fact, it's easier to set up than a PC for networking.
AppleTalk was great in the early days, easy to set up and all, but once networks went corporate, it's chattiness didn't make friends with IT. AppleTalk runs OVER TCP/IP now and it's not actively chatty. The old method still works (for printers and such), but that isn't passed by most routers or bridges anyways, limiting that traffic to the local network segment. I use Gimp-Print to print over TCP/IP on Wi-Fi since my WAP doesn't bridge AppleTalk. Works great.
Essentially what you get with Mac OS X is two operating systems. You can fire up Terminal and do all the Unix stuff, but you've also got a rich GUI there as well. Some things are easier to do in the GUI, and sometimes you want to reach for the power of some classic unix commands. Mac OS X lets you do both, without the clunkiness of X.
I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for the job and am devoutly multi-platform. I think every IT department should install a Mac in their office and use it. People fear the unknown, but what they know is less scary. Any good IT person should strive to learn as much about as many platforms as possible. It makes you more valuable. Anyone that knows only Windows is only limiting themselves in my book. Windows and Unix is better and Windows, Unix, Mac is even better.
It's stupid for companies to force Windows on people that use Macs and are productive. Let the accounting folks use PCs and let the Art Dept use their Macs. And the IT guys can use Linux boxes or whatever they want. The machines chosen should be whatever the people using them can be most productive with, not whatever is cheapest or whatever is most convenient for the IT guys. Use the right tool for each job and hire the appropriately skilled IT personnel to support that.
by the definition you posted, it's not a troll.
It was not a prank comment, nor was it intended to provoke ANY response.
But enough of the dickering over moderation. Posts are poorly moderated all the time.
A troll? Flamebait?
I think not.
I don't feel the craft looks very strong. Am I an aeronautics expert? No. Am I a Structural Engineer? No.
But would I ride in the plane? No.
And am I likely to be given the opportunity to? No.
I wished the team all the success. Just because I wouldn't feel comfortable flying in the craft does not make the post either a troll or a flame.
And I'll bet I'm not the only slashdotter that wouldn't feel comfortable riding in that plane.
No way in hell you'd catch me hitchin a ride on such a flimsy lookin rig. I can just see the wings getting ripped off by turbulence.
I wish them and all the contestants success, though.
in this case, 10 nm means 10 nautical miles, not 10 nanometers.
A nautical mile is slightly more than a mile ( I forget the specifics), but 10 nm is roughly 11 miles.
It's possible one of the creditors snapped it up during the fire sales held by the court after the company folded.
That's what happened to the code for a company I worked for. This big company no one's heard of was going to invest, reneged, we folded, and they swooped in. Instead of a license, they got it all, and on the cheap, too. However, they are doing NOTHING with it, which is sad as end users would like to Open Source it or at least support some company to bring it back to life.
I'd recommend contacting the former company's CFO if you can. They are usually in the loop on what happened to a company's assets.
You're going to need a lawyer most likely if you manage to find out who owns it, but you probably don't need a lawyer to find the owner.
They don't need to put you in stasis, they just need your blood.
However, it is leeching off humans for energy. The similarity is both stunning and macabre.
Now if they implement this and some dude in a long black coat rebels and starts kicking slow motion ass I'm gonna freak...
ah, I misread CSMA/AC as CSMA/CD... my bad.
Yes, that is inherently the problem with the 802.1x network and it's nothing new that network geeks haven't known from the get go.
Just install switches instead of hubs. Kiss CSMA/CD collision issues goodbye with a dedicated switch port for every system/device.
In days past, it was cost prohibitive to do this, but with cheap switches these days, why not? I run a switched net at home, not that I really need to, but if I happen to be doing a 2 gig file copy from one box to another, at least I can surf the net without any slowdowns.
Not so.
There is precedent... A burglar broken into someone's house, injured themselves some how on a kitchen knife, sued the owner of the house and won.
Kids climing the fence to swim and drowning, many cases of this have been to court and won.
Just because it is private property doesn't make you immune from legal responsibility. In my opinion it SHOULD in most cases, but that's not the law in most states.
Pretty slick, but you just KNOW some kid is gonna climb his fence, ride the coaster, fuck it up, hurt himself and sue the guy.
So... $5.5k + $1million lawyers fees + $5 million per kid that parents let run loose unattended.
You mean we're supposed to READ the article before replying to the thread here? How are we supposed to whore up karma points that way? Only Evelyn Wood speed readers will have karma to spare! Screw that!
Seriously, though... 250kbps is better than my upstream on my DSL line. With a 95ft range more or less, that covers your entire house. This could be VERY useful.
Bluetooth is only 4x the speed, but IIRC much shorter range. This sounds like some great technology that may well become ubiquitous (god knows if I spelled THAT right) in the not too distant future.
It's good to see that there are people that are never satisfied with what's available and are always looking for alternatives. I think in many cases I'd give up 4x speed for increased range, lower cost and significantly longer battery life.
You're not going to dogfight your way out of a missile on your ass without SIGNIFICANT advance warning. And you don't get that with rebooting systems. Murphy's Law says your system will need to reboot at the worse possible time (with a bogey on your tail).
Zero defect can and is done on complex projects.
"write code for multiple distributed computers on a MIL-STD-1553B bus that never crashes even when all environmental parameters are exceeded"
Sounds like the spec is inadequate for the task at hand if the environmental parameters are being EXCEEDED. But then, I think that was just a line of bullshit you spewed out to sound like you knew what you were talking about (and clearly don't).
Never worked on an IM client, myself. I work on supercomputers. Not zero tolerance, to be sure, but at least I'm familiar with the basics of the zero tolerance processes.
It's all a matter of committment. If they set the goal for no in-flight rebooting, they could achieve it. The problem is they are willing to accept mediocrity.
I'm a Senior QA Engineer by trade, having worked at a couple major names in the valley, several startups and a few dot coms.
You're just used to not being given enough time to do your job really well. Everything in the industry is rush, rush, rush these days. And the end products show that. I don't blame you or fellow engineers, I blame senior management for all the rush jobs.
To do zero defect development requires alot more design time, alot more coding time and massively longer test cycles. It's usually cost prohibitive for most companies, but for a $220 million fighter and the life of the pilot I think the extra time and costs are justified. But then, I'm not a bean counter making the decisions.
for flight systems to reboot 'on the fly' but I consider that unacceptable for mission critical systems.
It's the mentality that feels that 'good enough' is good enough that brings us this type of warm and comfy software.
Good enough isn't. Stable code can be written. It merely takes talented engineers, design time to conceptualize and architech the product up front before coding it and giving QA what they need to test and committment to FIXING the issues that QA identifies. It's not the cheapest or fastest way to deliver a product, but if I want cheap and fast I'll go to Taco Bell, not a jet fighter.
Given how expensive these planes are, does it make sense to go cheap on the software and risk crashing not only the software but the multi million/billion dollar plane too?
I just set my target for unity gain no matter what I'm recording. That way it's as clean as you can get given the source material.
What annoys me is the poor audio engineering in movies and DVDs today. I have fine hearing, but I often have to turn on the subtitles because if I turn up to hear alot of the dialog, other sections of the movie will fry the voice coils on my speakers. I like dynamic range and all, but there's such a thing as a signal that is too low.
Well, technically the term UNIX doesn't include Linux. The * is used to include that, since for most purposes, you can lump them all together. It's not meant to be cute or funny, it's meant to be inclusive and accurate.
The Go To Server function has been able to find local servers since before Apple implemented Rendezvous.
With all the red tape, it's amazing anything ever gets done these days. It took them a year to bring OJ to freaking trial for god's sake. I can tell you that if I was the accused in that case I'd have been on trail within 90 days AND I'd have been convicted (assuming identical circumstances - we ALL know OJ was guilty as sin).
I'm rather sick of hearing about SCO's whining bullshit case. It's all trumped up garbage and I really wish someone would just kick the shit out of them and get this over with. Maybe IBM is ready to do that, I dunno.
Perhaps the only way is to put Linus Torvalds and SCO's CEO in a ring and let em duke it out. Give them 90 days to prepare.
And the Open Souce community can fund martial arts courses for Linus and SCO's side can struggle to fund free boxing classes at the Y for him. 8)
Apple doesnt' even really use AppleTalk anymore. It uses AFP over TPC, which is the AppleTalk Filing Protocol over TCP.
... Bill Gates? The box is there, the box is gone? It's online and can be reached by \\servername, but not in the neighborhood? What's up with that?
There is minimal support for this on *nix, but good luck getting it configured and working well.
*nix really needs some kind of GUI client for AFP/TCP much like the Go To Server window in OS X. That is, something that scans the LAN for servers as well as allows direct IP entry of the server if you know it.
NFS sure is convenient but it's a security nightmare and no sysadmin worth his pay will let you set up and use NFS on a network.
I'm no Windows fan, but let's face it, getting rid of the Windows boxes/network is not an acceptable solution to the majority of the world. Windows is there, running, and working well enough for them to not seriously consider migration at this point or they WOULD be migrating.
So any OS needs to work WITH Windows. Of course, to play fair, Windows should work will WITH others, too. The general demeanor is that SMB networking isn't proprietary. It is, very much so. The only OS that uses it natively is Windows and the only reason someone would want to use it is to work WITH Windows boxes. SMB as a general networking technology sucks. With absolutely no physical changes what is shown in Network Neighborhood varies at the whim of the OS and
What we REALLY need is a platform agnostic networking solution that works well, is fast, is reliable and works the same everywhere.
Not that 're-deployment' would be easy, mind you, but unless there's some kind of fuel issue, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible (bearing in mind I'm far from an expert on the subject).
On one hand, it would develop skills for astronauts that would be needed on the Space Stations, on the other, it's not cheap and doesn't provide advancement in deployed equipment.
Then again, maybe in 50 years, retrofitting sattelites for technology upgrades by Space Station personnel might become a regular thing.
"Gotta do an EVA to install an upgrade on the Hubble, back in about half an hour. Want me to pick up anything while I'm out?"
Well, if you refuse to pay for anything, then you need to:
Return your computer to the store, you paid for it.
Empty your fridge and dump all your food, you paid for it.
Toss your fridge, you or someone paid for THAT.
Move out of your house/apartment, you pay for that.
I think I've made my point...