Uh, a lot of work is done via remote locations nowadays.
For example, the current project I'm working on involves 3 companies spanning 5 or 6 states in the US. We can't just meet face-to-face without spending a hell of a lot of money.
And next week I'll be working on something else for a completely different company.
This is how stuff gets done. It allows talent from all over the globe to be used for minimal cost.
I don't think so. Imagine if some rogue country tried broadcasting and interfering in the RF spectrum. Other countries would come down on them hard.
They may not have specific laws preventing that, but their government can certainly be effected by other nations if they don't play by the rules (think, embargo, etc).
It won't happen. Unless BPL causes little to no interference then it will not be accepted anywhere. Period. The RF spectrum is limited and extremely important to so many things people do every day. No government will stand having their military crippled because Joe-Redneck needs more pr0n.
I highly doubt it. I still think the boxer will be better off. Those big guys have no stamina at all, after 30 minutes he be laying flat on his back.
Although it would be an interesting contest. Maybe we can get Discovery Channel to do a special. Take the middleweight champion and pit him against Mr. Universe or something. Test them in various activities (kinda like a car comparison).
True, and that is part of my point. As humans there is a balance between being strong with just enough muscle and going too far (ie. going past the human body's design). Past that point you're not accomplishing anything other than looks, while seriously retricting overall performance. While in absolute terms they may be able to lift more, that's not what I would call strength (definitions vary of course).
In my book strength is survival of the fittest. And survival more often than not involves your own bodyweight because that's what the human body is designed to deal with.
I'll put up any boxer against some muscle-freak any day of the week. Who do you think will survive?
Yes, there is. After a certain point it's not advantageous.
I lift weights and I can tell you from experience, large muscles and being strong do not always go together. A lot of the training that bodybuilders do is to add bulk muscle (explosive strength). This type strength only works for short bursts and those huge guys get tired real quick. Take a look at how a gymnast or martial artist is built. That's real strength and flexibility. They may be musclely but they are not super-huge freaks.
At a certain point the added weight of muscle bulk becomes a disadvantage. Ever watch those crappy reality shows where the super-huge muscle guy fails at some physical activity like climbing a rope? Yeah, too much weight and not enough stamina.
And there are many others out there. Many have help-wanted boards.
Just use a standard work-for-hire type contract. That is, you will own the copyright. Then you can do whatever you want with it (like release under an open-source license). This is just standard practice for contract work of any type. There are lots of contract templates on the web and just about all of them assign copyright of created works to the person/company paying for it.
how come, btw, when a tweaking utility for Linux is released, it's a cool added bit of functionality that makes Linux even more kickass than it already was... but when a tweaking utility is released for windows it's a kludgy fix to add functionality that obviously SHOULD've been there in the first place?
This is most likely because typically these tweeks for Linux add functionality, while the tweeks for Windows are to remove annoying/insecure functionality.
Re:Don't use Promise, for one thing
on
SATA vs ATA?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
3ware is another (some say superior) hardware RAID controller.
One thing about SATA is that it's easy to remotely mount the drives. You can easily put them outside the machine (in a rack or whatever) for enhanced cooling. They're kinda like really fast firewire drives.
I liken it to my toolbox in the garage. I have hundreds of tools that are great in their own right. However, there's a couple dozen I use regularly.
People always make the comparison of programming language to traditional tools. I don't understand that. A programming language, while a "tool" or sorts, is not like the tools you use to work on your house or your car.
A programming language is more like a particular automobile. That is, they all do pretty much the same thing, the difference is in style and execution (ie. how you accomplish the task at hand).
True, and when not using the "hashme" thing it uses some default version in whatever implementation of STL you are using. Are any of these comparable to the builtin Java version? I don't know.
I think the big thing (for me) is that at least in C++ I have a choice. I can swap these functions out, use the default version, or whatever I want. That's not so easy with Java (if you want maximum performance at least).
You can also replace the strcmp with a string equals function and get even more speed. strcmp checks the string ordering which you don't need for the hasher.
I just went through and tested the hash2 benchmark and found that I was correct. The C++ version slaughters the Java version (even in "server" mode). This is completely different than what this dude's page shows.
I've been playing with those benchmarks for ages. I use them any time a new language comes out or if I just want to do some independent testing.
A couple points:
- The "Great Shootout" benchmark times are sometimes way off because the run-time was too short to get an accurate reading. In those cases the tests should have been run with higher values to really stress the machine. That doesn't appear to be an issue in this test though (assuming his graph values are in seconds).
- Many of the C++ tests are not optimized. That is, they use C++ features like the iostream stuff (cout, and friends) which is extremely slow. The C versions are available and very fast. C++ is pretty much just an extension of C. You don't need to use C++ features if they slow you down. Another one is the hash stuff. In the C++ hash benchmark there are some goofy mistakes made by using the brackets [] operator where it forces several unnecessary lookups. You can also substitute a better STL hashing function that is faster (like MLton's insanely fast hasher).
- The test could be done by comparing C to Java. Anything in C++ can be made as fast as an equivalent C version but there are not many programmers that know how. Just assume anything in C++ will run as fast as a C version, and if it doesn't then you did something wrong. The hash tests would be easier in C++ though. If they were written properly they would kill the Java version.
With that said, I'm going to try these tests myself because I do not believe the results to be accurate. but who knows...
I'm not a blogger, and I don't read any blogs. I don't understand how the blog thing works.
Do people just sit around and read other people's blogs? How do they know which ones to read? If everyone is blogging then it seems like there would be so much useless crap out there that you wouldn't know what to look at. Who would waste time sifting through it all? Doesn't seem very useful to me. Good thoughts would go unnoticed and the sewer would spew forth. There's no focal point.
This isn't the first time this has been asked. The thing is, it isn't that complicated. The problem is that developers tend to want to do their individual thing versus having a large, cohesive goal. Which is generally what commercial outfits (Microsoft, BeOS, etc.) give you. With most of the free software being written by volunteers, what can you expect? With money you can tell developers (ie. force them) to do what you want and generate software at a higher level. Usually people with the best vision and plans are not the people actually doing the work. You think the slaves building the pyramids really cared about making a pointy pile of rocks?
That's just the way it is. Nothing wrong with individuals doing their thing, but with something as large as an operating system you just can't do that and have a cohesive system. Companies like RedHat are trying to change that, but even they are having to work with lots of software generated by individuals with different goals.
So what do users want?
They want something that does what they need to want to do in the easiest possible manner.
Period. It's as simple as that.
Here is a simplified list based on that idea. You'll need to read between the lines to really understand what I'm saying.
- It must run the software they need to run. - It must work with all hardware that the user wants to use. - Configuration should be a breeze. It should be almost invisible. It should do everything for you. If there are any user-optional/configurable features they should be made easily available. - It must not crash. - It must run as fast as the hardware can possibly support. - It should be intuitive to use (including other software packages). Things should be context sensitive.
The user shouldn't think about how they need to do something. They should just be thinking of what they want to do.
Yeah, as a ham myself I have to agree with the "snake oil" theory.
Antenna design is a lot like cryptographic algorithm design. That is, a lot of extremely smart people have tried and failed. Often once their work is out in the public for a larger community to examine the flaws start to show through.
Like crypto design, antenna design is mathematically provable. However, it's complicated enough that it's damn near impossible for one person to cover all the bases and make something that really meets all the claims. As I said, even extremely smart and talented people goof up when working on this type of thing. The laws of physics are called laws for a reason.
Good to know that people are still trying though! That's how breakthroughs occur.
True, but your typical PC heatpipe thing uses air where this one is using fluid.
I don't see what the big deal is though. Looks like just your run of the mill Apple marketing crap to get people to spend money on expensive sounding stuff.
Really all a heatpipe does is either relocate the heatsink or provide more surface area for heat dissipation. In other words, it's no different than adding a bigger normal heatsink with good ventilation to the outside.
Now if they were using peltier's or something to cool the fluid in a remote location, that would be nice. From what I see this new Apple thing is just a normal heatsink that happens to use fluid.
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they are suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome.
With that said, I wouldn't mind having a VI-like editor intregrated into Kdevelop. I like Kdevelop and the Visual-Studio-like features, but I often sorely miss my Vim functionality and I end up being forced to switch back and forth between a terminal and Kdevelop.
Imagine a tiny "dock" station that had VGA-out, USB connectors, and ethernet. You wouldn't need it all the time, but when the occasion arises, like to play a game of Quake3 or write a report in Abiword, then you just plug it in and it becomes a normal computer. Pop it out and it goes with you.
The Internet cafes wouldn't even need computers any more because everyone would carry one with them. All they would need are monitors, keyboards, mice, and a little (cheap) dock thingamajig.
That's my favorite Futurama episode. I like the ones where Fry kicks ass (the Devil's Hands one is good too).
What a great show. It had a bad time slot and was probably too geeky for mainstream. In fact, I was part of the problem. I didn't even watch it very much when new shows were coming out. I had this "Simpsons wannabe" attitude and thought the show was OK, but nothing special. It was only years later that I discovered how great the show actually is.
3D animation, technical references galore, very funny.
I almost fell out of my chair when on that one episode there were a bunch of aliens (invaders or something?) coming out of a spaceship making all sorts of arcade references and such, then one goes "All your base are belong to us!"
I work in the security field (mostly smartcards and biometrics) and I can tell you that if that's all they have then their security sucks.
Biometrics are highly inaccurate/insecure. We break them all the time. I myself would never use anything important that was secured with only a biometric. Even a 4 digit limited error PIN would be more secure.
Currently these are the main drivers that I know of. There are some PCMCIA Linux drivers with source here if you're willing to do some porting work.
Even better than that are the USB smartcards (like the Schlumberger e-Gate series; Java and Cryptoflex). You can just plug the smartcard itself into the USB slot. PC/SC drivers exist for at least the Schlumberger cards but I don't know if they have been made publicly available (maybe they come with OS X now?). No reader required.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, a lot of work is done via remote locations nowadays.
For example, the current project I'm working on involves 3 companies spanning 5 or 6 states in the US. We can't just meet face-to-face without spending a hell of a lot of money.
And next week I'll be working on something else for a completely different company.
This is how stuff gets done. It allows talent from all over the globe to be used for minimal cost.
All these interviews and the only thing I've ever wanted to know about the guy is never asked.
What encryption and/or data protection schemes did he use that the FBI couldn't break?
I don't think so. Imagine if some rogue country tried broadcasting and interfering in the RF spectrum. Other countries would come down on them hard.
They may not have specific laws preventing that, but their government can certainly be effected by other nations if they don't play by the rules (think, embargo, etc).
It won't happen. Unless BPL causes little to no interference then it will not be accepted anywhere. Period. The RF spectrum is limited and extremely important to so many things people do every day. No government will stand having their military crippled because Joe-Redneck needs more pr0n.
I highly doubt it. I still think the boxer will be better off. Those big guys have no stamina at all, after 30 minutes he be laying flat on his back.
Although it would be an interesting contest. Maybe we can get Discovery Channel to do a special. Take the middleweight champion and pit him against Mr. Universe or something. Test them in various activities (kinda like a car comparison).
True, and that is part of my point. As humans there is a balance between being strong with just enough muscle and going too far (ie. going past the human body's design). Past that point you're not accomplishing anything other than looks, while seriously retricting overall performance. While in absolute terms they may be able to lift more, that's not what I would call strength (definitions vary of course).
In my book strength is survival of the fittest. And survival more often than not involves your own bodyweight because that's what the human body is designed to deal with.
I'll put up any boxer against some muscle-freak any day of the week. Who do you think will survive?
Yes, there is. After a certain point it's not advantageous.
I lift weights and I can tell you from experience, large muscles and being strong do not always go together. A lot of the training that bodybuilders do is to add bulk muscle (explosive strength). This type strength only works for short bursts and those huge guys get tired real quick. Take a look at how a gymnast or martial artist is built. That's real strength and flexibility. They may be musclely but they are not super-huge freaks.
At a certain point the added weight of muscle bulk becomes a disadvantage. Ever watch those crappy reality shows where the super-huge muscle guy fails at some physical activity like climbing a rope? Yeah, too much weight and not enough stamina.
Post want-ads on graphics Internet boards. Search the web to find graphics boards. Here are a few to get you started:
CGTalk
Polycount
And there are many others out there. Many have help-wanted boards.
Just use a standard work-for-hire type contract. That is, you will own the copyright. Then you can do whatever you want with it (like release under an open-source license). This is just standard practice for contract work of any type. There are lots of contract templates on the web and just about all of them assign copyright of created works to the person/company paying for it.
how come, btw, when a tweaking utility for Linux is released, it's a cool added bit of functionality that makes Linux even more kickass than it already was... but when a tweaking utility is released for windows it's a kludgy fix to add functionality that obviously SHOULD've been there in the first place?
This is most likely because typically these tweeks for Linux add functionality, while the tweeks for Windows are to remove annoying/insecure functionality.
3ware is another (some say superior) hardware RAID controller.
One thing about SATA is that it's easy to remotely mount the drives. You can easily put them outside the machine (in a rack or whatever) for enhanced cooling. They're kinda like really fast firewire drives.
I liken it to my toolbox in the garage. I have hundreds of tools that are great in their own right. However, there's a couple dozen I use regularly.
People always make the comparison of programming language to traditional tools. I don't understand that. A programming language, while a "tool" or sorts, is not like the tools you use to work on your house or your car.
A programming language is more like a particular automobile. That is, they all do pretty much the same thing, the difference is in style and execution (ie. how you accomplish the task at hand).
What's with the crappy font? Even at 3200x1200 I can't read anything unless I zoom in to like 300%, which means I can't see very much.
The font is too bold and too small for the size of the graphic.
Yeah, thanks. That code was copied from some older C hash code I had (the reason for the non-bool items).
True, and when not using the "hashme" thing it uses some default version in whatever implementation of STL you are using. Are any of these comparable to the builtin Java version? I don't know.
I think the big thing (for me) is that at least in C++ I have a choice. I can swap these functions out, use the default version, or whatever I want. That's not so easy with Java (if you want maximum performance at least).
You can also replace the strcmp with a string equals function and get even more speed. strcmp checks the string ordering which you don't need for the hasher.
So change the eqstr class to the following:
struct eqstr {
bool operator()(const char* s1, const char* s2) const
{
unsigned int i;
if (!s1 || !s2) return 0;
for (i = 0; s1[i] != 0; i++)
{ if (s1[i] != s2[i]) return 0; }
if (s1[i] == s2[i]) return 1;
else return 0;
}
};
(reformated a bit to get past Slashdot's insane "whitespace" nonsense)
I just went through and tested the hash2 benchmark and found that I was correct. The C++ version slaughters the Java version (even in "server" mode). This is completely different than what this dude's page shows.
Here is the "correct" code for hash2.cpp:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <ext/hash_map>
using namespace std;
using namespace __gnu_cxx;
struct eqstr {
bool operator()(const char* s1, const char* s2) const {
return strcmp(s1, s2) == 0;
}
};
struct hashme
{
size_t operator()(const char* s) const
{
size_t i;
for (i = 0; *s; s++)
i = 31 * i + *s;
return i;
}
};
int
main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
int n = ((argc == 2) ? atoi(argv[1]) : 1);
char buf[16];
typedef hash_map<const char*, int, hashme, eqstr> HM;
HM hash1, hash2;
for (int i=0; i<10000; i++) {
sprintf(buf, "foo_%d", i);
hash1[strdup(buf)] = i;
}
for (int i=0; i<n; i++) {
for (HM::iterator k = hash1.begin(); k != hash1.end(); ++k) {
hash2[(*k).first] += k->second;
}
}
cout << hash1["foo_1"] << " " << hash1["foo_9999"] << " "
<< hash2["foo_1"] << " " << hash2["foo_9999"] << endl;
}
I've been playing with those benchmarks for ages. I use them any time a new language comes out or if I just want to do some independent testing.
A couple points:
- The "Great Shootout" benchmark times are sometimes way off because the run-time was too short to get an accurate reading. In those cases the tests should have been run with higher values to really stress the machine. That doesn't appear to be an issue in this test though (assuming his graph values are in seconds).
- Many of the C++ tests are not optimized. That is, they use C++ features like the iostream stuff (cout, and friends) which is extremely slow. The C versions are available and very fast. C++ is pretty much just an extension of C. You don't need to use C++ features if they slow you down. Another one is the hash stuff. In the C++ hash benchmark there are some goofy mistakes made by using the brackets [] operator where it forces several unnecessary lookups. You can also substitute a better STL hashing function that is faster (like MLton's insanely fast hasher).
- The test could be done by comparing C to Java. Anything in C++ can be made as fast as an equivalent C version but there are not many programmers that know how. Just assume anything in C++ will run as fast as a C version, and if it doesn't then you did something wrong. The hash tests would be easier in C++ though. If they were written properly they would kill the Java version.
With that said, I'm going to try these tests myself because I do not believe the results to be accurate. but who knows...
I'm not a blogger, and I don't read any blogs. I don't understand how the blog thing works.
Do people just sit around and read other people's blogs? How do they know which ones to read? If everyone is blogging then it seems like there would be so much useless crap out there that you wouldn't know what to look at. Who would waste time sifting through it all? Doesn't seem very useful to me. Good thoughts would go unnoticed and the sewer would spew forth. There's no focal point.
What am I missing?
This isn't the first time this has been asked. The thing is, it isn't that complicated. The problem is that developers tend to want to do their individual thing versus having a large, cohesive goal. Which is generally what commercial outfits (Microsoft, BeOS, etc.) give you. With most of the free software being written by volunteers, what can you expect? With money you can tell developers (ie. force them) to do what you want and generate software at a higher level. Usually people with the best vision and plans are not the people actually doing the work. You think the slaves building the pyramids really cared about making a pointy pile of rocks?
That's just the way it is. Nothing wrong with individuals doing their thing, but with something as large as an operating system you just can't do that and have a cohesive system. Companies like RedHat are trying to change that, but even they are having to work with lots of software generated by individuals with different goals.
So what do users want?
They want something that does what they need to want to do in the easiest possible manner.
Period. It's as simple as that.
Here is a simplified list based on that idea. You'll need to read between the lines to really understand what I'm saying.
- It must run the software they need to run.
- It must work with all hardware that the user wants to use.
- Configuration should be a breeze. It should be almost invisible. It should do everything for you. If there are any user-optional/configurable features they should be made easily available.
- It must not crash.
- It must run as fast as the hardware can possibly support.
- It should be intuitive to use (including other software packages). Things should be context sensitive.
The user shouldn't think about how they need to do something. They should just be thinking of what they want to do.
Yeah, as a ham myself I have to agree with the "snake oil" theory.
Antenna design is a lot like cryptographic algorithm design. That is, a lot of extremely smart people have tried and failed. Often once their work is out in the public for a larger community to examine the flaws start to show through.
Like crypto design, antenna design is mathematically provable. However, it's complicated enough that it's damn near impossible for one person to cover all the bases and make something that really meets all the claims. As I said, even extremely smart and talented people goof up when working on this type of thing. The laws of physics are called laws for a reason.
Good to know that people are still trying though! That's how breakthroughs occur.
True, but your typical PC heatpipe thing uses air where this one is using fluid.
I don't see what the big deal is though. Looks like just your run of the mill Apple marketing crap to get people to spend money on expensive sounding stuff.
Really all a heatpipe does is either relocate the heatsink or provide more surface area for heat dissipation. In other words, it's no different than adding a bigger normal heatsink with good ventilation to the outside.
Now if they were using peltier's or something to cool the fluid in a remote location, that would be nice. From what I see this new Apple thing is just a normal heatsink that happens to use fluid.
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they are suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome.
With that said, I wouldn't mind having a VI-like editor intregrated into Kdevelop. I like Kdevelop and the Visual-Studio-like features, but I often sorely miss my Vim functionality and I end up being forced to switch back and forth between a terminal and Kdevelop.
Imagine a tiny "dock" station that had VGA-out, USB connectors, and ethernet. You wouldn't need it all the time, but when the occasion arises, like to play a game of Quake3 or write a report in Abiword, then you just plug it in and it becomes a normal computer. Pop it out and it goes with you.
The Internet cafes wouldn't even need computers any more because everyone would carry one with them. All they would need are monitors, keyboards, mice, and a little (cheap) dock thingamajig.
That's my favorite Futurama episode. I like the ones where Fry kicks ass (the Devil's Hands one is good too).
What a great show. It had a bad time slot and was probably too geeky for mainstream. In fact, I was part of the problem. I didn't even watch it very much when new shows were coming out. I had this "Simpsons wannabe" attitude and thought the show was OK, but nothing special. It was only years later that I discovered how great the show actually is.
3D animation, technical references galore, very funny.
I almost fell out of my chair when on that one episode there were a bunch of aliens (invaders or something?) coming out of a spaceship making all sorts of arcade references and such, then one goes "All your base are belong to us!"
I work in the security field (mostly smartcards and biometrics) and I can tell you that if that's all they have then their security sucks.
Biometrics are highly inaccurate/insecure. We break them all the time. I myself would never use anything important that was secured with only a biometric. Even a 4 digit limited error PIN would be more secure.
Currently these are the main drivers that I know of. There are some PCMCIA Linux drivers with source here if you're willing to do some porting work.
Even better than that are the USB smartcards (like the Schlumberger e-Gate series; Java and Cryptoflex). You can just plug the smartcard itself into the USB slot. PC/SC drivers exist for at least the Schlumberger cards but I don't know if they have been made publicly available (maybe they come with OS X now?). No reader required.