I doubt that most of the/. crowd would beleive the stuff that was going on back then, and they are too young to have seen it for them selves. I still have the old PC Rag reviews comparing Windows with OS/2. They are a riot. The fact twisting and bias and downright lies are so blattent as to be laughable. Zip Data got away with this BS because most of its readership was still using DOS, and never got a chance to see OS/2 for themselves. IBM was buisy with a corporate makeover, which left OS/2 without the marketing support it needed. And the internet had not evolved to the point of being a signifigant media for bringing liers to task. If some of the OS/2 vs. Windows studies were published today, they would be discredited into oblivian. Another point is that in the eighties, most readers trusted the reporting of tech magazines. They could not have imagined that they had been bought, or that they were being deliberatly lied to. It does not help when Jerry Pornelle is running around claiming that the role of the tech reporter is to regurgitate what the Advertisers claim, without question or investigation.
The other reason, your post will fall on deaf ears is that the history of Desktop Computing according to Bill Gates, has so permiated the industry, that even the anti-MS segment buys into a lot of it.
There are two requirements neede for a black eye to be produced. And a third for a black eye to be meaningfull.
First, a punch needs to be thrown.
Second, the punch need to connect.
SCO is sure throwing a lot of punches. But they are all wild. Kinda like a 6 year old at their first Karate lesson. I don't think any has connected hard enough to cause a black eye. If one did cause a bruise, it was just a matter of chance.
Addition requirement, For a black eye to be meaningfull, it must have been from a deliberate, controled punch. As I said befor, all SCO is doing if flailing its collective arms.
To illustrate the difference between a meaningfull and insignifigant black eye, I will provide the following example. It typifies an insignifigant black eye.
While sparing with my Sensei, I, by chance, gave him a black eye ( I had slipped, my punch went wild because of lack of control). The fact that I gave my Senei a black eye was meaningless. He could easily have bounce my ass around the Dojo. In fact, if I was him, I would have done exactly that. Fortunatly, like many Martial Arts instructers, he had a great sence of humor.
BTW, Russia had its wild east. While we had our mountain man era, the Russian had theirs, except they were going in the other direction. The parellels continue untill the turn of the century!
I guess, I lost a little perspective. But you are also missinterpreting what I wrote. I wrote exacly what I wanted to say, nothing more nothing less. I never said that there were not corporate execs who make short term profits at the expence of future generations. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are concerned about enviromental issues. Some of these people run corporations. Attacking these people is not only doing them a disservice, it is doing whatever actions they are taking a disservice. I have seen this happen to many times. Why is it so hard to understand that a CEO with a family might actualy be concerned about the quality of the world he/she leaves their children.
You blast the company I worked for without knowing anything. Your opinion is actualy not all that valid as it is based on a very distorted data set. Its like a Cop, who thinks everyone is a criminal. It was a knee-jerk reaction that I usualy associate with the enviro-wackos, though I don't think you are one. Actualy, I think your just yanking my chain. Enviro-wacko is the term I use to describe the reactionary activist driven by spoon-fed propaganda and not scientific fact ( damn I need a new keyboard, this thing sucks). I use this term to distinguish them from eviromentalist whos concerns and activities are based on scientific data and understanding. This group gets very little airtime ( though they are the majority) as the are not nearly as fun as the envior-wackos.
I had planed on responding to your responce with some details. But I don't think I can. If you realy do what you say you do, wich I have no reason to doubt, then almost anything I say will give you enough clues to identify the company. From your other post I suspected that you were involved with material disposal. My brother was also invoved withit at one tiem. That why the garbage collecter jibe, which obviously worked.
Unfortunatly, the current buisness climate, is removing the decision making from company execs and giving it to a facless collection of institutional stock collectors, driven by the Wallstreet reality distortion field. In other words, groups of individuals are not at the reins any more but rather an abstracted collective consciensnes incapable of enviromental concerns. You want an enemy, there's your enemy. All of the progress made by individual corporate execs twords enviromental protection are slowly being eroded away. The enviro-wackos are helping to accelerate this. They also provide an enviromentalist stereotype in the minds of wallstreet types. Execs need to be very carfull not to be associated with enviromentalism or the stereotype will be applied to them, kiss the corporate ladder goodbye. I have a feeling that the company that I had worked for is not the same company as when I was there. The BOD apperanyly has concolidated its grip. This makes leaving clues to the identity of the company even touchier ( and not only does my keybord suck, I can't spell and am getting tiered).
What I will say is that the company was founded by scientist and engineers. It was ran by engineers and scientist untill very resently. Being scientist, they had an appriciation for scientic matters, including enviromental science. They always tried to do the right thing. These guys were not out to make a killing, they just wanted to make the best stuff. But it turns out that in the long run, doing things the right way, in an enviromental sence, also make buisness sence ( though short sighted buisness types fail to see this). Well while doing things the right way there was an incident. It scared the shit out of a lot of people. Corporate managment decided that following the rules was not good enough. I was directly involved with some of the activites that followed. I spent a year running around tracking down chemicals usage and disposition, i.e what chemicals were used, why were they used, how were they used, what alternatives coulds be used, what biological effect, what enviromental effect, what was done with the chemical after they were used, what els
You have know idea what you are talking about. Your comment reeks of ignourance and unsupported predjudace. I have found that your type is best ignored because the last thing you want are facts. So go back to garbage collecting. Its what your best at. The lack of critical reasoning skills in some of the/. readership is apalling. Obviously you did not even realy read my post. "Oh no, he's defending industry. ATTACK! ATTACK". BTW, I've seen what happens when politician do the policing. I've also seen the results of knee-jerk enviro-wacko activism.
The ignorance of inviromental issues that characterised corporat executives, is pretty much a thing of the past. Today, many corporations are driven by people that realise that their children will be living in the world they effect. I worked for a semiconducter-manufacturer as it attempted to get a handle on controling its impact on the enviroment. This was well befor any US federal requirements. This company worked with governmental agencies to help draft enviromental policy. Its activities were used as a modle of what a company could do if it realy wanted to. Some of the processe developed are now part of EPA requirements ( in a slightly watered down form).
The enviromental cause, like all causes needs an enemy. If one is not available, one will be fabricated. To this ended, the extreme pro-enviroment camp, who are also the most vocal, continue to promote the notion of the evil polluting industrialist. This, despit the decline in the population of this type of industrialist and the decline of their impact on corporate policy. That has left the extreme enviromental activist in a tough spot. Their usual responce is to vehemetly attack any corporation attempting to do anything pro-enviroment with the desire to derail such activities. This tactic has been quite successfull. Today, most buisness realise this, so tend to keep their activities out of the news. The semi-manufacturer I worked for did just this, which is why most people do not know about it.
as harddrives get more and more high-tech, the reliability seems to be taking a big nosedive
Talk about ignorant moderation. Sheesh.
Hard Drives technology is very mature. Every innovation has involved incremental improvments to the same basic tech. So the notion of Hard Drives getting more high tech is false. Second, the reliability of Hard Drives has been steadily increasing in a nearly linear fasion since their introduction in the 60s. There has always been instances of a particular Drive model or model family having difficulties. These are special cases from a statistical point of view. Saying that these models represent the quality of all Hard Drives is like saying that terrorists represents all Irishmen. On top of this, many HD reliability issues are realy HD handeling issues, i.e. originating with the PC manufacturers, not the HD producers. So the second part of the statement is also false, in fact way false.
how will this effect the reliability of future drives?
If you bothered to read the full artical, you would know that one of the hold ups of this new approch is quality concerns. The HD manufacturers will not deploy it untill it is suitable for their high end ( i.e. most reliable) Hard Drive lines.
You will be very lucky to find any software related position in defence that does not require an active TS clearence. I have 15+ years experience in defence electronics, but as my clearence lapsed over 5 years ago, it does not help.
I am not sure were you got your numbers, but as a large number of tech jobs are in areas with very high costs of living, I think $50K/year for a family of four is kinda low. I am a single parent living in the "North Bay" of the San Fransico area. I have a teenager. At $50K/year ( which I had to work OT to achieve), I was barley able to make ends meet. And don't tell me I need to cut costs, I had done that years ago. You should see the peice of "chevy" that I drive. On second thought, it would be better if you didn't.
I would have figured most people would heve seen the joke. I guess some/.ers were partying a little to heavy last night. So instead of being a joke it has become a troll. And look at the number of bites it got. WOW!
The only true killer app was Lotus 1 2 3. Netscape came close to being one. A real killer app has four characteristics. It must do something that people need to do, whether they know it or not. It must be or become the only practical way to do that something when it is introduced. It must target a tech platform that has a potentialy mathamaticaly catastrophic adoption pattern. And finally, their needs to be another platform to be killed. This last ties in with number three.
It is the third characteristic that that will enable the killer app effect. If PC had not already been comoditised when Lotus was introduced, it would not have been a killer app. Netscape misses, because even though it was the most practical, it was not the only practical way of "surfing the net".
Now with that out of the way, I can get to my main point.
as with all pure tech - it needs that killer app
Man has been adopting new tech since we became man. The initial adoption pattern is almost always exponential, though the existance of several compeating technologies can make things interesting. If several compeating technologies share characteristics that are mutualy exclusive ( e.g. PCs and Macs both use software, but the software for one will not run naturaly on the other), the adoption pattern becomes somewhat unstable. This unstability can lead to catastrophies which pave the way for a killer app. But I digress. What happened with the PC was an unique phenonmina. It had never been seen befor. The term "killer app" was coined to describe the cause of that phenomina. In other words, it describes something that deviates from normal. So the concept that new tech needs a killer app to be adopted is just plain wrong.
good luck finding that app
Since the term "killer app" was first coined, people have beeen running around trying to find the next "killer app". Tech writers have been speculating on the nature of the next "killer app". But guess what, when the next killer app arrives, no one will recognise it as such untill after it has done its killing. That the potentialy killer nature of an app is knowable, probably precludes it from being a killer app. I would have included this as a characteristic of killer apps, but I have not proved it to be true. At this point, I concider it a conjecture. Anyway, one can identify the tech platforms that have characteristics which allow then to be affected by a killer app. And its not the desktop!
educating users what it is, and what it does.
Because of certain technological synergies, 3G, is the most likely area to be affected by some killer app. If this happens, no one will have predicted it. I feel that the potential for the arrival of a killer app is very high. I also feel that the definition of killer app might need to be tweeked a bit to include a set of apps from several sources that people start using together. The most likely place for this to happen is in the highschools. Its the users that will define the next killer app.
I'm still learning Ada. From what I've seen, creating Ada bindings to C libraries is trivial. In fact, my team will be using libSDL for our visualization taskes.
On the other hand, I do not want to be interfacing needlessly to external C libraries. Ada has a lot of native support for distributed computing ( I almost wrote distriputing). In fact, a lot of computationaly intense distributed systems are developed using Ada. As I am still learning Ada, and about distributed computing in general, I realy don't know what I'll be needing. I have a lot more to learn. You should see the stack of math books next to my computer! But, hey, thats why this project is worth doing. Thank God for Dover Publications.
I have three reasons for selecting Ada. The second can be infered from the above paragraph. The first has to do with the topic of the main discusion, code quality. Ada lends itself to QA Analysis. Safe coding practices and architectual consistancy are easier to enforce in Ada then other languages. Ada syntax is clean, and the language itself very safe. A large number of the bugs found in modern software would not have existed if the code was writen in Ada instead of C. My third reason is probably more about taste then anything else. I jsut do not like the way OOP has been implemented in C++.
Now we have proof geeks really can't work well with others:)
Hey, another advantage to OSS development. OSS develpores can choose who they work with a lot easier the developers working for some company.
The fact that so many OSS projects have one developer is more in keeping with modular tool aproch to design that the OSS community has adopted from UNIX. Anyways, most propiatary projects are realy just collections of projects, many with single developers, placed under one name.
As a developer, if my name is on the code, I am sure going to take pains to insure that it is of the highest quality befor anyyone see it. With OSS, I would be even more carefull because complete strangers could be potentialy laughing at my mistakes. On the other hand, I realy get a rush when a coworker comes to me to tell me that my code is "beautifull".
P.S. Your Mithral projects look intreaging. I have recently started the investigation phase of a large system design. the system will do computationaly intence modeling of dynamic systems, and data visualization in near real time. This will be done on a distributed multi-platform network. I will be developing in Ada, so I am not sure of the utility in using your guys projects, but they are sure worth investigating.
Its been my obsevation, that the French base their national identity more on language then anything else. Just like in the US, its "The American Way" (whatever that is:)). I like the French approch. It is a lot better then some other national identites, like those based on ethnicity or religion.
This should not be too suprising, concidering the over all condition of the semi market. I don't think there is a high end fab anywere in the world that is running a capacity. I am sure, everyone concerned was hoping that the market would have rebounded by now. It will rebound, its jsut a matter of when. When it does, companies like IBM and Samsung, who invested in new infrastructur instead of clamping down on investment like some others( Motorola!), will be ready. While they are cranking out product on their new fabs, their competetors will be scrambling to facilities new fabs in a demand market. Then companies, like one of the ones I worked for ( equipment used in semi-manufacturing) can charge whatever they want. BTW, concidering what IBM got, $3B is cheap.
I read the Ars artical, thanks for the link. It is in regards to a Forbes artical. Frankly, the analysts had their heads up their analysis. The main cause of the tech downturn was all the tech co. execs, listening to such Wallstreet drivle.
What/. story are you refering to? I must have missed it. Even without reading it, I can say that the evaluation is a bit premature. It takes at least a year, after a fab has been facilitised, to pilot and charactarise it. Real production can not happen utill after this. This is for a fab supprting fairly standard processes, which this plant is not. When the plant has been in operation for 3 or 4 years, then comments like this might be relevent. Besides the semi market is kinda soft right now. Which is fine. A company does not spend $3B for what they need today, but what they need tomorow. Oh BTW, 15 years experience in the semiconductor industry that includes characterising new fabs and new processes.
For smaller quantities of highly sensitive stuff (e.g. keying material, one day pads), a standard kitchen blender works nice. Reduces the paper to a gelatinous pupl that is perfect for disposing in the latrine. I dare anyone to reconstruct that!
I figured that, thats why I added the side note bit. I realy was just being silly by taking a straight man approch, and interpreting your statement literally like an eggheaded theologian. I liked your word play. Just because I'm a Christian does not mean I lack a sence of humor. I realise my own humor tends to be a bit dry. Which is funny concidering I'm a big fan of the Pythonesque (sp?).
I'm only 23 years old, but I already feel like I'm heading down the wrong path because of poor choices made when I was 17
Don't be silly. Your still a kid. If you feel like you have the wrong degree, go back to school. There is nothing wrong with having degrees in different area. If you feel your headed down the wrong path, figure out the path you want to be on and look for the nearest trail to get you to it. And what ever you do, do not think that the time you spent on one path was a wast of time. The experience you gained will make you a richer person. This is especialy true if you what to explore the creative side of existance. On the other hand the sooner you take action, the easier a change will be. There are more trails between the paths
I'm in my 40s. I've loved animation my entire life. I also love math and programming. I am a programmer, and have been an electronic tech. I don't have a degree. I have learned everything the hard way. Even though I know as much about software design as any college grad, not having a degree has limited my career. I have spent the last 10 years whining about the impossibility of getting that degree. I said things like "Try finding time to do anything when working 10 h/week OT jsut to feed myself and my son", or "Even if I get my degree, who is going to hire a 50 year old programmer, cause thats how old I'll be by the time I get it." Well now I say F it all. I'm going back to school. I'm gona get my degree, and its not going to be a CS. What I realy what to do is draw, sooo, I'll be starting school soon to get a degree in Character Design. If I finaly got the "stuff" to do a career redirect at 40+, you should be able to find the same "stuff" at 23. Now I wonder, whos gona hire a 50 year old newbie artist. I guess that 20+ years of programming experience will be usefull for a while yet:)
What do you expect from a Californian judge. Most are appointed by Democratic admistrations because of their pro-Hollywood leanings. This McCoy guy seems to fit the mold perfectly, though I have seen some refrences to him being one of the better "Technical" Judges. That is why he offen handles highly complex cases. I do see a problem with his very hands on approch leaving a lot of room for the filtering of data to unconcsiously support preconcieved opinions.
Its amasing what a little googleing can turn up.
As a Christian, fairly well schooled in theological matters, I've had the opprotunity to exlore a wide range of Christian thought. The concept of personal evolution is very important and expressed often in both the Old and the New Testiments. Almost all Christians will agree, that our personalities evolve. In fact, the first 5 books of the Bible is a story about evolution, the evoloution of the Nation of Isreal.
On a side note, I do not know Larry Walls feelings concerning biological evolution. I can say, however, that it would be wrong to assume that all Christians concider the theory of evolution incompatible with Biblical truth.
Slashdot Mirror
The other reason, your post will fall on deaf ears is that the history of Desktop Computing according to Bill Gates, has so permiated the industry, that even the anti-MS segment buys into a lot of it.
First, a punch needs to be thrown.
Second, the punch need to connect.
SCO is sure throwing a lot of punches. But they are all wild. Kinda like a 6 year old at their first Karate lesson. I don't think any has connected hard enough to cause a black eye. If one did cause a bruise, it was just a matter of chance.
Addition requirement, For a black eye to be meaningfull, it must have been from a deliberate, controled punch. As I said befor, all SCO is doing if flailing its collective arms.
To illustrate the difference between a meaningfull and insignifigant black eye, I will provide the following example. It typifies an insignifigant black eye.
While sparing with my Sensei, I, by chance, gave him a black eye ( I had slipped, my punch went wild because of lack of control). The fact that I gave my Senei a black eye was meaningless. He could easily have bounce my ass around the Dojo. In fact, if I was him, I would have done exactly that. Fortunatly, like many Martial Arts instructers, he had a great sence of humor.
BTW, Russia had its wild east. While we had our mountain man era, the Russian had theirs, except they were going in the other direction. The parellels continue untill the turn of the century!
You blast the company I worked for without knowing anything. Your opinion is actualy not all that valid as it is based on a very distorted data set. Its like a Cop, who thinks everyone is a criminal. It was a knee-jerk reaction that I usualy associate with the enviro-wackos, though I don't think you are one. Actualy, I think your just yanking my chain. Enviro-wacko is the term I use to describe the reactionary activist driven by spoon-fed propaganda and not scientific fact ( damn I need a new keyboard, this thing sucks). I use this term to distinguish them from eviromentalist whos concerns and activities are based on scientific data and understanding. This group gets very little airtime ( though they are the majority) as the are not nearly as fun as the envior-wackos.
I had planed on responding to your responce with some details. But I don't think I can. If you realy do what you say you do, wich I have no reason to doubt, then almost anything I say will give you enough clues to identify the company. From your other post I suspected that you were involved with material disposal. My brother was also invoved withit at one tiem. That why the garbage collecter jibe, which obviously worked.
Unfortunatly, the current buisness climate, is removing the decision making from company execs and giving it to a facless collection of institutional stock collectors, driven by the Wallstreet reality distortion field. In other words, groups of individuals are not at the reins any more but rather an abstracted collective consciensnes incapable of enviromental concerns. You want an enemy, there's your enemy. All of the progress made by individual corporate execs twords enviromental protection are slowly being eroded away. The enviro-wackos are helping to accelerate this. They also provide an enviromentalist stereotype in the minds of wallstreet types. Execs need to be very carfull not to be associated with enviromentalism or the stereotype will be applied to them, kiss the corporate ladder goodbye. I have a feeling that the company that I had worked for is not the same company as when I was there. The BOD apperanyly has concolidated its grip. This makes leaving clues to the identity of the company even touchier ( and not only does my keybord suck, I can't spell and am getting tiered).
What I will say is that the company was founded by scientist and engineers. It was ran by engineers and scientist untill very resently. Being scientist, they had an appriciation for scientic matters, including enviromental science. They always tried to do the right thing. These guys were not out to make a killing, they just wanted to make the best stuff. But it turns out that in the long run, doing things the right way, in an enviromental sence, also make buisness sence ( though short sighted buisness types fail to see this). Well while doing things the right way there was an incident. It scared the shit out of a lot of people. Corporate managment decided that following the rules was not good enough. I was directly involved with some of the activites that followed. I spent a year running around tracking down chemicals usage and disposition, i.e what chemicals were used, why were they used, how were they used, what alternatives coulds be used, what biological effect, what enviromental effect, what was done with the chemical after they were used, what els
You have know idea what you are talking about. Your comment reeks of ignourance and unsupported predjudace. I have found that your type is best ignored because the last thing you want are facts. So go back to garbage collecting. Its what your best at. The lack of critical reasoning skills in some of the /. readership is apalling. Obviously you did not even realy read my post. "Oh no, he's defending industry. ATTACK! ATTACK". BTW, I've seen what happens when politician do the policing. I've also seen the results of knee-jerk enviro-wacko activism.
The enviromental cause, like all causes needs an enemy. If one is not available, one will be fabricated. To this ended, the extreme pro-enviroment camp, who are also the most vocal, continue to promote the notion of the evil polluting industrialist. This, despit the decline in the population of this type of industrialist and the decline of their impact on corporate policy. That has left the extreme enviromental activist in a tough spot. Their usual responce is to vehemetly attack any corporation attempting to do anything pro-enviroment with the desire to derail such activities. This tactic has been quite successfull. Today, most buisness realise this, so tend to keep their activities out of the news. The semi-manufacturer I worked for did just this, which is why most people do not know about it.
Talk about ignorant moderation. Sheesh.
Hard Drives technology is very mature. Every innovation has involved incremental improvments to the same basic tech. So the notion of Hard Drives getting more high tech is false. Second, the reliability of Hard Drives has been steadily increasing in a nearly linear fasion since their introduction in the 60s. There has always been instances of a particular Drive model or model family having difficulties. These are special cases from a statistical point of view. Saying that these models represent the quality of all Hard Drives is like saying that terrorists represents all Irishmen. On top of this, many HD reliability issues are realy HD handeling issues, i.e. originating with the PC manufacturers, not the HD producers. So the second part of the statement is also false, in fact way false.
how will this effect the reliability of future drives?
If you bothered to read the full artical, you would know that one of the hold ups of this new approch is quality concerns. The HD manufacturers will not deploy it untill it is suitable for their high end ( i.e. most reliable) Hard Drive lines.
You will be very lucky to find any software related position in defence that does not require an active TS clearence. I have 15+ years experience in defence electronics, but as my clearence lapsed over 5 years ago, it does not help.
I am not sure were you got your numbers, but as a large number of tech jobs are in areas with very high costs of living, I think $50K/year for a family of four is kinda low. I am a single parent living in the "North Bay" of the San Fransico area. I have a teenager. At $50K/year ( which I had to work OT to achieve), I was barley able to make ends meet. And don't tell me I need to cut costs, I had done that years ago. You should see the peice of "chevy" that I drive. On second thought, it would be better if you didn't.
The statement "There will need to be 100 IP addresses for every human" is NOT the same as "Every human will need 100 IP addresses."
I would have figured most people would heve seen the joke. I guess some /.ers were partying a little to heavy last night. So instead of being a joke it has become a troll. And look at the number of bites it got. WOW!
It is the third characteristic that that will enable the killer app effect. If PC had not already been comoditised when Lotus was introduced, it would not have been a killer app. Netscape misses, because even though it was the most practical, it was not the only practical way of "surfing the net".
Now with that out of the way, I can get to my main point.
as with all pure tech - it needs that killer app
Man has been adopting new tech since we became man. The initial adoption pattern is almost always exponential, though the existance of several compeating technologies can make things interesting. If several compeating technologies share characteristics that are mutualy exclusive ( e.g. PCs and Macs both use software, but the software for one will not run naturaly on the other), the adoption pattern becomes somewhat unstable. This unstability can lead to catastrophies which pave the way for a killer app. But I digress. What happened with the PC was an unique phenonmina. It had never been seen befor. The term "killer app" was coined to describe the cause of that phenomina. In other words, it describes something that deviates from normal. So the concept that new tech needs a killer app to be adopted is just plain wrong.
good luck finding that app
Since the term "killer app" was first coined, people have beeen running around trying to find the next "killer app". Tech writers have been speculating on the nature of the next "killer app". But guess what, when the next killer app arrives, no one will recognise it as such untill after it has done its killing. That the potentialy killer nature of an app is knowable, probably precludes it from being a killer app. I would have included this as a characteristic of killer apps, but I have not proved it to be true. At this point, I concider it a conjecture. Anyway, one can identify the tech platforms that have characteristics which allow then to be affected by a killer app. And its not the desktop!
educating users what it is, and what it does.
Because of certain technological synergies, 3G, is the most likely area to be affected by some killer app. If this happens, no one will have predicted it. I feel that the potential for the arrival of a killer app is very high. I also feel that the definition of killer app might need to be tweeked a bit to include a set of apps from several sources that people start using together. The most likely place for this to happen is in the highschools. Its the users that will define the next killer app.
On the other hand, I do not want to be interfacing needlessly to external C libraries. Ada has a lot of native support for distributed computing ( I almost wrote distriputing). In fact, a lot of computationaly intense distributed systems are developed using Ada. As I am still learning Ada, and about distributed computing in general, I realy don't know what I'll be needing. I have a lot more to learn. You should see the stack of math books next to my computer! But, hey, thats why this project is worth doing. Thank God for Dover Publications.
I have three reasons for selecting Ada. The second can be infered from the above paragraph. The first has to do with the topic of the main discusion, code quality. Ada lends itself to QA Analysis. Safe coding practices and architectual consistancy are easier to enforce in Ada then other languages. Ada syntax is clean, and the language itself very safe. A large number of the bugs found in modern software would not have existed if the code was writen in Ada instead of C. My third reason is probably more about taste then anything else. I jsut do not like the way OOP has been implemented in C++.
Hey, another advantage to OSS development. OSS develpores can choose who they work with a lot easier the developers working for some company.
The fact that so many OSS projects have one developer is more in keeping with modular tool aproch to design that the OSS community has adopted from UNIX. Anyways, most propiatary projects are realy just collections of projects, many with single developers, placed under one name.
As a developer, if my name is on the code, I am sure going to take pains to insure that it is of the highest quality befor anyyone see it. With OSS, I would be even more carefull because complete strangers could be potentialy laughing at my mistakes. On the other hand, I realy get a rush when a coworker comes to me to tell me that my code is "beautifull".
P.S. Your Mithral projects look intreaging. I have recently started the investigation phase of a large system design. the system will do computationaly intence modeling of dynamic systems, and data visualization in near real time. This will be done on a distributed multi-platform network. I will be developing in Ada, so I am not sure of the utility in using your guys projects, but they are sure worth investigating.
Adherence to release scheduals is also almost always contrary to quality.
Its been my obsevation, that the French base their national identity more on language then anything else. Just like in the US, its "The American Way" (whatever that is:)). I like the French approch. It is a lot better then some other national identites, like those based on ethnicity or religion.
This should not be too suprising, concidering the over all condition of the semi market. I don't think there is a high end fab anywere in the world that is running a capacity. I am sure, everyone concerned was hoping that the market would have rebounded by now. It will rebound, its jsut a matter of when. When it does, companies like IBM and Samsung, who invested in new infrastructur instead of clamping down on investment like some others( Motorola!), will be ready. While they are cranking out product on their new fabs, their competetors will be scrambling to facilities new fabs in a demand market. Then companies, like one of the ones I worked for ( equipment used in semi-manufacturing) can charge whatever they want. BTW, concidering what IBM got, $3B is cheap.
I read the Ars artical, thanks for the link. It is in regards to a Forbes artical. Frankly, the analysts had their heads up their analysis. The main cause of the tech downturn was all the tech co. execs, listening to such Wallstreet drivle.
What /. story are you refering to? I must have missed it. Even without reading it, I can say that the evaluation is a bit premature. It takes at least a year, after a fab has been facilitised, to pilot and charactarise it. Real production can not happen utill after this. This is for a fab supprting fairly standard processes, which this plant is not. When the plant has been in operation for 3 or 4 years, then comments like this might be relevent. Besides the semi market is kinda soft right now. Which is fine. A company does not spend $3B for what they need today, but what they need tomorow. Oh BTW, 15 years experience in the semiconductor industry that includes characterising new fabs and new processes.
For smaller quantities of highly sensitive stuff (e.g. keying material, one day pads), a standard kitchen blender works nice. Reduces the paper to a gelatinous pupl that is perfect for disposing in the latrine. I dare anyone to reconstruct that!
One should not cast PERL befor swine.
I figured that, thats why I added the side note bit. I realy was just being silly by taking a straight man approch, and interpreting your statement literally like an eggheaded theologian. I liked your word play. Just because I'm a Christian does not mean I lack a sence of humor. I realise my own humor tends to be a bit dry. Which is funny concidering I'm a big fan of the Pythonesque (sp?).
Offtopic, I guess some people are REALY lacking in imagination. Or maybe just to stupid to understand what I was alogorising.
Don't be silly. Your still a kid. If you feel like you have the wrong degree, go back to school. There is nothing wrong with having degrees in different area. If you feel your headed down the wrong path, figure out the path you want to be on and look for the nearest trail to get you to it. And what ever you do, do not think that the time you spent on one path was a wast of time. The experience you gained will make you a richer person. This is especialy true if you what to explore the creative side of existance. On the other hand the sooner you take action, the easier a change will be. There are more trails between the paths
I'm in my 40s. I've loved animation my entire life. I also love math and programming. I am a programmer, and have been an electronic tech. I don't have a degree. I have learned everything the hard way. Even though I know as much about software design as any college grad, not having a degree has limited my career. I have spent the last 10 years whining about the impossibility of getting that degree. I said things like "Try finding time to do anything when working 10 h/week OT jsut to feed myself and my son", or "Even if I get my degree, who is going to hire a 50 year old programmer, cause thats how old I'll be by the time I get it." Well now I say F it all. I'm going back to school. I'm gona get my degree, and its not going to be a CS. What I realy what to do is draw, sooo, I'll be starting school soon to get a degree in Character Design. If I finaly got the "stuff" to do a career redirect at 40+, you should be able to find the same "stuff" at 23. Now I wonder, whos gona hire a 50 year old newbie artist. I guess that 20+ years of programming experience will be usefull for a while yet:)
What do you expect from a Californian judge. Most are appointed by Democratic admistrations because of their pro-Hollywood leanings. This McCoy guy seems to fit the mold perfectly, though I have seen some refrences to him being one of the better "Technical" Judges. That is why he offen handles highly complex cases. I do see a problem with his very hands on approch leaving a lot of room for the filtering of data to unconcsiously support preconcieved opinions. Its amasing what a little googleing can turn up.
On a side note, I do not know Larry Walls feelings concerning biological evolution. I can say, however, that it would be wrong to assume that all Christians concider the theory of evolution incompatible with Biblical truth.