I run my recently upgraded desktop (Core i5-2500K) through a power meter and it is very easy to notice - Ubuntu 10.10 (kernel 2.6.35) idles at about 30W, while 11.04 (2.6.38) goes up to 35W. That's about 20% more.
I believe 2.6.36 introduced a problem with DRI on intel and some other video chipsets which led to a shitload of kworker wake ups. One of my laptops running Arch benefitted from a kernel parameters suggestion over here but by that stage I had a menu.lst as long as your arm full of attempts at a functional system (e.g. kernel... nohz=off highres=off pcie_ports=compat...) each with small, incremental improvements.
You can't catch every regression without owning all hardware and infinite time:)
a whole os, distro and the highlights include enabling http pipelining and including a couple of browser add-ons, switching default search engine Really ? really ? That's the problem that needs solving, thru a new disto
Yep, that's right, a whole new distro... to enable something that not everybody thinks is a great idea... I mean, if you want to make 200 http connections per web page have at it, but do it on some other web, not the one that myself and others enjoy traffic from.
Erm... yes, that's great and all. Except Hatsune Miku has been around since 2007, and versons of the the Vocaloid software that powers "her" has been around a good bit longer (since 2004 or so, I think). I'm pretty sure I heard reference to special-effects-heavy concerts more than a year ago.
Precisely. Japan's latest rock star is a discovery of the Whitman Campaign. Jerry Brown knows what I'm talkin' 'bout.
I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.
Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.
I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.
Troll, eh? Is that because winsock2 is actually good or because I didn't close the bracket?
I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.
Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.
I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.
Why update at all? There are still legacy systems using FORTRAN and probably COBOL as well. While there are C#, Java, PHP developers all over the place I imagine that finding a developer to maintain a legacy system is extremely hard. Of course that means there will not be many jobs out there for you but the pool of qualified applicants will be extremely small.
Plenty of money in COBOL but there is a need to suit up (physically and mentally) - not for everyone.
I have found a small but significant niche in embedded *nix programming. Small yet powerful systems requiring every scintilla of juice tempered with a familiar API - C Systems programming work is common enough (yet not common enough!). This is where I hope to spend the next while.
An "old school" approach to knowing the architecture inside-out and attention to detail is clouded by the bizarre abstractions of C# and Java. PHP isn't even an abstraction, it's a distraction (I grew tired of the inconsistency so no longer practise).
Perl is unfashionable in some circles and has a reputation for having magic constants (or whatever it is the detractors call "I don't want to learn this language") but I recommend it if you want dynamically typed "chops".
I find these "chops" are overrated. I enjoy low-level thinking so don't need to bloat up with virtual machines[1] (the real ones work fine for me), OO[2] (I know how to pass a pointer to my data to a lib) or design patterns[3] ("ways to do things" - if you learn one way as "the way" you may be unlikely to think there may be a better way)
[1] I use virtual machines but it's perverse running the dozens of MB JVM (and waiting around for it) for a browser bound animation or trivial desktop app. There may be a better case for this messing on the application server, but I don't care.
[2] OK, I will make an argument for OO in GUI programming - a large and complex library of heterogeneous components is difficult to arrange sensibly in a procedural manner. gtk_status_icon_set_from_file(foo_icon, "bar.png") or fooIcon.fileSet("bar.png")? There may be a similar argument to be made for other systems but for the most part I find the OO model a needless abstraction.
[3] Right... most programmers aren't brilliant - I know I'm fucking terrible for the most part - so having established methods for common situations is no bad thing... just don't get too attached.
Excuse me, COBOL itself is still the COBOL of the 21st century, as it still makes banking, airlines and quite a lot of brick and mortar industrial companies keep on rolling. Maybe average slashdotters are out of this reality, but it is still alive and kicking. Please don't blame me, I've never programmed a line of COBOL in my whole live.
I have... and I'm not even that old.
I once worked writing COBOL for VMS and Mainframe systems in various government departments. It's the job that inspired me to go get a degree.
personally i'd send it to China for "recycling"...
Aye, junk it. One of the considerations now in my bang for buck considerations in running home servers is the power bill. Sure, it was cool to have my old P3 tower sitting there as a little slackware workhorse doing mail, web, shells and everything else for me but at the same time it's sucking up 200W... I could get a dual core atom box which runs on 50W for little money.
Yes, there are open-source HMI projects available, but try convincing someone to deploy a life-critical system using one of them.
That's the first time I've seen alpha software with a "This may kill you and everyone around you" warning that was literally true.
It's not a great confidence boost when you're thinking of switching from the commercial solution which I am sure makes plenty of soothing cooing noises about its safety.
Actually I was reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at 10. I did pick my nose though... still do.
I wasn't reading a whole lot besides Asterix at that age, but I did have a decent record collection including Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction - the swearing amused me. Didn't understand why the middle sized robot smashed the nice naked lady's little sized robots but was glad the big sized robot caught him at it.
As for nose picking? Only in the car and other times when I think people can't see me...
I don't see anything wrong with that as long as they're not playing first-person shooter games, violent games, games with a lot of sexual or drug content.
Stop the censure! I grew up with duke nukem and it had no bad consequences.
And I'm all out of gum!
I want the badge to be a silhouette of Nico Bellic (or one of his counterparts from another GTA game) whacking someone by the river bank... or maybe a montage of three Nicos:
- Battering a hooker - Doing a line - Riverside execution
You can fully "undress" it, down to the bare basics, and it is incredibly stable. You'll definitely run it from a 4 Gb USB stick - and your students, most importantly, will LEARN from it.
I learned a hell of a lot from using Slackware and still use it as my day to day distro... but from a server management perspective:
Debian shell server with user-mode linux instances for each user - you can keep an OS image centrally with any changes made going into a copy-on-write file in the home directory. I find this a lot simpler than maintaining separate VM and OS - If the student messes up, nuke their COW file and it's back to stock.
Before starting to use spotify I had upwards of 200gb of mp3s (mostly badly sorted, tagged) that I used as a music library and downloaded huge amounts of music. These days I dont bother. Most of what I want is on spotify and I pay for a "premium" service with no ads. Was nice to reclaim those gigabytes;)
I maintain my own music collection (it is sorted and tagged impeccably, btw). The disk space overhead (x2, backup, backup, backup!) is completely worth it to me to be able to listen to music how, when and where I like. I can buy any portable player I like, I can copy the music to any device, I don't need a constant connection to the internet to listen to my collection (which is good, as my "broadband" service is a turd), I can maintain the collection in a quality which is acceptable to me (i.e. not internet streaming quality)... There are probably other great reasons for maintaining my own collection but I just take this freedom for granted so am having trouble listing the other things I like about it.
A chunk of my collection is old stuff captured from my own vinyl collection, I would imagine there is much of it that is simply not available in Spotify's catalogue (I'd like to confirm this but blah blah my country etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Haha, you say that as if compressors haven't been around for decades. Have you ever heard a Frank Zappa record?
I prefer to, oh you know, not run an operating system that is susceptible to malware attacks.
HAHAHAHA!
Oh, you were being serious.
I run my recently upgraded desktop (Core i5-2500K) through a power meter and it is very easy to notice - Ubuntu 10.10 (kernel 2.6.35) idles at about 30W, while 11.04 (2.6.38) goes up to 35W. That's about 20% more.
I believe 2.6.36 introduced a problem with DRI on intel and some other video chipsets which led to a shitload of kworker wake ups. One of my laptops running Arch benefitted from a kernel parameters suggestion over here but by that stage I had a menu.lst as long as your arm full of attempts at a functional system (e.g. kernel ... nohz=off highres=off pcie_ports=compat...) each with small, incremental improvements.
You can't catch every regression without owning all hardware and infinite time :)
a whole os, distro and the highlights include enabling http pipelining and including a couple of browser add-ons, switching default search engine
Really ? really ?
That's the problem that needs solving, thru a new disto
Yep, that's right, a whole new distro... to enable something that not everybody thinks is a great idea... I mean, if you want to make 200 http connections per web page have at it, but do it on some other web, not the one that myself and others enjoy traffic from.
Precisely. Japan's latest rock star is a discovery of the Whitman Campaign. Jerry Brown knows what I'm talkin' 'bout.
That guy is from Korea, not Japan. He just does a lot of covers of Japanese songs.
He's from Korea, but he's Big in Japan.
Erm... yes, that's great and all. Except Hatsune Miku has been around since 2007, and versons of the the Vocaloid software that powers "her" has been around a good bit longer (since 2004 or so, I think). I'm pretty sure I heard reference to special-effects-heavy concerts more than a year ago.
Precisely. Japan's latest rock star is a discovery of the Whitman Campaign. Jerry Brown knows what I'm talkin' 'bout.
I have seen the only Zombie movie I ever need to see. The rest have no rhythm.
"This video contains content from Vevo, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds" - that is a good-ass movie.
and the living won't be pestered with all those stupid zombie movies anymore.
cremation = no zombie.
Have you ever even seen a zombie movie?
Hint: Few feature the grave.
It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.
Nah, Intel actually bought HP - McAfee just came bundled.
haha, this made me laugh... there's always a war between the developers here at work on whether to use spaces or tabs...
So get someone higher to publish a mandatory coding standard... advised by you, of course.
I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.
Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.
I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.
Troll, eh? Is that because winsock2 is actually good or because I didn't close the bracket?
I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.
Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.
I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.
Why update at all? There are still legacy systems using FORTRAN and probably COBOL as well. While there are C#, Java, PHP developers all over the place I imagine that finding a developer to maintain a legacy system is extremely hard. Of course that means there will not be many jobs out there for you but the pool of qualified applicants will be extremely small.
Plenty of money in COBOL but there is a need to suit up (physically and mentally) - not for everyone.
I have found a small but significant niche in embedded *nix programming. Small yet powerful systems requiring every scintilla of juice tempered with a familiar API - C Systems programming work is common enough (yet not common enough!). This is where I hope to spend the next while.
An "old school" approach to knowing the architecture inside-out and attention to detail is clouded by the bizarre abstractions of C# and Java. PHP isn't even an abstraction, it's a distraction (I grew tired of the inconsistency so no longer practise).
Perl is unfashionable in some circles and has a reputation for having magic constants (or whatever it is the detractors call "I don't want to learn this language") but I recommend it if you want dynamically typed "chops".
I find these "chops" are overrated. I enjoy low-level thinking so don't need to bloat up with virtual machines[1] (the real ones work fine for me), OO[2] (I know how to pass a pointer to my data to a lib) or design patterns[3] ("ways to do things" - if you learn one way as "the way" you may be unlikely to think there may be a better way)
[1] I use virtual machines but it's perverse running the dozens of MB JVM (and waiting around for it) for a browser bound animation or trivial desktop app. There may be a better case for this messing on the application server, but I don't care.
[2] OK, I will make an argument for OO in GUI programming - a large and complex library of heterogeneous components is difficult to arrange sensibly in a procedural manner. gtk_status_icon_set_from_file(foo_icon, "bar.png") or fooIcon.fileSet("bar.png")? There may be a similar argument to be made for other systems but for the most part I find the OO model a needless abstraction.
[3] Right... most programmers aren't brilliant - I know I'm fucking terrible for the most part - so having established methods for common situations is no bad thing... just don't get too attached.
Excuse me, COBOL itself is still the COBOL of the 21st century, as it still makes banking, airlines and quite a lot of brick and mortar industrial companies keep on rolling. Maybe average slashdotters are out of this reality, but it is still alive and kicking. Please don't blame me, I've never programmed a line of COBOL in my whole live.
I have... and I'm not even that old.
I once worked writing COBOL for VMS and Mainframe systems in various government departments. It's the job that inspired me to go get a degree.
personally i'd send it to China for "recycling"...
Aye, junk it. One of the considerations now in my bang for buck considerations in running home servers is the power bill. Sure, it was cool to have my old P3 tower sitting there as a little slackware workhorse doing mail, web, shells and everything else for me but at the same time it's sucking up 200W... I could get a dual core atom box which runs on 50W for little money.
Yes, there are open-source HMI projects available, but try convincing someone to deploy a life-critical system using one of them.
That's the first time I've seen alpha software with a "This may kill you and everyone around you" warning that was literally true.
It's not a great confidence boost when you're thinking of switching from the commercial solution which I am sure makes plenty of soothing cooing noises about its safety.
Actually I was reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at 10. I did pick my nose though... still do.
I wasn't reading a whole lot besides Asterix at that age, but I did have a decent record collection including Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction - the swearing amused me. Didn't understand why the middle sized robot smashed the nice naked lady's little sized robots but was glad the big sized robot caught him at it.
As for nose picking? Only in the car and other times when I think people can't see me...
Not only will this be the first fully HTML5 compliant parser
Really, fully compliant with an incomplete and moving spec? That IS clever coding.
To use the show Breaking Bad as an analogy, it's Walter White vs. Jesse Pinkman. Who would you want making your drugs?
Jesse's shit is good now, he learned well from Walter.
That said, I'm probably not going to be buying a lot of crystal unless things really go downhill
Poor snake. Probably died. (Regurgitating sucks when you're a snake.) Oh well, Darwin at work I suppose.
Aye, fuckin' right it died - regurgitating is supposed to blow!
I don't see anything wrong with that as long as they're not playing first-person shooter games, violent games, games with a lot of sexual or drug content.
Stop the censure! I grew up with duke nukem and it had no bad consequences.
And I'm all out of gum!
I want the badge to be a silhouette of Nico Bellic (or one of his counterparts from another GTA game) whacking someone by the river bank... or maybe a montage of three Nicos:
- Battering a hooker
- Doing a line
- Riverside execution
All in a day's work^Wplay.
You can fully "undress" it, down to the bare basics, and it is incredibly stable. You'll definitely run it from a 4 Gb USB stick - and your students, most importantly, will LEARN from it.
I learned a hell of a lot from using Slackware and still use it as my day to day distro... but from a server management perspective:
Debian shell server with user-mode linux instances for each user - you can keep an OS image centrally with any changes made going into a copy-on-write file in the home directory. I find this a lot simpler than maintaining separate VM and OS - If the student messes up, nuke their COW file and it's back to stock.
Before starting to use spotify I had upwards of 200gb of mp3s (mostly badly sorted, tagged) that I used as a music library and downloaded huge amounts of music. These days I dont bother. Most of what I want is on spotify and I pay for a "premium" service with no ads. Was nice to reclaim those gigabytes ;)
I maintain my own music collection (it is sorted and tagged impeccably, btw). The disk space overhead (x2, backup, backup, backup!) is completely worth it to me to be able to listen to music how, when and where I like. I can buy any portable player I like, I can copy the music to any device, I don't need a constant connection to the internet to listen to my collection (which is good, as my "broadband" service is a turd), I can maintain the collection in a quality which is acceptable to me (i.e. not internet streaming quality)... There are probably other great reasons for maintaining my own collection but I just take this freedom for granted so am having trouble listing the other things I like about it.
A chunk of my collection is old stuff captured from my own vinyl collection, I would imagine there is much of it that is simply not available in Spotify's catalogue (I'd like to confirm this but blah blah my country etc.)
...cross platform opengl is dead...
As opposed to cross-platform DirectX which is alive and kicking.
It matters because standard def is 4:3 and high def is 16:9. The simpsons looks a lot better now that I don't need to stretch it to fit my screen.
Maybe, but it's still not funny any more.