I think that this is great - low-cost zero gravity, or a 2-D version - it may open up more possibilities for people who want to experiment with the robots or the AI. Pesumably, more people will build the hardware, which would (hopefully) be good for the AI people as well.
My Karma was raised to Good as a result of a reply I made a few days ago.
So, I start reading/. last night after midnight, and feel the need to reply to this important topic. Funny thing, though - I realize that there are, at that point no comments - mine would/might be first. Anyway, I post.
By the time I did (2 or 3 minutes later), someone had already made a comment about the important implications in the Porn industry, and now my comment is modded down as Redundant. Fine.
But (with this negative mod), my Karma is now back down to Positive.
I think that mods of Redundant and Overrated should, like Funny, not affect Karma.
Databases are usually pretty disk intensive, so I would probably go for SCSI disks. Anyway - when the hardware costs are dwarfed by the Oracle licence cost - why skimp on the hardware?
It has been my experience, over many years, that when Oracle is working, it is compute-bound. Actually, now that I think of it, I am not sure that this is true when using IDE disks, but Oracle goes through a lot of cycles. One reason is that it gets a big block of disk to which it has very fast access but it uses cycles to encode/decode data going to/from the disk.
I am running a $700 personal version of Oracle on a $900 box (2.4 GHz).
Yeah, they should do it cheap...
on
What To Wear On Mars
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· Score: 3, Insightful
By using cutting edge materials (20 years early)
it's extremely expensive now
it's 20 years old then
They should do this on the cheap, using the simplest most standard materials/approaches that they can.
What they would end up with might not be the very best, and probably won't be the final design, but it could set a standard... any final design should be a lot better if it is going to cost a lot more.
With the right publicity (for the next 20 years), this could draw more attention to the school (and its important supply of girl geeks) than developing an expensive design that is out of date and not chosen.
... and people don't ask you what church you belong to or try to get you to come to theirs.
Actually, we do get a few Jehovah's Witnesses and a small proportion of enthusiastic (generally born again) Christians, but there is no overall cultural pressure for this sort of thing.
Looking at a part of the the world and expressing it in software is a craft. There may be science involved, either in the problem being addressed or in the way the software expresses it or in the way you evaluate the software. But the act of programming, "The Art of Programming", is a craft.
To be a good developer requires mastery of Junior High math.
You know about set theory (as did Dr. Codd), and you use it when you think about SQL. I don't know about set theory but I have a talent for looking at the world in the right way.
I agree that passion, dedication, [and] determination in relation to a scientific view of the world is required. But I had that when I was ten; it certainly does not take university level math to achieve that.
The normalization and simplifications are trivial if you have a talent for looking at the world from the point of view of SQL. It's the talent that's important; you just happen to (also) use yours for mathematics.
If you get deeply into the science of Computer Science, you can certainly get into some math. But, it is important to note that practically no one gets employed as a computer scientist (except for people who stay in academe and study and teach Computer Science).
Most people going into CS expect to get jobs as systems developers of some sort. 'Code monkeys' might be the bottom of the pack; frequently they are just trained tool-users who write snippets of code behind buttons.
But to be a great developer is to be a master of a craft, not a scientist. This particular craft is mental - it is, as you imply, a matter of critical thinking and problem solving. It is being able to look at the world in different ways and being able to see how to express an aspect of the world using the tools of your craft. It is a craft with many principles and design patterns and ways of looking at the things.
To be a great developer requires talent. Picking candidates that are strong on math may be a useful way of identifying people with the talent. (This approach screws people like me, however; I believe that I have a great deal of talent in the craft, but my brain crapped-out after basic calculus.)
The vast majority of developers require no more than:
basic algebra
basic trig
basic statistics
Some people need basic geometry.
Sure, if you are getting into signal processing or astrophysics or a variety of other areas, you need lots of math. But that isn't where most people are going. If you are, and you are into math, great; otherwise, don't sweat it.
You don't write good SQL because you are good at math (as others have apparently suggested); you write good SQL because
The SUSE website says that the difference between SUSE you pay for and SUSE you download for free is only a few apps that are not included in the free one. But I could never find a list of the apps that were not included.
Does anyone know what the difference between free SUSE and paid-for SUSE is?
I have been using Redhat 9 and I liked it. Oracle supported it and I can install Oracle 9i (without the i parts) just fine.
Now, near as I can tell, Oracle is not supported on any home or workstation version of Linux; it is only supported on server editions. Supposedly, you can get Oracle to run on FC and a variety of other distros, but it requires files that are only available if you already get support from Oracle. Probably there are ways around this, but... I would rather a setup that is supposed to work rather than a long, involved procedure to get it to work.
As a developer that wants to use Oracle from time to time on my personal machine, this is not good.
So... Red Hat 9 for now, probably home-SUSE plus a server version of SUSE on a separate box if I want to get into Oracle in a serious way.
Back when I was in high school, in 1976 or '77, I had the popular electronics magazine with the picture of the first computer you could build from a kit - I think it was called the Altair 6800 (or something like that).
Several months after that, I saw a big ad in Popular Electronics or Byte for a 1 KB board for $1000 - a dollar a byte.
Long ago, people would buy stock in a company because it made money and distributed (much of) those profits to its owners - the shareholders - in the form of dividends.
Speculators might be more interested in whether the company was growing and whether the stock would go up. But the basic idea of investment was to be a part owner of a company so that you could share in the profits.
Of course, tech companies in particular need to retain some earnings to fincance new things, but this business of just sitting on billions and billions of dollars is... weird.
It used to be that "hobby" projects were not considered to be part of your "professional experience".
However...
If you set yourself up as a business, do something as an Open Source project, create a web-site for it and get the project listed on FreshMeat.net, then you can list it as part of your professional experience.
I havn't earned any money for far too long, but, as a self-employed person trying to start a business, I have started www.chkdb.org and www.mcov.org, both with websites and both listed on freshmeat with a few subscribers. These projects are listed on my resume as part of the work done by my (unsuccessful) business.
Companies should have "Start Smoking" programs
on
Those Eureka Moments
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· Score: 1
I would be doing some work and get to some tricky aspect that I had to (or felt like) solving now. But it was a toughy... there was no obviously right solution, or I couldn't decide between two choices.
So I would go out for a smoke. I would have the intention of continuing to try to solve the problem. I wasn't just taking (yet another) break, I was trying to change my surroundings...
But, by the time I had finished the cigarette, I realized that I had gotten distracted much earlier and had, in fact, spent the time day dreaming. (I should probably stress, at this point, that I am, in fact, talking about tobacco - Drum from Holand (not that crap they put in commercial cigerettes)).
Then, as I walked back towards the door, I would realize that I knew the right way to look at the problem and that the best solution was obvious.
Companies that want to increase creativity and problem-solving skills should begin "Start Smoking" programs. (Manditory only for new-hires, or course.)
Do they use focus groups for design issues such as this, or do they just GUESS what will sell?
Remember that Coke did a lot of consumer testing before bringing out "New Coke"... you're walking through the mall, someone asks you if you want to participate, you take a little sip of each (even though you are not actually thirsty at that point), and you pick the one which is sweetest.
Unfortunately, after they bring out "New Coke" and you are thirsty, the last thing you want is something that tastes like super-sweet cough medicine.
You do a focus group on your new device, maybe in a brightly lit area, and people like the light-sabre LED....
I love to program and I love to design databases. The part I like the best is designing the high-level set of classes/entities. My talent is in abstraction - deciding what to make into an object/entity and defining the fundamental relationships.
I want to get a good feel for what is required in a general way and then design classes/entities that will support what is required. I try to build the simplest set of classes/entities that will do what the user is generally asking for. If this is done well, whatever the user needs at the detail level will be easy to implement in the classes/entities.
So...
get a general idea of what is required plus a detailed idea of what the initial version of the system should do
develop classes/entities that will handle (or can be easily extended to handle) anything the user might reasonably ask for
build the minimal initial system (which should be clean and sound) and hopefully get user buy-in to take the development further
But the most important step is deciding which classes/entities are going to be initially built and which are going to be allowed-for (not built but would be simple to add).
I like the idea of moderately frequent releases. But the most important thing is for a good person
(or a good small team) to do a good job at initially laying out the fundamental architecture - expressed as a well documented set of classes or entities.
If Linux becomes very easy to use, there will be less demand for service and support providers that configure and manage Linux systems -- users wil be able to configure and manage their own boxes.
If Linux becomes easier to use, more people will use it, including people who will always need support.
New users will try out an application, decide that they might want to use it, but be unable to do what they want to do. I mean, even good products require support, and the more users there are, the more support people there will have to be.
As Fred Brooks pointed out in the classic paper in 1987, there are "No Silver Bullets".
Writing software is difficult because it actually is complex - a piece of software of any size has more "moving parts" than (almost?) any other thing people build.
Things have gotten better over the last 50 years - high-level languages, object-oriented design and information-hiding to reduce interdependencies.
But software is still one of the most complex things people make. Better tools and approaches help, but there are no silver bullets - software is complex because it is complex.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that this is great - low-cost zero gravity, or a 2-D version - it may open up more possibilities for people who want to experiment with the robots or the AI. Pesumably, more people will build the hardware, which would (hopefully) be good for the AI people as well.
I imagine that a low refresh rate will mean a very low rate of flow of (new) information.
So, I start reading /. last night after midnight, and feel the need to reply to this important topic. Funny thing, though - I realize that there are, at that point no comments - mine would/might be first. Anyway, I post.
By the time I did (2 or 3 minutes later), someone had already made a comment about the important implications in the Porn industry, and now my comment is modded down as Redundant. Fine.
But (with this negative mod), my Karma is now back down to Positive.
I think that mods of Redundant and Overrated should, like Funny, not affect Karma.
I don't even have a sound card; I sure as hell am not getting this.
No, I am just kidding...
From Oracle's web-site, I got Oracle Database 9i Personal Edition - Named User Plus Perpetual - Users: 1 Full Use
Plus the CD pack for Linux Intel, plus shipping, all for just over Can$690.00
I don't use the 'i' part of 9i - I just use the database, SQL*Plus, SQL*Loader and PL/SQL.
It has been my experience, over many years, that when Oracle is working, it is compute-bound. Actually, now that I think of it, I am not sure that this is true when using IDE disks, but Oracle goes through a lot of cycles. One reason is that it gets a big block of disk to which it has very fast access but it uses cycles to encode/decode data going to/from the disk.
I am running a $700 personal version of Oracle on a $900 box (2.4 GHz).
They should do this on the cheap, using the simplest most standard materials/approaches that they can.
What they would end up with might not be the very best, and probably won't be the final design, but it could set a standard... any final design should be a lot better if it is going to cost a lot more.
With the right publicity (for the next 20 years), this could draw more attention to the school (and its important supply of girl geeks) than developing an expensive design that is out of date and not chosen.
And how many miles of farm roads are there in Texas?
Actually, we do get a few Jehovah's Witnesses and a small proportion of enthusiastic (generally born again) Christians, but there is no overall cultural pressure for this sort of thing.
To be a good developer requires mastery of Junior High math.
You know about set theory (as did Dr. Codd), and you use it when you think about SQL. I don't know about set theory but I have a talent for looking at the world in the right way.
I agree that passion, dedication, [and] determination in relation to a scientific view of the world is required. But I had that when I was ten; it certainly does not take university level math to achieve that.
The normalization and simplifications are trivial if you have a talent for looking at the world from the point of view of SQL. It's the talent that's important; you just happen to (also) use yours for mathematics.
Or did the thing wrap or something?
1/15 is only approximately zero when you are talking about things like sticks of gum; when you are talking about the capitalization of Microsoft...
If you get deeply into the science of Computer Science, you can certainly get into some math. But, it is important to note that practically no one gets employed as a computer scientist (except for people who stay in academe and study and teach Computer Science).
Most people going into CS expect to get jobs as systems developers of some sort. 'Code monkeys' might be the bottom of the pack; frequently they are just trained tool-users who write snippets of code behind buttons.
But to be a great developer is to be a master of a craft, not a scientist. This particular craft is mental - it is, as you imply, a matter of critical thinking and problem solving. It is being able to look at the world in different ways and being able to see how to express an aspect of the world using the tools of your craft. It is a craft with many principles and design patterns and ways of looking at the things.
To be a great developer requires talent. Picking candidates that are strong on math may be a useful way of identifying people with the talent. (This approach screws people like me, however; I believe that I have a great deal of talent in the craft, but my brain crapped-out after basic calculus.)
The vast majority of developers require no more than:
- basic algebra
- basic trig
- basic statistics
Some people need basic geometry.Sure, if you are getting into signal processing or astrophysics or a variety of other areas, you need lots of math. But that isn't where most people are going. If you are, and you are into math, great; otherwise, don't sweat it.
You don't write good SQL because you are good at math (as others have apparently suggested); you write good SQL because
Nothing beats talent plus experience.
Does anyone know what the difference between free SUSE and paid-for SUSE is?
Now, near as I can tell, Oracle is not supported on any home or workstation version of Linux; it is only supported on server editions. Supposedly, you can get Oracle to run on FC and a variety of other distros, but it requires files that are only available if you already get support from Oracle. Probably there are ways around this, but... I would rather a setup that is supposed to work rather than a long, involved procedure to get it to work.
As a developer that wants to use Oracle from time to time on my personal machine, this is not good.
So... Red Hat 9 for now, probably home-SUSE plus a server version of SUSE on a separate box if I want to get into Oracle in a serious way.
Several months after that, I saw a big ad in Popular Electronics or Byte for a 1 KB board for $1000 - a dollar a byte.
Speculators might be more interested in whether the company was growing and whether the stock would go up. But the basic idea of investment was to be a part owner of a company so that you could share in the profits.
Of course, tech companies in particular need to retain some earnings to fincance new things, but this business of just sitting on billions and billions of dollars is... weird.
However...
If you set yourself up as a business, do something as an Open Source project, create a web-site for it and get the project listed on FreshMeat.net, then you can list it as part of your professional experience.
I havn't earned any money for far too long, but, as a self-employed person trying to start a business, I have started www.chkdb.org and www.mcov.org, both with websites and both listed on freshmeat with a few subscribers. These projects are listed on my resume as part of the work done by my (unsuccessful) business.
So I would go out for a smoke. I would have the intention of continuing to try to solve the problem. I wasn't just taking (yet another) break, I was trying to change my surroundings...
But, by the time I had finished the cigarette, I realized that I had gotten distracted much earlier and had, in fact, spent the time day dreaming. (I should probably stress, at this point, that I am, in fact, talking about tobacco - Drum from Holand (not that crap they put in commercial cigerettes)).
Then, as I walked back towards the door, I would realize that I knew the right way to look at the problem and that the best solution was obvious.
Companies that want to increase creativity and problem-solving skills should begin "Start Smoking" programs. (Manditory only for new-hires, or course.)
Remember that Coke did a lot of consumer testing before bringing out "New Coke"... you're walking through the mall, someone asks you if you want to participate, you take a little sip of each (even though you are not actually thirsty at that point), and you pick the one which is sweetest.
Unfortunately, after they bring out "New Coke" and you are thirsty, the last thing you want is something that tastes like super-sweet cough medicine.
You do a focus group on your new device, maybe in a brightly lit area, and people like the light-sabre LED....
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
(Although maybe this was someone else using a similar sig.)
I note that you have dropped the last two-word bit. Is it the Cuba thing?
I hate XP because it tries to eliminate the part of systems design that I consider most important...
I want to get a good feel for what is required in a general way and then design classes/entities that will support what is required. I try to build the simplest set of classes/entities that will do what the user is generally asking for. If this is done well, whatever the user needs at the detail level will be easy to implement in the classes/entities.
So...
But the most important step is deciding which classes/entities are going to be initially built and which are going to be allowed-for (not built but would be simple to add).
I like the idea of moderately frequent releases. But the most important thing is for a good person (or a good small team) to do a good job at initially laying out the fundamental architecture - expressed as a well documented set of classes or entities.
If Linux becomes easier to use, more people will use it, including people who will always need support.
New users will try out an application, decide that they might want to use it, but be unable to do what they want to do. I mean, even good products require support, and the more users there are, the more support people there will have to be.
Writing software is difficult because it actually is complex - a piece of software of any size has more "moving parts" than (almost?) any other thing people build.
Things have gotten better over the last 50 years - high-level languages, object-oriented design and information-hiding to reduce interdependencies.
But software is still one of the most complex things people make. Better tools and approaches help, but there are no silver bullets - software is complex because it is complex.