Funny you should mention the USB Swiss Army Knife for it's price, since IT"S THE CHEAPEST THING THERE!!! Oh, I do know they make a 'travelers' version with a pen and something else useless instead of those 'dangerous' inch-long blades.
Hell-o, Tom's Hardware? Yea, uh, 2000 was several years ago, and we're programmers and IT workers around here? Yea, uh, we don't make that kind of cash anymore, right? And we blew our credit on new computer systems already? Can I see even _one_ item less than ninety bucks ? That'd be great. Thanks.
Seriously, though, what's the average sticker price on these items, like $1200 ?!? Yea, nice little christmas gifts we'll all be seeing under the tree, sure...
The worst part about this whole thing is that EA could have easily avoided it all. How? By paying their employees like professionals.
Ok, so it sounds a little crazy, but if you want to make your employees "exempt", it's really pretty simple to do. Just pay them enough! In California, that's just a little over $80k per year. Make 'em salaried, and if they're programmers or other IT folk, $80k+ per year, and you can ask them to work all you frickin' want. No overtime. They're in charge of their schedules, more or less, and just have to get the job done.
I see this case as less about the video game industry as about industry in general, and if you want to make it specific, it's about programmers.
IMHO, if you're hiring programmers ( of any kind, QA, whatever ) for any job in the S.F. Bay Area, you really should be paying at least $80k, it's not your workers can realistically buy a house on that salary anyway. If you can't pay that, you *should* move your business out of the area. Or pay your employees more. Either way, breaking labor laws isn't a smart business move. This lawsuit, however it goes, will cost the company more ( in bad publicity, in money, in lost productivity, etc ) than just paying everyone decently from the beginning would have.
Stuff like this kept me from working on video games, seriously. I took one look at the salaries my friends were getting in video games, and decided I'd enjoy working on other stuff...
Re:This Article is riddled with inaccuracies.
on
NeXTSTEP To Mac OS X
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Most. Interesting. NeXTSTEP. article. ever!
They didn't release their products because they insisted upon CARBON.
Now that Cocoa is finally getting its just dues how long before we see replacements to these Gorillas
I am sooo over the Carbon apps. Why won't these %*#@! companies get with the times and hire some of us Cocoa programmers already!! I'm cheap, I swear!! Beyond that, Objective-C... it's *still* the way to go!! Stupid Carbon apps will never really work 100% right, I swear... freekin' Word *still* has problems with long file names, that's SO unacceptable!!
Oh, wait, I see the problem. Do I want to work for Macromedia?? I think I know too much about how that ship is run... Quark? If they're not smart enough to see that they've lost market share already... Microsoft? Adobe? Oh. Yea. They might have enough money, but they haven't offered it yet, if you know what I'm saying...
So who wants to pay me to replace one of these "Gorillas"? Oh, and I'll probably need 8 or 9 other Objective-C programmers to get the job done soon enough for marketing drones to be happy...
The machines weren't ready for "real" sales until 1990, when they went on the market for $9999.
What's that mean, 'real' sales?
I know I went to a nice university, but we had NeXT machines in pretty good numbers by 1991... I can't believe they were actually that much... then again, a hard drive was pretty pricy back then, I bet you could easily configure a machine at that price! But, uh, I'd take that number with a grain of salt, it's not like they sold only one model, and that's a wiki entry with no source to back it up...
Oh, BTW, I remembered the site that specializes in NeXT hardware is BlackHoleInc, get yer NeXTStation Turbo Color for a low, low $499 !!
Yea, all things considered, that's some hardware that's held it's value pretty well... try getting that for *any* PC from 1992!!
I dunno what they go for on eBay, but were they ever really $10k?? I thought they were more along the lines of $2-5k... and I should know.;-)... maybe the dual-color-cubes could get up to $10k??
Some guy on ebay is selling an empty cube, though, and it's already up to $78.
I bought my NeXT slab, monitor and laser printer for $150 or so from a coworker a few years ago...
No working systems are on ebay, though ( mine works ). And there seems to be some weird thing where these machines don't have their logos attached, what's that all about?
Anyway, NeXT had stopped making those boxes long before 1996 ( it was more like 1992-1993 that happened ), it's likely that a lot of folks at NeXT were using NeXTStep for Intel by 1996... now, where did I put my copy of NeXTStep for Intel?? Darn it...
Don't look at Nullsoft ( bought by AOL, which destroys every company it buys, including Time-Warner ). Look at Bill Kincaid.
He's _back_ at Apple ( he'd left it before making SoundJam )... I'm thinking they may have made it worth his while to return.
Hey, don't get me wrong, Panic is a great company, I'm glad they're still around. Still, you should always meet with Apple ( or any other business ) if they want to meet- at least find out why, huh? At least give yourself the chance to say "no" rather than just handing business to your competition...
Yea, for the kind of work you're doing ( really, the task is "interpreting PDF data, scanning each page for specific textual information, sorting the PDF pages based on that data"... low-level stuff as far as PDF goes ), you need to do some real programming, no matter what platform you're on.
But what SDK are you talking about ? Adobe's site says
Functionality in the Adobe PDF library is consistent across the following platforms:
Windows Macintosh Sun Solaris Linux IBM AIX HP-UX AS/400 MVS (OS/390)
or is that not the SDK you're using? Not that it matters... as you've already noted, the OS layer isn't sucking up all _that_ much CPU time. And probably if you're doing these types of jobs, you're not worried about the extra few hundred you're spending on Windows licenses. I was just concerned that you were getting stuck in the all-too-common "get it done yesterday, do what you know" mode small business so often falls into.
Again, not that it matters, but OS X's Acrobat has gotten a lot closer in functionality... we haven't found the thing it won't do.
If one _was_ to attempt a project such as yours in an OS X environment, you wouldn't really need Acrobat anyway, and I'd actually doubt you'd need much more than libraries that come with OS X to do the job. Of course, maybe there's a level of abstraction or two you're getting from your SDK that the Cocoa API and/or Quartz 2D doesn't provide... any maybe you don't want to learn Objective-C, though the APIs I just pointed to are plain ol' C...
If you ever happen upon an OS X installation with the developer tools installed,
/Developer/Examples/Quartz/PDF/Voyeur
contains a sample project which displays ( in outline format ) the markup contents of any PDF. I unfortunately couldn't find a copy of it online, it's not one of the download samples from the Apple Developer Connection, it's just installed with the developer tools.
c'mon...give these guys a break. First, they didn't know they were going to be asked to be iTunes.
I like the way you think, in general, but what you've stated is precisely my point. They didn't even know why Apple wanted to talk to them. It would have been easy to find out, wouldn't it?
Just because I hate it when people don't answer my questions, no I no longer run my own shop. I gave up private contracting work long ago, have a wife and child, and don't see in the current American economic climate a lot of opportunities for starting a business ( high tech or otherwise ). I have some experience with small business from working at one and doing private contracting for years ( which is similar, yet not at all like a normal private business ).
I don't think Apple would have neccessarily said "we're buying your company", though, do you? Even if that was the first offer, maybe they'd have gotten "we're buying your code and signing this extensive contract setting your company up for the next several years". What's to say a deal with Apple wouldn't have meant that they could get what they want in life?
But they never even got to the "oh, we're interested in your software" stage, according to the article... in fact, it's really puzzling, the guy was so excited to even get an *email* from Steve, then just blows off meeting with Apple just because they'd see them at the WWDC in a couple of months anyway? Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if there isn't more to the story, it's not very well explained by "we were in negotiations with AOL so we didn't meet with Apple".
When Apple ( or any large potential customer ) wants to set up a meeting with you, meet with them! Find out what they're interested in! Don't cancel the meeting because your potential partners are too busy ( i.e. too busy for you ). Don't go hangliding/sailing/hiking. Don't think opportunity knocks all the time. Don't be too busy; find room in your schedule and get to work! MEET with your potential clients/partners/meal ticket!!
Freaking pathetic. These guys passed up an opportunity to become iTunes, and why?? Because they thought AOL was going to solve all of their problems, because they couldn't hold a frickin' meeting without them?!? I know it's easy to spot in retrospect, but that's so pathetic, it should have been easy to spot at the time... I mean, you're an Apple developer and Apple wants to meet with you, so you... don't??!? What would Apple have had to do to buy these guys big frickin' houses?!?
Tell you what - if you're a small software developer being contacted by Apple, hire me as your managerial consultant. I'll make sure you meet with them, at the very least!!
Well, all of the sudden, a client wants us to process a 100,000 page document. Ohh. Hmm. Interesting. Well, well, what to do now! We have 72 hrs to get it to press..
Clusters here we come. What else can we do! Spent a few weeks tweaking and profiling and fixing the code and that helped a lot. But now its just plain CPU bound!
The processing parallesizes fairly well, so a nice cluster of boxes would be the best solution I can think of. And since everything is already Windows based....
...what other options do we have!
Well, what you do is realize that there's no reason on god's green earth for everything to be Windows based... and that even Adobe Acrobat is more easily scriptable on OS X than Windows, if you've got to use that tool for some sort of features or comfort level issue.
Then again, I'm less sure what kind of processing you're doing... we have a production process that is pretty much end-to-end PDF, but... I can't think of a single operation that takes enough time that, even done 5000 times, would take more than a couple of hours.
What the heck kind of 'processing' are you doing to documents that takes so long? Do they start as PDF, or are you taking scans or other bitmaps and converting them to PDF ?
From a business perspective, it would probably make a lot of sense for you guys to figure out what takes such a long amount of processing, identify the bottlenecks, and create a small cluster to take care of that processing... regardless of OS platform, although I will go out of my way to recommend OS X as an OS where PDF is strongly supported, Acrobat is easily scriptable ( via Applescript ) and ghostscript and other PDF tools are plentiful. Not to mention support for clustering...
But if you have windows-only programs and programmers, that's why you're using windows... not for any other reason... and that's where the tricky part of getting yourself and your boss to recognize this as a weakness, and the need to invest in a little R&D, comes in... you might find that ghostscript and a few other command-line tools running on a set of cheapo linux boxes cranks through the more time-consuming calculations a lot faster than some WinXP boxes, but you'll never know unless you take the time and effort to set up some test cases. Not hiring extra help and not looking beyond current solutions due to ( perceived or real ) high cost of research keeps a lot of small businesses small.
Seriously, what is it about your PDF processing that couldn't be done by a Linux machine with ghostscript? Or is it just that you wouldn't know where to start?
I spent many, many hours playing with Matchbox Cars.
I can't believe yours was the first post to mention toy cars!! Matchbox or Hot Wheels, they're one of my three-year old's favorites, and I'd hate to meet the poor sad sack who didn't play with them. I'd mod you up if I had points.
The Matchbox are the cheap version, Hot Wheels are more high-end. Matchbox for playing out in the dirt. Hot Wheels for inside on plastic tracks. They're both made by the same company, just marketed and manufactured as low-end and high-end products, respectively.
Ok, I know I'm stating the obvious, and risk getting flamed for doing so, but...
any time I need an MP3 file or video from my computer, I burn it onto a CD or DVD, put said disc in my DVD player ( which also supports MP3 format files along with several video formats I've never used ) and play it.
I'll readily admit I've never found a good reason to move any video other than home movies from computer to TV, so yea, this would be a *little* tricky for things like, er, some random piece of video downloaded off the 'net, but... I haven't found the instance where I'd rather look at the video on my TV than on my computer. What's the point again? And of course, as long as I can encode it in mpeg for DVD burning, what, DVD media is too expensive or something??
I guess for MP3s something like Airport Express would be more ideal ( though you need a remote, sigh ), or a Tivo Media or a full-fledge computer ( seriously, blah, seems like a bit much ) solution could be more convenient, but, seriously... the number of times I've wanted to put video from my computer onto my TV without *also* wanting to burn a DVD of that video is pretty small. About as small as the number of times I've wanted to listen to MP3s on my home stereo and thought burning a CD of MP3s was too much bother.
Seriously, I used to think the idea was super-cool, but I have to admit I think that a lot of the "computer media on home entertainment equipment" solutions are looking to solve a problem that isn't very big in most people's minds. I mean, it's a neat idea that I could get to a file on my computer and play it on my stereo or TV more easily than by burning a disc. But from a practical standpoint, usually I want to burn that disc anyway; why not use a DVD player like it was intended, rather than use a PC hooked to my TV ?
Sure, someone is going to point out that I actually have to get off my ass to change discs, but hey, I have a five disc changer, and I'm not _that_ lazy. Except when it comes to putting together overly elaborate A/V solutions when my DVD player and CD/DVD burner do the job just fine...
On the other hand, if some solution came really easily and more or less complete, I might use it instead. If my Tivo did more stuff, like could play songs, video, or show pictures from my computer, that'd be cool. But I'm not going to pay a whole lot extra for that ability when I can burn a disc and get nearly the same result ( how is that Home Media pack thing working out for Tivo, anyway ? ).
Even the concept of needing yet another A/V switch to bring in yet another source feels like going too far. I'd like fewer devices in my A/V rack, not more. Really.
I recieved a loan called a FHA loan. After 5 years, the loan is forgiven, with me not paying shit. Should I sell my house before 5 years, I pay N*$1000, where N=years left on 5 year term. This is for closing costs, etc ONLY.
Funny that this was posted by an AC. I was looking for the parent post to respond with this, since it's what I *think* they might have been talking about. Just a few details, though. For one, the maximum amount of a FHA loan isn't half of the median price I mentioned. Don't FHA loans have to be for houses with one acre attached, or is that a different loan program I'm thinking of? Or is the loan only for the closing costs and whatnot, not the home loan itself? In any event, I doubt an FHA loan is going to be helpful, or even available, to someone living in the SF bay area.
I'd love to hear differently, but again, for some reason, neither my mortage broker nor my real estate agent managed to mention FHA loans as an option for us... wonder why...
The "average" price where I live is over $1M (Santa Barbara, CA). A buddy of mine making about $60K a year bought a house built circa 1920 for just over $500K. His wife also made around $60K, so I guess the tip is "Find a wife."
That's all good and well, but really, your advice seems to be "get a wife who makes as much as you do". That and/or "cut your expenses drastically and buy a low-income condo". Or "have some equity because you bought a long time ago", or "get wealthy relatives to loan you some cash".
See what I'm saying?
I have a young child and a wife. My wife, while employable and college-educated, has never made more than $30k a year ( read: liberal arts degree ). Which would just cover the expenses related to child care and her working, add to our tax burden, thrash our quality of life, and still not really give us enough saving power to get into a house. Yea, I've thought of raiding the ( depression-depleted ) 401(k), I actually almost did it to buy a "low-income" condo ( fixed at 2%+cost of living appreciation ), before I realized I was nearly overdrawn and trying to buy at that moment would have been flirting with bankruptcy.
I have the same financial planning books, and I use Quicken, I've been over my budget again and again. I've identified a few areas where I could save ( at most ) a couple hundred bucks a month by making some fairly major life changes. But I've also done the analysis that suggests I wouldn't survive the $2,222+ monthly housing payment with any sort of "savings" or "float" whatsoever, even after cutting out NetFlix, cable internet, heat, and everything else worth living for... short of getting more income. How many people spend more than $600 bucks a month after rent? People who have families and eat. We spend $600 a month on food alone. Utilities average easily over $200 a month... Could I personally live on a whole lot less? Sure, if I was single... but I'm not. Hey, I grew up really, really poor, and know how to live like that, but I can't do that to my family just to buy into an over-inflated housing market.
This is one of those few times where the statistics don't lie, and they tell a harsh tale: unless you're in the top 14% of income earners in many places in California, you can't hope to break into real estate. Sure, I know people who've done it. With help from their parents, or with double incomes. It's sad, but that's what it takes.
it's time to move if the average house is 530k. Try moving to Atlanta, GA (if the idea is not too frightening for you).
Yea, the idea of moving to Georgia is absolutely terrifying. I'd more likely move my family to Oregon, Washington or even Canada. Starting from northern California, moving to *Amsterdam* would likely be less of a culture shock than moving to Atlanta.
But, yea, the cost of an average house in the SF Bay area is terrifying.
You can't get a *condo* for $280k here, but the real problem is that salaries aren't adjusted to reflect the difference. A whopping 14 percent of people who live here can afford to buy a house, which is why I had such a problem with the parent post's "save, buy a house!" mantra, like it's something anyone with a job can do. It *should* be something anyone with a decent job can do, and it might be, if business and political leaders were looking out for the average man. But for the time being, paying programmers ( or just about anyone else ) enough to buy a house in the bay area isn't on anyone's to-do list.
renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!! There are federal government programs to help first time buyers so that you don't even need a downpayment!
Bullshit.
Sorry. Let me find a nicer way to say that. Er, can you provide a link to information about these swell federal government programs? My mortage broker and real estate agent seem to have failed to point those out to me. Thanks.
Can you tell me how someone making $60k a year is going to break in to a housing market where an *average* house is $530k ? I thought so.
I'm not excusing the guy in the story for not buying a house in Ohio back when he was making $45k ( he probably could have ), but I am saying, from my personal experience on the west coast, that there are people _with_ nearly-decent jobs who have no possible hope of purchasing real estate. Any tips are appreciated, but basically, we're either going to have to start making more money, real estate prices are going to have to start coming down, or the number of homeless families is going to go up. I have a bad feeling about which it will be.
My advice: don't move to California looking for a job.
Hey, I never said anyone should try to buy this code ( which, of course, would be illegal, nobody should buy stolen items ), I was just offering up one more reason why doing so might not be terribly intelligent...
But, even though I'm not breaking the law, I *am* asking how you'd trust this particular incarnation of the "SCC" not to be a sting operation...
really, I'm kinda curious, it could be good to know;-)
Of course, I have the NVidia GeForce 5200, so you may still have an ATI driver issue, but then again maybe not. It's just the demo, reinstall and check again... you are running with the patch, right?
See boss, someone reported a problem with the system update, I just _had_ to test UT2k4 to see if there was an OpenGL problem...
I know it's probably not, I'd be impressed if law enforcement was smart enough to try this, and it would likely be viewed as entrapment if they did, but...
puts on tinfoil hat
suppose for just a minute that you wanted to contact, trace, and/or otherwise smoke out large numbers of people interested in buying source code to security applications. Might one approach be to (a) publicize a code theft (b) pose as a 'known' hacker organization selling the code (c) fully investigate everyone who contacts you
I'm leaving the tinfoil hat on, I just noticed we'll see Republicans in power for 4 more years
But seriously, how are you going to trust "SCC" not to actually be "FBI" or even "NSA"?!? What are you going to do, ask them if they're cops!?!?
This will certainly spell the end of the Mac as a commercial/production machine. Instead using it as a serious business tool, employees will now spend their days playing doom3. The Mac advantage, the ability to remove components such as WMP, IE and the like, and thus avoid unnecessary vulnerabilities and distraction for staff and production workers, will be annihilated with this one game.
It's just a part of the steady decline in productivity that started with Wolfenstein3D and really picked up steam with Unreal Tournament 2004...
you could always vote Peace & Freedom instead of libertarian.
Voting for a political prisoner serving a life sentance in the U.S. does have it's charms. I mean, if you want to signal that there's a problem with the system...
hey, if you're going to list third-parties... Peace & Freedom is an oldie but a timely choice.
I picked P&F as the third-party choice back when Peace and Freedom was pretty much the only third party, and just never found a good reason to change it. I almost registered Green last time around, but decided against it... I mean, their candidate for president has been Leonard Peltier for several elections!! Nader doesn't trump that.
If I'm going to back a wacky third party with no chance in hell, their candidate might as well be serving life as a political prisoner, I figure...
But I am voting Kerry this year, even with my state locked down for the Demos. I hate G.W. that much.
Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto cyberspace researcher, said of the findings. "Remember when cars came out, and people would say, 'Wow, we're going for a ride today!' Now they just go for a ride."
Uh, no Barry, I don't remember when cars came out, how frickin' old ARE you!?
And, hello, "cyberspace researcher" at University of Toronto? Is that your official title?? What's that pay, I have a few websites to research...
What about @"SOMESTRING" ? That's a compile-time allocation, sure to be on the stack, right?
Maybe it'd be more correct to say *most* objects are heap objects? Certainly, the memory for the objects themselves is always in the heap. With possibly a few exceptions ( like above, are there maybe others? ), as well as pointers and primitives, of course.
How about
static NSString *foo;
at the top of a.m file, that NSString's memory *is* in the heap, right? yea, that's right - it's just the pointer that's in the stack, the memory reserved in a class' -alloc method is on the heap...
Of course, there's the notion that for a _lot_ of stuff near performance-sensitive code, you _wouldn't_ usually be using the object calls, and for largish, persistient, frequently-accessed data structures, you'd not pick an object over a primitive if performance was an issue, but then, that's just good common-sense programming practice, right ?;-)
The whole point of what these guys are doing with C++ in the kernel is to make using C++ in general a little _less_ slow, as well as bringing in some of the benefits of more modular, reusable code... where it make sense. It's an interesting experiment, at the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell-o, Tom's Hardware? Yea, uh, 2000 was several years ago, and we're programmers and IT workers around here? Yea, uh, we don't make that kind of cash anymore, right? And we blew our credit on new computer systems already? Can I see even _one_ item less than ninety bucks ? That'd be great. Thanks.
Seriously, though, what's the average sticker price on these items, like $1200 ?!? Yea, nice little christmas gifts we'll all be seeing under the tree, sure...
Ok, so it sounds a little crazy, but if you want to make your employees "exempt", it's really pretty simple to do. Just pay them enough! In California, that's just a little over $80k per year. Make 'em salaried, and if they're programmers or other IT folk, $80k+ per year, and you can ask them to work all you frickin' want. No overtime. They're in charge of their schedules, more or less, and just have to get the job done.
I see this case as less about the video game industry as about industry in general, and if you want to make it specific, it's about programmers.
IMHO, if you're hiring programmers ( of any kind, QA, whatever ) for any job in the S.F. Bay Area, you really should be paying at least $80k, it's not your workers can realistically buy a house on that salary anyway. If you can't pay that, you *should* move your business out of the area. Or pay your employees more. Either way, breaking labor laws isn't a smart business move. This lawsuit, however it goes, will cost the company more ( in bad publicity, in money, in lost productivity, etc ) than just paying everyone decently from the beginning would have.
Stuff like this kept me from working on video games, seriously. I took one look at the salaries my friends were getting in video games, and decided I'd enjoy working on other stuff...
They didn't release their products because they insisted upon CARBON.
Now that Cocoa is finally getting its just dues how long before we see replacements to these Gorillas
I am sooo over the Carbon apps. Why won't these %*#@! companies get with the times and hire some of us Cocoa programmers already!! I'm cheap, I swear!! Beyond that, Objective-C... it's *still* the way to go!! Stupid Carbon apps will never really work 100% right, I swear... freekin' Word *still* has problems with long file names, that's SO unacceptable!!
Oh, wait, I see the problem. Do I want to work for Macromedia?? I think I know too much about how that ship is run... Quark? If they're not smart enough to see that they've lost market share already... Microsoft? Adobe? Oh. Yea. They might have enough money, but they haven't offered it yet, if you know what I'm saying...
So who wants to pay me to replace one of these "Gorillas"? Oh, and I'll probably need 8 or 9 other Objective-C programmers to get the job done soon enough for marketing drones to be happy...
What's that mean, 'real' sales?
I know I went to a nice university, but we had NeXT machines in pretty good numbers by 1991... I can't believe they were actually that much... then again, a hard drive was pretty pricy back then, I bet you could easily configure a machine at that price! But, uh, I'd take that number with a grain of salt, it's not like they sold only one model, and that's a wiki entry with no source to back it up...
Oh, BTW, I remembered the site that specializes in NeXT hardware is BlackHoleInc, get yer NeXTStation Turbo Color for a low, low $499 !!
Yea, all things considered, that's some hardware that's held it's value pretty well... try getting that for *any* PC from 1992!!
Some guy on ebay is selling an empty cube, though, and it's already up to $78.
I bought my NeXT slab, monitor and laser printer for $150 or so from a coworker a few years ago...
No working systems are on ebay, though ( mine works ). And there seems to be some weird thing where these machines don't have their logos attached, what's that all about?
Anyway, NeXT had stopped making those boxes long before 1996 ( it was more like 1992-1993 that happened ), it's likely that a lot of folks at NeXT were using NeXTStep for Intel by 1996... now, where did I put my copy of NeXTStep for Intel?? Darn it...
Interesting... somewhere there's a collector who knows the exact date that Mattel bought Matchbox and the cars started getting crappy.
He's _back_ at Apple ( he'd left it before making SoundJam )... I'm thinking they may have made it worth his while to return.
Hey, don't get me wrong, Panic is a great company, I'm glad they're still around. Still, you should always meet with Apple ( or any other business ) if they want to meet- at least find out why, huh? At least give yourself the chance to say "no" rather than just handing business to your competition...
Yea, for the kind of work you're doing ( really, the task is "interpreting PDF data, scanning each page for specific textual information, sorting the PDF pages based on that data"... low-level stuff as far as PDF goes ), you need to do some real programming, no matter what platform you're on.
But what SDK are you talking about ? Adobe's site says
or is that not the SDK you're using? Not that it matters... as you've already noted, the OS layer isn't sucking up all _that_ much CPU time. And probably if you're doing these types of jobs, you're not worried about the extra few hundred you're spending on Windows licenses. I was just concerned that you were getting stuck in the all-too-common "get it done yesterday, do what you know" mode small business so often falls into.
Again, not that it matters, but OS X's Acrobat has gotten a lot closer in functionality... we haven't found the thing it won't do.
If one _was_ to attempt a project such as yours in an OS X environment, you wouldn't really need Acrobat anyway, and I'd actually doubt you'd need much more than libraries that come with OS X to do the job. Of course, maybe there's a level of abstraction or two you're getting from your SDK that the Cocoa API and/or Quartz 2D doesn't provide... any maybe you don't want to learn Objective-C, though the APIs I just pointed to are plain ol' C...
If you ever happen upon an OS X installation with the developer tools installed,
/Developer/Examples/Quartz/PDF/Voyeur
contains a sample project which displays ( in outline format ) the markup contents of any PDF. I unfortunately couldn't find a copy of it online, it's not one of the download samples from the Apple Developer Connection, it's just installed with the developer tools.
I like the way you think, in general, but what you've stated is precisely my point. They didn't even know why Apple wanted to talk to them. It would have been easy to find out, wouldn't it?
Just because I hate it when people don't answer my questions, no I no longer run my own shop. I gave up private contracting work long ago, have a wife and child, and don't see in the current American economic climate a lot of opportunities for starting a business ( high tech or otherwise ). I have some experience with small business from working at one and doing private contracting for years ( which is similar, yet not at all like a normal private business ).
I don't think Apple would have neccessarily said "we're buying your company", though, do you? Even if that was the first offer, maybe they'd have gotten "we're buying your code and signing this extensive contract setting your company up for the next several years". What's to say a deal with Apple wouldn't have meant that they could get what they want in life?
But they never even got to the "oh, we're interested in your software" stage, according to the article... in fact, it's really puzzling, the guy was so excited to even get an *email* from Steve, then just blows off meeting with Apple just because they'd see them at the WWDC in a couple of months anyway? Now that I think about it, I'm wondering if there isn't more to the story, it's not very well explained by "we were in negotiations with AOL so we didn't meet with Apple".
Freaking pathetic. These guys passed up an opportunity to become iTunes, and why?? Because they thought AOL was going to solve all of their problems, because they couldn't hold a frickin' meeting without them?!? I know it's easy to spot in retrospect, but that's so pathetic, it should have been easy to spot at the time... I mean, you're an Apple developer and Apple wants to meet with you, so you... don't??!? What would Apple have had to do to buy these guys big frickin' houses?!?
Tell you what - if you're a small software developer being contacted by Apple, hire me as your managerial consultant. I'll make sure you meet with them, at the very least!!
Clusters here we come. What else can we do! Spent a few weeks tweaking and profiling and fixing the code and that helped a lot. But now its just plain CPU bound!
The processing parallesizes fairly well, so a nice cluster of boxes would be the best solution I can think of. And since everything is already Windows based....
Well, what you do is realize that there's no reason on god's green earth for everything to be Windows based... and that even Adobe Acrobat is more easily scriptable on OS X than Windows, if you've got to use that tool for some sort of features or comfort level issue.
Then again, I'm less sure what kind of processing you're doing... we have a production process that is pretty much end-to-end PDF, but... I can't think of a single operation that takes enough time that, even done 5000 times, would take more than a couple of hours.
What the heck kind of 'processing' are you doing to documents that takes so long? Do they start as PDF, or are you taking scans or other bitmaps and converting them to PDF ?
From a business perspective, it would probably make a lot of sense for you guys to figure out what takes such a long amount of processing, identify the bottlenecks, and create a small cluster to take care of that processing... regardless of OS platform, although I will go out of my way to recommend OS X as an OS where PDF is strongly supported, Acrobat is easily scriptable ( via Applescript ) and ghostscript and other PDF tools are plentiful. Not to mention support for clustering...
But if you have windows-only programs and programmers, that's why you're using windows... not for any other reason... and that's where the tricky part of getting yourself and your boss to recognize this as a weakness, and the need to invest in a little R&D, comes in... you might find that ghostscript and a few other command-line tools running on a set of cheapo linux boxes cranks through the more time-consuming calculations a lot faster than some WinXP boxes, but you'll never know unless you take the time and effort to set up some test cases. Not hiring extra help and not looking beyond current solutions due to ( perceived or real ) high cost of research keeps a lot of small businesses small.
Seriously, what is it about your PDF processing that couldn't be done by a Linux machine with ghostscript? Or is it just that you wouldn't know where to start?
I can't believe yours was the first post to mention toy cars!! Matchbox or Hot Wheels, they're one of my three-year old's favorites, and I'd hate to meet the poor sad sack who didn't play with them. I'd mod you up if I had points.
The Matchbox are the cheap version, Hot Wheels are more high-end. Matchbox for playing out in the dirt. Hot Wheels for inside on plastic tracks. They're both made by the same company, just marketed and manufactured as low-end and high-end products, respectively.
Ok, I know I'm stating the obvious, and risk getting flamed for doing so, but...
any time I need an MP3 file or video from my computer, I burn it onto a CD or DVD, put said disc in my DVD player ( which also supports MP3 format files along with several video formats I've never used ) and play it.
I'll readily admit I've never found a good reason to move any video other than home movies from computer to TV, so yea, this would be a *little* tricky for things like, er, some random piece of video downloaded off the 'net, but... I haven't found the instance where I'd rather look at the video on my TV than on my computer. What's the point again? And of course, as long as I can encode it in mpeg for DVD burning, what, DVD media is too expensive or something??
I guess for MP3s something like Airport Express would be more ideal ( though you need a remote, sigh ), or a Tivo Media or a full-fledge computer ( seriously, blah, seems like a bit much ) solution could be more convenient, but, seriously... the number of times I've wanted to put video from my computer onto my TV without *also* wanting to burn a DVD of that video is pretty small. About as small as the number of times I've wanted to listen to MP3s on my home stereo and thought burning a CD of MP3s was too much bother.
Seriously, I used to think the idea was super-cool, but I have to admit I think that a lot of the "computer media on home entertainment equipment" solutions are looking to solve a problem that isn't very big in most people's minds. I mean, it's a neat idea that I could get to a file on my computer and play it on my stereo or TV more easily than by burning a disc. But from a practical standpoint, usually I want to burn that disc anyway; why not use a DVD player like it was intended, rather than use a PC hooked to my TV ?
Sure, someone is going to point out that I actually have to get off my ass to change discs, but hey, I have a five disc changer, and I'm not _that_ lazy. Except when it comes to putting together overly elaborate A/V solutions when my DVD player and CD/DVD burner do the job just fine...
On the other hand, if some solution came really easily and more or less complete, I might use it instead. If my Tivo did more stuff, like could play songs, video, or show pictures from my computer, that'd be cool. But I'm not going to pay a whole lot extra for that ability when I can burn a disc and get nearly the same result ( how is that Home Media pack thing working out for Tivo, anyway ? ).
Even the concept of needing yet another A/V switch to bring in yet another source feels like going too far. I'd like fewer devices in my A/V rack, not more. Really.
Funny that this was posted by an AC. I was looking for the parent post to respond with this, since it's what I *think* they might have been talking about. Just a few details, though. For one, the maximum amount of a FHA loan isn't half of the median price I mentioned. Don't FHA loans have to be for houses with one acre attached, or is that a different loan program I'm thinking of? Or is the loan only for the closing costs and whatnot, not the home loan itself? In any event, I doubt an FHA loan is going to be helpful, or even available, to someone living in the SF bay area.
I'd love to hear differently, but again, for some reason, neither my mortage broker nor my real estate agent managed to mention FHA loans as an option for us... wonder why...
That's all good and well, but really, your advice seems to be "get a wife who makes as much as you do". That and/or "cut your expenses drastically and buy a low-income condo". Or "have some equity because you bought a long time ago", or "get wealthy relatives to loan you some cash".
See what I'm saying?
I have a young child and a wife. My wife, while employable and college-educated, has never made more than $30k a year ( read: liberal arts degree ). Which would just cover the expenses related to child care and her working, add to our tax burden, thrash our quality of life, and still not really give us enough saving power to get into a house. Yea, I've thought of raiding the ( depression-depleted ) 401(k), I actually almost did it to buy a "low-income" condo ( fixed at 2%+cost of living appreciation ), before I realized I was nearly overdrawn and trying to buy at that moment would have been flirting with bankruptcy.
I have the same financial planning books, and I use Quicken, I've been over my budget again and again. I've identified a few areas where I could save ( at most ) a couple hundred bucks a month by making some fairly major life changes. But I've also done the analysis that suggests I wouldn't survive the $2,222+ monthly housing payment with any sort of "savings" or "float" whatsoever, even after cutting out NetFlix, cable internet, heat, and everything else worth living for... short of getting more income. How many people spend more than $600 bucks a month after rent? People who have families and eat. We spend $600 a month on food alone. Utilities average easily over $200 a month... Could I personally live on a whole lot less? Sure, if I was single... but I'm not. Hey, I grew up really, really poor, and know how to live like that, but I can't do that to my family just to buy into an over-inflated housing market.
This is one of those few times where the statistics don't lie, and they tell a harsh tale: unless you're in the top 14% of income earners in many places in California, you can't hope to break into real estate. Sure, I know people who've done it. With help from their parents, or with double incomes. It's sad, but that's what it takes.
Yea, the idea of moving to Georgia is absolutely terrifying. I'd more likely move my family to Oregon, Washington or even Canada. Starting from northern California, moving to *Amsterdam* would likely be less of a culture shock than moving to Atlanta.
But, yea, the cost of an average house in the SF Bay area is terrifying.
You can't get a *condo* for $280k here, but the real problem is that salaries aren't adjusted to reflect the difference. A whopping 14 percent of people who live here can afford to buy a house, which is why I had such a problem with the parent post's "save, buy a house!" mantra, like it's something anyone with a job can do. It *should* be something anyone with a decent job can do, and it might be, if business and political leaders were looking out for the average man. But for the time being, paying programmers ( or just about anyone else ) enough to buy a house in the bay area isn't on anyone's to-do list.
Bullshit.
Sorry. Let me find a nicer way to say that. Er, can you provide a link to information about these swell federal government programs? My mortage broker and real estate agent seem to have failed to point those out to me. Thanks.
Can you tell me how someone making $60k a year is going to break in to a housing market where an *average* house is $530k ? I thought so.
I'm not excusing the guy in the story for not buying a house in Ohio back when he was making $45k ( he probably could have ), but I am saying, from my personal experience on the west coast, that there are people _with_ nearly-decent jobs who have no possible hope of purchasing real estate. Any tips are appreciated, but basically, we're either going to have to start making more money, real estate prices are going to have to start coming down, or the number of homeless families is going to go up. I have a bad feeling about which it will be.
My advice: don't move to California looking for a job.
But, even though I'm not breaking the law, I *am* asking how you'd trust this particular incarnation of the "SCC" not to be a sting operation...
really, I'm kinda curious, it could be good to know ;-)
UT2k4 demo works fine on my system. Dual 1.8 G5.
Of course, I have the NVidia GeForce 5200, so you may still have an ATI driver issue, but then again maybe not. It's just the demo, reinstall and check again... you are running with the patch, right?
See boss, someone reported a problem with the system update, I just _had_ to test UT2k4 to see if there was an OpenGL problem...
puts on tinfoil hat
suppose for just a minute that you wanted to contact, trace, and/or otherwise smoke out large numbers of people interested in buying source code to security applications. Might one approach be to
(a) publicize a code theft
(b) pose as a 'known' hacker organization selling the code
(c) fully investigate everyone who contacts you
I'm leaving the tinfoil hat on, I just noticed we'll see Republicans in power for 4 more years
But seriously, how are you going to trust "SCC" not to actually be "FBI" or even "NSA"?!? What are you going to do, ask them if they're cops!?!?
It's just a part of the steady decline in productivity that started with Wolfenstein3D and really picked up steam with Unreal Tournament 2004...
Voting for a political prisoner serving a life sentance in the U.S. does have it's charms. I mean, if you want to signal that there's a problem with the system...
And no, I've already voted for Kerry.
I picked P&F as the third-party choice back when Peace and Freedom was pretty much the only third party, and just never found a good reason to change it. I almost registered Green last time around, but decided against it... I mean, their candidate for president has been Leonard Peltier for several elections!! Nader doesn't trump that.
If I'm going to back a wacky third party with no chance in hell, their candidate might as well be serving life as a political prisoner, I figure...
But I am voting Kerry this year, even with my state locked down for the Demos. I hate G.W. that much.
Uh, no Barry, I don't remember when cars came out, how frickin' old ARE you!?
And, hello, "cyberspace researcher" at University of Toronto? Is that your official title?? What's that pay, I have a few websites to research...
What about @"SOMESTRING" ? That's a compile-time allocation, sure to be on the stack, right?
.m file, that NSString's memory *is* in the heap, right? yea, that's right - it's just the pointer that's in the stack, the memory reserved in a class' -alloc method is on the heap...
;-)
Maybe it'd be more correct to say *most* objects are heap objects? Certainly, the memory for the objects themselves is always in the heap. With possibly a few exceptions ( like above, are there maybe others? ), as well as pointers and primitives, of course.
How about
static NSString *foo;
at the top of a
Of course, there's the notion that for a _lot_ of stuff near performance-sensitive code, you _wouldn't_ usually be using the object calls, and for largish, persistient, frequently-accessed data structures, you'd not pick an object over a primitive if performance was an issue, but then, that's just good common-sense programming practice, right ?
The whole point of what these guys are doing with C++ in the kernel is to make using C++ in general a little _less_ slow, as well as bringing in some of the benefits of more modular, reusable code... where it make sense. It's an interesting experiment, at the very least.