Good analysis. I honestly am a bit baffled by Intel's purchase of Altera (especially for the price they paid). I don't think this means there will suddenly be a scramble to buy up FPGA companies (Altera and Xilinx control something like 90% of that market). It's not clear that having an FPGA on your SOC will be a clear win in the datacenter - FPGA programming is hard partly because it's hardware development which is in many ways very different from software development, and partly because the tools suck. The FPGA dev tools suck because Xilinx and Altera have controlled 90% of the market and haven't been willing to spend much money to improve their tools. Maybe Intel will change this in the case of Altera's Quartus tools, but I tend to doubt it - Intel isn't known for their software either. I suspect nobody is in a hurry to acquire Xilinx because they'll wait and see how this plays out with Intel/Altera.
AMD would certainly be a poor match as a potential purchaser for the reasons you stated. Better choices might be Qualcom or Samsung, but I really doubt either of them will be in any hurry to buy Xilinx.
Have done 1-4 and 7 exactly. The only way to survive in tech longterm (I'm now in my 50's) is to live way below your means, save as much money as you can for the lean times. You need to get to the point where you can relish a layoff because it means you're going to get to do a few months of self-retraining. I try to have at least a couple of year's worth of living expenses on hand to be prepared for the inevitable layoff.
The only fly in the ointment is health insurance. While Obama Care has helped immensely, we're still looking at having to pay about $650/month for the wife & I on a Silver Plan. I suspect that in not that many years insurance cost will exceed the amount we pay for our mortgage each month. Hopefully we'll have the mortgage paid off by then.
seems much more likely that they're opening a Silicon Valley office. Google would probably like to have them close by as well to look after that $542Million investment.
If it all comes down to "freedom vs. Control", well, TJ Rodgers is a huge control freak - just ask anyone who has ever worked at Cypress Semiconductor.
My parents have lived in Moses Lake for the last 12 years. They're trying to sell their house and get out of there; unfortunately for them the housing market there is not as hot as it is other places. In fact they haven't had any bites in the last couple of months it's been on the market.
You mention water skiing in Moses Lake - However whenever I have visited the lake is full of algae scum. It's a rather stagnant lake. Not anything I'd want to swim in.
And the weather? It gets very cold in the Winter (down around 0 is not unusual) and very hot in the Summer (100 is not unusual this time of the year). And it's a desert landscape without much of anything interesting. There's a park nearby called the Potholes Park (sounds just lovely). Lots of farms around so you can get plenty of pesticide spray wafting your way (one of the reasons my parents want to move - it has become enough of a problem that it's effecting their health). Oh and then there's the Hanford Nuclear Reservation not an hour away - lot's of glow-in-the-dark fun to be had there!
No, Moses Lake is not the beauty spot you make it out to be. I actually find it to be one of the most depressing places I've ever visited - but maybe it's partly because I prefer the green side of the mountains.
Google has to pay as much as $60 per megabit in IP transit fees.
Poor Google. They must have already burned through their IPO money by now and be $Billions in debt given these onerous data transmission fees. It's just amazing, I don't know how they stay afloat.
Yup, dag nab it! Them Ruby college boys keep come'n round here'n tell'n me that I need to learn their language, but I'll stick with my COBOL thank ya very much!
there must be One Thousand questionable patents filed every day in the USA now. By 2015 that number will be multiplied by pi to Three Thousand One Hundred and Forty One per day. When will this insanity stop?
I'd like to see more comparisons between the two.
At this point, it seems to me that if one were just starting out in web programming they might be better off going with Ruby On Rails.
I don't see any advantages for PHP now.
Don't encourage people to move here. Oregon is full and unemployment is bad enough without more Californians moving up here and fucking it up that much worse.
So first you tell people not to move here and then you go on to extoll Portland's virtues...
732 Evergreen, Lake Oswego (Childhood home of Matt Groening, house was inspiration for The Simpsons house of the same address in Springfield
I don't think it's in Lake Oswego, otherwise how did he go to LHS and Ainsworth? It's in NW Portland. In fact you can find more connections between the Simpsons' Springfield and Groening's Portland here.
Why the lucky stiff's performance which included his own animations, shadow puppets, and an inside look at a meeting of the Ruby cabal The Least Surprised was hilarious.
It seems to me that this is just a smokescreen. Maybe they're having problems getting the PS3 going?
Maybe they're having yield problems with the Cell processor? Who knows, but a delay like this would really send the message that PS3 is vapor and lead to more people going out to buy the XBox 360.
Now employees are the ones who can pick & choose.
Yeah, for the last four years it's been the employers who have been in the drivers seat and they've stuck it to us engineers. Now the tables are turned, Mwa,ha, ha!
A few months back Washington County (the county where most all of Intel's Oregon facilities are located) announced a deal whereby Intel was given huge tax breaks by the county. In return Intel pledged to spend something like $20 Billion in Oregon over the next 10 years or so. That spending was supposed to create something like 3000 to 5000 more jobs here so the county went along with it thinking they would make up the revenue in property taxes from all those new residents (a questionable assumption anyway, since they would have to build all sorts of new infrastructure like schools and roads to support the increase in population - but I digress)
So now Intel announces that the next big new shiny fab will be located in Arizona. So what gives? Was Washington County taken for a ride?
Besides, doesn't Oregon have a lot more water than Arizona and don't fabs need huge amounts of water?
Damn! Wish I would've known that before I decided to learn Ruby because of all the good things I was hearing about it. But now you tell me it's obscure! Man, I feel so betrayed by all those people who were telling me about how great Ruby is. I had no idea all those people (some with some pretty impressive credentials like the Pragmatic Programmers, the creator of Ant, etc.) were trying to lead me astray. My coworker was showing me how much more productive he was programming in Ruby - was that all just an act? Well, it just proves that you just can't trust anyone these days, eh? Damn!
Yeah, Nitro is in Ruby. But considering that RoR has opened the Ruby door so that many people have been learning Ruby lately ( and also considering that it's quite easy to go from either Perl or Python to Ruby) that's not a problem. Excellent Ruby web programming frameworks are now popping up like mushrooms after a Fall rain.
In today's episode representatives from the IT Business Consortium (IBC) visit the Talented and Gifted class in a highshcool in suburbia, USA.
IBC Drone:"... and so that's why we would like some of you to consider a career in IT. Any questions?"
Gifted Student: "Isn't it true that the kinds of careers you are asking us to consider have jobs which are among the easiest to outsource to third world countries where labor rates are 1/10 to 1/4 what they are here in the USA due to much lower overall standards of living in those countries?"
IBC Drone: "Well, er, ummm... there will always be work in this field. We need lots of IT workers."
Talented Student: "Perhaps, but we'll have to migrate to Mumbai to get a job. Many of the companies in your consortium are hiring primarily in places like India and China and only doing minor hiring of contractors and temporary workers in the US."
IBC Drone: "Well, when business conditions improve we'll need more people in the USA too..."
Articulate Student: "Forget that crap, It seems to me that if you want any kind of job stability without having to move to a third world sweat shop you'd better stay as far away from IT and Computer Science as you can. Me, I'm going into patent law; plenty of money to be made and great job stability!"
Slashdot Mirror
Google Code? What is this Google Code you speak of? Never existed.
Google Code is dead. Long live Google Code!
You give the verbal offer and *then* do the background & reference checks?
Good analysis. I honestly am a bit baffled by Intel's purchase of Altera (especially for the price they paid). I don't think this means there will suddenly be a scramble to buy up FPGA companies (Altera and Xilinx control something like 90% of that market). It's not clear that having an FPGA on your SOC will be a clear win in the datacenter - FPGA programming is hard partly because it's hardware development which is in many ways very different from software development, and partly because the tools suck. The FPGA dev tools suck because Xilinx and Altera have controlled 90% of the market and haven't been willing to spend much money to improve their tools. Maybe Intel will change this in the case of Altera's Quartus tools, but I tend to doubt it - Intel isn't known for their software either. I suspect nobody is in a hurry to acquire Xilinx because they'll wait and see how this plays out with Intel/Altera. AMD would certainly be a poor match as a potential purchaser for the reasons you stated. Better choices might be Qualcom or Samsung, but I really doubt either of them will be in any hurry to buy Xilinx.
Have done 1-4 and 7 exactly. The only way to survive in tech longterm (I'm now in my 50's) is to live way below your means, save as much money as you can for the lean times. You need to get to the point where you can relish a layoff because it means you're going to get to do a few months of self-retraining. I try to have at least a couple of year's worth of living expenses on hand to be prepared for the inevitable layoff. The only fly in the ointment is health insurance. While Obama Care has helped immensely, we're still looking at having to pay about $650/month for the wife & I on a Silver Plan. I suspect that in not that many years insurance cost will exceed the amount we pay for our mortgage each month. Hopefully we'll have the mortgage paid off by then.
seems much more likely that they're opening a Silicon Valley office. Google would probably like to have them close by as well to look after that $542Million investment.
No way. Very Red state. Hot & humid. Hurricane prone. Ground zero for sea level rise.
If it all comes down to "freedom vs. Control", well, TJ Rodgers is a huge control freak - just ask anyone who has ever worked at Cypress Semiconductor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010 (and of course there was the Tempest video game back then too)
My parents have lived in Moses Lake for the last 12 years. They're trying to sell their house and get out of there; unfortunately for them the housing market there is not as hot as it is other places. In fact they haven't had any bites in the last couple of months it's been on the market.
You mention water skiing in Moses Lake - However whenever I have visited the lake is full of algae scum. It's a rather stagnant lake. Not anything I'd want to swim in.
And the weather? It gets very cold in the Winter (down around 0 is not unusual) and very hot in the Summer (100 is not unusual this time of the year). And it's a desert landscape without much of anything interesting. There's a park nearby called the Potholes Park (sounds just lovely). Lots of farms around so you can get plenty of pesticide spray wafting your way (one of the reasons my parents want to move - it has become enough of a problem that it's effecting their health). Oh and then there's the Hanford Nuclear Reservation not an hour away - lot's of glow-in-the-dark fun to be had there!
No, Moses Lake is not the beauty spot you make it out to be. I actually find it to be one of the most depressing places I've ever visited - but maybe it's partly because I prefer the green side of the mountains.
Google has to pay as much as $60 per megabit in IP transit fees.
Poor Google. They must have already burned through their IPO money by now and be $Billions in debt given these onerous data transmission fees. It's just amazing, I don't know how they stay afloat.
Yup, dag nab it! Them Ruby college boys keep come'n round here'n tell'n me that I need to learn their language, but I'll stick with my COBOL thank ya very much!
there must be One Thousand questionable patents filed every day in the USA now. By 2015 that number will be multiplied by pi to Three Thousand One Hundred and Forty One per day. When will this insanity stop?
RoR is a boxed in approach How so?
I'd like to see more comparisons between the two. At this point, it seems to me that if one were just starting out in web programming they might be better off going with Ruby On Rails. I don't see any advantages for PHP now.
Don't encourage people to move here. Oregon is full and unemployment is bad enough without more Californians moving up here and fucking it up that much worse.
So first you tell people not to move here and then you go on to extoll Portland's virtues...
732 Evergreen, Lake Oswego (Childhood home of Matt Groening, house was inspiration for The Simpsons house of the same address in Springfield
I don't think it's in Lake Oswego, otherwise how did he go to LHS and Ainsworth? It's in NW Portland. In fact you can find more connections between the Simpsons' Springfield and Groening's Portland here.
Check out the FOSCON slideshow .
Why the lucky stiff's performance which included his own animations, shadow puppets, and an inside look at a meeting of the Ruby cabal The Least Surprised was hilarious.
It seems to me that this is just a smokescreen. Maybe they're having problems getting the PS3 going? Maybe they're having yield problems with the Cell processor? Who knows, but a delay like this would really send the message that PS3 is vapor and lead to more people going out to buy the XBox 360.
Ruby would have a hard time turning into lisp, given the lack of continuations.
Ruby has continuations. It's Python that lacks them.
Now employees are the ones who can pick & choose. Yeah, for the last four years it's been the employers who have been in the drivers seat and they've stuck it to us engineers. Now the tables are turned, Mwa,ha, ha!
A few months back Washington County (the county where most all of Intel's Oregon facilities are located) announced a deal whereby Intel was given huge tax breaks by the county. In return Intel pledged to spend something like $20 Billion in Oregon over the next 10 years or so. That spending was supposed to create something like 3000 to 5000 more jobs here so the county went along with it thinking they would make up the revenue in property taxes from all those new residents (a questionable assumption anyway, since they would have to build all sorts of new infrastructure like schools and roads to support the increase in population - but I digress)
So now Intel announces that the next big new shiny fab will be located in Arizona. So what gives? Was Washington County taken for a ride?
Besides, doesn't Oregon have a lot more water than Arizona and don't fabs need huge amounts of water?
There's a nice Windows installer for Ruby and a nice set of Ruby bindings for ImageMagick.
ruby is just too obscure!
Damn! Wish I would've known that before I decided to learn Ruby because of all the good things I was hearing about it. But now you tell me it's obscure! Man, I feel so betrayed by all those people who were telling me about how great Ruby is. I had no idea all those people (some with some pretty impressive credentials like the Pragmatic Programmers, the creator of Ant, etc.) were trying to lead me astray. My coworker was showing me how much more productive he was programming in Ruby - was that all just an act? Well, it just proves that you just can't trust anyone these days, eh? Damn!
The future is here.
Django is now old news...
Yeah, Nitro is in Ruby. But considering that RoR has opened the Ruby door so that many people have been learning Ruby lately ( and also considering that it's quite easy to go from either Perl or Python to Ruby) that's not a problem. Excellent Ruby web programming frameworks are now popping up like mushrooms after a Fall rain.
In today's episode representatives from the IT Business Consortium (IBC) visit the Talented and Gifted class in a highshcool in suburbia, USA.
IBC Drone:"... and so that's why we would like some of you to consider a career in IT. Any questions?"
Gifted Student: "Isn't it true that the kinds of careers you are asking us to consider have jobs which are among the easiest to outsource to third world countries where labor rates are 1/10 to 1/4 what they are here in the USA due to much lower overall standards of living in those countries?"
IBC Drone: "Well, er, ummm... there will always be work in this field. We need lots of IT workers."
Talented Student: "Perhaps, but we'll have to migrate to Mumbai to get a job. Many of the companies in your consortium are hiring primarily in places like India and China and only doing minor hiring of contractors and temporary workers in the US."
IBC Drone: "Well, when business conditions improve we'll need more people in the USA too..."
Articulate Student: "Forget that crap, It seems to me that if you want any kind of job stability without having to move to a third world sweat shop you'd better stay as far away from IT and Computer Science as you can. Me, I'm going into patent law; plenty of money to be made and great job stability!"