I thought all the cool kids were running Python this week.
Can you imagine trying to line up syntactictally important indentation as your're trying to type in Python code on a cell phone?
An agent-based system like this would sort of be like the MUTE system 'turned inside-out'. Nodes wouldn't 'know' how to do much more than how to run agent code and how to pass agent-code along to other nodes. I guess the agent could even be in charge of figuring out which node(s) to send itself to next.
Perhaps the agent could even 'inject' code into nodes thus adding to the functionality available at a node (this would be easy to do with a very dynamic language like, say, Ruby or Lisp).
An intriguing idea. Speaking of biological inspiration, it almost sounds viral. There is evidence that viruses can have positive effects, for example moving DNA to different species.
some viruses are certainly able to travel quickly through a population - like the flu.
Perhaps there could be some way to determine if an agent came from a friend or foe so you could determine that you don't want to run the RIAA's ant...
Sort of like an immune system. Somehow we would need a way to reject agents of unknown (or known hostile) origin.
On the otherhand, if it were agent based it might be more difficult for the RIAA to prove that you were willingly infringing
Yes, the initial code running on a node would probably be fairly simple. Also the 'injected code' would only reside in memory. It would be very difficult (impossible) for them to find out what you had been running after you turned off the power. Of course this could also be a dissadvantage since after you powerdown you lose all that 'injected' code, but it could issue a request for an update after powering up again, I suppose.
Of course a system like that would be one huge security risk and nobody in their right mind would want to run one of these nodes unless there were some way to make sure that certain types of operations were not doable by an agent passing by
Allow file copying from certain directories only, and disallow file deletion anywhere. I'm sure there would be more security details like don't allow 'system' commands to be run.
sounds like an interesting experiment.
It does. I'd like to prototype something like this. Agents (or Ants if you like) would have to also carry payloads (the files to transfer). When an Ant reaches it's destination it would drop off the payload. Perhaps multiple destinations could be specified for an ant if the file being transferred was popular.
Until the 1.8 release the whole Ruby source code and libraries could be distributed on a 1.4MB floppy with room to spare. With 1.8 a lot of libraries have been added so it's about twice as big. (you can always leave out libraries you don't need to keep it light)
Ruby is also easy to embed as well, but we decided to use swig to wrap our C++ classes so that they're accessable from Ruby and then script the whole thing in Ruby. This offers several advantages for our application since we wanted to allow users to script it anyway.
Another project involves including Ruby and libs on a CD with a Ruby script that is used for license detection/management and installation. The Ruby script queries the rpm repository (on Linux) or registry (on windoze) and makes certain determinations about the system on which the actual software on the CD is to be installed. Turns out that including Ruby and most of it's libraries on the CD took much less room than the statically linked executables we used to include for doing the same thing (which were developed in C++). At any rate, the potential user of our CD doesn't need to have Ruby installed on their system because we include it on the CDROM and start up the Ruby script from a shell script (or a bat file on Windows.). Oh, and the Ruby code for this particular project that replaced C++ code is about 1/3 as big and only took us 1/4 of the time to develop & debug as compared to the previous C++ solution. And the Ruby-based system is much more flexible than the previous C++ one - when new requirements come in we can usually have the Ruby system updated & tested in a matter of hours as compared to days for the previous C++ based system. The productivity gains alone were well worth the conversion to Ruby.
With US programming jobs disappearing and starting salaries coming down, at some point companies will have to say "Wait, how much are we saving exactly?" It has happened with call centers...
More likely there won't be anyone left in the US with the required skillsets in a few years. Most engineers build their skills and experience on the job and if they're out of a job for a year or two they've lost out on learning the latest 'in demand' skills. This may not be as big of a problem for software engineers (after all you can participate in an open source project and keep your skills up), but for hardware engineers it's a different story: there's no way you can go out and buy hardware design software which costs $50K for use at home.
We're not only seeing the export of some very good paying jobs out of the US (likely never to return) and the effect that will have on our economy, we're also seeing the export of knowledge and skills to other countries... in the longrun, that could be worse.
Sheesh. I'm debating on whether to take a job that pays $8 an hour and you're going on about $35 and hour.
Oh, I hear you. I was considering similar non-programming options. I was even buying books at Goodwill to sell on Amazon - got enough money to live on in September doing that. So $35/hour is great considering the alternatives, but for C++ programming it's a lot less than it used to be and I suspect it will continue to fall.
Sure, we're not living in our cars (yet) and we're not getting beat up just for talking about organizing (we're ignored), but there seem to be a lot of parallels between what was happening to Okies in the '30s and programmers today. It's amazing how the same kinds of corporate greed issues are still happening just the same as they were then. Essentially, offshoring puts downward pressure on our income just as bringing in too many workers did to farm labor back then. The main difference is that it will do us absolutely no good to unionize since the corporations have a huge supply of workers willing to work for nothing (at least from our perspective).
Just like in the book where the price paid for a picked box of peaches went from 5cents then 2.5 cents (for a ton, as I recall), the same is happening to us programmers. A year and a half ago I had a C++ contract working at $40/hr which was easily $10 to $15/hr less than the year before that. Last week I accepted (after not having paying work for over a year) a C++ contract at $35/hr. What will the going rate be in another year?
Global free trade/capitalism is a race to the bottom.
Article seems to indicate that they juiced this virus so it's more effective in killing cells. We can only hope that after it's been out in the environment for a while (and that's bound to happen, they can't keep everyone who gets it isolated for weeks) that it won't start to mutate and infect healthy cells too.
so they patented this, but what's to keep someone from just getting their cancer cure by shaking hands with someone who's getting the treatment?
Our local GoodWill has two 'outlet' stores. Basically these are large warehouses where the stuff that didn't sell at the regular GoodWill store ends up in large bins and is sold by the pound. We call it simply 'The Bins' and it has spawned an interesting sub-culture of it's own.
It's a great place to go look for books (books are seperated and put in their own bins so you don't have to claw though clothes to find them) and lots of eBay/half.com sellers go there to buy books for 25 cents each (50cents for hardbacks). When new book bins come out it's a frenzy of books flying as the book sellers elbow each other for position. How do I know? I visited the book bins last August and September to make money to live on.
Now, GoodWill has gotten wise and they pre-screen the books that go into the bins for sale on various online outlets, so it's not quite as lucrative visiting the bins anymore.
Imagine what kind of encryption you could do with quantum computing.
You're probably right; one should be able to come up with better encryption schemes using quantum computers (at least theoretically) that would then be difficult for a quantum computer to break... however when practical quantum computers do become available (and that's probably still at least 15 to 30 years off) they'll only be owned by governments. Just as with the development of digital computers it will take decades before they become affordable to your average person (so we're probably talking 50+ years ) - and who knows, given the touted power of quantum computing to do things like break strong encryption in minutes, perhaps governments will try to keep the masses from gaining access to quantum computers.
Well, if a journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, that's what this step is. We've still got 1000miles minus 1step to go yet.
Perhaps we should be thinking about some new alternative encryption techniques now while we've still got another 30 years or so left before a quantum computer actually exists...
The lesson here is that one should NEVER put something like this on a blog with your name in the URL (or anywhere else on the blog page). Yes it sucks, but I'm not at all surprised that M$ would fire this guy over something like this.
So if you need the job, use some sort of pseudonym when posting stuff like this.
After all the layoffs of recent years, the remaining workers have to work a lot harder to keep things going. It would be nice if there were more part-time tech jobs or if job sharing were allowed. That would help in two ways: 1) there would be more jobs to go around and 2) there would be less stress.
I for one would like to work 20 - 25 hours per week. That's really all I need to do to provide all my needs and even a few goodies. But in my experience tech companies (and managers) find this concept foriegn if not outright bizarre.
"You mean you want to work less hours?!" "Yep, that's right" "But you won't make as much money." "So, I can make all the money I need in 20 hours per week. Why work more?" "But, but..."
The membership is $99 for one year, and you get a once-in-a-lifetime 20% discount on Apple hardware. So, that nice new dual 2GHz G5 is only $2400 instead of $3000,
No, make that $2499 vs $3000 (gotta include the $99 for the membership). Still a good deal, though. I'll have to keep this in mind if I ever manage to scrounge up $2499...
The discount applies to any hardware at the Apple store, including Cinema Displays and the like. Is nice...that's how I'm paying for my new G5 & 20" cinema display...
Obviously, you're a wealthy student! Those 20" cinema displays aren't cheap! As a student myself, I'd like to figure out how to afford that setup. Got any tips?
Me thinks Mr. Grove is speaking out of both sides of his mouth... or perhaps he's starting to see the light.
I've done contract software development at Intel in the past. In the last year or so there have been no contracts at Intel available. Recently I asked one of the people I was contracting for if he had any more contracts coming up and his reply was: "We'd really like to hire you, but right now we can't unless you're in India". And then he went on to relate how every couple of weeks there is a companywide email going out about some new outsourcing project in India/China and he said this was very worrisome.
finding that their $150 Accounting 101 book became worthless after the sememster was over.
Actually, how much could change in an Accounting 101 text book from one revision to another? I often buy used text books which are one edition out of date on Amazon and I save big $$$ (the new, latest edition might be $80, while the used last edition is usually around $10 incl. shipping). Generally speaking, you don't find much difference between the editions as long as you don't go back more than one addition.
It is a bit of a scam on the part of the textbook companies, IMHO, and it certainly wastes a lot of paper. If Teachers would continue to use older editions (where appropriate) that would help students save money as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Ruby would probably take a lot less memory space than Perl which would make it a goot fit for these sorts of small devices.
I thought all the cool kids were running Python this week. Can you imagine trying to line up syntactictally important indentation as your're trying to type in Python code on a cell phone?
Shouldn't this story have the camel logo which the previous one sported? How many penguins are in Saudi Arabia?
An agent-based system like this would sort of be like the MUTE system 'turned inside-out'. Nodes wouldn't 'know' how to do much more than how to run agent code and how to pass agent-code along to other nodes. I guess the agent could even be in charge of figuring out which node(s) to send itself to next.
Perhaps the agent could even 'inject' code into nodes thus adding to the functionality available at a node (this would be easy to do with a very dynamic language like, say, Ruby or Lisp).
An intriguing idea. Speaking of biological inspiration, it almost sounds viral. There is evidence that viruses can have positive effects, for example moving DNA to different species.
some viruses are certainly able to travel quickly through a population - like the flu.
Perhaps there could be some way to determine if an agent came from a friend or foe so you could determine that you don't want to run the RIAA's ant...
Sort of like an immune system. Somehow we would need a way to reject agents of unknown (or known hostile) origin.
On the otherhand, if it were agent based it might be more difficult for the RIAA to prove that you were willingly infringing
Yes, the initial code running on a node would probably be fairly simple.
Also the 'injected code' would only reside in memory. It would be very difficult (impossible) for them to find out what you had been running after you turned off the power. Of course this could also be a dissadvantage since after you powerdown you lose all that 'injected' code, but it could issue a request for an update after powering up again, I suppose.
Of course a system like that would be one huge security risk and nobody in their right mind would want to run one of these nodes unless there were some way to make sure that certain types of operations were not doable by an agent passing by
Allow file copying from certain directories only, and disallow file deletion anywhere. I'm sure there would be more security details like don't allow 'system' commands to be run.
sounds like an interesting experiment.
It does. I'd like to prototype something like this. Agents (or Ants if you like) would have to also carry payloads (the files to transfer). When an Ant reaches it's destination it would drop off the payload. Perhaps multiple destinations could be specified for an ant if the file being transferred was popular.
Until the 1.8 release the whole Ruby source code and libraries could be distributed on a 1.4MB floppy with room to spare. With 1.8 a lot of libraries have been added so it's about twice as big. (you can always leave out libraries you don't need to keep it light)
Ruby is also easy to embed as well, but we decided to use swig to wrap our C++ classes so that they're accessable from Ruby and then script the whole thing in Ruby. This offers several advantages for our application since we wanted to allow users to script it anyway.
Another project involves including Ruby and libs on a CD with a Ruby script that is used for license detection/management and installation. The Ruby script queries the rpm repository (on Linux) or registry (on windoze) and makes certain determinations about the system on which the actual software on the CD is to be installed. Turns out that including Ruby and most of it's libraries on the CD took much less room than the statically linked executables we used to include for doing the same thing (which were developed in C++). At any rate, the potential user of our CD doesn't need to have Ruby installed on their system because we include it on the CDROM and start up the Ruby script from a shell script (or a bat file on Windows.). Oh, and the Ruby code for this particular project that replaced C++ code is about 1/3 as big and only took us 1/4 of the time to develop & debug as compared to the previous C++ solution. And the Ruby-based system is much more flexible than the previous C++ one - when new requirements come in we can usually have the Ruby system updated & tested in a matter of hours as compared to days for the previous C++ based system. The productivity gains alone were well worth the conversion to Ruby.
With US programming jobs disappearing and starting salaries coming down, at some point companies will have to say "Wait, how much are we saving exactly?" It has happened with call centers...
More likely there won't be anyone left in the US with the required skillsets in a few years. Most engineers build their skills and experience on the job and if they're out of a job for a year or two they've lost out on learning the latest 'in demand' skills. This may not be as big of a problem for software engineers (after all you can participate in an open source project and keep your skills up), but for hardware engineers it's a different story: there's no way you can go out and buy hardware design software which costs $50K for use at home.
We're not only seeing the export of some very good paying jobs out of the US (likely never to return) and the effect that will have on our economy, we're also seeing the export of knowledge and skills to other countries... in the longrun, that could be worse.
ut don't worry, in the lab where I work we already have a treatment against sars in production and nearing the clinical trial stage.
And where might that be?
Sheesh. I'm debating on whether to take a job that pays $8 an hour and you're going on about $35 and hour.
Oh, I hear you. I was considering similar non-programming options. I was even buying books at Goodwill to sell on Amazon - got enough money to live on in September doing that. So $35/hour is great considering the alternatives, but for C++ programming it's a lot less than it used to be and I suspect it will continue to fall.
Sure, we're not living in our cars (yet) and we're not getting beat up just for talking about organizing (we're ignored), but there seem to be a lot of parallels between what was happening to Okies in the '30s and programmers today. It's amazing how the same kinds of corporate greed issues are still happening just the same as they were then. Essentially, offshoring puts downward pressure on our income just as bringing in too many workers did to farm labor back then. The main difference is that it will do us absolutely no good to unionize since the corporations have a huge supply of workers willing to work for nothing (at least from our perspective).
Just like in the book where the price paid for a picked box of peaches went from 5cents then 2.5 cents (for a ton, as I recall), the same is happening to us programmers. A year and a half ago I had a C++ contract working at $40/hr which was easily $10 to $15/hr less than the year before that. Last week I accepted (after not having paying work for over a year) a C++ contract at $35/hr. What will the going rate be in another year?
Global free trade/capitalism is a race to the bottom.
Article seems to indicate that they juiced this virus so it's more effective in killing cells. We can only hope that after it's been out in the environment for a while (and that's bound to happen, they can't keep everyone who gets it isolated for weeks) that it won't start to mutate and infect healthy cells too.
so they patented this, but what's to keep someone from just getting their cancer cure by shaking hands with someone who's getting the treatment?
Our local GoodWill has two 'outlet' stores.
Basically these are large warehouses where the stuff that didn't sell at the regular GoodWill store ends up in large bins and is sold by the pound. We call it simply 'The Bins' and it has spawned an interesting sub-culture of it's own.
It's a great place to go look for books (books are seperated and put in their own bins so you don't have to claw though clothes to find them) and lots of eBay/half.com sellers go there to buy books for 25 cents each (50cents for hardbacks). When new book bins come out it's a frenzy of books flying as the book sellers elbow each other for position. How do I know? I visited the book bins last August and September to make money to live on.
Now, GoodWill has gotten wise and they pre-screen the books that go into the bins for sale on various online outlets, so it's not quite as lucrative visiting the bins anymore.
Let'em try it. Google has the power to 'erase' all memory of SCO from the internet...
An imagined future google session:
enter 'SCO', hit the 'I'm feeling lucky' button...
1. Southern College of Optometry (SCO)
2. Small Corporate Operation (SCO)
3. SCOffer's anonymous
4. Small Company the Offed itself (SCO)
5. Stupid Company Operation (SCO)
6. Some Company or Other (SCO)
You're forgetting that they live in Utah. They've probably already got a years supply of computers, power and water stored up.
If we keep getting these gigantic solar flares and one happens to hit the earth head-on.
IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that IBM plans 'to add 10,000 workers in fields of emerging demand over the next year
Of course he failed to mention that those jobs would be in India.
Imagine what kind of encryption you could do with quantum computing.
You're probably right; one should be able to come up with better encryption schemes using quantum computers (at least theoretically) that would then be difficult for a quantum computer to break... however when practical quantum computers do become available (and that's probably still at least 15 to 30 years off) they'll only be owned by governments. Just as with the development of digital computers it will take decades before they become affordable to your average person (so we're probably talking 50+ years ) - and who knows, given the touted power of quantum computing to do things like break strong encryption in minutes, perhaps governments will try to keep the masses from gaining access to quantum computers.
All of todays encryption becomes irrelevant
Well, if a journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, that's what this step is. We've still got 1000miles minus 1step to go yet.
Perhaps we should be thinking about some new alternative encryption techniques now while we've still got another 30 years or so left before a quantum computer actually exists...
The lesson here is that one should NEVER put something like this on a blog with your name in the URL (or anywhere else on the blog page). Yes it sucks, but I'm not at all surprised that M$ would fire this guy over something like this.
So if you need the job, use some sort of pseudonym when posting stuff like this.
Speaking of overworked people...
After all the layoffs of recent years, the remaining workers have to work a lot harder to keep things going. It would be nice if there were more part-time tech jobs or if job sharing were allowed. That would help in two ways: 1) there would be more jobs to go around and 2) there would be less stress.
I for one would like to work 20 - 25 hours per week. That's really all I need to do to provide all my needs and even a few goodies. But in my experience tech companies (and managers) find this concept foriegn if not outright bizarre.
"You mean you want to work less hours?!"
"Yep, that's right"
"But you won't make as much money."
"So, I can make all the money I need in 20 hours per week. Why work more?"
"But, but..."
The membership is $99 for one year, and you get a once-in-a-lifetime 20% discount on Apple hardware. So, that nice new dual 2GHz G5 is only $2400 instead of $3000,
No, make that $2499 vs $3000 (gotta include the $99 for the membership). Still a good deal, though. I'll have to keep this in mind if I ever manage to scrounge up $2499...
The discount applies to any hardware at the Apple store, including Cinema Displays and the like. Is nice...that's how I'm paying for my new G5 & 20" cinema display...
Obviously, you're a wealthy student! Those 20" cinema displays aren't cheap! As a student myself, I'd like to figure out how to afford that setup. Got any tips?
I'm platform neutral - I'll use any of Linux, OSX, *BSD and sometimes Solaris.
Do I get to be a pro?
Me thinks Mr. Grove is speaking out of both sides of his mouth... or perhaps he's starting to see the light. I've done contract software development at Intel in the past. In the last year or so there have been no contracts at Intel available. Recently I asked one of the people I was contracting for if he had any more contracts coming up and his reply was: "We'd really like to hire you, but right now we can't unless you're in India". And then he went on to relate how every couple of weeks there is a companywide email going out about some new outsourcing project in India/China and he said this was very worrisome.
I ask for two reasons: 1) that could influence how much they're willing to pay. 2) I'd like to make some cash myself ;-)
It's clear that Darl has no intellect left and therefore no intellectual property, therefore his claim to intellectual property is null and void.
finding that their $150 Accounting 101 book became worthless after the sememster was over.
Actually, how much could change in an Accounting 101 text book from one revision to another? I often buy used text books which are one edition out of date on
Amazon and I save big $$$ (the new, latest edition might be $80, while the used last edition is usually around $10 incl. shipping). Generally speaking, you don't find much difference between the editions as long as you don't go back more than one addition.
It is a bit of a scam on the part of the textbook companies, IMHO, and it certainly wastes a lot of paper. If Teachers would continue to use older editions (where appropriate) that would help students save money as well.