As far as I'm concerned, "they" can have my PC just after they've pried my Glock from my cold, dead hands. However, I think that the advocates of so-called "cloud computing" are groping towards a service for which there is an actual need. To be sure, I don't need it, and if you are reading this, you probably don't need it either, but I know people who do need something like the cloudy people are talking about.
I'm thinking of my sister-in-law. She believes—or used to believe—that I was her personal, dedicated computer support muppet. She is the archetype of the Clueless Normal (C.N.). Not only does hardware develop an unholy propensity to fail whenever it passes the doors of her house, but she was constantly calling me about networking issues, how to get into her Hotmail account (luckily, I could truthfully tell her I know nothing about Hotmail), and how to use whatever braindead application she decided was essential to her life. (How I rid myself of this problem may form the basis of a journal entry, if I find the time.)
Fellow geeks, you all know at least one person like this—someone who is draining your vital forces at the behest of demonic brain-sucking Bogons who dwell in an alternate universe that has long suffered final entropic heat death. I suggest to you that "cloud computing" is just the thing this sort of person. Give the C.N.s a terminal with just enough smarts to connect to a fiber optic line and talk to its Master. The CN can now read his email, "surf the web", and run stupid application to his heart's consent, without ever worrying about reinstalling Windows, system misconfiguration, application crashes (that can't happen in the clouds, can it?), viruses, or whatever.
So what if the Cloud carries a distinct whiff of sulfur. Data privacy and brain-sucking have never been on the C.N.'s list of worries in any case. And if he calls you, then you can answer quite truthfully that you know nothing about this stuff because you don't use it, and direct him to contact Yellow Stinking Cloud Tech Support.
Yep, I think there's a big market out there for cloud computing. Just because it's not us doesn't mean it's not there.
Now, forget the jobs, forget the education. Those are your smallest sections. Create a section called "skills" and list your skills (literally every piece of software/language/technique) you've touched and how many years you've done it. You've surfed the web? "HTTP" You've chatted before? "Realtime Communications" You've used MySpace "Content Management Systems"
I suppose that might work for an HR interview, but never a peer interview. He certainly wouldn't survive my interview, nor many that I've gone through myself. I make it a point to ask very pointed and detailed questions about any technical competencies claimed by a candidate. I don't expect a candidate to know everything, but I expect him to know about the things his resume says he knows. If he doesn't, he's a B.S. artist, and he goes out the door double-quick.
About a year ago, we had a guy in here claiming that he created a certain web site (among very many other miraculous things). I looked at the site (he had been unwise enough to supply the URL), and sure enough, he was listed as the "contact person". I then dumped the source from the site, and brought the printout to the interview. He was the kind of guy who likes to dominate an interview—just kept talking non-stop. After he exceeded my politeness threshold, I abruptly held up the printout, pointed to a highlighted line, and asked, "Now, could you please tell me what this line of Javascript does?" He didn't know, of course. OK...if someone showed me some code I'd written even a few months ago, I might not remember right off what it did. However, a succession of quick questions revealed that he could not possibly had written that code, that he did not understand HTML, let alone Javascript, and that "I created this website" perhaps meant "I chose the colors". Bang. Next candidate, please.
The approach you describe (keyword spamming) could conceivably get a resume fished out of the pile by HR for further scrutiny. But this guy's problem isn't getting interviews—it's getting through them.
It isn't your current job, it's your attitude to that job. You are getting interviews, so you look good to prospective employers "on paper". In other words, they don't think that serving 2 years as first-tier tech support monkey is a turn-off. However, I bet that when you talk to them about what you have done in those 2 years, you make it clear that the job is boring, lacks challenge, and is taking you nowhere. What would you think about a person who puts up with a job like that for 2 years? Would you think he is likely to be excited about the job you are offering, once he gets it?
The problem with hiring fresh college grads is that they have absolutely no track record: there is nothing you can judge them on, except how good they look in a suit. If that is who you are competing against, then you have a potential advantage: you have a track record. However, that record must be a good one, or it works against you and not for you.
When you interview, tell them how exciting your job is. Make it sound as though you are really reluctant to leave; in fact, you love your job. You like to help people, to explain things to them, to solve their problems. You like learning about all the technical stuff that you are supporting. Come prepared with at least three anecdotes where you were a stellar success in your present job. Think of three people you helped, and tell the story. Think of improvements you made that won praise from your boss and co-workers. Dress it up. You can't overdo this part: your job has been wonderful; you have learned tons of stuff and accomplished miracles. Oh, and you like and respect your boss.
I guarantee that if you follow this advice, you will have a job within the next 3-4 interviews.
I won't go quite that far, but I've noticed that in interviews where my "give a damn" quotient and general interest in the position is low, I tend to get job offers. That might have something to do with the display of confidence
Heh. There's something to that. I once interviewed for a software company as a tech writer. This was just after I had talked my way into my first job doing same, 11 months before. The (prospective) boss threw down a huge pile of manuals in front of me and said, "Can you write this many manuals in three months?". I looked at the largish pile, looked at him, and said, "Why, no". I mentally wrote off the interview as a waste of time, but went through the motions. (Heck, all they did was boring financial and industrial software.)
You can imagine my surprise when the guy called my the next day and offered me the job. I turned him down, because I basically felt that he had unrealistic expectations, and I didn't want to get caught in a situation where I knew I couldn't live up to my employer's expectations. A couple of days later, he called back and asked me why I had turned him down. I explained my reasoning—I didn't feel that writing software documentation was like grinding out sausage...and he increased his offer by 20%. I took the job that time. And it was a good move, even though it was boring software.
I checked, and was really disappointed that they're not supporting the Sansa View. I don't suppose I can really blame Rock Box...how many other people bought one of these dogs? Thing is, the hardware is really fine. Nice big screen (hence the name, I guess), 16G of built in memory, plus I put in an 8G MicroSD card. But the firmware makes this product absolutely awful. Instead of the stated battery life of 35 hours playing MP3 music, I get maybe 5! I've seen plenty of complaints from other users about the same problem. I don't understand how Sandisk can continue to advertise such a patent falsehood. The player's database regularly gets corrupted so that it thinks I have multiple copies of the same song (when I don't), and thus plays the same song over and over again. The album art is rarely in synch with what's really playing, response to control input is slooooow...and new bugs are introduced with every firmware update.
I notice the Sansa e200 series is supported. I had one of these and really liked it...figured the View had to be just as good, but with more capacity. Wrong! It feels bad to get took.
How this actually happened (the State of Kentucky obtaining ownership of domains) boggles the mind. It's not the judge that belongs in the loony bin, it's ICANN.
Did it happen? I looked up the registration records of a sampling of the domains in question, and none of them say they are owned by Kentucky. Maybe this is merely a case of some judge enjoying delusions of effectiveness? I'm at work, so I can't actually try to access these sites; did you try? It might be nice to do so, before going into hyperventilation.
I'm confused about what's at issue. Does the State of Kentucky now claim to own the domains in question? Or do they have a court order in place that directs Domain Name Servers (DNSs) to respond to all HTTP traffic to those domain names by resolving to a domain that's actually owned by Kentucky? Does Kentucky claim to have seized some property (domains), or does it claim to have blocked access to them via the DNS route? Did it work?
You know, for a technical discussion forum, there seem to be too many people interested in moral outrage and too few in explaining or discussing the technical issues that result from this legal decision. We can always get morally outraged once we understand the technical stuff, right?
I tried to RTFA, but I'm at work and the URL has "gambling" in it, so I got a "Access Blocked" and "This attempt has been logged" for my pains. So FTFA. How about a helpful answer?
I don't understand why Sweeney thinks that the "death of the GPU" would entailthe death of all graphic APIs. By definition, an API is a programming interface that helps the programmer do certain jobs without having to code low-level stuff over and over again, right? So if graphics rendering starts being done by the CPUs instead of a dedicated GPU, how does this change the situation?
Yes, I understand that the APIs will have to be rewritten to accommodate the underlying hardware, and that some restrictions that were imposed by GPUs may go away if we use a general-purpose CPU instead...but why in the world does that mean the game programmers of the future will be confronted by nothing but a blank screen and a program editor? Don't we have APIs now for writing programs that run on CPUs? I'm pretty sure that in addition to the program editor, they'll still have graphics APIs—just newer and better ones.
In fairness, I have to say that this is a pretty short and shallow interview. Maybe Sweeney meant to say something like, "people who write game engines will have to start over from scratch, and rethink their basic tools". Maybe.
I think they are talking about the character database from the game. Has nothing to do with "DNA", except that in the game, you were a soldier who could be revived as a clone "from stored DNA" if you died. I died lots of times, horribly, in battle against insectoid aliens. Only to be revived, sent back into battle to die again...and again. I am deeply disturbed by the thought that somewhere, some time, there might be a version of me condemned to that particular hell. Now would be a good time to test that anti-satellite rocket.
Propulsion Labs says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk -- a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise.
Obviously, they've never watched "The Usual Suspects". Really good terrorists like Keyser Soze have no problem changing their gait.
Where in the article does it suggest this has practical utility? It seemed to me to be full of implications that this was just one step in a long process
Well,yes. The question is whether the process is leading to an interesting conclusion. They've established that when the experimental subject recalls recent events, neural activity seems to be specific to the event. That is, a few neurons that happen to be near the probes inserted into the subject's brain show repeatable patterns when the subject is asked to remember something. To me, this seems to be neither particularly surprising nor does it seem to promise the kind of breakthrough that always seems to be just over the neuroscientific horizon. It does seem to promise a continuation of grants to support these guys so they can continue sticking probes into people's heads. I don't think it's out of place to ask why we should fund this.
When I read the headline, I thought maybe someone had caught a neuron reminiscing about its youth as an undifferentiated stem cell. Now that would be news: "Neuron Publishes Memoirs!"
Ever since I downloaded Firefox 3, pages have been taking forever to load. Has nobody else noticed this? I've had to turn off automatic image loading to make it borderline bearable. So maybe this is a good time to change browsers.
I've been using Perl for abour 15 years. I experimented with Python once: I wrote a program that controlled a WebDAV doc management system using http protocol and xml. It worked great, and there were a lot of things I liked about Python. However, one thing absolutely killed it for me: it's indent sensitive. That is, code blocks (like if and while loops and such) are defined by their indenting. If your indenting is off, you get a syntax error, or unexpected results. This seems completely bizarre to me. Don't get me wrong—I'm downright compulsive about indenting my Perl code because it makes the code readable. But I want those curly braces to set off blocks, so that if my editor accidentally eats all the white space at the beginning of every line in my code, I won't be left with a complete mess. Not only does this remind me of my Cobol punch-card days, when commands had to begin at a particular column or the juju would fail, but the whole notion of meaningful white space just strikes me as unholy.
My impression was that both languages were about equally good; both have active user communities supporting them. If Python had some sort of edge, I'd put up with the indent thing, but as it is, I see no reason to change to a language that has such an annoying feature, and offers no clear benefits over what I'm using.
"I have my own domain, which has its own email server, where I receive all my personal email. I've been getting about 800 emails a day, of which perhaps 20 are real. Suddenly, Sunday...
You've got your own domain, and you get 780 pieces of trash a day? Why bother with the domain, just use hotmail. I've got my own domain, and I almost never get spam. First, I don't give out my "real" email except to trusted friends. Vendors I order stuff from, mailing lists, political organizations, etc. all get their very own special email address. So if I start getting spam directed to vendorname@myaddress, then I know who sold my address. I also revoke that address. I maintain an easy-to-remember series of throwaway addresses for casual purchases or communication with people I don't trust. Those just get changed on a monthly basis. Oh yeah, I also have the domain run through an anonymization service, so they can't even get my information by looking up the domain name. Problem solved.
Didn't we go through this very sort of thing in the 80's with IBM? Didn't the proliferation of IBM-PC clones create the ultimate dominance of the PC in the marketplace?
Yep...and the big loser was IBM, who was trying to dominate the PC market with their hardware and an OS that they had neglected to control because they did not understand the importance of software. When people figured out that you did not have to buy a box from IBM to run DOS (or later, Windows), the PC became a mere commodity, prices dropped, and we all benefited (except for IBM, of course).
Apple saw this, and avoided IBM's fate by tying its OS closely to it hardware: Macs were built on Motorola CPUs, and had a proprietary architecture; MacOS would only run on that architecture. Apple had chosen not to go head with Microsoft as a software company, and continued to survive primarily as a hardware company. When someone tried to clone that hardware without permission (and permission wasn't forthcoming expect for a short interval when Apple flirted with licensing), Apple went after them for patent infringement.
However, all that changed when Apple adopted what is essentially the generic Wintel hardware architecture: now the only thing that prevents people from building boxes that run Apple's OS is the EULA under which the OS is sold. That is a much weaker position than Apple was in previously. You don't have to break any patent laws to build a "Mac Clone"—there's nothing proprietary about the hardware platform any more. (You do have to be careful to include only hardware that the OS supports, of course.) As others have pointed out, tying software to a particular brand of hardware may very well be in violation of US anti-trust law.
It also seems to me that the morality of Apple's position has been undermined. There is nothing special or innovative about today's Macs, except maybe the stylish cases. Yet, Apple sells these boxes for a considerable mark-up—and insists that we can only run their OS on boxes that carry their logo. In the PC business, at least, Apple has ceased being an innovator and is merely capitalizing on their historic prestige and slick marketing.
Question: I understand there are some provisions in the Apple OS that keep it from running on a generic PC platform. Can someone tell me exactly what those provisions are, and what has to be done to circumvent them? —No, I'm not planning to build myself a Mac, I'm just curious if getting around Apple's safeguards involves actions that might themselves break laws, for example re-writing any part of the OS could conceivably be a copyright infringement, right?
They are hoping that they can scare people into giving up their rights.
That's part of it, of course. But there's another side of the issue: they can scare potential employers into not hiring someone who has signed such an agreement. If former employer A finds out that Joe Shmo is applying for a job at Company B, all it takes is a friendly phone call from A to B mentioning that that Joe is a former employee who has signed a non-compete agreement, and that A views B as a competitor. I saw this happen back in the day when corporations actually considered software people to have strategic significance. B would have to balance their desire to hire Joe against the potential costs of a lawsuit by A...and they'd have to want Joe an awful lot to take that risk. This would have nothing to do with the validity of the agreement—it's just a matter of having to spend money for lawyers to defend against the lawsuit.
Another factor is the related—but legally distinct—issue of non-disclosure. If you've signed a non-disclosure agreement with an employer, then go to work for another employer who is in the same line of business, there's a risk that you and your new employer may get sued because you failed to forget all you learned at your previous job.
And I usually hear it as Fear, Uncertainy, and Doubt.
That's correct. "FUD" is (or was) a reference to IBM marketing techniques back in the dark ages (i.e. the age of the "mainframe"—the 70s and 80s). IBM's strategy was basically to assert that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM"—implying that if you did buy something else, your career was in jeopardy. If you bought a competitor's product (say an Amdahl or DEC), then you—the purchasing manager—were hosed if anything went wrong. On the other hand, if you bought IBM and things went south, you could assert that you had made the best possible choice, so it wasn't your fault. Crazy as it was, this technique worked very well—IBM had a dominant position in the industry for decades not because they always had the best technology, but because they very effectively played on corporate manager's fears.
Really. That makes it completely useless in my book. The only way I ever use a reference is by looking up what I want to know in the index, and going straight there. For a reference book, a table of contents—no matter how detailed—just isn't much use. A good index (and making a good index requires work and skill on the part of the author or editor) allows me to quickly zero in on the topic I have questions about; a table of contents is only a list of what's in the book, which is arranged in a way that made sense to the author—but not necessarily to me.
At work, I find myself using Google and paper references about 30/70 (in favor of paper) when it comes to programming questions. Google helps me ferret out some of the more obscure stuff, and helpful insights by, for example, fellow victims...er...I mean cognoscenti of XSLT. Why do I use paper at all? Well, paper stays open on my desk...I've usually got 3 or 4 references opened up, with pens stuck in important places. Every time I want to google for something, I have to minimize the editor window, pop Firefox, make the query...then I've got about a dozen open tabs, and I forget which is which...then I have to open the editor again and look at my code...ok I guess I use paper because I'm disorganized. And besides, it helps sop up the spilled coffee.
There is one difference between Hatfill, Jewell, and this dead guy. The dead guy wasn't just being investigated, he wasn't just being "hounded"—he was about to be indicted, and knew it. I'm not so naive as to think that the innocent have nothing to fear in a trial...but if I was indicted for an offense I didn't commit, I wouldn't cap myself—I'd find myself the best lawyer I could afford and make a fight of it. I guess I figure my chances in a public trial on false charges are considerably better than sure death...
Of course, I don't know this guy, and I don't know what he was like. The pity of it is, now there won't be a trial, and we won't have the sort of public examination of evidence and testimony that a trial would produce.
Why don't they implement a challenge-response system in-game...
Hmmm...yeah, I'd say that has possibilities. Here's Breadalbane the Warlock, about to whack his 261st Defias looter of the day, but the looter goes to his knees and begs for mercy, offering to lead me to his hoard of fabulous riches, if only I will spare him. (Maybe have the NPC hold up a sign that says, "Spare me!" so the bot can't key off dialogue?) Perhaps the NPC would have to ask the answer to a simple riddle as well, to make sure the bots don't catch on to the "ransom" scheme. It seems to me that this ought to work, and it would fit right in with gameplay—unlike random captchas that suddenly pop up in-game.
And if a "player" disregards several of these opportunities, I think it would be safe to flag him as a bot (or pretty stupid, anyway).
I would love to be able to print my own replacement model parts.
I missed the "model", and my mind spun off on a wild tangent...yes, I would like to have a new left arm, please—the one I've got is pretty messed up. Then if that works out OK, how about a new heart? Oh...
I think you're on the right track teaching him C (absolutely not C++, because it's so anally retentive that he will decide programming is the most boring thing in the world). You know C, and it has all the features a programming language needs—and no more. C also resembles many newer programming languages enough so that once he learns C, he shouldn't have any trouble picking up languages like Python, Perl, Java or C++. I would say that guidance is absolutely necessary—teach him to write unobfuscated code (e.g., do not be impressed when he tries to show you how much he can do in a single line of code), and encourage him to comment abundantly. I'd stay away from pointers—stick to the high level aspects of C; low-level programming is for a few specialists nowadays, and chances are he will never have any practical need to use such techniques. (If he does, he will learn.)
Another possibility is to teach him HTML and Javascript. I'd do this after laying down the fundamentals with some C programming—but the gratification of seeing the effects of his code immediately on the screen might be a powerful motivator—especially if he's visually oriented.
... that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device
The browser is going to be an operating system? Hello? Am I the only one here who knows what an OS is? (Hint: it's not a GUI). Or has Firefox developed features that allow it to instantiate and run application threads on CPUs, interfaces for hardware device drivers, and file systems that I'm not aware of?
And, OK, I probably should know...but what the heck is "kiosk" mode? The thing unfolds into a little hut with a French guy inside who sells you newspapers and magazines?
Well put. I'm in a technical profession, and each passing year my reduces my perception that the "new hotness" is either new or hot. When you get good with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, maybe?
You seem to assume that this is a fault. Could it be that not everything that is new is good, and that you have learned this simple fact? If you have a need to drive nails, then a hammer is the best tool. Now, if somebody came up with a cheap self-driving nail...that would be hot. Sure, as you get older, you become more skeptical of new ideas...because you've learned that 99% of all new ideas are bullshit. The trick is to keep sifting the crap, so you don't miss that rare nugget of gold.
People can become more liberal or more conservative as they age. And they can change their opinions.
Well, thanks for saying that. I was getting pretty depressed reading about how inflexible I am (I'm into my sixth decade, so I think I qualify as "old" by/. standards). I certainly don't think that being old necessarily makes you stodgy or bigoted, as some commentators seem to be saying. I believe the correct term for this attitude is "ageism".
The consequences of a greatly extended human life span are incalculable—literally. Maybe we'd get stagnation, but I think that it's just as likely that near-immortality would lead to a cultural renaissance. I feel like my life is nearing its end just as I'm about to get some things figured out. If I had another 700 years that I could spend thinking and writing, maybe I could do something really worthwhile. (OK, so I'm kinda slow...a real genius can change the world in a normal lifetime.) Of course, if everybody lived that long, I probably couldn't retire at 66, and I'd have to spend those 700 years working at the same stupid mind-killing job I have now. And I'll wonder just when I died and went to Hell.
I thought I had it all figured out when I was 12—I was sure that scientific progress would lengthen human lifespans to about 100 years by the time I got to be 60, and that in the extra 40 years, more progress would be made, giving me another 50 years, which would be enough time for more medical breakthroughs...voila: immortality! Alas, I think I'm going to be disappointed. Or maybe I should feel relieved.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I'm concerned, "they" can have my PC just after they've pried my Glock from my cold, dead hands. However, I think that the advocates of so-called "cloud computing" are groping towards a service for which there is an actual need. To be sure, I don't need it, and if you are reading this, you probably don't need it either, but I know people who do need something like the cloudy people are talking about.
I'm thinking of my sister-in-law. She believes—or used to believe—that I was her personal, dedicated computer support muppet. She is the archetype of the Clueless Normal (C.N.). Not only does hardware develop an unholy propensity to fail whenever it passes the doors of her house, but she was constantly calling me about networking issues, how to get into her Hotmail account (luckily, I could truthfully tell her I know nothing about Hotmail), and how to use whatever braindead application she decided was essential to her life. (How I rid myself of this problem may form the basis of a journal entry, if I find the time.)
Fellow geeks, you all know at least one person like this—someone who is draining your vital forces at the behest of demonic brain-sucking Bogons who dwell in an alternate universe that has long suffered final entropic heat death. I suggest to you that "cloud computing" is just the thing this sort of person. Give the C.N.s a terminal with just enough smarts to connect to a fiber optic line and talk to its Master. The CN can now read his email, "surf the web", and run stupid application to his heart's consent, without ever worrying about reinstalling Windows, system misconfiguration, application crashes (that can't happen in the clouds, can it?), viruses, or whatever.
So what if the Cloud carries a distinct whiff of sulfur. Data privacy and brain-sucking have never been on the C.N.'s list of worries in any case. And if he calls you, then you can answer quite truthfully that you know nothing about this stuff because you don't use it, and direct him to contact Yellow Stinking Cloud Tech Support.
Yep, I think there's a big market out there for cloud computing. Just because it's not us doesn't mean it's not there.
I suppose that might work for an HR interview, but never a peer interview. He certainly wouldn't survive my interview, nor many that I've gone through myself. I make it a point to ask very pointed and detailed questions about any technical competencies claimed by a candidate. I don't expect a candidate to know everything, but I expect him to know about the things his resume says he knows. If he doesn't, he's a B.S. artist, and he goes out the door double-quick.
About a year ago, we had a guy in here claiming that he created a certain web site (among very many other miraculous things). I looked at the site (he had been unwise enough to supply the URL), and sure enough, he was listed as the "contact person". I then dumped the source from the site, and brought the printout to the interview. He was the kind of guy who likes to dominate an interview—just kept talking non-stop. After he exceeded my politeness threshold, I abruptly held up the printout, pointed to a highlighted line, and asked, "Now, could you please tell me what this line of Javascript does?" He didn't know, of course. OK...if someone showed me some code I'd written even a few months ago, I might not remember right off what it did. However, a succession of quick questions revealed that he could not possibly had written that code, that he did not understand HTML, let alone Javascript, and that "I created this website" perhaps meant "I chose the colors". Bang. Next candidate, please.
The approach you describe (keyword spamming) could conceivably get a resume fished out of the pile by HR for further scrutiny. But this guy's problem isn't getting interviews—it's getting through them.
It isn't your current job, it's your attitude to that job. You are getting interviews, so you look good to prospective employers "on paper". In other words, they don't think that serving 2 years as first-tier tech support monkey is a turn-off. However, I bet that when you talk to them about what you have done in those 2 years, you make it clear that the job is boring, lacks challenge, and is taking you nowhere. What would you think about a person who puts up with a job like that for 2 years? Would you think he is likely to be excited about the job you are offering, once he gets it?
The problem with hiring fresh college grads is that they have absolutely no track record: there is nothing you can judge them on, except how good they look in a suit. If that is who you are competing against, then you have a potential advantage: you have a track record. However, that record must be a good one, or it works against you and not for you.
When you interview, tell them how exciting your job is. Make it sound as though you are really reluctant to leave; in fact, you love your job. You like to help people, to explain things to them, to solve their problems. You like learning about all the technical stuff that you are supporting. Come prepared with at least three anecdotes where you were a stellar success in your present job. Think of three people you helped, and tell the story. Think of improvements you made that won praise from your boss and co-workers. Dress it up. You can't overdo this part: your job has been wonderful; you have learned tons of stuff and accomplished miracles. Oh, and you like and respect your boss.
I guarantee that if you follow this advice, you will have a job within the next 3-4 interviews.
Heh. There's something to that. I once interviewed for a software company as a tech writer. This was just after I had talked my way into my first job doing same, 11 months before. The (prospective) boss threw down a huge pile of manuals in front of me and said, "Can you write this many manuals in three months?". I looked at the largish pile, looked at him, and said, "Why, no". I mentally wrote off the interview as a waste of time, but went through the motions. (Heck, all they did was boring financial and industrial software.)
You can imagine my surprise when the guy called my the next day and offered me the job. I turned him down, because I basically felt that he had unrealistic expectations, and I didn't want to get caught in a situation where I knew I couldn't live up to my employer's expectations. A couple of days later, he called back and asked me why I had turned him down. I explained my reasoning—I didn't feel that writing software documentation was like grinding out sausage...and he increased his offer by 20%. I took the job that time. And it was a good move, even though it was boring software.
I checked, and was really disappointed that they're not supporting the Sansa View. I don't suppose I can really blame Rock Box...how many other people bought one of these dogs? Thing is, the hardware is really fine. Nice big screen (hence the name, I guess), 16G of built in memory, plus I put in an 8G MicroSD card. But the firmware makes this product absolutely awful. Instead of the stated battery life of 35 hours playing MP3 music, I get maybe 5! I've seen plenty of complaints from other users about the same problem. I don't understand how Sandisk can continue to advertise such a patent falsehood. The player's database regularly gets corrupted so that it thinks I have multiple copies of the same song (when I don't), and thus plays the same song over and over again. The album art is rarely in synch with what's really playing, response to control input is slooooow...and new bugs are introduced with every firmware update.
I notice the Sansa e200 series is supported. I had one of these and really liked it...figured the View had to be just as good, but with more capacity. Wrong! It feels bad to get took.
Did it happen? I looked up the registration records of a sampling of the domains in question, and none of them say they are owned by Kentucky. Maybe this is merely a case of some judge enjoying delusions of effectiveness? I'm at work, so I can't actually try to access these sites; did you try? It might be nice to do so, before going into hyperventilation.
I'm confused about what's at issue. Does the State of Kentucky now claim to own the domains in question? Or do they have a court order in place that directs Domain Name Servers (DNSs) to respond to all HTTP traffic to those domain names by resolving to a domain that's actually owned by Kentucky? Does Kentucky claim to have seized some property (domains), or does it claim to have blocked access to them via the DNS route? Did it work?
You know, for a technical discussion forum, there seem to be too many people interested in moral outrage and too few in explaining or discussing the technical issues that result from this legal decision. We can always get morally outraged once we understand the technical stuff, right?
I tried to RTFA, but I'm at work and the URL has "gambling" in it, so I got a "Access Blocked" and "This attempt has been logged" for my pains. So FTFA. How about a helpful answer?
I don't understand why Sweeney thinks that the "death of the GPU" would entailthe death of all graphic APIs. By definition, an API is a programming interface that helps the programmer do certain jobs without having to code low-level stuff over and over again, right? So if graphics rendering starts being done by the CPUs instead of a dedicated GPU, how does this change the situation?
Yes, I understand that the APIs will have to be rewritten to accommodate the underlying hardware, and that some restrictions that were imposed by GPUs may go away if we use a general-purpose CPU instead...but why in the world does that mean the game programmers of the future will be confronted by nothing but a blank screen and a program editor? Don't we have APIs now for writing programs that run on CPUs? I'm pretty sure that in addition to the program editor, they'll still have graphics APIs—just newer and better ones.
In fairness, I have to say that this is a pretty short and shallow interview. Maybe Sweeney meant to say something like, "people who write game engines will have to start over from scratch, and rethink their basic tools". Maybe.
I think they are talking about the character database from the game. Has nothing to do with "DNA", except that in the game, you were a soldier who could be revived as a clone "from stored DNA" if you died. I died lots of times, horribly, in battle against insectoid aliens. Only to be revived, sent back into battle to die again...and again. I am deeply disturbed by the thought that somewhere, some time, there might be a version of me condemned to that particular hell. Now would be a good time to test that anti-satellite rocket.
Obviously, they've never watched "The Usual Suspects". Really good terrorists like Keyser Soze have no problem changing their gait.
Well,yes. The question is whether the process is leading to an interesting conclusion. They've established that when the experimental subject recalls recent events, neural activity seems to be specific to the event. That is, a few neurons that happen to be near the probes inserted into the subject's brain show repeatable patterns when the subject is asked to remember something. To me, this seems to be neither particularly surprising nor does it seem to promise the kind of breakthrough that always seems to be just over the neuroscientific horizon. It does seem to promise a continuation of grants to support these guys so they can continue sticking probes into people's heads. I don't think it's out of place to ask why we should fund this.
When I read the headline, I thought maybe someone had caught a neuron reminiscing about its youth as an undifferentiated stem cell. Now that would be news: "Neuron Publishes Memoirs!"
Ever since I downloaded Firefox 3, pages have been taking forever to load. Has nobody else noticed this? I've had to turn off automatic image loading to make it borderline bearable. So maybe this is a good time to change browsers.
I've been using Perl for abour 15 years. I experimented with Python once: I wrote a program that controlled a WebDAV doc management system using http protocol and xml. It worked great, and there were a lot of things I liked about Python. However, one thing absolutely killed it for me: it's indent sensitive. That is, code blocks (like if and while loops and such) are defined by their indenting. If your indenting is off, you get a syntax error, or unexpected results. This seems completely bizarre to me. Don't get me wrong—I'm downright compulsive about indenting my Perl code because it makes the code readable. But I want those curly braces to set off blocks, so that if my editor accidentally eats all the white space at the beginning of every line in my code, I won't be left with a complete mess. Not only does this remind me of my Cobol punch-card days, when commands had to begin at a particular column or the juju would fail, but the whole notion of meaningful white space just strikes me as unholy.
My impression was that both languages were about equally good; both have active user communities supporting them. If Python had some sort of edge, I'd put up with the indent thing, but as it is, I see no reason to change to a language that has such an annoying feature, and offers no clear benefits over what I'm using.
You've got your own domain, and you get 780 pieces of trash a day? Why bother with the domain, just use hotmail. I've got my own domain, and I almost never get spam. First, I don't give out my "real" email except to trusted friends. Vendors I order stuff from, mailing lists, political organizations, etc. all get their very own special email address. So if I start getting spam directed to vendorname@myaddress, then I know who sold my address. I also revoke that address. I maintain an easy-to-remember series of throwaway addresses for casual purchases or communication with people I don't trust. Those just get changed on a monthly basis. Oh yeah, I also have the domain run through an anonymization service, so they can't even get my information by looking up the domain name. Problem solved.
Yep...and the big loser was IBM, who was trying to dominate the PC market with their hardware and an OS that they had neglected to control because they did not understand the importance of software. When people figured out that you did not have to buy a box from IBM to run DOS (or later, Windows), the PC became a mere commodity, prices dropped, and we all benefited (except for IBM, of course).
Apple saw this, and avoided IBM's fate by tying its OS closely to it hardware: Macs were built on Motorola CPUs, and had a proprietary architecture; MacOS would only run on that architecture. Apple had chosen not to go head with Microsoft as a software company, and continued to survive primarily as a hardware company. When someone tried to clone that hardware without permission (and permission wasn't forthcoming expect for a short interval when Apple flirted with licensing), Apple went after them for patent infringement.
However, all that changed when Apple adopted what is essentially the generic Wintel hardware architecture: now the only thing that prevents people from building boxes that run Apple's OS is the EULA under which the OS is sold. That is a much weaker position than Apple was in previously. You don't have to break any patent laws to build a "Mac Clone"—there's nothing proprietary about the hardware platform any more. (You do have to be careful to include only hardware that the OS supports, of course.) As others have pointed out, tying software to a particular brand of hardware may very well be in violation of US anti-trust law.
It also seems to me that the morality of Apple's position has been undermined. There is nothing special or innovative about today's Macs, except maybe the stylish cases. Yet, Apple sells these boxes for a considerable mark-up—and insists that we can only run their OS on boxes that carry their logo. In the PC business, at least, Apple has ceased being an innovator and is merely capitalizing on their historic prestige and slick marketing.
Question: I understand there are some provisions in the Apple OS that keep it from running on a generic PC platform. Can someone tell me exactly what those provisions are, and what has to be done to circumvent them? —No, I'm not planning to build myself a Mac, I'm just curious if getting around Apple's safeguards involves actions that might themselves break laws, for example re-writing any part of the OS could conceivably be a copyright infringement, right?
That's part of it, of course. But there's another side of the issue: they can scare potential employers into not hiring someone who has signed such an agreement. If former employer A finds out that Joe Shmo is applying for a job at Company B, all it takes is a friendly phone call from A to B mentioning that that Joe is a former employee who has signed a non-compete agreement, and that A views B as a competitor. I saw this happen back in the day when corporations actually considered software people to have strategic significance. B would have to balance their desire to hire Joe against the potential costs of a lawsuit by A...and they'd have to want Joe an awful lot to take that risk. This would have nothing to do with the validity of the agreement—it's just a matter of having to spend money for lawyers to defend against the lawsuit.
Another factor is the related—but legally distinct—issue of non-disclosure. If you've signed a non-disclosure agreement with an employer, then go to work for another employer who is in the same line of business, there's a risk that you and your new employer may get sued because you failed to forget all you learned at your previous job.
That's correct. "FUD" is (or was) a reference to IBM marketing techniques back in the dark ages (i.e. the age of the "mainframe"—the 70s and 80s). IBM's strategy was basically to assert that "no one ever got fired for buying IBM"—implying that if you did buy something else, your career was in jeopardy. If you bought a competitor's product (say an Amdahl or DEC), then you—the purchasing manager—were hosed if anything went wrong. On the other hand, if you bought IBM and things went south, you could assert that you had made the best possible choice, so it wasn't your fault. Crazy as it was, this technique worked very well—IBM had a dominant position in the industry for decades not because they always had the best technology, but because they very effectively played on corporate manager's fears.
Really. That makes it completely useless in my book. The only way I ever use a reference is by looking up what I want to know in the index, and going straight there. For a reference book, a table of contents—no matter how detailed—just isn't much use. A good index (and making a good index requires work and skill on the part of the author or editor) allows me to quickly zero in on the topic I have questions about; a table of contents is only a list of what's in the book, which is arranged in a way that made sense to the author—but not necessarily to me.
At work, I find myself using Google and paper references about 30/70 (in favor of paper) when it comes to programming questions. Google helps me ferret out some of the more obscure stuff, and helpful insights by, for example, fellow victims...er...I mean cognoscenti of XSLT. Why do I use paper at all? Well, paper stays open on my desk...I've usually got 3 or 4 references opened up, with pens stuck in important places. Every time I want to google for something, I have to minimize the editor window, pop Firefox, make the query...then I've got about a dozen open tabs, and I forget which is which...then I have to open the editor again and look at my code...ok I guess I use paper because I'm disorganized. And besides, it helps sop up the spilled coffee.
There is one difference between Hatfill, Jewell, and this dead guy. The dead guy wasn't just being investigated, he wasn't just being "hounded"—he was about to be indicted, and knew it. I'm not so naive as to think that the innocent have nothing to fear in a trial...but if I was indicted for an offense I didn't commit, I wouldn't cap myself—I'd find myself the best lawyer I could afford and make a fight of it. I guess I figure my chances in a public trial on false charges are considerably better than sure death...
Of course, I don't know this guy, and I don't know what he was like. The pity of it is, now there won't be a trial, and we won't have the sort of public examination of evidence and testimony that a trial would produce.
Hmmm...yeah, I'd say that has possibilities. Here's Breadalbane the Warlock, about to whack his 261st Defias looter of the day, but the looter goes to his knees and begs for mercy, offering to lead me to his hoard of fabulous riches, if only I will spare him. (Maybe have the NPC hold up a sign that says, "Spare me!" so the bot can't key off dialogue?) Perhaps the NPC would have to ask the answer to a simple riddle as well, to make sure the bots don't catch on to the "ransom" scheme. It seems to me that this ought to work, and it would fit right in with gameplay—unlike random captchas that suddenly pop up in-game.
And if a "player" disregards several of these opportunities, I think it would be safe to flag him as a bot (or pretty stupid, anyway).
I missed the "model", and my mind spun off on a wild tangent...yes, I would like to have a new left arm, please—the one I've got is pretty messed up. Then if that works out OK, how about a new heart? Oh...
I think you're on the right track teaching him C (absolutely not C++, because it's so anally retentive that he will decide programming is the most boring thing in the world). You know C, and it has all the features a programming language needs—and no more. C also resembles many newer programming languages enough so that once he learns C, he shouldn't have any trouble picking up languages like Python, Perl, Java or C++. I would say that guidance is absolutely necessary—teach him to write unobfuscated code (e.g., do not be impressed when he tries to show you how much he can do in a single line of code), and encourage him to comment abundantly. I'd stay away from pointers—stick to the high level aspects of C; low-level programming is for a few specialists nowadays, and chances are he will never have any practical need to use such techniques. (If he does, he will learn.)
Another possibility is to teach him HTML and Javascript. I'd do this after laying down the fundamentals with some C programming—but the gratification of seeing the effects of his code immediately on the screen might be a powerful motivator—especially if he's visually oriented.
The browser is going to be an operating system? Hello? Am I the only one here who knows what an OS is? (Hint: it's not a GUI). Or has Firefox developed features that allow it to instantiate and run application threads on CPUs, interfaces for hardware device drivers, and file systems that I'm not aware of?
And, OK, I probably should know...but what the heck is "kiosk" mode? The thing unfolds into a little hut with a French guy inside who sells you newspapers and magazines?
You seem to assume that this is a fault. Could it be that not everything that is new is good, and that you have learned this simple fact? If you have a need to drive nails, then a hammer is the best tool. Now, if somebody came up with a cheap self-driving nail...that would be hot. Sure, as you get older, you become more skeptical of new ideas...because you've learned that 99% of all new ideas are bullshit. The trick is to keep sifting the crap, so you don't miss that rare nugget of gold.
Well, thanks for saying that. I was getting pretty depressed reading about how inflexible I am (I'm into my sixth decade, so I think I qualify as "old" by /. standards). I certainly don't think that being old necessarily makes you stodgy or bigoted, as some commentators seem to be saying. I believe the correct term for this attitude is "ageism".
The consequences of a greatly extended human life span are incalculable—literally. Maybe we'd get stagnation, but I think that it's just as likely that near-immortality would lead to a cultural renaissance. I feel like my life is nearing its end just as I'm about to get some things figured out. If I had another 700 years that I could spend thinking and writing, maybe I could do something really worthwhile. (OK, so I'm kinda slow...a real genius can change the world in a normal lifetime.) Of course, if everybody lived that long, I probably couldn't retire at 66, and I'd have to spend those 700 years working at the same stupid mind-killing job I have now. And I'll wonder just when I died and went to Hell.
I thought I had it all figured out when I was 12—I was sure that scientific progress would lengthen human lifespans to about 100 years by the time I got to be 60, and that in the extra 40 years, more progress would be made, giving me another 50 years, which would be enough time for more medical breakthroughs...voila: immortality! Alas, I think I'm going to be disappointed. Or maybe I should feel relieved.