I work in digital TV. It is embedded, but with quite capable processors and a lot of resources. E.g. SoC based on MIPS 3300 running at 500MHz with 256MB DDR2 at 800MHz is considered "low end" and used for cheaper STBs. Software for such system is still written in C/C++. I've seen one big company using C/C++ in combination with Java, but that made system very sluggish. And Java was only for top tier (GUI). So I don't expect that C/C++ would be abandoned soon in DTV field due to entire code base already written. But Java is also making a progress because Android will be very big player in DTV very soon, so more and more thing will move to Java, but core of the system will still require solid amount of C/C++ coding in predictable future.
Yes, it would be nice if we could get entire stack - documentation, working code, test examples, free support accounts, testing hardware, source repository access, Intel engineers payed to work on our favorite project, board of directors meeting memos and our own Santa but that is not going to happen. Documentation and some support is probably all the community would get, but that should be enough. The community usually had to work with a lot less and it was still capable of making useful code.
That was really explanatory, indeed. One idea that came to my mind: how about medical records? Medical records are used by doctors not by you*, they are kept at hospitals and they are still protected by 4th Amendment. Do you think that this brings sufficient analogy to telephone metadata? Or is it maybe that medical records are protected by some law and not by the constitution?
* In some cases they may be used by the patient, but that can be said for phone listings and related metadata as well.
And not only that, but since the map can't scroll, I'm assuming the map can't rotate either.
Very good point! During my military training, official instruction was to rotate the map as you were moving/rotating - i.e. to orientate map just as the terrain is oriented and not to keep the North on the top just because the map was drawn that way.
It is very confusing to have to rotate the map in your head even when you are walking, not to mention the effort for doing it real-time while you are driving a vehicle.
IIRC, Alan Cox explained how before starting his working day he would walk around the block, and after the work he would walk around the block in different direction.
...all roofs in New York should also be painted black in winter, because damnit, it gets cold in New York in winter.
During the winter, day is shorter than night, and your house is always heated to ~70F (both day and night). Hence, your roof will radiate energy for longer period (night) than it would absorb the energy (day). And black bodies radiate energy better than white ones. Conclusion is that it is better to have white roof during the winter.
lim sin(x)/x = 1, when x->0
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
Apart from necessary technical knowledge, there is one more reason: most radical social movements has often started on technical universities.
Reason for this is simple. Technically oriented people tend to underestimate how society works, and believe that it is possible to change it easily. This attitude was also seen in XIX century, when mathematicians tried to apply mathematics rules to social problems. It should mention that this never worked. Not because mathematics is wrong, but society is simply too complex to be modeled that way. (Or, it could be modeled mathematically, but results would not be spectacular.)
Or to say it in other words: you have an intelligent but socially incompetent person, who believes that everything is easy to fix (hey, there was no WinXP that he could not attach a SATAII disk to!). He is highly dedicated, he believes that his position in society won't be appreciated as it should, and he believes that one bomb could actually solve something. Doesn't this sound like a good candidate for a terrorist?
DAB is around 30% efficient in transmission, whereas FM is about 90%.
Please define "efficiency in transmission".
This is a term from telecommunication theory. For each type of modulation (AM, FM...) you have carrier and signal which is embedded into the carrier. IIRC (it was 1997 when I attended telecommunication course), efficiency is defined as a power of the signal compared to the power of the carrier. In AM it is like 0.5% (!) which is why they have so powerful transmitters (up to 1MW, IIRC). FM is much better in that regard.
There is no home grown Linux, Apache or Android equivalent to compete with Java or.NET.
I would dare to say that PHP competes just fine, just for example.
Agile is good for GUI/web projects
on
Becoming Agile
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Scrum has one good point - show your code to your customer often and apply his comments. But that works only for GUI or web. I cannot imagine that in, say, medical software. For instance, one of my colleagues had to optimize crucial piece of code (some heavy math for CAT scanner). It took him several months. Only thing he could say to the customer was like "it is now two times faster" or "it is now 3.45 times faster". Not something you can really get some useful feedback on.
In another company, we were supposed to do a project for GE, and there was some serious GUI there, but their office was some several thousands miles from us and I really didn't know how we would make regular meetings with them as Scrum required. Also, they had some very elaborate specs and they did not see too much point of Scrum methodology. In some other situation, that project would be a perfect one for Scrum.
PS One thing I don't like with Agile evangelists is that Agile (Scrum in this case) is always right. It's either "what are you doing is not Scrum" or "you did not adapt Scrum to your needs", but its never the problem in Scrum.
I have a cousin in USA, and last time we talked, she told me that she and her husband pay 120USD per month (total) and they get nice mobile phones and awesome Internet. She compared that to Serbia where she considered mobile rates to be extremely high, since we pay everything by usage. In the worst case, we pay about 0.05 per SMS (only sent one, receiving is free); we pay about 0.20USD per minute of call (receiving call is free); Internet can go up to 0.60USD per MB. But with some extra "packet add-ons" you can lower your SMS price to 0.01USD, calls to 0.01USD for certain numbers and you can get Internet for 0.02USD per MB. And everything is still without any contract, just via buying some coupons on the kiosk (or on ATM, or in bank, post office, via Intenet...).
In my point of view, this is actually a better deal than 60USDx24 months to get a telephone which I can buy for 300USD (and you can always buy it on credit card if you don't have enough cash). Even with worst case scenario here, it would take me quite a calls and SMSs to make bill worth of 24x60-300 = 1140 USD.
Is there a way to get pre-paid number in USA and how much they charge per minute and SMS? Can you buy decent DCMA telephone without contract?
"Tate" refers to George Tate, db-ii's designer; "Ashton", to nobody in particular. Later on, George Tate bought a parrot, and named it "Ashton".
Ashton refers to the other co-founder Lashlee, but marketing decided that Ashton sounds better. That's what I've read somewhere years ago, but Wikipedia does not confirm that Ashton is actually derived from Lashlee.
I've read TFA and I still don't get the point. Author says that Americans believe that technological advancement will solve problems instead of social advancement. I think that he does not understand that all major social movements were driven by technological progress, or at least they were made possible by it.
For instance, state as we know it is only possible in a society where high-speed communication is possible. It is not a coincidence that old feudal regimes where overthrown at the same time when technological revolution was in progress. And this is nothing new, and it was elaborated by Carl Marx in great details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism) more than a century ago. (Yeah, Marx is considered to be wrong, but not in that part.)
In a part where author describes how we have traded one problem for another, only I could say is "rubbish". If he does not think that car is better than horse carriage, I would say that other 6bln ppl believe in the opposite.
Let's compare yourself to someone of your age and education but without a masters degree.
In two years, he is in great advantage (you have 0 experience, he has 2yrs). Two years later, he is still in the advantage (masters + 2yrs against 4 years). At this moment he is, unlike you, a candidate for getting a promotion etc.
But in a moment when you get ~4 yrs of experience, i.e. where you have to compare his 6yrs against your 4yrs of experience, his advantage is not that big. Four years later, 8yrs vs. 10yrs of experience does not make any difference. But your degree will remain an advantage.
Assuming that you'll work in IT for more than 2 years, I would say that your master will be an advantage for longer period that his 2yrs of more experience will be the advantage for him.
And as something possible in CS/IT, you can get some real-life experience during your masters course, which means that in practice you will have 2yrs spent on masters with some experience, and he will get only the experience.
Also, on a plus side for you, the larger company becomes, it takes more into account formal training. So if one day you want to work in some large system, it's better to have higher qualifications. In this moment you may not want that, but do you know where would you like to work in, say, 15-20 years?
In Serbia, our fixed line monopolist Telekom does not offer voice mail. On the other side, all of our mobile providers do offer voice mail, and they offer it for 8 years, and still no one uses it.
Somewhat similar to this, mobile providers send you a SMS with a list of missed calls (time + number) so if you have turned your mobile off, you'll get the list as soon as you turn your phone on.
Also if you cannot get someone on his mobile, you can send him a SMS, and it will be delivered once he gets reachable again.
This won't do any help in fighting terrorism. Instead, it will allow an easy route to blackmail people. Like, we will present some evidence about your infidelity to your wife if you don't cooperate with us.
Yes, secret agencies were able to do that even before, but now, when such logging becomes mandatory, even telco technician will be able to get the history of your communications.
FSF, EFL and other organizations should do everything to develop and promote technical solutions that would render this logging useless. We should start using encryption even for most trivial tasks.
Does anyone here really think you could run a large company without being able to monitor emails sent by company representatives, using company resources? Does this really seem right to you?
I still don't understand how this kind of monitoring does any help in running the company?
It's pretty ludicrous that in Finland you can just take confidential company information and use your work email to send it to a competitor.
If you want to sell confidential data to your company's competitor, it is very likely that you'll do it via your home internet account. Does it mean that Nokia should be able to read your private mail too?
It is some strange trend that companies become so paranoid. Treating employees like traitors will not help them in any way. Those who want to hurt the company will find the way to do it anyhow. For instance, good way to hurt your company is to ruin its public image by breaking laws and lobbying for ridiculous legislations.
Why don't they use the original specs the programmers used to implement the communication protocols on Microsofts' own server product?
Well, specs may have errors too. You cannot test the specs like you test the code. So if specs have some bug (like, it does not cover some not-so-obvious situation) and developer notices this, there we can ask is the spec was updated, or it was "silencely" changed by the developer (it should not happen, but such things happen).
Also, no matter that code is the only relevant source of information what was really implemented, it does not mean that every behavior is obvious from the code.
After all, it worked for [...] or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them
Serbia is not the best example. Serbia has organized the assassination of the Austrian throne heir. Assassin was an underage (!) and he killed the archduke, the Bosnian governor and archduke's pregnant wife!
And the worse thing is that assassin is celebrated in Serbia even today - there are streets and schools named after him. (Trust me, I live in Serbia.)
Ok, problems between Austro-Hungary and Serbia started long before, but during that period AH did not do anything even remotely savage to Serbian state, although there was a trade war.
I have worked for 4 companies so far, and I worked on some projects on my own.
So far, I was able to see that coding is the least problem. Major problem with software are related to poor management i.e. lack of planning.
It is generally accepted that you cannot collect good specs, that user will change his mind in the middle of the project, that some initial design decisions will prove to be bad ones etc. But that is not an excuse for good ol' planning.
As a first, you have to decide what features you want to implement. But I have heard zillion of excuses just to avoid to make a list to start with. Because, if you make a list, then you are responsible for the list, and then someone can ask you about the list. So the solution is not to make a list.
Without feature list, there could be no good and precise architecture. And good architecture is significantly more important than good code.
Finally, once you have to make changes, noone will let you to do refactoring. It is impossible to make any significant changes if you don't change architecture. But refactoring is never calculated and financed. So you get bad product even it had a decent architecture in version 1.0.
Testing is first thing that is reduced if deadlines is approaching. Testers are not paid enough. Often they don't even exist, and programmers are notoriously bad in testing it's own code.
Programming is like shooting a moving target. But it does not mean that you can shoot randomly. Moving target means that you have to shoot more cleverly.
Slashdot Mirror
I work in digital TV. It is embedded, but with quite capable processors and a lot of resources. E.g. SoC based on MIPS 3300 running at 500MHz with 256MB DDR2 at 800MHz is considered "low end" and used for cheaper STBs. Software for such system is still written in C/C++. I've seen one big company using C/C++ in combination with Java, but that made system very sluggish. And Java was only for top tier (GUI). So I don't expect that C/C++ would be abandoned soon in DTV field due to entire code base already written. But Java is also making a progress because Android will be very big player in DTV very soon, so more and more thing will move to Java, but core of the system will still require solid amount of C/C++ coding in predictable future.
Yes, it would be nice if we could get entire stack - documentation, working code, test examples, free support accounts, testing hardware, source repository access, Intel engineers payed to work on our favorite project, board of directors meeting memos and our own Santa but that is not going to happen. Documentation and some support is probably all the community would get, but that should be enough. The community usually had to work with a lot less and it was still capable of making useful code.
That was really explanatory, indeed. One idea that came to my mind: how about medical records? Medical records are used by doctors not by you*, they are kept at hospitals and they are still protected by 4th Amendment. Do you think that this brings sufficient analogy to telephone metadata? Or is it maybe that medical records are protected by some law and not by the constitution?
* In some cases they may be used by the patient, but that can be said for phone listings and related metadata as well.
And not only that, but since the map can't scroll, I'm assuming the map can't rotate either.
Very good point! During my military training, official instruction was to rotate the map as you were moving/rotating - i.e. to orientate map just as the terrain is oriented and not to keep the North on the top just because the map was drawn that way.
It is very confusing to have to rotate the map in your head even when you are walking, not to mention the effort for doing it real-time while you are driving a vehicle.
IIRC, Alan Cox explained how before starting his working day he would walk around the block, and after the work he would walk around the block in different direction.
...all roofs in New York should also be painted black in winter, because damnit, it gets cold in New York in winter.
During the winter, day is shorter than night, and your house is always heated to ~70F (both day and night). Hence, your roof will radiate energy for longer period (night) than it would absorb the energy (day). And black bodies radiate energy better than white ones. Conclusion is that it is better to have white roof during the winter.
But if we redefine radian, lim sin(x)/x = 2
As an option, yes, but not as the default X server. You can expect it to be really buggy right now, though.
My understanding is that main point of Wayland is not to be a X server.
Apart from necessary technical knowledge, there is one more reason: most radical social movements has often started on technical universities.
Reason for this is simple. Technically oriented people tend to underestimate how society works, and believe that it is possible to change it easily. This attitude was also seen in XIX century, when mathematicians tried to apply mathematics rules to social problems. It should mention that this never worked. Not because mathematics is wrong, but society is simply too complex to be modeled that way. (Or, it could be modeled mathematically, but results would not be spectacular.)
Or to say it in other words: you have an intelligent but socially incompetent person, who believes that everything is easy to fix (hey, there was no WinXP that he could not attach a SATAII disk to!). He is highly dedicated, he believes that his position in society won't be appreciated as it should, and he believes that one bomb could actually solve something. Doesn't this sound like a good candidate for a terrorist?
DAB is around 30% efficient in transmission, whereas FM is about 90%.
Please define "efficiency in transmission".
This is a term from telecommunication theory. For each type of modulation (AM, FM...) you have carrier and signal which is embedded into the carrier. IIRC (it was 1997 when I attended telecommunication course), efficiency is defined as a power of the signal compared to the power of the carrier. In AM it is like 0.5% (!) which is why they have so powerful transmitters (up to 1MW, IIRC). FM is much better in that regard.
There is no home grown Linux, Apache or Android equivalent to compete with Java or .NET.
I would dare to say that PHP competes just fine, just for example.
Scrum has one good point - show your code to your customer often and apply his comments. But that works only for GUI or web. I cannot imagine that in, say, medical software. For instance, one of my colleagues had to optimize crucial piece of code (some heavy math for CAT scanner). It took him several months. Only thing he could say to the customer was like "it is now two times faster" or "it is now 3.45 times faster". Not something you can really get some useful feedback on.
In another company, we were supposed to do a project for GE, and there was some serious GUI there, but their office was some several thousands miles from us and I really didn't know how we would make regular meetings with them as Scrum required. Also, they had some very elaborate specs and they did not see too much point of Scrum methodology. In some other situation, that project would be a perfect one for Scrum.
PS One thing I don't like with Agile evangelists is that Agile (Scrum in this case) is always right. It's either "what are you doing is not Scrum" or "you did not adapt Scrum to your needs", but its never the problem in Scrum.
In Korea, only old people use conventional weapons.
I have a cousin in USA, and last time we talked, she told me that she and her husband pay 120USD per month (total) and they get nice mobile phones and awesome Internet. She compared that to Serbia where she considered mobile rates to be extremely high, since we pay everything by usage. In the worst case, we pay about 0.05 per SMS (only sent one, receiving is free); we pay about 0.20USD per minute of call (receiving call is free); Internet can go up to 0.60USD per MB. But with some extra "packet add-ons" you can lower your SMS price to 0.01USD, calls to 0.01USD for certain numbers and you can get Internet for 0.02USD per MB. And everything is still without any contract, just via buying some coupons on the kiosk (or on ATM, or in bank, post office, via Intenet...).
In my point of view, this is actually a better deal than 60USDx24 months to get a telephone which I can buy for 300USD (and you can always buy it on credit card if you don't have enough cash). Even with worst case scenario here, it would take me quite a calls and SMSs to make bill worth of 24x60-300 = 1140 USD.
Is there a way to get pre-paid number in USA and how much they charge per minute and SMS? Can you buy decent DCMA telephone without contract?
"Tate" refers to George Tate, db-ii's designer; "Ashton", to nobody in particular. Later on, George Tate bought a parrot, and named it "Ashton".
Ashton refers to the other co-founder Lashlee, but marketing decided that Ashton sounds better. That's what I've read somewhere years ago, but Wikipedia does not confirm that Ashton is actually derived from Lashlee.
I've read TFA and I still don't get the point. Author says that Americans believe that technological advancement will solve problems instead of social advancement. I think that he does not understand that all major social movements were driven by technological progress, or at least they were made possible by it.
For instance, state as we know it is only possible in a society where high-speed communication is possible. It is not a coincidence that old feudal regimes where overthrown at the same time when technological revolution was in progress. And this is nothing new, and it was elaborated by Carl Marx in great details (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism) more than a century ago. (Yeah, Marx is considered to be wrong, but not in that part.)
In a part where author describes how we have traded one problem for another, only I could say is "rubbish". If he does not think that car is better than horse carriage, I would say that other 6bln ppl believe in the opposite.
If you can afford it, go for masters.
Let's compare yourself to someone of your age and education but without a masters degree.
In two years, he is in great advantage (you have 0 experience, he has 2yrs). Two years later, he is still in the advantage (masters + 2yrs against 4 years). At this moment he is, unlike you, a candidate for getting a promotion etc.
But in a moment when you get ~4 yrs of experience, i.e. where you have to compare his 6yrs against your 4yrs of experience, his advantage is not that big. Four years later, 8yrs vs. 10yrs of experience does not make any difference. But your degree will remain an advantage.
Assuming that you'll work in IT for more than 2 years, I would say that your master will be an advantage for longer period that his 2yrs of more experience will be the advantage for him.
And as something possible in CS/IT, you can get some real-life experience during your masters course, which means that in practice you will have 2yrs spent on masters with some experience, and he will get only the experience.
Also, on a plus side for you, the larger company becomes, it takes more into account formal training. So if one day you want to work in some large system, it's better to have higher qualifications. In this moment you may not want that, but do you know where would you like to work in, say, 15-20 years?
And it was never popular in Europe.
In Serbia, our fixed line monopolist Telekom does not offer voice mail. On the other side, all of our mobile providers do offer voice mail, and they offer it for 8 years, and still no one uses it.
Somewhat similar to this, mobile providers send you a SMS with a list of missed calls (time + number) so if you have turned your mobile off, you'll get the list as soon as you turn your phone on.
Also if you cannot get someone on his mobile, you can send him a SMS, and it will be delivered once he gets reachable again.
This won't do any help in fighting terrorism. Instead, it will allow an easy route to blackmail people. Like, we will present some evidence about your infidelity to your wife if you don't cooperate with us.
Yes, secret agencies were able to do that even before, but now, when such logging becomes mandatory, even telco technician will be able to get the history of your communications.
FSF, EFL and other organizations should do everything to develop and promote technical solutions that would render this logging useless. We should start using encryption even for most trivial tasks.
Start Google Earth, go to the ocean west of the Ireland, and you will see even larger "Atlantis".
Does anyone here really think you could run a large company without being able to monitor emails sent by company representatives, using company resources? Does this really seem right to you?
I still don't understand how this kind of monitoring does any help in running the company?
It's pretty ludicrous that in Finland you can just take confidential company information and use your work email to send it to a competitor.
If you want to sell confidential data to your company's competitor, it is very likely that you'll do it via your home internet account. Does it mean that Nokia should be able to read your private mail too?
It is some strange trend that companies become so paranoid. Treating employees like traitors will not help them in any way. Those who want to hurt the company will find the way to do it anyhow. For instance, good way to hurt your company is to ruin its public image by breaking laws and lobbying for ridiculous legislations.
Why don't they use the original specs the programmers used to implement the communication protocols on Microsofts' own server product?
Well, specs may have errors too. You cannot test the specs like you test the code. So if specs have some bug (like, it does not cover some not-so-obvious situation) and developer notices this, there we can ask is the spec was updated, or it was "silencely" changed by the developer (it should not happen, but such things happen).
Also, no matter that code is the only relevant source of information what was really implemented, it does not mean that every behavior is obvious from the code.
After all, it worked for [...] or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them
Serbia is not the best example. Serbia has organized the assassination of the Austrian throne heir. Assassin was an underage (!) and he killed the archduke, the Bosnian governor and archduke's pregnant wife!
And the worse thing is that assassin is celebrated in Serbia even today - there are streets and schools named after him. (Trust me, I live in Serbia.)
Ok, problems between Austro-Hungary and Serbia started long before, but during that period AH did not do anything even remotely savage to Serbian state, although there was a trade war.
I have worked for 4 companies so far, and I worked on some projects on my own.
So far, I was able to see that coding is the least problem. Major problem with software are related to poor management i.e. lack of planning.
It is generally accepted that you cannot collect good specs, that user will change his mind in the middle of the project, that some initial design decisions will prove to be bad ones etc. But that is not an excuse for good ol' planning.
As a first, you have to decide what features you want to implement. But I have heard zillion of excuses just to avoid to make a list to start with. Because, if you make a list, then you are responsible for the list, and then someone can ask you about the list. So the solution is not to make a list.
Without feature list, there could be no good and precise architecture. And good architecture is significantly more important than good code.
Finally, once you have to make changes, noone will let you to do refactoring. It is impossible to make any significant changes if you don't change architecture. But refactoring is never calculated and financed. So you get bad product even it had a decent architecture in version 1.0.
Testing is first thing that is reduced if deadlines is approaching. Testers are not paid enough. Often they don't even exist, and programmers are notoriously bad in testing it's own code.
Programming is like shooting a moving target. But it does not mean that you can shoot randomly. Moving target means that you have to shoot more cleverly.