That book is horrible. Unfortunately it was one of the first Heinlein I tried reading, and it turned me off from his other books. I tried "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers" but the scarring from "Number" was too severe;)
Number, from what I remember, was basically about a threesome that travel through time and had sex. It just sucked. I remember thinking, if this were some young author's first novel, they would be banished from writing again.
To play a devil's advocate, signoff can't occur without everything else in the "stack" signing off. You think your code works great, but did you write the compiler you used? Did you fab the processor it will run on? The OS that runs your code? Bugs in any of those components equals your buggy software.
I'm not sure certification will do anything for software, without tying certification to liability. The reason bridges don't collapse and cars don't explode is that the companies responsible are liable for big bucks if that stuff happens in everyday usage. While the software industry releases products with license agreements that basically say "this product isn't guarenteed to work; you have no recourse" it won't get better.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of attaching liability - just without that you can't fairly compare "real" engineering disciplines to software.
I have a Master's in Comp Sci, and contemplated going for a PhD. My undergrad is in Electrical Engineering and I also considered working for a PhD.
The thing is, the degree is either a) so you can get a job you like, or b) fulfill some personal desire. It's a long road for a PhD and I would only suggest getting one if at some point you would look back on your life with vast regret that you didn't do it.
If you already have a job you like, or can get jobs you like without the PhD, then you don't need another advanced degree. And our industry is filled with lots of jobs that are interesting/rewarding and don't require a doctorate.
But, maybe you have your eye on something special that requires a PhD to get. If so, go for it.
Fourier is no longer alive, but the guys behind the fast fourier transform (FFT) might be. They were James Cooley and John Tukey, and their paper on an algorithm for calculating the FFT came out in 1965. I remember reading it for a digital signal processing class I had. Of course, I no longer remember all the details of the paper;)
Their algorithm is recognizable as a "divide and conquer" by successive halving, ala quicksort.
I love it - have a project that routes spam through an "autochecker", and one of the check steps involves pinging a site or bringing up a URL. Since the economies of spam involve something like a 0.01% response rate, having even 1% to 10% of people respond will crush the merchant's computers. Spam sent out, servers somewhere roasted.
They are running VMWare as part of a migration strategy. This is exactly what MS itself is going to do in the future - why do you think MS bought Connectix Virtual PC? Because they need a way to migrate people off NT 4.0, and it provides a path.
Munich needs this interim step since they probably have a bunch of Windows apps that doesn't exist under Linux yet. Heck, they'd probably have the same problem if they went with Windows anyway (trying to get their legacy apps running on a modern version of Windows).
It's not that bad. At work, I had occasion to do some development with Visual Studio 6.0. The problem was, I already had Visual Studio.NET on my notebook. And we all know how well 2 generations of MS apps play with each other... NOT;) So, I just set up a virtual machine and ran Visual Studio 6.0 inside that. This worked fine on my system, ~750 MHz pentium 3 with 512 MB memory.
I'm a huge Terminator fan and I've thought the best possible Terminator 3 movie would have been set in the future, covering the story of how John led the humans to victory. The last 10 mins of the movie would have shows skynet and the humans sending back the T101 and Reese to set up the first movie, and then sending back the T1000 and T101 to set up the second. That would have been fantastic.
Well, they could possibly do this in T4, the sequel they obviously set up.
P.S. When Connors is riding his motorcycle at the beginning, the license plate ends in T4. I think that is a subliminal hint;)
I think EE could use more hands on stuff. I was an undergrad EE and later a grad student. Geez we had to beat/threaten the undergrads to do the electromagnetics labs.
The whole discipline is fairly virtual compared to mechanical or chemical engineering. Students there build real stuff. We just used SPICE to simulate circuits and logic, other software to try out controls/instruments. Nobody built transformers, we just studied the equations. EM? Well, that was my area and it was a mystery to most students. Our lab had them measure fields in a waveguide, but since you can't really "see" anything in EM (well, anything safe;), a rigged program that just cranked out the expected numbers would have been fine for most who just wanted the get the hell out of the lab anyway.
Sure, we had a few digital logic labs. Check it out, after hours of finger numbering breadboard work I can light up an LED digit!
Meanwhile, the civil engineers were building cement canoes, the mechanical engineers were always having some robot/egg-drop/catapult contest of some-sort (for class credit no less!), and well I had no idea what the chem ee's were up to, that stuff was always a mystery to me.
Funny, I used to say that when I was a student. What the heck to you really use Laplace transforms for I asked? Later in digital signal processing class as I was designed filters I found out.
Surely nobody really uses complex analysis - I mean, what do trig functions of complex numbers mean? Later in grad school studying electromagnetics, I found that wave reflection/refraction with complex angles meant attenuation for the refracted wave, and it was a way to handle polarization of all waves involved.
Humph. No way would I use conformal mapping... until I found myself mapping the integers onto a circle in order to solve a potential distribution.
Aha, I know there isn't any real use of integration in the complex plane. I mean, tracing out paths and detouring around zeroes, slices and branches? One lecture started up with that exact chart, solving some antenna radiation pattern by integrating from negative infinity to infinity along the complex plane. I was lost... and I never again asked "what possible use is this mathematics that I am learning"?
Yes and no... it all depends on how much functionality is left if the service isn't there.
I own a TiVo and for me, the important features are time shifting and large recording space. Not having to juggle a bunch of tapes is great, being able to watch a show while it is being recorded is nice (e.g. you get home 10 minutes late, with TiVo you can start watching, with tapes you have to wait until recording is finished if you want to watch from the start).
So as long as you can program the thing like a VCR, it is still useful. Sure, service means programming guides and on screen info, but I don't really need that stuff.
As a side note, I mentioned before my TiVo 2 is defective and I've cancelled my service. As an experiment, I tried using it like a VCR and it was fine... until I hit the 30 day mark. TiVo 2 has stopped all functionality except playing back previously recorded shows. So, I need to send it in for repairs and pick up the service again or it is as useful as a doorstop. I missed this tidbit in the service agreement... Anyway, I think TiVo has stated if they go under they will release a software patch that allows TiVo's to function without the service.
Maybe he used to live near work, and got another job. Or, perhaps the zoning in the area is such that there aren't any residences for miles. And so forth.
Living close to work is great, but not always as easy as you make it sound, i.e. just a simple choice. What if he were a consultant and got a new assignment every year? Do you expect him to move every year? Maybe he has a family of 3 kids and a small row house with a tiny garden just doesn't cut it.
The article discusses a Christian rebirth scene: awakening from the pod, the symbolic birth/baptism.
I always thought the Christ symbolism was at the end when he is shot, dies, and comes back to life. At that point he becomes powerful enough to destroy the agents.
OK, probably nobody will ever see this as the thread is scrolled off the front page, but I looked all over the TiVo web site and can't find anything that say you must subscribe to the service.
The service agreement, which is available in the middle of this page allows you to cancel the service at any time for any reason. After which, you just lose the service (watchlist, season passes, etc.).
I don't have TiVo service now, in fact if you read the post I linked to above in this thread, TiVo themselves suggested I cancel! My series 2 works just fine, in timed recording mode.
I have a Series 2 that I'm not subscribing to, and it works just fine. Granted, every time I go to the TiVo menu I get a nag screen about calling in, but that is an extra button press to skip.
Re:Could someone please...
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 1
I forgot to describe what the above options get you.
The monthly subscription and/or lifetime fee gets you the guide data. This is what lets you pull up info on a show, set a wishlist (record shows that star a particular actor, or record a show if it happens to come on), set season passes (record first run episodes, or include repeats).
Home media option lets you play music, videos, transfer shows from one TiVo to another.
Re:A good idea
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There is no subscription requirement. You can program the TiVo like a VCR (i.e. you specify what channel, what time, what duration to record for). You don't need the guide data or any of that stuff for it to work.
I'm currently not subscribing to the TiVo service, as explained in a previous TiVo posting;)
I've owned one since fall 2001 and have seen TiVo ads since then, so that's within three years.
One was basically a family sitting down to eat dinner, all stuffing their mouths as fast as possible. They frantically call out how much time is left until their show starts. The adline is something about watching the show when you're ready.
Another was a woman glued to the set, when her boyfriend/husband comes in. He starts asking questions about the show, and she keeps waving at him to shut up - she doesn't want the interruption. The adline is something about being to watch the show while it is recording, so they can both see it.
Re:Could someone please...
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Basically, the TiVo service comes in two forms:
1) Monthly payment of $12.95, or 2) Lifetime fee of $249.00.
Note: the lifetime fee applies to the unit, not the owner.
Subscribing to TiVo service lets you get the guide data, which is programming info up to two weeks out. This is what lets you do wishlists, season passes, etc.
New with series 2 is the "home media option", which is a upgrade available for $99.00
Paraphrased (as near as I can remember) from Rob Short, at a meeting, when I worked at Microsoft:
Whistler is the codename for what became Win2003 (it was just Oddysey for a while), Blackcomb was chosen because "it is just a little bit farther", and Longhorn was picked to represent something in the interim. Longhorn is the name of a bar in between Whistler and Blackcomb in the ski village.
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That book is horrible. Unfortunately it was one of the first Heinlein I tried reading, and it turned me off from his other books. I tried "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers" but the scarring from "Number" was too severe ;)
Number, from what I remember, was basically about a threesome that travel through time and had sex. It just sucked. I remember thinking, if this were some young author's first novel, they would be banished from writing again.
Just kill off msmsgs.exe, that works for me :-)
To play a devil's advocate, signoff can't occur without everything else in the "stack" signing off. You think your code works great, but did you write the compiler you used? Did you fab the processor it will run on? The OS that runs your code? Bugs in any of those components equals your buggy software.
I'm not sure certification will do anything for software, without tying certification to liability. The reason bridges don't collapse and cars don't explode is that the companies responsible are liable for big bucks if that stuff happens in everyday usage. While the software industry releases products with license agreements that basically say "this product isn't guarenteed to work; you have no recourse" it won't get better.
I'm not saying I'm in favor of attaching liability - just without that you can't fairly compare "real" engineering disciplines to software.
Uh... let's see... Neo is the STAR of the Matrix movies. Did you SERIOUSLY think he wouldn't prevail in the Burly Brawl??????
I have a Master's in Comp Sci, and contemplated going for a PhD. My undergrad is in Electrical Engineering and I also considered working for a PhD.
The thing is, the degree is either a) so you can get a job you like, or b) fulfill some personal desire. It's a long road for a PhD and I would only suggest getting one if at some point you would look back on your life with vast regret that you didn't do it.
If you already have a job you like, or can get jobs you like without the PhD, then you don't need another advanced degree. And our industry is filled with lots of jobs that are interesting/rewarding and don't require a doctorate.
But, maybe you have your eye on something special that requires a PhD to get. If so, go for it.
Not to be a pessimist, but aren't most of the identity theft cases a result of a dishonest employee working for a credit agency?
Fourier is no longer alive, but the guys behind the fast fourier transform (FFT) might be. They were James Cooley and John Tukey, and their paper on an algorithm for calculating the FFT came out in 1965. I remember reading it for a digital signal processing class I had. Of course, I no longer remember all the details of the paper ;)
Their algorithm is recognizable as a "divide and conquer" by successive halving, ala quicksort.
I love it - have a project that routes spam through an "autochecker", and one of the check steps involves pinging a site or bringing up a URL. Since the economies of spam involve something like a 0.01% response rate, having even 1% to 10% of people respond will crush the merchant's computers. Spam sent out, servers somewhere roasted.
They are running VMWare as part of a migration strategy. This is exactly what MS itself is going to do in the future - why do you think MS bought Connectix Virtual PC? Because they need a way to migrate people off NT 4.0, and it provides a path.
Munich needs this interim step since they probably have a bunch of Windows apps that doesn't exist under Linux yet. Heck, they'd probably have the same problem if they went with Windows anyway (trying to get their legacy apps running on a modern version of Windows).
It's not that bad. At work, I had occasion to do some development with Visual Studio 6.0. The problem was, I already had Visual Studio .NET on my notebook. And we all know how well 2 generations of MS apps play with each other... NOT ;) So, I just set up a virtual machine and ran Visual Studio 6.0 inside that. This worked fine on my system, ~750 MHz pentium 3 with 512 MB memory.
I'm a huge Terminator fan and I've thought the best possible Terminator 3 movie would have been set in the future, covering the story of how John led the humans to victory. The last 10 mins of the movie would have shows skynet and the humans sending back the T101 and Reese to set up the first movie, and then sending back the T1000 and T101 to set up the second. That would have been fantastic.
;)
Well, they could possibly do this in T4, the sequel they obviously set up.
P.S. When Connors is riding his motorcycle at the beginning, the license plate ends in T4. I think that is a subliminal hint
I think EE could use more hands on stuff. I was an undergrad EE and later a grad student. Geez we had to beat/threaten the undergrads to do the electromagnetics labs.
;), a rigged program that just cranked out the expected numbers would have been fine for most who just wanted the get the hell out of the lab anyway.
The whole discipline is fairly virtual compared to mechanical or chemical engineering. Students there build real stuff. We just used SPICE to simulate circuits and logic, other software to try out controls/instruments. Nobody built transformers, we just studied the equations. EM? Well, that was my area and it was a mystery to most students. Our lab had them measure fields in a waveguide, but since you can't really "see" anything in EM (well, anything safe
Sure, we had a few digital logic labs. Check it out, after hours of finger numbering breadboard work I can light up an LED digit!
Meanwhile, the civil engineers were building cement canoes, the mechanical engineers were always having some robot/egg-drop/catapult contest of some-sort (for class credit no less!), and well I had no idea what the chem ee's were up to, that stuff was always a mystery to me.
Math you never use... hehe.
... and I never again asked "what possible use is this mathematics that I am learning"?
Funny, I used to say that when I was a student. What the heck to you really use Laplace transforms for I asked? Later in digital signal processing class as I was designed filters I found out.
Surely nobody really uses complex analysis - I mean, what do trig functions of complex numbers mean? Later in grad school studying electromagnetics, I found that wave reflection/refraction with complex angles meant attenuation for the refracted wave, and it was a way to handle polarization of all waves involved.
Humph. No way would I use conformal mapping... until I found myself mapping the integers onto a circle in order to solve a potential distribution.
Aha, I know there isn't any real use of integration in the complex plane. I mean, tracing out paths and detouring around zeroes, slices and branches? One lecture started up with that exact chart, solving some antenna radiation pattern by integrating from negative infinity to infinity along the complex plane. I was lost
Yes and no... it all depends on how much functionality is left if the service isn't there.
I own a TiVo and for me, the important features are time shifting and large recording space. Not having to juggle a bunch of tapes is great, being able to watch a show while it is being recorded is nice (e.g. you get home 10 minutes late, with TiVo you can start watching, with tapes you have to wait until recording is finished if you want to watch from the start).
So as long as you can program the thing like a VCR, it is still useful. Sure, service means programming guides and on screen info, but I don't really need that stuff.
As a side note, I mentioned before my TiVo 2 is defective and I've cancelled my service. As an experiment, I tried using it like a VCR and it was fine... until I hit the 30 day mark. TiVo 2 has stopped all functionality except playing back previously recorded shows. So, I need to send it in for repairs and pick up the service again or it is as useful as a doorstop. I missed this tidbit in the service agreement... Anyway, I think TiVo has stated if they go under they will release a software patch that allows TiVo's to function without the service.
Maybe he used to live near work, and got another job. Or, perhaps the zoning in the area is such that there aren't any residences for miles. And so forth.
Living close to work is great, but not always as easy as you make it sound, i.e. just a simple choice. What if he were a consultant and got a new assignment every year? Do you expect him to move every year? Maybe he has a family of 3 kids and a small row house with a tiny garden just doesn't cut it.
The article discusses a Christian rebirth scene: awakening from the pod, the symbolic birth/baptism.
I always thought the Christ symbolism was at the end when he is shot, dies, and comes back to life. At that point he becomes powerful enough to destroy the agents.
OK, probably nobody will ever see this as the thread is scrolled off the front page, but I looked all over the TiVo web site and can't find anything that say you must subscribe to the service.
The service agreement, which is available in the middle of this page allows you to cancel the service at any time for any reason. After which, you just lose the service (watchlist, season passes, etc.).
I don't have TiVo service now, in fact if you read the post I linked to above in this thread, TiVo themselves suggested I cancel! My series 2 works just fine, in timed recording mode.
I have a Series 2 that I'm not subscribing to, and it works just fine. Granted, every time I go to the TiVo menu I get a nag screen about calling in, but that is an extra button press to skip.
I forgot to describe what the above options get you.
The monthly subscription and/or lifetime fee gets you the guide data. This is what lets you pull up info on a show, set a wishlist (record shows that star a particular actor, or record a show if it happens to come on), set season passes (record first run episodes, or include repeats).
Home media option lets you play music, videos, transfer shows from one TiVo to another.
There is no subscription requirement. You can program the TiVo like a VCR (i.e. you specify what channel, what time, what duration to record for). You don't need the guide data or any of that stuff for it to work.
;)
I'm currently not subscribing to the TiVo service, as explained in a previous TiVo posting
I've owned one since fall 2001 and have seen TiVo ads since then, so that's within three years.
One was basically a family sitting down to eat dinner, all stuffing their mouths as fast as possible. They frantically call out how much time is left until their show starts. The adline is something about watching the show when you're ready.
Another was a woman glued to the set, when her boyfriend/husband comes in. He starts asking questions about the show, and she keeps waving at him to shut up - she doesn't want the interruption. The adline is something about being to watch the show while it is recording, so they can both see it.
Basically, the TiVo service comes in two forms:
1) Monthly payment of $12.95, or
2) Lifetime fee of $249.00.
Note: the lifetime fee applies to the unit, not the owner.
Subscribing to TiVo service lets you get the guide data, which is programming info up to two weeks out. This is what lets you do wishlists, season passes, etc.
New with series 2 is the "home media option", which is a upgrade available for $99.00
Paraphrased (as near as I can remember) from Rob Short, at a meeting, when I worked at Microsoft:
Whistler is the codename for what became Win2003 (it was just Oddysey for a while), Blackcomb was chosen because "it is just a little bit farther", and Longhorn was picked to represent something in the interim. Longhorn is the name of a bar in between Whistler and Blackcomb in the ski village.
Interesting question, especially since VMware will let you run all those virtual machines in NAT mode, sharing the physical pc's network adapter ;)
There's also bridged mode, which looks most like having extra physical machines running around.