I think it is a culture thing. For a long time, Unix thread code didn't port. Some flavors didn't even have threads. So if you wanted to write a product that worked on multiple Unix variants, you used forking and IPC instead of threading. It took a long time for pthreads to catch on.
Windows programmers generally don't worry about porting so they took to threads more quickly.
I haven't been asked about Unix programming at all in quite a long time. A lot of that work has gone over to Windows and/or Java. Similarly, I don't see a lot of X Windows programming jobs either.
I learned Unix IPC with M. Rochkind, "Advanced Unix Programming." But I haven't done it for about 10 years.
I've used threads in Windows and Java since then but not a lot of IPC. IPC is fun stuff, but just try and get some one to pay you to do it.
One place I worked had mandatory code reviews. It accomplished a couple of things:
1) Enforced variable naming conventions including informal exceptions to the convention. "You get i, j, and k for free."
2) In an environment where there were both employees and contractors, it made sure that there was no code that only contractors understood. It also makes sure that there is no code that only one person understands.
3) It kept gratuitously clever code (usually mine) out of the production system. An example of this, in C++, was using constructor syntax in integer variable declarations, e.g. int i(5); instead of int i = 5;
4) Other programmers would make suggestions as to where they would like to see comments added. As a result, comments were put where the code was hard to understand, not where it was obvious.
5) Oftentimes somebody would catch where the code didn't match the comments.
It mostly worked because there was a strong manager that knew the personalities, chose who reviewed whom, and kept pointless arguments to a minimum.
Any given software development practice will not solve all the problems by itself. Code reviews won't catch all the bugs. Unit tests won't catch all the bugs. Design diagrams won't prevent all the design flaws. But applying pressure on all these fronts, combined with talented team members, will improve the quality of the software.
I read Dan Heller's site, which was linked in another post to this article.
http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html
There, it is stated that the amount of damages, in the case where YOU took the photograph, is comparable to the amount you sold the photo for. That could be $200 or so. The person who sues you may pay $800 or so in legal fees. The amount of damages is comparable to the commercial value of the photo.
That is hardly big trouble. By the time you are getting published in Time magazine, you know what you are doing and hardly need to go to/. for legal advice.
You may, however, want to get a release for ethical reasons.
There is no dispute that Kurdistan is not a country. It may or may not be some day, but right now it isn't.
In the 1970's, Taiwan was ousted from the UN and the PRC was admitted.
It is not that hard to keep up with these things, even for a programmer. Or, if you find yourself entering data for an off the shelf software product, look it up. Just don't use the Encarta encyclopedia.;)
What really suprises me was that they showed Kurdistan. Where did they get the information for the border? Where do you get detailed information about a border when it is not a country?
The thing I don't like any many suggested Internet reforms is that they run counter to the original peer-to-peer nature of the Internet. It used to be that anyone could run a server of any kind, or connect from anywhere to anywhere. Now with NAT and reforms like this, you have to pay a fortune to get this kind of network access (paying for IPs, paying even more for static IPs, paying for domain names, paying for DNS, etc).
In the old days, anyone could run a server of any kind. But it wasn't cheap. The organization that provided them the LAN which was routed onto the Internet was paying for a T1 similar access. They might be paying $1200/month for that and 24/7 internet access for $50/month did not exist back then.
In the United States, actively jamming a cell-phone signal is illegal. The FCC, which is the government agency in charge of regulating the airwaves, has established severe penalties for doing so. If you're caught at your local restaurant with the SH066PL2A/B, it's possible you could face an $11,000 fine and a one-year jail term. Possible, but apparently highly unlikely. It seems that the FCC has never charged anyone with this crime, even though the American market is one of the most important when it comes to selling cell-phone jamming equipment. One distributor (who wished to remain anonymous) told me they've exported approximately 300 jammers to the United States this year, more than to any other country. The exporter claims that buyers include restaurants, schools (including some universities, which have installed the technology to stop students from wirelessly diddling away on their phones during lectures), and personal users.
I used to go to neighborhood coffee shops. But I got tired of the wide variation in quality. I like strong brewed coffee. But so often, I would pay my US$ 1.50 or so and get something that tasted bad.
When I go to Starbucks, anywhere I happen to be, the brewed coffee is uniformly good. Now, if I find my self somewhere other than Starbucks, I order a double espresso, since it is harder for someone to do that badly.
So in my opinion, Starbucks is resorting to providing uniform quality. Sounds like unfair competition to me.:)
Disclaimer: After noticing that there was always a line at Starbucks, I decided to buy stock in them too.
Desipite this being moderated offtopic, I found this to be true myself.
I suspect there are more system administrators reading slashdot than programmers.
So if you are being paid to program and you want to work with PostgreSQL, your best bet is to talk your current employer to switch. That is because almost no one is hiring programmers for PostgreSQL or MySQL.
Or you can keep using Oracle or MSSQL and put marketable skills on your resume.
People often look at their vote as the only way to have their voices heard.
Do not overlook these other ways:
1) write/email/phone your representatives 2) donate money to candidates/PACS/NGOs 3) volunteer time for candidates/PACS/NGOs 4) get involved in discussions with regular people
If you have some money to spare, use 2. If you have time to spare, use 3. NGOs can take the government to court for not doing what they are supposed to. You can contribute time or money to that, if you feel strongly enough.
In the eighties and nineties, the Replicans/conservatives got really organized doing all of these things. Now, the presidency of George W. Bush has stirred the Democrats/Progressives or Liberals (you pick) to do the same.
If you really think that you can't make a difference, go ahead and sit on your ass and compain and you won't make a difference.
Moneyed interests have always had a lot of influence. But maybe the fincial contributions of 1 wealthy equals the influence of 1000 outraged average people. But right now it can't be that hard to find 1000 outraged average people.
One place I worked had a rule that no bar on the project plan Gannt chart could be more than two weeks long.
The lone programmer in a room working against a three month deadline is a disaster waiting to happen. That way, you don't know if you are behind schedule for three months. At that point, they could still have another three months of work left to do. If the programmer is left alone for a week, you can find out how far along she is a the end of the week. If she is not done, you can ask if there is anything you can do to help her finish the task. That might include having her check everything in to revision control and giving part of the task to someone else. So worst case, you slip a week.
Having a critical part of the software being built by a lone person with a long deadline is really bad news unless you get lucky.
Another way to think about it is that you get to find out if the project estimates are reasonable a lot sooner. If the first task took 50% longer than estimated, don't say "We'll make it up later on in the project." That is a sign that you need to increase estimates or remove features to meet the project deadline.
There would likely be no aviation industry without government subsidy. In the early days of aviation, mail delivery contracts kept the early aviation companies afloat until there were other paying customers. Where would Boeing and others be without military aircraft orders? How many commercial pilots have never flown military aircraft?
Similarly, there would be no nuclear power industry without the government picking up a large portion of the insurance tab. The Price-Anderson act was passed in the 50s to nurture the fledgling nuclear power industry. It has been renewed up through the current administration. Basically, the industry only has to insure the first 80 million or so per reactor. After that, the federal government picks up the tab. No private insurer would ever cover all the risk of nuclear power plants. Without this subsidy, there would never have been commercial nuclear power plants. And the subsidy continues after more than 40 years.
Maybe NASA would not bring space flight to within reach of the average person. But without the NASA space program having paved the way, there would be no private space program. So much of rocket and aviation research has been done by the government. Now there is a large pool of knowlege and talent for aerospace engineering and private companies can make use of that.
When the private space companies succeed, lets not pretend that they did not benefit from all the government aviation and space spending of the previous century.
A good deal of the cost of getting people and things into space comes from physics and not from government waste.
I don't understand. The one time I programmed on punched cards, I used comments. It was in FORTRAN.
The command cards in the deck would 1) cards for the source file, 2) cards with commands to compile and link the program, 3) a card with the command to print out the list file, 4) cards for input data, 5) the command to run the program, 6) a card with the command to print the output.
If you had a logic error, you had to figure it out by going through the printed list file and keeping track of what was in each variable at a given point to see where it went wrong. The comments in the printed list helped you keep your bearings.
There was a function on the keypunch machine that you could use to copy the card for a banner comment line to another card.
I have to describe the banner comments because of the lameness filter.
So a FORTRAN banner comment would start with a C and have a lot of asterisks on it.
Now that we are so advanced, we use a/, a lot of asterisks and end with a/.
I guess in summary, making comments on cards was easier than trying to execute in your head a printout of uncommented code to explain the output you got.
Since I made a lot of typos, I had to buy an extra box of blank cards for the course.
It describes how the partition table has geometry values for both LBA and C/H/S (cylinders, heads, and sectors, I presume). In the fedora bug, these values get inconsistent with heach other, with LBA being correct. The post describes how to re-create your partition table so that both sets of values are correct.
Use extreme caution with the procedure in the post. You could lose everything on the disk.
I only have one system at home and I can't afford to toast it. So I will wait until they figure out the cause of this bug.
When I talk to the Red Hat folks about a migration path for my RedHat 9 home system, they push Fedora. I have not gone to it becuase this system is my only computer at home and I use it every day.
It is dual boot with Windows XP. I need/want windows for Corel Painter and possibly later if I take a Photoshop class.
So as far as I am concerned, there is no RedHat migration path for me. If it takes long enough for them to get stable, I will try Debian instead.
Because of my dial-up access, I need a distribution that a friend can burn a CD for me or I can get one from Cheap Bytes.
Debian is the one distribution for which will never have to deal with a license policy change driven by revenue concerns.
Your simple solution works so long as you have a system administrator.
Where I work, there are five of us. We all know windows. When something comes up, we try to figure it out. I know Linux, but none of the other four do.
So setting up even a single Linux box here at work is not an option because the policy is to not have systems where only one employee knows how to maintain it.
So our switching cost is the training of at least one other employee to be able to maintain the first and subsequent Linux boxes or hiring a full time RHCE.
At many places of employment, familiarity with Windows is a requirement at hiring time. Familiarity with Linux is not, but at least they don't hold it against you.:)
For some reason, we have not had a problem with Outlook or IE viruses. I don't know if we are lucky or if it is because we all know enough not to open attachments. The firewall helps.
It is true that it is hard to compare government expenses and private expenses. The government doesn't pay:
1) property tax on buildings it owns, 2) multi-million dollar executive salaries, 3) congressional lobbying, and 4) "Harry and Louise" commercials when someone tries to reform health care.
As far as benefits, if it were up to the insurance companies, I wouldn't have health insurance. I have been turned down on my own and have had to rely on COBRA and HIPPA laws that require that they issue me a plan.
So why would they turn me down? I have asthma, allergies, and high cholesterol. Three on-going prescriptions and apparently that is too much for them. I am otherwise healthy but the insurance companies prefer people that pay premiums and don't use their insurance.
I have recently become employeed with a company that has a group plan, so I will be ok until the next lay off.
Actually, no private insurance has overhead as low as Medicare.
HMOs, in particular, have about 20% of their revenue going to non-medical expenses. A lot of that money goes to pay people to hassle you or your doctor everytime you want a prescription filled or to go see a specialist.
Medicare has 2 to 3% of costs going to non-medical expenses.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is a culture thing. For a long time, Unix thread code didn't port.
Some flavors didn't even have threads.
So if you wanted to write a product that worked on multiple Unix variants, you used forking and IPC instead of threading.
It took a long time for pthreads to catch on.
Windows programmers generally don't worry about porting so they took to threads more quickly.
I haven't been asked about Unix programming at all in quite a long time.
A lot of that work has gone over to Windows and/or Java.
Similarly, I don't see a lot of X Windows programming jobs either.
I learned Unix IPC with M. Rochkind, "Advanced Unix Programming."
But I haven't done it for about 10 years.
I've used threads in Windows and Java since then but not a lot of IPC.
IPC is fun stuff, but just try and get some one to pay you to do it.
One place I worked had mandatory code reviews. It accomplished a couple of things:
1) Enforced variable naming conventions including informal exceptions to the convention. "You get i, j, and k for free."
2) In an environment where there were both employees and contractors, it made sure that there was no code that only contractors understood.
It also makes sure that there is no code that only one person understands.
3) It kept gratuitously clever code (usually mine) out of the production system. An example of this, in C++, was using constructor syntax in integer variable declarations, e.g. int i(5); instead of int i = 5;
4) Other programmers would make suggestions as to where they would like to see comments added.
As a result, comments were put where the code was hard to understand, not where it was obvious.
5) Oftentimes somebody would catch where the code didn't match the comments.
It mostly worked because there was a strong manager that knew the personalities, chose who reviewed whom, and kept pointless arguments to a minimum.
Any given software development practice will not solve all the problems by itself.
Code reviews won't catch all the bugs. Unit tests won't catch all the bugs. Design diagrams won't prevent all the design flaws.
But applying pressure on all these fronts, combined with talented team members, will improve the quality of the software.
Here's the CERT entry. It is from a week ago:
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/847200
I read Dan Heller's site, which was linked in another post to this article.
/. for legal advice.
http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html
There, it is stated that the amount of damages, in the case where YOU took the photograph, is comparable to the amount you sold the photo for.
That could be $200 or so. The person who sues you may pay $800 or so in legal fees.
The amount of damages is comparable to the commercial value of the photo.
That is hardly big trouble. By the time you are getting published in Time magazine,
you know what you are doing and hardly need to go to
You may, however, want to get a release for ethical reasons.
My biggest complaint about Fedora is that they haven't fixed the dual boot with XP bug.
Some have described this as a feature, but for me it is a show stopper.
I now have XP, RedHat 9, and Debian 3.0 as my three OSes on my one computer.
I am liking the package management of Debian but there are too many quirks in my install to switch as of yet.
So maybe UserLinux would give me a phone number to call to fix these.
The quirks so far are:
1) No GUI program to start my dial up connection.
2) GDM kicks me out to the login screen during long downloads.
3) I can't burn a CD on my IDE cd burner. This is becuase the modules aren't loaded.
I had none of these problems on RH 9. I might eventually sort out these quirks but I won't switch permanently until I do.
I just couldn't resist.
There is no dispute that Kurdistan is not a country. It may or may not be some day, but right now it isn't.
;)
In the 1970's, Taiwan was ousted from the UN and the PRC was admitted.
It is not that hard to keep up with these things, even for a programmer.
Or, if you find yourself entering data for an off the shelf software product, look it up.
Just don't use the Encarta encyclopedia.
What really suprises me was that they showed Kurdistan. Where did they get the information for the border?
Where do you get detailed information about a border when it is not a country?
The thing I don't like any many suggested Internet reforms is that they run counter to the original peer-to-peer nature of the Internet. It used to be that anyone could run a server of any kind, or connect from anywhere to anywhere. Now with NAT and reforms like this, you have to pay a fortune to get this kind of network access (paying for IPs, paying even more for static IPs, paying for domain names, paying for DNS, etc).
In the old days, anyone could run a server of any kind. But it wasn't cheap.
The organization that provided them the LAN which was routed onto the Internet was paying for a T1 similar access.
They might be paying $1200/month for that and 24/7 internet access for $50/month did not exist back then.
I used to go to neighborhood coffee shops. But I got tired of the wide variation in quality.
:)
I like strong brewed coffee. But so often, I would pay my US$ 1.50 or so and get
something that tasted bad.
When I go to Starbucks, anywhere I happen to be, the brewed coffee is uniformly good.
Now, if I find my self somewhere other than Starbucks, I order a double espresso, since
it is harder for someone to do that badly.
So in my opinion, Starbucks is resorting to providing uniform quality.
Sounds like unfair competition to me.
Disclaimer: After noticing that there was always a line at Starbucks, I decided to buy stock in them too.
Desipite this being moderated offtopic, I found this to be true myself.
I suspect there are more system administrators reading slashdot than programmers.
So if you are being paid to program and you want to work with PostgreSQL, your best bet is to talk your current employer to switch.
That is because almost no one is hiring programmers for PostgreSQL or MySQL.
Or you can keep using Oracle or MSSQL and put marketable skills on your resume.
People often look at their vote as the only way to have their voices heard.
Do not overlook these other ways:
1) write/email/phone your representatives
2) donate money to candidates/PACS/NGOs
3) volunteer time for candidates/PACS/NGOs
4) get involved in discussions with regular people
If you have some money to spare, use 2. If you have time to spare, use 3.
NGOs can take the government to court for not doing what they are supposed to.
You can contribute time or money to that, if you feel strongly enough.
In the eighties and nineties, the Replicans/conservatives got really organized doing all of these things.
Now, the presidency of George W. Bush has stirred the Democrats/Progressives or Liberals (you pick) to do the same.
If you really think that you can't make a difference, go ahead and sit on your ass and compain and you won't make a difference.
Moneyed interests have always had a lot of influence. But maybe the fincial contributions of 1 wealthy equals the influence of 1000 outraged average people.
But right now it can't be that hard to find 1000 outraged average people.
One place I worked had a rule that no bar on the project plan Gannt chart could be more than two weeks long.
The lone programmer in a room working against a three month deadline is a disaster waiting to happen.
That way, you don't know if you are behind schedule for three months.
At that point, they could still have another three months of work left to do.
If the programmer is left alone for a week, you can find out how far along she is a the end of the week.
If she is not done, you can ask if there is anything you can do to help her finish the task.
That might include having her check everything in to revision control and giving part of the task to someone else.
So worst case, you slip a week.
Having a critical part of the software being built by a lone person with a long deadline is really bad news unless you get lucky.
Another way to think about it is that you get to find out if the project estimates are reasonable a lot sooner.
If the first task took 50% longer than estimated, don't say "We'll make it up later on in the project." That is a sign that you need to increase estimates or remove features to meet the project deadline.
There would likely be no aviation industry without government subsidy.
In the early days of aviation, mail delivery contracts kept the early aviation companies afloat until there were other paying customers.
Where would Boeing and others be without military aircraft orders?
How many commercial pilots have never flown military aircraft?
Similarly, there would be no nuclear power industry without the government picking up a large portion of the insurance tab.
The Price-Anderson act was passed in the 50s to nurture the fledgling nuclear power industry. It has been renewed up through the current administration.
Basically, the industry only has to insure the first 80 million or so per reactor. After that, the federal government picks up the tab.
No private insurer would ever cover all the risk of nuclear power plants.
Without this subsidy, there would never have been commercial nuclear power plants.
And the subsidy continues after more than 40 years.
Maybe NASA would not bring space flight to within reach of the average person.
But without the NASA space program having paved the way, there would be no private space program.
So much of rocket and aviation research has been done by the government.
Now there is a large pool of knowlege and talent for aerospace engineering and private companies can make use of that.
When the private space companies succeed, lets not pretend that they did not benefit from all the government aviation and space spending of the previous century.
A good deal of the cost of getting people and things into space comes from physics and not from government waste.
I don't understand. The one time I programmed on punched cards, I used comments.
/, a lot of asterisks and end with a /.
It was in FORTRAN.
The command cards in the deck would 1) cards for the source file, 2) cards with commands to compile and link the program, 3) a card with the command to print out the list file, 4) cards for input data, 5) the command to run the program, 6) a card with the command to print the output.
If you had a logic error, you had to figure it out by going through the printed list file and keeping track of what was in each variable at a given point
to see where it went wrong.
The comments in the printed list helped you keep your bearings.
There was a function on the keypunch machine that you could use to copy the card for a banner comment line to another card.
I have to describe the banner comments because of the lameness filter.
So a FORTRAN banner comment would start with a C and have a lot of asterisks on it.
Now that we are so advanced, we use a
I guess in summary, making comments on cards was easier than trying to execute in your head a printout of uncommented code to explain the output you got.
Since I made a lot of typos, I had to buy an extra box of blank cards for the course.
Maybe his jar file was written to a file called "a.out"
The second ammendment is the right to keep and bear arms.
/ am endment04/
/ am endment01/
Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure is in the 4th amendment.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution
Right of the people to freely assemble is in the 1st amendment.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution
After searching around, I found this post.
/ 20 04-May/msg02114.html
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list
It describes how the partition table has geometry values for both LBA and C/H/S (cylinders, heads, and sectors, I presume).
In the fedora bug, these values get inconsistent with heach other, with LBA being correct.
The post describes how to re-create your partition table so that both sets of values are correct.
Use extreme caution with the procedure in the post. You could lose everything on the disk.
I only have one system at home and I can't afford to toast it. So I will wait until they figure out the cause of this bug.
If you had bothered to click the bug link, you would see that there are reports it is still in test2 and test3.
It has not been closed yet.
When I talk to the Red Hat folks about a migration path for my RedHat 9 home system, they push Fedora.
I have not gone to it becuase this system is my only computer at home and I use it every day.
It is dual boot with Windows XP. I need/want windows for Corel Painter and possibly later if I take a Photoshop class.
So as far as I am concerned, there is no RedHat migration path for me.
If it takes long enough for them to get stable, I will try Debian instead.
Because of my dial-up access, I need a distribution that a friend can burn a CD for me or I can get one from Cheap Bytes.
Debian is the one distribution for which will never have to deal with a license policy change driven by revenue concerns.
Your simple solution works so long as you have a system administrator.
:)
Where I work, there are five of us. We all know windows. When something comes up, we try to figure it out.
I know Linux, but none of the other four do.
So setting up even a single Linux box here at work is not an option because the policy is to not have
systems where only one employee knows how to maintain it.
So our switching cost is the training of at least one other employee to be able to maintain the first and subsequent Linux boxes or hiring a full time RHCE.
At many places of employment, familiarity with Windows is a requirement at hiring time. Familiarity with Linux is not, but at least they don't hold it against you.
For some reason, we have not had a problem with Outlook or IE viruses. I don't know if we are lucky or if it is because we all know enough not to open attachments. The firewall helps.
Before job ads start asking for 5 years of D experience.
It is true that it is hard to compare government expenses and private expenses.
The government doesn't pay:
1) property tax on buildings it owns,
2) multi-million dollar executive salaries,
3) congressional lobbying, and
4) "Harry and Louise" commercials when someone tries to reform health care.
As far as benefits, if it were up to the insurance companies, I wouldn't have health insurance.
I have been turned down on my own and have had to rely on COBRA and HIPPA laws that require that they issue me a plan.
So why would they turn me down? I have asthma, allergies, and high cholesterol.
Three on-going prescriptions and apparently that is too much for them.
I am otherwise healthy but the insurance companies prefer people that pay premiums and don't use their insurance.
I have recently become employeed with a company that has a group plan, so I will be ok until the next lay off.
Actually, no private insurance has overhead as low as Medicare.
g ht -5.html
HMOs, in particular, have about 20% of their revenue going to non-medical expenses.
A lot of that money goes to pay people to hassle you or your doctor everytime you want a prescription filled or to go see a specialist.
Medicare has 2 to 3% of costs going to non-medical expenses.
http://www.medicarewatch.org/2001Basic/Whats_Ri
Privatizing Medicare will make it run out of money faster.