I think the discussion has been interesting. It's informative to see how the more important sites on the 'net were started. There's a common theme; geeks doing it for the love and fun of it.
I don't know where you get the $100k/yr number from. I don't make anywhere near that now and I've been in the field since 1988. I don't have benefits of any kind. And I don't have job security.
I was laid off from a permanent, full-time position in 2001 and I've been working as a perma-temp since 2002.
The consulting idea is BS, too. My brother, who as a PhD in statistics and over 20 years of industry experience, tried the consultant gig for a while. He got two contracts, but then things have dried up. Now he works for the local power company, thank God. He has medical benefits for the first time in 6 years.
IT/tech is crap; stressful, demanding, unrewarding. A bus driver goes home after his/her shift and enjoys life. Job security, benefits, and advancement opportunities if you want to work in management. You knock it because you have no experience with it.
Perhaps if you had actually driven a bus for a while, you might not say that. I worked my way through school as a bus drive in Seattle. I loved driving a bus. My quality of life was better driving a bus than working in IT/tech.
I am considering leaving the IT/tech field and moving back to Seattle and getting another bus driving job with Metro.
Again, quality of life.
FYI, the city of Seattle has the highest educated bus driving workforce in the country. Many students work their way through a degree at the UW by driving a bus. When they graduate they often realize that finding work in their field doesn't pay as much as driving a bus. Top scale is $25 or so, and overtime is paid time and a half. Next time you work a 60 hour week, think about the fact that bus drives are getting paid the same if they work that much. With a degree, bus drivers can move into management, which pays more.
And there's that quality of life thing again. If you don't want the overtime, if you want to do something with your free time, like flip houses, you have that choice. (I knew two bus drivers who owned apartment building together.) In IT/tech, you're forced to work 50-60 hour weeks.
I blame my generation (baby boomers) for the expectation of 50-60 hour weeks in IT. Screw that.
No, this will force IT management to be more efficient. Human resources are the most precious of resources. For too long, IT management has resorted to forcing workers to work longer to compensate for poor IT decisions. I'm reminded of why the Egyptians didn't use the steam engine when they invented it; slave labor was cheaper and more adaptable.
This sort of technique get used in agribusiness; a choice between investing in better productivity tools vs. hiring migrant farm workers. I recently was in Kauai where the Kauai coffee plantation invested in productivity methods to compensate for the rising cost of labor. Only when it's more painful not to adapt will IT management adapt.
Ok, what if Sony comes out with a cooler running unit with more processing power. At what point to you think that this is a worthwhile expenditure. Electricity here in Idaho is below 6 cents kwh. Alzheimer's runs in my wife's family. Do you even know how bad it's going to hurt if she comes down with Alzheimer's?
I leave my Desk AND my laptop running 24/7. The laptop's been at it for almost 3 years. The desktop longer. I've been eyeballing a new CPU/Mobo/Radeon GPU card combo just for its folding capabilities. They're doing stuff on our PC's that wouldn't get done otherwise.
But there's another reason to participate. By joining the effort, it creates a demand for better folding software. The first folding software was Windows only. Slashdot's participation helped get the Linux client done. So, there's a virtuous circle to joining; the more that join, the more that can join. Hopefully, someday soon, everybody's idle cycles will be 'recycled'.
Sony and FAH ported the folding software for use on the PS3. It's fast as hell. IIRC, it's 40x faster than the typical CPU. FAH comes installed on the PS3, you just need to enable it.
But why did he get it wrong. It's a symptom of a larger issue; Microsoft is corporate, Forbes is corporate, Gartner Group is corporate. They meet on the golf course, they meet at seminars, they sit on each other's boards. The problem is, these pundits are influential, at least in terms of public perception.
People should keep reminding him that he got it wrong. He needs to be taken down a notch, recalibrated. Only then, will the good-old-boy start getting it right. When the feel the taser, they'll squeal like a little girl, but maybe next time they'll think a little more before they speak and act.
Actually, I got interrupted when I posted the above post. My point was; are these three core processors just a 4 core with one bad processor; a way of using failed 4 core processors? I would think so.
This reminds me of the joke about the 3 dollar bill. Counterfeiters mistakenly make a 12 dollar bill, so they go to a rural state, like Idaho, to try to pass it off. Going into a store they ask for change. The clerk asks "would you like four three's, or two six's?"
So, What's to stop someone from buying a 750Gb HDD and replacing the 160Gb drive?
I'm a little amazed that this isn't more hackable; more DVD writers, more memory, more tuners. WTF?
After all this time, I expected much more. Maybe I should just try to build a PVR. God knows that with the low price of memory, the new multi-core processors, the low cost of disk storage and the new GPUs with vector processors, I should be able to get something worthwhile going. Too bad I don't watch more TV.
I remember when a local company, Boise Cascade, was blaming environmentalists for their inability to find wood to cut. This was announced on page one of the Idaho Statesman newspaper. On page 6 was an article about them selling sections of timberland to Georgia Pacific.
In short, it was politically motivated bullcrap. The corporate culture takes another swipe at the American working class, while they game the system.
This is a cure for death, unless I'm badly mistaken. This relates to ischemia and other avenues of organ failure. This will lead to some pretty interesting stuff in the future.
I assure you, all planes are fully loaded when they take off.. it's called the frieght industry.
Good catch, and I appreciate them doing this. In the long run, it makes the economy more efficient.
I would think that larger planes would also improve efficiency. That would be good news for passengers. I loath flying in the commuter planes; slow, noisy, cramped.
Places like LA will be the biggest winners with this effort by the FAA.
Years of the Bush administration have left me feeling so grateful when I seem a government agency doing something in the public interest.
What they're proposing makes a lot of sense and can save a lot of CO2. Unfortunately, if they're serious, it will mean that all planes will be fully loaded before they take off, no more half-empty planes. On the up-side, it will save the airlines lots of money, reduce noise, speed gate-to-gate times and make our air cleaner. Good news.
Re:Engineers doing it? Yeah, plenty of them.
on
Embedded Linux Primer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Dood, where I work they have been porting a *nix OS to printers for years, like 10 years. It's voodoo and the results are often spooky. It's actually pretty cool to be able to use typical Unix commands to work in the printer's OS. I work in the test department and we spend a lot of time logging in and working on the printer. I can compile new 'firmware' and load it when I need to, and I have sometimes looked at the source for failure analysis reasons.
I will probably buy a book like this one to help me understand the issues. I have a little familiarity with low-level Unix workings, and it would be instructive to get an overview of the subject.
Inferno and Plan9 are used in Lucent products. Plan9 with RT extensions is used in Lucent mobile phone masts to manage calls.
I just saw a bit on the cnn website that talked about Google, the electrical grid, and the transportation system. I wonder if Plan9, a distributed OS, is well suited to managing the electrical grid?
Boise, Idaho. (Actually Meridian, Idaho on the Boise town line.)
Living on an acre. Garden, apple trees. Wednesday a raccoon woke me up with his horsing around on the back porch, he gave me the stare-down when I spoke to him. We've been feeding Mallards for years and they nest in my yard. Today was irrigation day. I opened the gate on the ditch and flooded my yard.
It's just a coincidence, but all of our power in Idaho comes from renewable sources; hydro, wind, geothermal.
My car is 20 years old. I walk to work when I can. I drive less than 5000 miles a year.
I'm not perfect, but I try to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. But all this is beside the point. A tech worker in the city can be just as environmentally gentle with recycling, public transportation, choices in recreation. I moved here from Seattle and I was just as hard-core a recycler then as now.
Why don't you post from an account instead of posting as an AC?
I am aware that Inuit were doing the hunting. So what? Inuit have other choices. Fishing for salmon would be a good example.
I do value the Inuit culture, but at a certain point clinging to old ways becomes a Luddite reaction to change. They don't need to hunt whale, and their continuing hunts of whales endanger their future ability to hunt whales.
Mankind needs to move on. Lingering in old ways does not exalt the past, it mocks the past.
I am sympathetic to the plight of peoples whose culture have been so heavily influenced by outsiders, and their way of life being so changed. I do appreciate the cultures of indigenous peoples, especially peoples with lifestyles that are so closely tied to the environment. But I'm now wondering if we shouldn't be promoting the idea that they might want to catalog their cultural artifacts and rituals, but that they need to move on. The need to stop the whaling.
Go ahead, flame me, but I'm serious. We humans are having a profound effect on the planet and we need to change our behaviors. If you're wondering, yes, I have been modifying my behavior to lessen my impact for a long time; recycling, composting, reducing my energy usage. I'm near the practical limit of what I can do alone. Some new public policy to assist my efforts would help. Investment is solar cell technology, better and more public transportation, etc.
But back to the whales and the Inuit, the Norwegians (or whomever is hunting them), I'd like to see it stop.
My very first thought when I read the headline was, 'If whales live so long, we should not be hunting them. They probably have a very finite rate of reproduction, their numbers are low and getting lower, and we're even killing the old ones.' I wish we would stop killing whales.
Ships injure and kill whales, whalers kill whales, sonar from U.S. Navy submarines kill whales and ruin their hearing. What we're doing is unforgivable.
Is anybody else alarmed about the news that we just killed an old whale?
Yes, it is a surprise and a disappointment that we would end up so low. It has everything to do with the influence of business on government; broadband providers use their monopolies to keep prices high and reduce competition. Unless I'm mistaken, much of this technology was pioneered here in the US. We would have been the first to widely deploy the technology and then the technology would disperse to other markets. How could we have fallen from the first adopters to the ones with the least penetration?
Considering the significant competitive advantages to this type of technology, I am discouraged that this doesn't get more attention from our political 'leaders'.
I had the same thought (reading way too much into this). Perhaps roots of related plants are toxic to each other and that's why the roots don't spread. Roots of unrelated plants are not toxic to each other. This could be an evolutionary adaptation that encourages cross-breeding of unrelated plants.
Regardless, there are a number of possible reasons for the effect.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the discussion has been interesting. It's informative to see how the more important sites on the 'net were started. There's a common theme; geeks doing it for the love and fun of it.
I don't know where you get the $100k/yr number from. I don't make anywhere near that now and I've been in the field since 1988. I don't have benefits of any kind. And I don't have job security.
I was laid off from a permanent, full-time position in 2001 and I've been working as a perma-temp since 2002.
The consulting idea is BS, too. My brother, who as a PhD in statistics and over 20 years of industry experience, tried the consultant gig for a while. He got two contracts, but then things have dried up. Now he works for the local power company, thank God. He has medical benefits for the first time in 6 years.
IT/tech is crap; stressful, demanding, unrewarding. A bus driver goes home after his/her shift and enjoys life. Job security, benefits, and advancement opportunities if you want to work in management. You knock it because you have no experience with it.
Perhaps if you had actually driven a bus for a while, you might not say that. I worked my way through school as a bus drive in Seattle. I loved driving a bus. My quality of life was better driving a bus than working in IT/tech.
I am considering leaving the IT/tech field and moving back to Seattle and getting another bus driving job with Metro.
Again, quality of life.
FYI, the city of Seattle has the highest educated bus driving workforce in the country. Many students work their way through a degree at the UW by driving a bus. When they graduate they often realize that finding work in their field doesn't pay as much as driving a bus. Top scale is $25 or so, and overtime is paid time and a half. Next time you work a 60 hour week, think about the fact that bus drives are getting paid the same if they work that much. With a degree, bus drivers can move into management, which pays more.
And there's that quality of life thing again. If you don't want the overtime, if you want to do something with your free time, like flip houses, you have that choice. (I knew two bus drivers who owned apartment building together.) In IT/tech, you're forced to work 50-60 hour weeks.
I blame my generation (baby boomers) for the expectation of 50-60 hour weeks in IT. Screw that.
No, this will force IT management to be more efficient. Human resources are the most precious of resources. For too long, IT management has resorted to forcing workers to work longer to compensate for poor IT decisions. I'm reminded of why the Egyptians didn't use the steam engine when they invented it; slave labor was cheaper and more adaptable.
This sort of technique get used in agribusiness; a choice between investing in better productivity tools vs. hiring migrant farm workers. I recently was in Kauai where the Kauai coffee plantation invested in productivity methods to compensate for the rising cost of labor. Only when it's more painful not to adapt will IT management adapt.
Ok, what if Sony comes out with a cooler running unit with more processing power. At what point to you think that this is a worthwhile expenditure. Electricity here in Idaho is below 6 cents kwh. Alzheimer's runs in my wife's family. Do you even know how bad it's going to hurt if she comes down with Alzheimer's?
I leave my Desk AND my laptop running 24/7. The laptop's been at it for almost 3 years. The desktop longer. I've been eyeballing a new CPU/Mobo/Radeon GPU card combo just for its folding capabilities. They're doing stuff on our PC's that wouldn't get done otherwise.
But there's another reason to participate. By joining the effort, it creates a demand for better folding software. The first folding software was Windows only. Slashdot's participation helped get the Linux client done. So, there's a virtuous circle to joining; the more that join, the more that can join. Hopefully, someday soon, everybody's idle cycles will be 'recycled'.
I wonder why the parent got modded as flamebait.
Sony and FAH ported the folding software for use on the PS3. It's fast as hell. IIRC, it's 40x faster than the typical CPU. FAH comes installed on the PS3, you just need to enable it.
But why did he get it wrong. It's a symptom of a larger issue; Microsoft is corporate, Forbes is corporate, Gartner Group is corporate. They meet on the golf course, they meet at seminars, they sit on each other's boards. The problem is, these pundits are influential, at least in terms of public perception.
People should keep reminding him that he got it wrong. He needs to be taken down a notch, recalibrated. Only then, will the good-old-boy start getting it right. When the feel the taser, they'll squeal like a little girl, but maybe next time they'll think a little more before they speak and act.
Actually, I got interrupted when I posted the above post. My point was; are these three core processors just a 4 core with one bad processor; a way of using failed 4 core processors? I would think so.
This reminds me of the joke about the 3 dollar bill. Counterfeiters mistakenly make a 12 dollar bill, so they go to a rural state, like Idaho, to try to pass it off. Going into a store they ask for change. The clerk asks "would you like four three's, or two six's?"
I must have read a different article. All I saw was an article that describes scientific research that confirmed some theories.
And here's another question; before the continents drifted apart, what was the climate like? Volatile? Constant?
So much of what we think we know is wrong. It's amazing to see the new discoveries.
So, What's to stop someone from buying a 750Gb HDD and replacing the 160Gb drive?
I'm a little amazed that this isn't more hackable; more DVD writers, more memory, more tuners. WTF?
After all this time, I expected much more. Maybe I should just try to build a PVR. God knows that with the low price of memory, the new multi-core processors, the low cost of disk storage and the new GPUs with vector processors, I should be able to get something worthwhile going. Too bad I don't watch more TV.
Please, let's not feed the trolls. I don't believe that OP is truly serious. I think he's trying to start a flame war.
I remember when a local company, Boise Cascade, was blaming environmentalists for their inability to find wood to cut. This was announced on page one of the Idaho Statesman newspaper. On page 6 was an article about them selling sections of timberland to Georgia Pacific.
In short, it was politically motivated bullcrap. The corporate culture takes another swipe at the American working class, while they game the system.
This is a cure for death, unless I'm badly mistaken. This relates to ischemia and other avenues of organ failure. This will lead to some pretty interesting stuff in the future.
Good catch, and I appreciate them doing this. In the long run, it makes the economy more efficient.
I would think that larger planes would also improve efficiency. That would be good news for passengers. I loath flying in the commuter planes; slow, noisy, cramped.
Places like LA will be the biggest winners with this effort by the FAA.
Years of the Bush administration have left me feeling so grateful when I seem a government agency doing something in the public interest.
What they're proposing makes a lot of sense and can save a lot of CO2. Unfortunately, if they're serious, it will mean that all planes will be fully loaded before they take off, no more half-empty planes. On the up-side, it will save the airlines lots of money, reduce noise, speed gate-to-gate times and make our air cleaner. Good news.
Dood, where I work they have been porting a *nix OS to printers for years, like 10 years. It's voodoo and the results are often spooky. It's actually pretty cool to be able to use typical Unix commands to work in the printer's OS. I work in the test department and we spend a lot of time logging in and working on the printer. I can compile new 'firmware' and load it when I need to, and I have sometimes looked at the source for failure analysis reasons.
I will probably buy a book like this one to help me understand the issues. I have a little familiarity with low-level Unix workings, and it would be instructive to get an overview of the subject.
I just saw a bit on the cnn website that talked about Google, the electrical grid, and the transportation system. I wonder if Plan9, a distributed OS, is well suited to managing the electrical grid?
Boise, Idaho. (Actually Meridian, Idaho on the Boise town line.)
Living on an acre. Garden, apple trees. Wednesday a raccoon woke me up with his horsing around on the back porch, he gave me the stare-down when I spoke to him. We've been feeding Mallards for years and they nest in my yard. Today was irrigation day. I opened the gate on the ditch and flooded my yard.
It's just a coincidence, but all of our power in Idaho comes from renewable sources; hydro, wind, geothermal.
My car is 20 years old. I walk to work when I can. I drive less than 5000 miles a year.
I'm not perfect, but I try to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. But all this is beside the point. A tech worker in the city can be just as environmentally gentle with recycling, public transportation, choices in recreation. I moved here from Seattle and I was just as hard-core a recycler then as now.
Why don't you post from an account instead of posting as an AC?
I am aware that Inuit were doing the hunting. So what? Inuit have other choices. Fishing for salmon would be a good example.
I do value the Inuit culture, but at a certain point clinging to old ways becomes a Luddite reaction to change. They don't need to hunt whale, and their continuing hunts of whales endanger their future ability to hunt whales.
Mankind needs to move on. Lingering in old ways does not exalt the past, it mocks the past.
I am sympathetic to the plight of peoples whose culture have been so heavily influenced by outsiders, and their way of life being so changed. I do appreciate the cultures of indigenous peoples, especially peoples with lifestyles that are so closely tied to the environment. But I'm now wondering if we shouldn't be promoting the idea that they might want to catalog their cultural artifacts and rituals, but that they need to move on. The need to stop the whaling.
Go ahead, flame me, but I'm serious. We humans are having a profound effect on the planet and we need to change our behaviors. If you're wondering, yes, I have been modifying my behavior to lessen my impact for a long time; recycling, composting, reducing my energy usage. I'm near the practical limit of what I can do alone. Some new public policy to assist my efforts would help. Investment is solar cell technology, better and more public transportation, etc.
But back to the whales and the Inuit, the Norwegians (or whomever is hunting them), I'd like to see it stop.
My very first thought when I read the headline was, 'If whales live so long, we should not be hunting them. They probably have a very finite rate of reproduction, their numbers are low and getting lower, and we're even killing the old ones.' I wish we would stop killing whales.
Ships injure and kill whales, whalers kill whales, sonar from U.S. Navy submarines kill whales and ruin their hearing. What we're doing is unforgivable.
Is anybody else alarmed about the news that we just killed an old whale?
Yes, it is a surprise and a disappointment that we would end up so low. It has everything to do with the influence of business on government; broadband providers use their monopolies to keep prices high and reduce competition. Unless I'm mistaken, much of this technology was pioneered here in the US. We would have been the first to widely deploy the technology and then the technology would disperse to other markets. How could we have fallen from the first adopters to the ones with the least penetration?
Considering the significant competitive advantages to this type of technology, I am discouraged that this doesn't get more attention from our political 'leaders'.
I had the same thought (reading way too much into this). Perhaps roots of related plants are toxic to each other and that's why the roots don't spread. Roots of unrelated plants are not toxic to each other. This could be an evolutionary adaptation that encourages cross-breeding of unrelated plants.
Regardless, there are a number of possible reasons for the effect.