The newer technologies are much harder to learn from than the older ones. The speeds are much higher, the protocols are more complicated, and the tools are more expensive. For a beginner learning this stuff, you never want to work with the latest technologies.
If you really want to learn about Firewire, do something with it for your Senior project.
Your supposed to bend over backwards to help and assist your clients, not make them do that for you.
Not necessarily. What if bending over backwards forces you to spend thousands of dollars more on software, just because one or two clients are unwilling to use the "Save As..." option in their word processor? Would you hire a consultant that charged an extra $10/hour because some of his other clients are too stupid/lazy/arrogant to cooperate with the consultant to get the job down at the lowest cost and least amount of time?
What idiot moderated the above as informative? The oil used in power plants is much, much cheaper than gasoline. Besides, there are plenty of power plants that don't run on oil.
IBM hires co-ops all the time, even now. There's one in my department now, and a co-op from last semester was hired at the beginning of this year. Another co-op was hired six months prior to that.
Drinking is more dangerous than smoking. A person who drinks can easily get drunk enough to kill. A person who smokes just kills himself (excluding second-hand smoke, which is nowhere near as dangerous as DUI anyway).
That, of course, got me thinking as to why a large number of tech geeks DO play RPG's. Based upon the stereotype, it would seem as if the social and storytelling aspects of RPG's wouldn't be as appealing to them as it would be to, say, somebody interesting in creative writing or drama.
That's easy. It's very easy for a geek to be social when he's socializing with people just like him. When you play D&D, you're guaranteed to have a number of things in common with the other players.
Geeks can't socialize when they can't find something in common to talk about. That's true for most people, but it's especially hard on geeks because most of them don't have anything to say about anything that's not tech related.
Imagine a art history major who knew nothing about history or literature or politics or science or technology or even current events. He would be just as useless at a party as the stereotypical geek.
Uh, sorry, but I only got a "C" in modern physics. Care to explain what Newton has to do with all this?
The BIOS is the device driver for the motherboard
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BIOS' Days Are Numbered
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The BIOS acts as the the device driver for the motherboard. There is no standard for several of the devices on the motherboard, so the BIOS needs to provide the interfaces. That's why we have stuff like APM and ACPI.
The reason why BIOS exists as it does today is because motherboard manufacturers wanted to add features that the major OS's were not supporting. For example, system sleep on laptops running Windows NT. NT doesn't support that, so the BIOS was updated to do the work "under the covers". Another example is USB keyboard support. In order to have your USB keyboard work in DOS or any other legacy OS, the BIOS has a USB driver built-in that translates USB keyboard events to PS/2 keyboard commands. The OS has no idea what's going on.
All of this could have been avoided if BIOS developers weren't so goddamn lazy. I used to be one, and my co-workers were experts at hacking up the BIOS code so that it would just barely work for whatever new feature they needed to add. The last thing they were going to do is redesign anything so that it made sense. Half of the code hadn't been touched in 10 years, and there was no one left who understand it anyway.
I hear Dell is planning on laying off all their BIOS developers and moving everything to China. I can't wait until some huge customer calls because they have some obscure hardware from the 90's that won't work in their Itanium box, and the problem won't get fixed because they don't have anyone left who knows what they're doing.
Obviously, you didn't read the manual that told you what hardware is being virtualized. Unless they changed it with VPC 6, it should still be an S3 Virge.
What if your CGI programs need to get data from libraries that only have C and C++ interfaces? On the embedded system I'm working on, everything that talks to hardware is written in C or C++, and in many cases the only way to get the data my CGI programs need to is to call a C++ class library. No one would take me seriously if I proposed writing this stuff in PHP or Perl.
What difference does it make if the communication between two points on the internet is voice data? How is that different from any other kind of data? What if I record my voice into an MP3, and email that file to my mom? Should that be regulated too? What if I write a program that emails MP3s between two people back-and-forth? It would be half-duplex voice communications, but I could hold a conversation with someone that way. Where do you draw the line?
You have fallen victim to what I call the Engineer's Curse. Being an engineer allows you to understand better than anyone else all the ways a particular mechanical device can fail.
It's different because it happens a lot more with Linux than it does with Windows or Mac. Mac users, for example, are generally keen on paying for shareware. I could not say the same thing about Linux users.
The problem with your argument is that buying something online without paying sales tax is illegal, if you live in a state that has sales tax. You're supposed to figure out how much sales tax you would have paid, and then send that money to your local government.
I'm neither a troll nor ignorant. Your points are valid, I just don't think they're as important as my points.
Obviously, some items should not be purchased online. Clothes and computer monitors come to mind. But that just underscores my point that people shouldn't be buying everything online. Because of the lack of tax and the free shipping deals, people buy even mundane items online, which is ridiculous.
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If you really want to learn about Firewire, do something with it for your Senior project.
Not necessarily. What if bending over backwards forces you to spend thousands of dollars more on software, just because one or two clients are unwilling to use the "Save As..." option in their word processor? Would you hire a consultant that charged an extra $10/hour because some of his other clients are too stupid/lazy/arrogant to cooperate with the consultant to get the job down at the lowest cost and least amount of time?
What idiot moderated the above as informative? The oil used in power plants is much, much cheaper than gasoline. Besides, there are plenty of power plants that don't run on oil.
IBM hires co-ops all the time, even now. There's one in my department now, and a co-op from last semester was hired at the beginning of this year. Another co-op was hired six months prior to that.
Drinking is more dangerous than smoking. A person who drinks can easily get drunk enough to kill. A person who smokes just kills himself (excluding second-hand smoke, which is nowhere near as dangerous as DUI anyway).
I grew up in New York, and ever milkshake I ordered had ice cream in it. I also never saw anything called a "frappe".
What does having a soul have to do with considering murder to be wrong?
No, of course not.
My balls could use some saving, too.
You mean like these people?
Your company was stupid to upgrade the software but not the hardware. They're not completely independent, you know.
That's easy. It's very easy for a geek to be social when he's socializing with people just like him. When you play D&D, you're guaranteed to have a number of things in common with the other players.
Geeks can't socialize when they can't find something in common to talk about. That's true for most people, but it's especially hard on geeks because most of them don't have anything to say about anything that's not tech related.
Imagine a art history major who knew nothing about history or literature or politics or science or technology or even current events. He would be just as useless at a party as the stereotypical geek.
Uh, sorry, but I only got a "C" in modern physics. Care to explain what Newton has to do with all this?
The reason why BIOS exists as it does today is because motherboard manufacturers wanted to add features that the major OS's were not supporting. For example, system sleep on laptops running Windows NT. NT doesn't support that, so the BIOS was updated to do the work "under the covers". Another example is USB keyboard support. In order to have your USB keyboard work in DOS or any other legacy OS, the BIOS has a USB driver built-in that translates USB keyboard events to PS/2 keyboard commands. The OS has no idea what's going on.
All of this could have been avoided if BIOS developers weren't so goddamn lazy. I used to be one, and my co-workers were experts at hacking up the BIOS code so that it would just barely work for whatever new feature they needed to add. The last thing they were going to do is redesign anything so that it made sense. Half of the code hadn't been touched in 10 years, and there was no one left who understand it anyway.
I hear Dell is planning on laying off all their BIOS developers and moving everything to China. I can't wait until some huge customer calls because they have some obscure hardware from the 90's that won't work in their Itanium box, and the problem won't get fixed because they don't have anyone left who knows what they're doing.
Obviously, you didn't read the manual that told you what hardware is being virtualized. Unless they changed it with VPC 6, it should still be an S3 Virge.
Wouldn't that require running Java on the server? And what about the C++ interfaces? Can I call those from Java?
What if your CGI programs need to get data from libraries that only have C and C++ interfaces? On the embedded system I'm working on, everything that talks to hardware is written in C or C++, and in many cases the only way to get the data my CGI programs need to is to call a C++ class library. No one would take me seriously if I proposed writing this stuff in PHP or Perl.
Just hold down the ctrl key twice.
What difference does it make if the communication between two points on the internet is voice data? How is that different from any other kind of data? What if I record my voice into an MP3, and email that file to my mom? Should that be regulated too? What if I write a program that emails MP3s between two people back-and-forth? It would be half-duplex voice communications, but I could hold a conversation with someone that way. Where do you draw the line?
You have fallen victim to what I call the Engineer's Curse. Being an engineer allows you to understand better than anyone else all the ways a particular mechanical device can fail.
Did you read the article? It doesn't need to pass the Senate.
It's different because it happens a lot more with Linux than it does with Windows or Mac. Mac users, for example, are generally keen on paying for shareware. I could not say the same thing about Linux users.
The problem with your argument is that buying something online without paying sales tax is illegal, if you live in a state that has sales tax. You're supposed to figure out how much sales tax you would have paid, and then send that money to your local government.
Obviously, some items should not be purchased online. Clothes and computer monitors come to mind. But that just underscores my point that people shouldn't be buying everything online. Because of the lack of tax and the free shipping deals, people buy even mundane items online, which is ridiculous.
That's what the government wants you to do.