Well, like horse shoers, techworkers will continue to exist in smaller numbers, but those who are good at what they do and who are willing to work hard will continue to be able to make a good living.
It's simply not necessary for people to know how everything they use works.
No, but people who care _nothing_ for how _everything_ around them works drive me crazy. I don't know how to series-wind an AC motor, but I have the curiosity and intelligence to wonder, "Hey, should I know how to do that? I wonder how long it would take me to learn that." People who never think at all about the world around them and how it works just seem to me to be missing something. Lately I've been reading lots of Richard Dawkins just because I'm curious about the details of evolution. I wonder what would happen to the world if a 'Hamner-Brown' type event happened. Would the remaining people be standing around wondering why their cell phones didn't work?
I've often wondered about copyright law and 'photographic memories'... Science will progress to the point where we can stick electrodes on someone's head and see what is in it. If we can prove that these people with 'photographic memories' really are violating copyright, what will become of the ability to _READ_ a book?
And be careful what you hook up to the UPS. You don't want high-current things like laser printers hooked up, and not just because it'll drain your battery faster. Also, motors are bad. Something about inductive loads. I've got two separate strips, well marked as to whether they are 'interruptable' or 'uninterruptable'.
Interesting, you use a 'blog' as a calendar to remind you of what you did when. I use 'iCal' for things like the furnace or even 'the last time I mowed the lawn' (I swear it grows 3 times as fast as the neighbors, or I'm missing weeks of time out of my life:-). The wine blog might be interesting to me if I were more into wine, but for just remembering which things I liked I'd probably use a text file in my 'Olio' directory. The Photo blog would be good, but I'm too lazy. I've just got some scripts that dump every picture from my digital camera into folders, 100 per, and put up pages of thumbnails. Actually putting some effort into it might be better:-) I'll get to that RSN...
No, they still exist and make good money. My wife paid one shoer almost $200 for about an hour's work. But the work can be really hard on your body and dangerous.
I've got a shuffle, but Apple has some stupid limitations in iTunes that keep you from syncing PodCasts to the Shuffle. There are other annoyances, but I can't think of what they are right now. But I do love my shuffle for jogging and such. For the Car it's my 4th Gen 40GB.
It seems to me that the rule of rewriting only applies to the same author. As the original author, you thought you understood the problem, you designed a solution, you implemented it. Then you realized you didn't completely understand the problem, so you (sort of) redesigned the parts you had to, reimplemented, etc. Once that process is complete, your probably really understand the problem and can reimplement the solution from scratch with a clean design that fixes all the hacky bits. But as someone who is just maintaining the original solution, you probably don't really understand the problem. And when you rewrite the original author's solution(s) with hacks and all, you'll miss bits of the problem you didn't understand, and you'll also introduce your own errors implementing things. So, the solution for better code is to implement everything multiple times from scratch, and over a short enough time span so you can keep fresh in your mind the whole of the problem. Of course with complexities and costs as large as they are these days that's impossible. Which is why all software sucks:-(
They have a better scheme, they just don't take it as far. The Gang transactions together and charge your card once for multiple 'buys'. E-bay does that for merchant transactions as well, but they'll hold onto a transaction for much longer before sending it to the credit card company, so their per-transaction costs are lower, but their lost interest is higher.
A modular kernel is practical now. If you're willing to buy the top end hardware and have it perform like middle to bottom end hardware, depending on what you're running. My most recent hardware is at least a few years old at this point, so I could 'upgrade' without gaining anything but a modular kernel, but why? I guess it's a question of tradeoffs, just like anything. When the reduction in performance is made up for by the increase security or programmer productivity then it's worth it. One thing that could be helped is to rework the whole POSIX APIs. If Cocoa interacted more directly with the Mach kernel and cut out (one of) the middle layer of overhead, that would help. I had a chance to ask Avi (one of the creators of Mach) about what he liked least about NeXTStep back in 1990, and his answer was UNIX. My take is that he hated having created a new, clean, API for an operating system, all based on 'ports' and message passing, then having to layer the UNIX apis on top of it to have any software to run.
Hell, I've got something better than that. I was using the 'sum' program (yeah, I should have used md5, but it's slower) to check if pictures on the website I'd inherited were the same with different names or not. There were two wildly different pictures (an owl and a landscape) which were the same size with the same sum. I was totally surprised.
Walking thru a graveyard the other day, looking at the grave stones from less than 100 years ago rotting away I was thinking about what it would take to come up with something that really would last for thousands of years.
It wouldn't store tons of data, but I was thinking that plate titanium with holes drilled in it. Expensive as hell, but it might last quite awhile, especially if the plate was about an inch thick.
I think most people that use emacs also use vi (if they do any sysadmining at all), but not so the other way around. Also, I'd agree with Tim that it could be the free manual Emacs includes that keeps people from buying one. And on the flamebait note, just because people use something more doesn't make it better (Windows vs. just about anything?)
But as an _environment_ Emacs kicks ass. I've got a headless box I never bothered to get X running on. I just run emacs on it within 'screen'. That lets me connect and disconnect from different computer and pickup right where I left off. I've got 4 shells, and about 20 other buffers open, including a few which are effectively editing files on a remote FTP server.
But if I'm on another machine and I'm not already running emacs there, I'll use vi to just do a quick edit.
do a google search like 'ipod jogging site:apple.com' and you'll see that Apple specifically recommends the iPod for jogging and sells accessories to help you do just that.
Also, new laptop drives like the seagate Momentus can handle 250Gs _operating_ shock. The iPod drives are spec'd to handle you jogging. Really, not a problem.
I don't use it anymore (left it when i left my last job), but someone wrote a Java proxy app(let?) which runs on your local machine and gateways local POP3 to Yahoo. Ie, it lets you use a normal POP3 client to access Yahoo mail. I used it to get a bunch of email off Yahoo. It had trouble with my wacky password, so i had to reset it to only alpha-numeric, but other than that the messages came across fine.
I've got an idea for a device which would benefit from acting like an iPod with respect to iTunes. That is, it should be able to sync with a user's iTunes music library. I haven't gone anywhere with the idea or contacted Apple about it. But given the lack of compatible devices on the market (only the ROKR as far as I know) and from searching the apple website I have to believe that Apple is not licensing their code, nor documenting widely the interface. Why not? It certainly seems that they could 'grow their ecosystem' by licensing other devices. Certainly they wouldn't want to errode their iPod marketshare, but I believe they have the wide-spread iTunes installation because of the success of the iPod, not vice-versa. Also, like the ROKR, devices in other spaces than the hand-held portable market could certainly benefit from iTunes integration but not infringe on Apples market. Any ideas on why Apple hasn't made iTunes integration easy?
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x86 desktops maybe. For other platforms there's still other choices. I think ARMs sell more than x86, but in 'less interesting' platforms.
Well, like horse shoers, techworkers will continue to exist in smaller numbers, but those who are good at what they do and who are willing to work hard will continue to be able to make a good living.
It's simply not necessary for people to know how everything they use works.
No, but people who care _nothing_ for how _everything_ around them works drive me crazy. I don't know how to series-wind an AC motor, but I have the curiosity and intelligence to wonder, "Hey, should I know how to do that? I wonder how long it would take me to learn that." People who never think at all about the world around them and how it works just seem to me to be missing something.
Lately I've been reading lots of Richard Dawkins just because I'm curious about the details of evolution. I wonder what would happen to the world if a 'Hamner-Brown' type event happened. Would the remaining people be standing around wondering why their cell phones didn't work?
I've often wondered about copyright law and 'photographic memories'... Science will progress to the point where we can stick electrodes on someone's head and see what is in it. If we can prove that these people with 'photographic memories' really are violating copyright, what will become of the ability to _READ_ a book?
And be careful what you hook up to the UPS. You don't want high-current things like laser printers hooked up, and not just because it'll drain your battery faster. Also, motors are bad. Something about inductive loads. I've got two separate strips, well marked as to whether they are 'interruptable' or 'uninterruptable'.
Interesting, you use a 'blog' as a calendar to remind you of what you did when. I use 'iCal' for things like the furnace or even 'the last time I mowed the lawn' (I swear it grows 3 times as fast as the neighbors, or I'm missing weeks of time out of my life :-). The wine blog might be interesting to me if I were more into wine, but for just remembering which things I liked I'd probably use a text file in my 'Olio' directory. The Photo blog would be good, but I'm too lazy. I've just got some scripts that dump every picture from my digital camera into folders, 100 per, and put up pages of thumbnails. Actually putting some effort into it might be better :-) I'll get to that RSN...
small nit:
Horse-shoers disappeared, too.
No, they still exist and make good money. My wife paid one shoer almost $200 for about an hour's work. But the work can be really hard on your body and dangerous.
I've got a shuffle, but Apple has some stupid limitations in iTunes that keep you from syncing PodCasts to the Shuffle. There are other annoyances, but I can't think of what they are right now. But I do love my shuffle for jogging and such. For the Car it's my 4th Gen 40GB.
Besides, it makes sense if he realized he was more thirsty than _hungry_. :-)
It seems to me that the rule of rewriting only applies to the same author. As the original author, you thought you understood the problem, you designed a solution, you implemented it. Then you realized you didn't completely understand the problem, so you (sort of) redesigned the parts you had to, reimplemented, etc. Once that process is complete, your probably really understand the problem and can reimplement the solution from scratch with a clean design that fixes all the hacky bits. :-(
But as someone who is just maintaining the original solution, you probably don't really understand the problem. And when you rewrite the original author's solution(s) with hacks and all, you'll miss bits of the problem you didn't understand, and you'll also introduce your own errors implementing things.
So, the solution for better code is to implement everything multiple times from scratch, and over a short enough time span so you can keep fresh in your mind the whole of the problem. Of course with complexities and costs as large as they are these days that's impossible.
Which is why all software sucks
They have a better scheme, they just don't take it as far. The Gang transactions together and charge your card once for multiple 'buys'. E-bay does that for merchant transactions as well, but they'll hold onto a transaction for much longer before sending it to the credit card company, so their per-transaction costs are lower, but their lost interest is higher.
A modular kernel is practical now. If you're willing to buy the top end hardware and have it perform like middle to bottom end hardware, depending on what you're running. My most recent hardware is at least a few years old at this point, so I could 'upgrade' without gaining anything but a modular kernel, but why? I guess it's a question of tradeoffs, just like anything. When the reduction in performance is made up for by the increase security or programmer productivity then it's worth it.
One thing that could be helped is to rework the whole POSIX APIs. If Cocoa interacted more directly with the Mach kernel and cut out (one of) the middle layer of overhead, that would help.
I had a chance to ask Avi (one of the creators of Mach) about what he liked least about NeXTStep back in 1990, and his answer was UNIX. My take is that he hated having created a new, clean, API for an operating system, all based on 'ports' and message passing, then having to layer the UNIX apis on top of it to have any software to run.
Hell, I've got something better than that. I was using the 'sum' program (yeah, I should have used md5, but it's slower) to check if pictures on the website I'd inherited were the same with different names or not. There were two wildly different pictures (an owl and a landscape) which were the same size with the same sum. I was totally surprised.
Store your passwords on a Java based iButton. You still need to trust the computer you plug it into, but it should be relatively secure.
Walking thru a graveyard the other day, looking at the grave stones from less than 100 years ago rotting away I was thinking about what it would take to come up with something that really would last for thousands of years.
It wouldn't store tons of data, but I was thinking that plate titanium with holes drilled in it. Expensive as hell, but it might last quite awhile, especially if the plate was about an inch thick.
How do you know Stars aren't thinking feeling beings? Have you read Frank Herbert? He's got some stories where they are...
:-)
Wierder things have been true
I think most people that use emacs also use vi (if they do any sysadmining at all), but not so the other way around. Also, I'd agree with Tim that it could be the free manual Emacs includes that keeps people from buying one.
And on the flamebait note, just because people use something more doesn't make it better (Windows vs. just about anything?)
That's great and all, but I can't find the PDF viewer inside of Emacs. How am I supposed to use this card? :-)
But as an _environment_ Emacs kicks ass. I've got a headless box I never bothered to get X running on. I just run emacs on it within 'screen'. That lets me connect and disconnect from different computer and pickup right where I left off. I've got 4 shells, and about 20 other buffers open, including a few which are effectively editing files on a remote FTP server.
But if I'm on another machine and I'm not already running emacs there, I'll use vi to just do a quick edit.
do a google search like 'ipod jogging site:apple.com' and you'll see that Apple specifically recommends the iPod for jogging and sells accessories to help you do just that.
Also, new laptop drives like the seagate Momentus can handle 250Gs _operating_ shock. The iPod drives are spec'd to handle you jogging. Really, not a problem.
This made me wonder...
:-)
What happens when you coral-cache-ify a coral-cache-ified (already) link?
I don't use it anymore (left it when i left my last job), but someone wrote a Java proxy app(let?) which runs on your local machine and gateways local POP3 to Yahoo. Ie, it lets you use a normal POP3 client to access Yahoo mail. I used it to get a bunch of email off Yahoo. It had trouble with my wacky password, so i had to reset it to only alpha-numeric, but other than that the messages came across fine.
WHAT?
It's true. Scientists have proven that Apple will no longer exist after the heat-death of the universe.
I've got an idea for a device which would benefit from acting like an iPod with respect to iTunes. That is, it should be able to sync with a user's iTunes music library. I haven't gone anywhere with the idea or contacted Apple about it. But given the lack of compatible devices on the market (only the ROKR as far as I know) and from searching the apple website I have to believe that Apple is not licensing their code, nor documenting widely the interface.
Why not? It certainly seems that they could 'grow their ecosystem' by licensing other devices. Certainly they wouldn't want to errode their iPod marketshare, but I believe they have the wide-spread iTunes installation because of the success of the iPod, not vice-versa. Also, like the ROKR, devices in other spaces than the hand-held portable market could certainly benefit from iTunes integration but not infringe on Apples market.
Any ideas on why Apple hasn't made iTunes integration easy?