In theory there is no difference between theory and reality. In reality there is.
Scsi cabeling is much better than it used to be, and it should obey all the laws of physics (unfortunatly we do not know all the laws of physics, though we should know enough to solve this).
Where do you live? I have NEVER seen a gas station without diesel without compition within a mile that does. (I saw an exception, but that station went out of buisness before I saw it, so I can't count it) I live in Minnesota where cold winters make diesels more troublesome.
Sure I'll agree that not every station has diesel, but to say that not every area does? I find that hard to belive. Diesel fuel is everywhere.
Every nation in the world claims to be a net exporter of food, so appearently they won't mind too much if less US food went into that big storage dumpster in the ocean we must all have...
Seriously, Every country claims it grows plenty of food. I have no idea which do.
The rules for buisness are different from the rules for people. They pay taxes at different rates, with different deductions, and so on. When a buisness buys a computer they have to depreciate it over several years (3?), when they lease they somehow deduct that from taxes. (Which isn't to say they pay less taxes by buying a computer, this area of tax law is so complex and messed up that I just tell people to contact an accountant and let them figgure it out.
Leasing a car is not nessicarly a good idea for people, it is typically more expensive. For a buisness the rules are different.
You have to try it yourself. Scsi supports it, and technically nothing can be scsi compliant if it won't work this way, but in practice... That is something else. I won't be at all surprized if one device fails to work that way, but a different from the smae manufacture does. So test your setup before you go to production.
I've met people who claim to have done this, and even gone so far as half the disk used by one comptuer, half the other (seperate partitions), but those start to get into friend of a friend so I wouldn't put much faith in my claim that it has been done.
Scsi cabling is still some of a black magic, but use good cables, no pig tails, good termination, and you should be fine. There should be no need watch for same length cables, just get the termination right, and follow the rules. Note that I said should, SCSI cables are still mystical enough that I wouldn't call you a fool for following rules that appear technically bogus.
There is a problem with your assertion: lack of time. A bachelors degree is 4-5 years of school (depend on if you rush it or take things slow). To learn everything you think I should know I would have needed to cram 30 years of class into my 5 years. There isn't time for that.
People need a broad range fo exposure, and a specality. Thermodynamics is all well and good, but to understand it, as a side to their normal schooling, takes more time than anyone has to give. Sure you can quote the second law like a parrot, and might mention it once or twice, but to understand it enough to make it useful to know takes years of study.
I have a large range of skills that I can do, and every day I watch people (some not as smart as me) to things that I can't do. I can change a diaper (and I don't have kids), do CPR, weld steel, hang a picture, change a tire, balance my checkbook, and many more things. Most of those are simple basics that I'd put on the list of things to know. Most people do not know CPR, few can weld, some should not hang a picture, simple as it sounds. (and they are not idiots, just no mechanicly ability). Off the top of my head: I cannot spell, do that touch your toes thing from gym. There are many more things that I can't do, but the point is that I don't have ability or time to do everything.
You should have some exposure to basic things. Today tires are reliable enough that most people wouldn't have to know how to change one, just to replace it every few years. In the past tires blew much more often and so it was a required task.
While waiting for the ecconomy to improve I took a construction job, and we just discussed this tonight:
In the union you start at $22.50 an hour, but after all your required deductions it works out to about not much more than you make in a non-union job. (accounting for similear benifits) Union workers work 8 hours a day, and go home. I often work 12 hour days, plus saterdays for overtime which means I take home more pay because union rarely gets overtime due to their high wages. (With a house payment to make I couldn't survive on those wages even though they appear higher)
Dress code is important. Union workers have to wear jeans even on the hottest summer days, long sleeves, hard hats. All roof work need at least a safety line if not a railing. All this safety sounds good, but in reality it gets in your way, and is uncomfortable. In computers this translates into no working from home unless your home office is inspected and approved by OSHA.
Unions are much more specalized, they have a crew for just floor plywood. (in general) Most of us consider that level of specalization boring. I don't know if there is a computer equivelent.
Pay is not merit, it is time. The second man on the crew knows nearly as much as the foreman, and in some ares is better. He gets paid nearly as much as the foreman despite only about a years expirence. There is another guy at the same company with two years expirence who makes about half as much, but it turns out he knows how to do most things, but he is very slow Both turn out good quality work. Unions pay the slow guy more than the fast guy despite getting less work from him because he has been there longer. (There is absolutely no reason to fire the slow guy, he knows what he is doing, and works hard, he is just slow) This is one of the biggest drawbacks. In the end unions do not encourage hard work.
Unions do not allow you to moonlight in any way. Non-union carpenders will help you finish your basement, union carpenders can be fired if they touch a hammer when not at work. (I think they are allowed to work on a house they own and live in, but that is all, they will be fired for helping a relative) In other words unions will not allow you to go home and write open source software if that is what you want to do.
Finially, unions have had ties to organized crime in the past. They will claim it is gone today, but is it really?
My boss often gets calls from union reps, and he flat says "Go ahead, talk to my guys".
Taxes are often different by enough to make up the difference. There are some accounting scams that mix in here too, but often a buisness is better of leasing. Don't forget in this that the budget looks better when you pay a fixed amount every year, than the replacement fee every 3 years.
Computers are obsolete in 3 years, with a lease someone else gets to figgure out how to enviormentally get rid of them.
No, WestLaw does not do exatly that. You can legally copy all the legal transcripts out of Westlaw that you want to. However WestLaw pays lawyers to annotate (notes, suggested cross references, etc) all the transcripts, and those are copyright. Further, to a real lawyer those notes are often more important than the transcripts.
Windows rules in computers that people see. It does not rule the important systems that are needed to get things done. There companies like Sun (unix), IBM (mainframe, As/400, RS/6000, x86) rule. I've been in many big computer labs, and the only windows machines sit on the admin's desk where someone sits and makes sure the important machines are still running.
It is always a difficult battle convincing people that Windows has not won the battle. Windows won the desktop (but faces compititon from Macs, with KDE and Gnome starting to come on strong). In the backroom Unix is king with various other OSes there too (VMS, OS/390, AS/400 [whatever that is called], along with windows) In embedded systems vxWorks is king, but many have a custom designed OS that does as little as nessicary to get the job done and is not in the way the rest of the time.
There is more than the desktop to comtpuer programing. In fact you could argue that the future of programing is not on the desktop where most products are mature (few people need more than word97...), which isn't to say that there is no need for future development.
Lindsay books is a good place to look for books on this line. (Get the catalog, it has more than the website lists) Several books contain interesting science experiments that you can try. Along with many other fun projects that Geeks will love.
Technical solutions may be nice, but most of what you need is the low tech solutions that have been around for (hundreds?) years.
At least one kid has found her picture on the milk carton over her breakfast, and notified athorities. Wait until your kid can read, and then get her picture on a milk carton where she or her friends can find it. Except for very young kids, it is hard to convince a kid that a name change is needed.
The biggest problem with online voting is it allows the following fraud: On election day the bad guy sends someone to your house with a gun, and forces you to vote their way, answering yes to all forms where you say you are not influenced by others. At the polls there are independant observers watching to make sure that you are alone in the booth.
Granted we have absentiee (sp?) ballots, but the process of requesting one takes long enough that you have time to sneak away from the bad guy and get some help to take care fo the situation.
Did this a couple years ago, found out severl people were going as lions, so I became the lion's cage. Only took a few mintues with some cardboard to make and it looked cool
Unfortunatly I couldn't get any of the cute lions to enter it with me, but I tried.
20/20 means that you see at 20 feet what a normal person sees at 20 feet. How is your vision at 2 feet? 200? 2000? Just this week I have needed to see at all of the above distances. With glasses I have 20/20 vision, and also excellent vision at 2, 200, and 2000 feet. After lasik I would have (about) 20/20 vision, but some of the others would be worse than with glasses.
Note however that the loss is not nessicarly large, obviously it works for you, and you don't notice it. Indeed there are enough other variables that you can have one of the worst losses percentage wise and still see better at your worse distance than someone else.
Hint, they were not showing you around, they were trying to get something from you. What I don't know, but something.
I got the show around on my interview for one job, and it turned out that what they were looking for was someone to sit down and play with the system he would work with. (This was a QA job, so I got to use the product I was going to do QA on)
Remember, when they show you around the plant you need to keep your eyes open for opportunities to prove you will fit in.
I know ALL programing languges, including the ones that have not been invented yet. (Barring the silver bullet that Fred Brooks is still correct about being unlikely) Any good programer can learn a language in at most a few days. It can take months or years to years to learn all the little details of the various libraries, but you will quickly pick up the important ones, and over time learn the rest. A programer with one month of expirence has either passed the learning curve (doesn't know everyting, but knows most of the details) or never will pass the curve.
The bottom line is that they are removing part of the lens. You will see worse after you get correcction. However, the bad place is moved from when you need to see to where you don't normamly need to see, with a bigger bad area. Note that the loss is generally very small, but it is there.
Most people who have this surgery agree that the cost is worth it, they don't even notice the loss. I have decided that I won't take the risk, but that doesn't mean I've made the right decision. I hate glasses (I couldn't wear contacts, but that was 10 years ago, things have changed I'm sure), but loss of vision is not something I could stand.
Might be time to retire my 386
on
RC5-64 Success
·
· Score: 2
I just remembered I have a 386-25 sitting on a shelf, telnet in, and sure enough, it is still running the dnet client. (This before OGR clients) Linux 2.0.36. Looks like the power company decided to reboot it 20 days ago. Nice little headles machine running off a 80Mb harddrive. Did something like 2 blocks a day.
Here's to old machines, and an operatoring system that can keep them running for years! Thank you Linus, and all the other hackers that went into making linux stable.
Re:Engineering is more difficult now
on
Engineer in a Box?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes and know. What the professors are (or should be) getting at is that you should think before you compute. Sure you can punch a much on numbers into your calculator in the right order and get the right answer. However what if you press the wrong button? Suddenly you have the wrong answer and don't know it. You should always have an idea of what the right answer would be.
Also, if you don't reach for the calculator right away you can often see a way to simplify the problem, and then the rest works out quickly. In fact for most of my college tests the problems were choosen such that it if you caught the tricks you could do all the math in your head faster than someone who memorized the equations without knowing them can punch numbers on the calculator. (or look, these two variables cancel, and 2 to the second power is 4 and before I knew it I had the right answer)
Of course there always a few problems that cannot be done in your head, but most can be.
As an out of work programer, I can tell you first hand that this is not the enviorment to quit in if there is any other choice. Mind you his reasons for leaving are good, but it is aweful hard to get a job today. Maybe he has name recignition to get one, but there are a lot of good programers (and many bad ones too I suppose) who are looking for work.
Good luck is all I can say. If you find a job, please think of the rest of us without work, and see if you can do something for us. (hint, get me a job.:)
Where do you get the idea that there is only one linux kernel? Well, okay, there is one kernel called linux, but there are 5 free kernels out there: Hurd, linux, Aa href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD,
href="http://www.netbsd.org/">NetBSD, and
href="http://www.openbsd.org/">OpenBSD. All are differet, and all compete. In fact it has been discovered that sometimes the compititon cannot come togather. OpenBSD's secure mission means they have to sit behind the bleeding edge on some things because it isn't proven yet. (others they sit in front because what they have isn't good enough). NetBSD's mission ot be easially portable to everything means that they often make compromises in that hurt performance on other platforms. Most people run linux, but the others are out there, and there is good reason to choose them, and good reason not to intigrate everything into linux.
Notice that even though they are all different, XFree86 runs on each, as do both KDE and Gnome. We compete where there is a choice of ways, with no clear winner, while we work togather to ensure (as much as possible) that everything not realted runs on/with either enviorment.
I'd like to remind you too that most of the flame about incompatabilities is not from developers, but from bystanders who don't understand the underling technical issues. The developers are willing to work togather, and if they don't it is because there are either more pressing issues to solve first, or there is good technical reason not to. (There are notable exceptions of developers who are hard to get along with, but for the most part developers get along)
Today that is true, but not back then. Today if you create it you own a copyright on it. Back then if you didn't take steps (I'm not sure what, but registration most likely) you had no copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
In theory there is no difference between theory and reality. In reality there is.
Scsi cabeling is much better than it used to be, and it should obey all the laws of physics (unfortunatly we do not know all the laws of physics, though we should know enough to solve this).
Where do you live? I have NEVER seen a gas station without diesel without compition within a mile that does. (I saw an exception, but that station went out of buisness before I saw it, so I can't count it) I live in Minnesota where cold winters make diesels more troublesome.
Sure I'll agree that not every station has diesel, but to say that not every area does? I find that hard to belive. Diesel fuel is everywhere.
Every nation in the world claims to be a net exporter of food, so appearently they won't mind too much if less US food went into that big storage dumpster in the ocean we must all have...
Seriously, Every country claims it grows plenty of food. I have no idea which do.
The rules for buisness are different from the rules for people. They pay taxes at different rates, with different deductions, and so on. When a buisness buys a computer they have to depreciate it over several years (3?), when they lease they somehow deduct that from taxes. (Which isn't to say they pay less taxes by buying a computer, this area of tax law is so complex and messed up that I just tell people to contact an accountant and let them figgure it out.
Leasing a car is not nessicarly a good idea for people, it is typically more expensive. For a buisness the rules are different.
You have to try it yourself. Scsi supports it, and technically nothing can be scsi compliant if it won't work this way, but in practice... That is something else. I won't be at all surprized if one device fails to work that way, but a different from the smae manufacture does. So test your setup before you go to production.
I've met people who claim to have done this, and even gone so far as half the disk used by one comptuer, half the other (seperate partitions), but those start to get into friend of a friend so I wouldn't put much faith in my claim that it has been done.
Scsi cabling is still some of a black magic, but use good cables, no pig tails, good termination, and you should be fine. There should be no need watch for same length cables, just get the termination right, and follow the rules. Note that I said should, SCSI cables are still mystical enough that I wouldn't call you a fool for following rules that appear technically bogus.
There is a problem with your assertion: lack of time. A bachelors degree is 4-5 years of school (depend on if you rush it or take things slow). To learn everything you think I should know I would have needed to cram 30 years of class into my 5 years. There isn't time for that.
People need a broad range fo exposure, and a specality. Thermodynamics is all well and good, but to understand it, as a side to their normal schooling, takes more time than anyone has to give. Sure you can quote the second law like a parrot, and might mention it once or twice, but to understand it enough to make it useful to know takes years of study.
I have a large range of skills that I can do, and every day I watch people (some not as smart as me) to things that I can't do. I can change a diaper (and I don't have kids), do CPR, weld steel, hang a picture, change a tire, balance my checkbook, and many more things. Most of those are simple basics that I'd put on the list of things to know. Most people do not know CPR, few can weld, some should not hang a picture, simple as it sounds. (and they are not idiots, just no mechanicly ability). Off the top of my head: I cannot spell, do that touch your toes thing from gym. There are many more things that I can't do, but the point is that I don't have ability or time to do everything.
You should have some exposure to basic things. Today tires are reliable enough that most people wouldn't have to know how to change one, just to replace it every few years. In the past tires blew much more often and so it was a required task.
While waiting for the ecconomy to improve I took a construction job, and we just discussed this tonight:
In the union you start at $22.50 an hour, but after all your required deductions it works out to about not much more than you make in a non-union job. (accounting for similear benifits) Union workers work 8 hours a day, and go home. I often work 12 hour days, plus saterdays for overtime which means I take home more pay because union rarely gets overtime due to their high wages. (With a house payment to make I couldn't survive on those wages even though they appear higher)
Dress code is important. Union workers have to wear jeans even on the hottest summer days, long sleeves, hard hats. All roof work need at least a safety line if not a railing. All this safety sounds good, but in reality it gets in your way, and is uncomfortable. In computers this translates into no working from home unless your home office is inspected and approved by OSHA.
Unions are much more specalized, they have a crew for just floor plywood. (in general) Most of us consider that level of specalization boring. I don't know if there is a computer equivelent.
Pay is not merit, it is time. The second man on the crew knows nearly as much as the foreman, and in some ares is better. He gets paid nearly as much as the foreman despite only about a years expirence. There is another guy at the same company with two years expirence who makes about half as much, but it turns out he knows how to do most things, but he is very slow Both turn out good quality work. Unions pay the slow guy more than the fast guy despite getting less work from him because he has been there longer. (There is absolutely no reason to fire the slow guy, he knows what he is doing, and works hard, he is just slow) This is one of the biggest drawbacks. In the end unions do not encourage hard work.
Unions do not allow you to moonlight in any way. Non-union carpenders will help you finish your basement, union carpenders can be fired if they touch a hammer when not at work. (I think they are allowed to work on a house they own and live in, but that is all, they will be fired for helping a relative) In other words unions will not allow you to go home and write open source software if that is what you want to do.
Finially, unions have had ties to organized crime in the past. They will claim it is gone today, but is it really?
My boss often gets calls from union reps, and he flat says "Go ahead, talk to my guys".
You misunderstand two big reasons to lease.
Taxes are often different by enough to make up the difference. There are some accounting scams that mix in here too, but often a buisness is better of leasing. Don't forget in this that the budget looks better when you pay a fixed amount every year, than the replacement fee every 3 years.
Computers are obsolete in 3 years, with a lease someone else gets to figgure out how to enviormentally get rid of them.
I've mentioned them before (several times), but it bears repeating: has several offerings that you need to check out. Get the paper catalog (it has more than the online version), and order some books. They have a CD-ROM of the good articals from Scientific American (back when it was worth reading), and several other books. Most of their books are long out of copyright, so they are old, but the science is still the same, even if the theorys have changed. (Watch out for that!)
No, WestLaw does not do exatly that. You can legally copy all the legal transcripts out of Westlaw that you want to. However WestLaw pays lawyers to annotate (notes, suggested cross references, etc) all the transcripts, and those are copyright. Further, to a real lawyer those notes are often more important than the transcripts.
Windows rules in computers that people see. It does not rule the important systems that are needed to get things done. There companies like Sun (unix), IBM (mainframe, As/400, RS/6000, x86) rule. I've been in many big computer labs, and the only windows machines sit on the admin's desk where someone sits and makes sure the important machines are still running.
It is always a difficult battle convincing people that Windows has not won the battle. Windows won the desktop (but faces compititon from Macs, with KDE and Gnome starting to come on strong). In the backroom Unix is king with various other OSes there too (VMS, OS/390, AS/400 [whatever that is called], along with windows) In embedded systems vxWorks is king, but many have a custom designed OS that does as little as nessicary to get the job done and is not in the way the rest of the time.
There is more than the desktop to comtpuer programing. In fact you could argue that the future of programing is not on the desktop where most products are mature (few people need more than word97...), which isn't to say that there is no need for future development.
Lindsay books is a good place to look for books on this line. (Get the catalog, it has more than the website lists) Several books contain interesting science experiments that you can try. Along with many other fun projects that Geeks will love.
Technical solutions may be nice, but most of what you need is the low tech solutions that have been around for (hundreds?) years.
At least one kid has found her picture on the milk carton over her breakfast, and notified athorities. Wait until your kid can read, and then get her picture on a milk carton where she or her friends can find it. Except for very young kids, it is hard to convince a kid that a name change is needed.
I can think of only one: Cuba. The US supported Castro's takeover of Cuba, and Castro backstabed the US immeadiatly afterwords.
The US made several (unsuccessful) attampts to get rid of Castro, but that was after Castro betrayed the US.
The biggest problem with online voting is it allows the following fraud: On election day the bad guy sends someone to your house with a gun, and forces you to vote their way, answering yes to all forms where you say you are not influenced by others. At the polls there are independant observers watching to make sure that you are alone in the booth.
Granted we have absentiee (sp?) ballots, but the process of requesting one takes long enough that you have time to sneak away from the bad guy and get some help to take care fo the situation.
Did this a couple years ago, found out severl people were going as lions, so I became the lion's cage. Only took a few mintues with some cardboard to make and it looked cool
Unfortunatly I couldn't get any of the cute lions to enter it with me, but I tried.
20/20 means that you see at 20 feet what a normal person sees at 20 feet. How is your vision at 2 feet? 200? 2000? Just this week I have needed to see at all of the above distances. With glasses I have 20/20 vision, and also excellent vision at 2, 200, and 2000 feet. After lasik I would have (about) 20/20 vision, but some of the others would be worse than with glasses.
Note however that the loss is not nessicarly large, obviously it works for you, and you don't notice it. Indeed there are enough other variables that you can have one of the worst losses percentage wise and still see better at your worse distance than someone else.
Hint, they were not showing you around, they were trying to get something from you. What I don't know, but something.
I got the show around on my interview for one job, and it turned out that what they were looking for was someone to sit down and play with the system he would work with. (This was a QA job, so I got to use the product I was going to do QA on)
Remember, when they show you around the plant you need to keep your eyes open for opportunities to prove you will fit in.
I know ALL programing languges, including the ones that have not been invented yet. (Barring the silver bullet that Fred Brooks is still correct about being unlikely) Any good programer can learn a language in at most a few days. It can take months or years to years to learn all the little details of the various libraries, but you will quickly pick up the important ones, and over time learn the rest. A programer with one month of expirence has either passed the learning curve (doesn't know everyting, but knows most of the details) or never will pass the curve.
The bottom line is that they are removing part of the lens. You will see worse after you get correcction. However, the bad place is moved from when you need to see to where you don't normamly need to see, with a bigger bad area. Note that the loss is generally very small, but it is there.
Most people who have this surgery agree that the cost is worth it, they don't even notice the loss. I have decided that I won't take the risk, but that doesn't mean I've made the right decision. I hate glasses (I couldn't wear contacts, but that was 10 years ago, things have changed I'm sure), but loss of vision is not something I could stand.
I just remembered I have a 386-25 sitting on a shelf, telnet in, and sure enough, it is still running the dnet client. (This before OGR clients) Linux 2.0.36. Looks like the power company decided to reboot it 20 days ago. Nice little headles machine running off a 80Mb harddrive. Did something like 2 blocks a day.
Here's to old machines, and an operatoring system that can keep them running for years! Thank you Linus, and all the other hackers that went into making linux stable.
Yes and know. What the professors are (or should be) getting at is that you should think before you compute. Sure you can punch a much on numbers into your calculator in the right order and get the right answer. However what if you press the wrong button? Suddenly you have the wrong answer and don't know it. You should always have an idea of what the right answer would be.
Also, if you don't reach for the calculator right away you can often see a way to simplify the problem, and then the rest works out quickly. In fact for most of my college tests the problems were choosen such that it if you caught the tricks you could do all the math in your head faster than someone who memorized the equations without knowing them can punch numbers on the calculator. (or look, these two variables cancel, and 2 to the second power is 4 and before I knew it I had the right answer)
Of course there always a few problems that cannot be done in your head, but most can be.
As an out of work programer, I can tell you first hand that this is not the enviorment to quit in if there is any other choice. Mind you his reasons for leaving are good, but it is aweful hard to get a job today. Maybe he has name recignition to get one, but there are a lot of good programers (and many bad ones too I suppose) who are looking for work.
Good luck is all I can say. If you find a job, please think of the rest of us without work, and see if you can do something for us. (hint, get me a job. :)
Where do you get the idea that there is only one linux kernel? Well, okay, there is one kernel called linux, but there are 5 free kernels out there: Hurd, linux, Aa href="http://www.freebsd.org/">FreeBSD, href="http://www.netbsd.org/">NetBSD, and href="http://www.openbsd.org/">OpenBSD. All are differet, and all compete. In fact it has been discovered that sometimes the compititon cannot come togather. OpenBSD's secure mission means they have to sit behind the bleeding edge on some things because it isn't proven yet. (others they sit in front because what they have isn't good enough). NetBSD's mission ot be easially portable to everything means that they often make compromises in that hurt performance on other platforms. Most people run linux, but the others are out there, and there is good reason to choose them, and good reason not to intigrate everything into linux.
Notice that even though they are all different, XFree86 runs on each, as do both KDE and Gnome. We compete where there is a choice of ways, with no clear winner, while we work togather to ensure (as much as possible) that everything not realted runs on/with either enviorment.
I'd like to remind you too that most of the flame about incompatabilities is not from developers, but from bystanders who don't understand the underling technical issues. The developers are willing to work togather, and if they don't it is because there are either more pressing issues to solve first, or there is good technical reason not to. (There are notable exceptions of developers who are hard to get along with, but for the most part developers get along)
Today that is true, but not back then. Today if you create it you own a copyright on it. Back then if you didn't take steps (I'm not sure what, but registration most likely) you had no copyright.