We need to create peace on Earth before we can ever hope to reach the stars
The principles we use for our current space travel, as used by the space rocket, were developed by the Nazis as weapons (V1 and V2). There are many spin-offs that travelled from the military to commercial. Competition is a key driving force in moving our civilisation forwards. Do you think the USA would have put a man on the moon in '69 if they weren't competing with the Russians? I agree peace on Earth is a goal to strive for but let's not dismiss some of the positive benefits our 'baser' human instincts provide us with. You may think it 'sad' but we are still only human. With a bit of luck nations will carry on playing one off against another to prevent one getting powerful enough to make it worth their while invading (or have I played too much Risk?)
And come on, we're not in the Cold War anymore. The commies arn't going to come and invade, and the Brits won't need any saving
Troll alert. When have the Brits ever needed saving? Is this the American habit of pretending they saved Europe in either of the World Wars when in reality they came with too little too late, well after the course of the war was decided?
Most security leaks are a direct consequence of using languages like C. People claim it is possible to program safely in C, however, incidents like this prove them wrong.
What a strange statement. It is perfectly safe to program in C as long as you are paying attention. In my experience, the security leaks occur by a) oversight of the programmer (probably about 3am) b) code contributed by an amateur who lack formal training thus wouldn't know the basics we do or c) rush jobs that were only meant for test purposes but then got incorporated into final code.
The first can be checked for by code review, which is where Open Source is supposed to excel. The second tends to occur where people have never studied CompSci, yet have dabbled in Javascript hence consider themselves a programmer (ok, slight exageration). The only solution to this is use software where the team has a good reputation. The last is poor software engineering. Harangue the author(s) to go back and do a proper job.
Personally I think C is an excellent language for writing core OS apps in. Fast, flexible and efficient. Java is a good server-side language for application server development but I wouldn't write my core server apps in it (not fast or lean enough). What alternative language would you suggest?
First of all, nuclear is not the only option. There are a myriad of options available including wind, solar, wave and biomass. There are many different fuel types including fuel-cell, compressed-air, MagneGas, biodiesel.
Global warming is happening, and the evidence points to man being a significan contributer. The USA is the major culprit producing 25% of CO2 emissions but, except for a few enlightened individuals, they do not care. This is unfortunate as it is a global problem that can only be tackled on a global scale.
There is an online magazine covering all the newest renewable and sustainable energy called Future Energies. They also have an item on the Greening Earth Society, mentioned elsewhere, who happen to be affiliated with the Western Fuels Association. They claim the Internet will be responsible for up to 50% of electricity consumed in the USA! Read more here.
I tried to use babel fish for a spanish project in my highschool. Big fucking mistake, it turned out to be pure gibberish and I got a big fat F.
The phrase "serves you right" springs to mind.
I can see people who are too lazy to learn another language getting into all kinds of sticky situations. CIA agent pulling a gun on a foreign criminal: FREEZE MOTHER FUCKER OR I'LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!!! What the foreigner hears: Would you like a new puppy?
So? If someone points a gun at you and starts screaming at you it doesn't matter what words come out, you get the idea. You can use the same non-verbal clues to help you in conjunction with the translator.
George Dubya talking with the president of france (he's to stupid to learn another language)
Sadly many English take an equally arogant and ignorant view
: I would like to build a STRONG relationship of compassion between our two natIONS. I want to help execute and build military ties with you.
In the language of diplomacy, even a 100% accurate translation would bear little resemblance to what the speaker actually means.
First and foremost: Elite! That spawned an entire genre itself. Then there is Revs (on the BBC) which founded the realistic F1 simulations rather than the arcade racers that abounded.
I also think Battle Chess deserves a mention for breathing new life into bringing board games to the PC, rather than the rather boring online translations that preceded it.
I agree with others that missing off C&C was a mistake. Nice to see my personal favourite Counterstrike (Half Life mod) was there. I don't think Wolf3D deserved to be in there though as it lacked the compulsive gameplay Doom and Quake had.
Lemmings is one that no-one seems to have mentioned.
They contribute to our knowledge when it suits them best. No disrespect to the announcement, which does them much credit, but the past has shown they intend to make everyone's systems so secure that no-one but themselves can crack it. I can do nothing but recommend The Code Book which gives the history of crypto from Ancient Egyptian times until today. The techology may change but the politics don't...
I've had cable modem for a few years. You can type in your postcode here to see if you can get NTL cable modem. I have to admit that NTL and Napster are my two favourite companies at the moment:-)
I used to have a few teething problems with cable modem when I was doing the NTL trial a long time ago. It's now been rock steady for me a long time, so persevere with Telewest for now.
I'm on NTL trial of ADSL and it's nice at 1Mbp/s. However, for a home user I can't see ADSL scoring over cable modem in any way. Apart from downloading ISO images of Linux distros, I never notice any difference between ADSL and cable modem when playing Counterstrike or streaming video.
NTL is *not* trialing cable modem. It rolled into service quite a while ago at £20 per month and the details are here. As NTL have over 8M homes (not people) as customers, with a franchaise of 12M, I wouldn't call them insignificant. Telewest reach "more than 1.6 million homes or approximately 4.0 million consumers".
Telewest 5.5M homes franchaise, NTL 12M homes franchaise, apply same 1.6/4 homes/consumers ratio, and you get a reach of 43.75M consumers. This is over 2/3 of the population of the UK, so I wouldn't underestimate the effect the cable companies are going to have.
As Fross says, BT kept stalling and stalling with trial after trial because it did not want to cannibalise its lucrative ISDN revenue. After all, why would business want to pay far less for 10x the speed. Even now they are capping ADSL to 256kb/s for home users and 512kb/s for business. I have cable modem at 512kb/s at home for £20 per month, half the price of ADSL home and 1/5 (I think) of the business price.
Just a quick correction. NTL owns Cable & Wireless. The other cable provider is Telewest, which also owns Cable London.
The most basic of tenets in physics is, "energy can be neither created nor destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another". The wave power effect of reducing the amplitude of waves is not odd. The amplitude of the wave is proportional to the potential energy it has. If you remove some of that potential energy by transforming it to electricity then you will reduce the amplitude of the wave. I wondered myself whether there would be any environmental impact but I haven't seen any evidence to date.
We think of solar as free energy, but if we covered the surface of the planet in solar panels, these would absorb the solar radiation and release very little. This will cool the planet and we'd have alarmists warning of another ice age:->
Solar can heat medium sized buildings, like this 4,600m three storey building here, but for high-rise buildings in close proximity you will need to feed the buildings from the grid where power can be taken from solar farms feeding in from more open areas.
There is no such thing as 'free' energy, and even the green alternatives will have an impact in some way on the checks and balances that make this world run. As a species that demands vast energy from an ecosystem not geared to provide it, we have to assess the risks and benefits of each source we decide to ramp up to the scale required to provide the energy we demand.
You say nuclear isn't done any more, but from what I remember (correct me if I'm wrong), over 90% of all power generated in France is nuclear. Tell people that using xxx power would make half the species of wildlife in the world extinct and people would shrug and carry on using it regardless. Suggest to people that through global warming subsequent natural disasters could lose them their homes, and they will suddently becomes "environmentally conscious". People have a perceived risk to themselves, fostered by the US media, hence nuclear does not happen for you.
Personally I'm in favour of localised power generation through appropriate green technologies (appropriate means balancing environmental impact with power levels required), coupled with reducing consumption.
We are all techies on here, and claim to be environmentally conscious, but then explain why a TV on stand-by takes randomly between 2W and 40W. Take it to your companies, make them think about working smarter to save power.
Sony seized the opportunity and the Lawrence Tube became the Trinitron in 1968
There may have been a delay between the patent being filed and being granted (so 68/69 could have been Patent Pending), hence it may have just run out?
I tried Opera, but I didn't like the way it opened new web pages as windows within one large window. I much prefer having each web page as a separate window on the desktop as I like to have multiple pages open at once mixed in with windows from other applications. Can Opera 5.0 do this?
So unfortunately I am stuck with IE or Netscape, both with their own problems. I have 4 PCs with IE of which only one copy works properly. On my main dev machine IE "View source" does nothing, which makes it useless for a server-side programmer:-( Updating IE has no effect. I am forced to use Netscape with its inferior UI.
And none of the browsers progressively renders tables any more! This means that if the whole page is one big table then you get a pregnant pause before the whole page is blapped to your screen at once. Damn I miss my Acorn.
"doing a linear search or a bubble sort is sometimes acceptable"
Doing a bubble sort is never acceptable. No matter what data set you have, there is always a better sort algorithm than bubble sort. Not only that but the algorithm is of O(n^2) so scales catastrophically. Knowing your basic algorithms is far more important than your ability to push Java or C++.
Worrying about performance later is not best practice. It is unprofessional. Performance is always part of the equation, along with maintainability amongst other things. There is no point wasting your time on a first pass on a product to get the functionality right if the software does not get the job done in the time available. If I write a search script that takes 30 seconds to return results I may as well not have written it in the first place.
Other factors may override performance but it will never stop being a contributing factor. Java is a popular server-side programming language because programmers are expensive and thin on the ground. Java is easier to maintain and less prone to bugs (the most common C/C++ one being memory leaks which Java almost eliminates). It may not perform as well as C/C++ but thrown enough hardware it performs well enough.
If I calculate the performance of a Java implementation and it fails on the performance needed by the spec given, then I will have to either implement in a higher performance language (and interface back to the Java backend if necessary) or report that the project is not possible under the conditions given.
Sorry, but relying on a second pass and profiling will lead you to doomed projects. If you stick to using the right algorithms then profiling will only allow you to shave off a limited amount of time. If this does not give you the necessary performance gain then you will need to totally re-architect your solution.
When I started to learn Pascal during my first year of Uni, we were made to use ex to teach us how to use a line editor and had points docked if we were caught using something like vi. Now maybe this is a bit extreme, but I think the reason the UK has more programming talent than any other country (currently) in Europe can be summed up in two words: Acorn Computers.
The standard computer in the UK used to be called the BBC Model B, and this was followed by the Acorn Archimedes. These computers differed from the standard PC in two major ways. First is that the OS was always in ROM and was indestructable. This allowed (nay encouraged) you to experiment on the computer without any fear. You knew no matter how far you pushed things, what dangerous things you tried, reset was only one button away.
The second thing is one keypress drops you into Basic, which is also built into ROM. This ran interpreted, so no compiling and you could debug as you go along. Simple and flexible, you could also write windows applications in it with easy (which ran like greased lightening despite being interpreted).
When you get to college, learning a more formal methodology and language may be appropriate. At least you go into it with an eager exploratory attitude. You know to learn things by trying rather than just copying out of books.
Unfortunately even in the UK we now use standard PCs. Instead of producing another generation of IT professionals we will have just a generation of secretaries, and we will quickly lose our place in Europe. All the less competition for me!
Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz
The old StrongARM processors (talking about 2-3yrs ago) ran easily overclocked at 280MHz, but you cannot compare the clock speed of a StrongARM with the clock speed of a x86 chip. My 8MHz ARM machine easily outstripped a 66MHz x86 all those years ago, and the intelligent elegant ARM architecture still retains that advantage today. The 200MHz RISC chip can easily play full screen video, what more do you need in terms of power from a laptop?
Phillip.
Videophone is not going to happen soon
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Sorry but there isn't enough bandwidth for video over your mobile. All these large companies in the UK have just forked out around 4 billion pounds sterling per UMTS license with all these grandiose schemes such as video phones and Vodaphone planning to download MP3s over your mobile. According to NTT who have rolled out UMTS in Japan it's, "uh uh guys, it just ain't happening". They now plan to offer short download video clips of only a few seconds as teasers and snippets of new singles as previews. There are more details in the FT (yesterday I think) but I can't find a link to the article on their site.
A few claims were made about UMTS, including the speed. Right next to the base station, in theory, you can get 2Mb/s to your handset, at a distance 64kb/s, and on average around 384kb/s. The problem is how this is achieved. Each license allocates a fixed band of spectrum. This is broken down into a number of channels and down each of these channels the data is multiplexed. With UMTS you have the ability for one user to boost capacity by borrowing bandwidth from the channel (ie grabbing more of those multiplexed slots). *BUT* there is still only a fixed about of bandwidth to go around.
A lot of telecoms theory is aimed at tailoring a system to allow for peak loads whilst minimising systems cost. Doesn't matter if it's a phone exchange or an ISP planning how many modems to put in the rack. A voice channel is 16kb/s. Let's put forwards the assumption that there is one mobile cell where they estimate a peak of 20 calls at any one time. Thus they put in one channel which at an average distance should provide enough capacity for 24 simultaneous calls (384kb/s divided by 16kb/s). Now let's imagine one person decides to video-conference over his mobile. "Medium Multimedia" is quoted at 384kb/s here . Hence one person making that call locks out all phone calls in the entire vinciny of that cell.
I'm sure you can all see the crunch coming. Nobody knows if videophones will take off and so the mobile companies aren't going to invest in billions of pounds just in case. You can't just throw in extra base stations, each new mast needs a back-feed to the land-line network. If people *do* start taking up video over mobile it will cripple the networks and there won't be any quality of service.
I hear it's a similar story for GPRS. You may say, "ah but there are protocols that allow video streaming as low as 9600bp/s". Unfortunately it's been designed as a packet system for short bursts and not for everyone to lock GPRS streams open permanently.
I don't mean to sound downbeat and I'm not saying GPRS and UMTS aren't the future. I *would* pay extra for the web pages on my laptop to download in a second or two instead of crawling at 9600. I'd prefer to pay a fixed subscription for mobile access instead of paying for time online using an analogue modem. However, in the foreseeable future if I need streamed video or HQ audio then I'll be looking to wireless modem (eg 802.11) or similar bandwidth-orientated technology.
Feel free to disagree or point out any factual errors I have made. I hope that this has provided both a little light and food for thought.
The entire world except for the USA uses GSM, whilst the USA thumbed its nose and opted for an inferior proprietary system (the excuse being that it needed the Clipper chip to eavesdrop on American citizens whereas GSM phones are secure).
Similarly USA has decided to go its own way with 3rd generation mobile, digital TV, etc. The independant nature a decade ago of USA telecoms and broadcasting compared to the over-regulated European regulations has done a full turn. Now the cohesive nature of EU regulations compared to the divisive in-fighting and lobbying of self-interested American parties has meant the Europeans shooting ahead of America in terms of technology. Unless the US can pull together as a team I can't see them catching up any time soon.
Phillip.
How to increase wave power percentage contribution
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People talk about increasing the power generated to cover the world's power consumption needs. Personally I think it should be a two-pronged approach. Firstly increasing renewable energy sources, and secondly reducing overall consumption so that the percentage of power that comes from renewable energy is again increased.
This is why I read Future Energies. It tries to cover both. For example a compressed-air powered car that can travel 60km/h for 120km on a 30cents charge. Solar-powered parking meters that don't need to be on the grid at all.
There is no point upgrading to state-of-the-art radiators if you are going to leave your windows open.
Obviously this friend hasn't heard of RogerWilco then. You can chat live with the rest of your team over the microphone whilst playing CS and it adds a whole new dimension. Trouble is that it's not integrated enough into CS so when you die you are still able to talk to the live players:-/
When I get labelled a cheat playing CS I get a nice warm feeling as it means I'm playing well:-) Though there are times when I'm sure an opponent is cheating (ie consistently shooting me through walls and boxes with awp). If I suspect someone is cheating, as soon as I die I cam-lock on them. If they appear to be irrationaly shooting and getting kills I can be fairly sure they are cheating.
In conclusion, then, I'd like to say that cheaters suck.
So if two allied forces (at the time of programming) turn on each other, what does the RFP do under these rules?
If one party fools the RFP into thinking it a friendly force, don't these rules prevent the error from being corrected by ground control (read terminated for corrected:-))?
The 'and its partners' in rule 3 is redundant as this is covered under rule 1?
I have a suspicion that these three broad rules would rather fall down when the actual details are thrashed out. Not living in Hollywood, you can't pick out a "bad guy" by the enemy pilot sporting a moustache and smoking a cigarette.
I worked on a commercial web browser, and users would tell us their favourite porn sites weren't working. So we would have to look at them (for scientific purposes, stop giggling down the back) and tweak the rendering code to be a bit more tolerant of their often sloppy HTML or whatever trick they were trying to pull. Porn sites have always been way ahead of the curve in terms of Internet technology so if a browser will cope with them it will cope with most sites. We did find it highly amusing to be handed very formal looking project management sheets, which were then splattered with references to sites like 'sex.com'.
Slashdot Mirror
We need to create peace on Earth before we can ever hope to reach the stars
The principles we use for our current space travel, as used by the space rocket, were developed by the Nazis as weapons (V1 and V2). There are many spin-offs that travelled from the military to commercial. Competition is a key driving force in moving our civilisation forwards. Do you think the USA would have put a man on the moon in '69 if they weren't competing with the Russians? I agree peace on Earth is a goal to strive for but let's not dismiss some of the positive benefits our 'baser' human instincts provide us with. You may think it 'sad' but we are still only human. With a bit of luck nations will carry on playing one off against another to prevent one getting powerful enough to make it worth their while invading (or have I played too much Risk?)
Phillip.
And come on, we're not in the Cold War anymore. The commies arn't going to come and invade, and the Brits won't need any saving
Troll alert. When have the Brits ever needed saving? Is this the American habit of pretending they saved Europe in either of the World Wars when in reality they came with too little too late, well after the course of the war was decided?
Phillip.
Most security leaks are a direct consequence of using languages like C. People claim it is possible to program safely in C, however, incidents like this prove them wrong.
What a strange statement. It is perfectly safe to program in C as long as you are paying attention. In my experience, the security leaks occur by a) oversight of the programmer (probably about 3am) b) code contributed by an amateur who lack formal training thus wouldn't know the basics we do or c) rush jobs that were only meant for test purposes but then got incorporated into final code.
The first can be checked for by code review, which is where Open Source is supposed to excel. The second tends to occur where people have never studied CompSci, yet have dabbled in Javascript hence consider themselves a programmer (ok, slight exageration). The only solution to this is use software where the team has a good reputation. The last is poor software engineering. Harangue the author(s) to go back and do a proper job.
Personally I think C is an excellent language for writing core OS apps in. Fast, flexible and efficient. Java is a good server-side language for application server development but I wouldn't write my core server apps in it (not fast or lean enough). What alternative language would you suggest?
Phillip.
First of all, nuclear is not the only option. There are a myriad of options available including wind, solar, wave and biomass. There are many different fuel types including fuel-cell, compressed-air, MagneGas, biodiesel.
Global warming is happening, and the evidence points to man being a significan contributer. The USA is the major culprit producing 25% of CO2 emissions but, except for a few enlightened individuals, they do not care. This is unfortunate as it is a global problem that can only be tackled on a global scale.
There is an online magazine covering all the newest renewable and sustainable energy called Future Energies. They also have an item on the Greening Earth Society, mentioned elsewhere, who happen to be affiliated with the Western Fuels Association. They claim the Internet will be responsible for up to 50% of electricity consumed in the USA! Read more here.
Phillip.
The phrase "serves you right" springs to mind.
I can see people who are too lazy to learn another language getting into all kinds of sticky situations. CIA agent pulling a gun on a foreign criminal: FREEZE MOTHER FUCKER OR I'LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!!! What the foreigner hears: Would you like a new puppy?
So? If someone points a gun at you and starts screaming at you it doesn't matter what words come out, you get the idea. You can use the same non-verbal clues to help you in conjunction with the translator.
George Dubya talking with the president of france (he's to stupid to learn another language)
Sadly many English take an equally arogant and ignorant view
: I would like to build a STRONG relationship of compassion between our two natIONS. I want to help execute and build military ties with you.
In the language of diplomacy, even a 100% accurate translation would bear little resemblance to what the speaker actually means.
Phillip.
You will find that in many companies, the job of web application programmer and site builder (HTML) are pretty clearly cut.
Phillip.
First and foremost: Elite! That spawned an entire genre itself. Then there is Revs (on the BBC) which founded the realistic F1 simulations rather than the arcade racers that abounded.
I also think Battle Chess deserves a mention for breathing new life into bringing board games to the PC, rather than the rather boring online translations that preceded it.
I agree with others that missing off C&C was a mistake. Nice to see my personal favourite Counterstrike (Half Life mod) was there. I don't think Wolf3D deserved to be in there though as it lacked the compulsive gameplay Doom and Quake had.
Lemmings is one that no-one seems to have mentioned.
Phillip.
They contribute to our knowledge when it suits them best. No disrespect to the announcement, which does them much credit, but the past has shown they intend to make everyone's systems so secure that no-one but themselves can crack it. I can do nothing but recommend The Code Book which gives the history of crypto from Ancient Egyptian times until today. The techology may change but the politics don't...
Phillip.
I've had cable modem for a few years. You can type in your postcode here to see if you can get NTL cable modem. I have to admit that NTL and Napster are my two favourite companies at the moment :-)
Phillip.
I used to have a few teething problems with cable modem when I was doing the NTL trial a long time ago. It's now been rock steady for me a long time, so persevere with Telewest for now.
Phillip.
I'm on NTL trial of ADSL and it's nice at 1Mbp/s. However, for a home user I can't see ADSL scoring over cable modem in any way. Apart from downloading ISO images of Linux distros, I never notice any difference between ADSL and cable modem when playing Counterstrike or streaming video.
NTL is *not* trialing cable modem. It rolled into service quite a while ago at £20 per month and the details are here. As NTL have over 8M homes (not people) as customers, with a franchaise of 12M, I wouldn't call them insignificant. Telewest reach "more than 1.6 million homes or approximately 4.0 million consumers".
Telewest 5.5M homes franchaise, NTL 12M homes franchaise, apply same 1.6/4 homes/consumers ratio, and you get a reach of 43.75M consumers. This is over 2/3 of the population of the UK, so I wouldn't underestimate the effect the cable companies are going to have.
Phillip.
As Fross says, BT kept stalling and stalling with trial after trial because it did not want to cannibalise its lucrative ISDN revenue. After all, why would business want to pay far less for 10x the speed. Even now they are capping ADSL to 256kb/s for home users and 512kb/s for business. I have cable modem at 512kb/s at home for £20 per month, half the price of ADSL home and 1/5 (I think) of the business price.
Just a quick correction. NTL owns Cable & Wireless. The other cable provider is Telewest, which also owns Cable London.
Phillip.
The most basic of tenets in physics is, "energy can be neither created nor destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another". The wave power effect of reducing the amplitude of waves is not odd. The amplitude of the wave is proportional to the potential energy it has. If you remove some of that potential energy by transforming it to electricity then you will reduce the amplitude of the wave. I wondered myself whether there would be any environmental impact but I haven't seen any evidence to date.
:->
We think of solar as free energy, but if we covered the surface of the planet in solar panels, these would absorb the solar radiation and release very little. This will cool the planet and we'd have alarmists warning of another ice age
Solar can heat medium sized buildings, like this 4,600m three storey building here, but for high-rise buildings in close proximity you will need to feed the buildings from the grid where power can be taken from solar farms feeding in from more open areas.
There is no such thing as 'free' energy, and even the green alternatives will have an impact in some way on the checks and balances that make this world run. As a species that demands vast energy from an ecosystem not geared to provide it, we have to assess the risks and benefits of each source we decide to ramp up to the scale required to provide the energy we demand.
You say nuclear isn't done any more, but from what I remember (correct me if I'm wrong), over 90% of all power generated in France is nuclear. Tell people that using xxx power would make half the species of wildlife in the world extinct and people would shrug and carry on using it regardless. Suggest to people that through global warming subsequent natural disasters could lose them their homes, and they will suddently becomes "environmentally conscious". People have a perceived risk to themselves, fostered by the US media, hence nuclear does not happen for you.
Personally I'm in favour of localised power generation through appropriate green technologies (appropriate means balancing environmental impact with power levels required), coupled with reducing consumption.
We are all techies on here, and claim to be environmentally conscious, but then explain why a TV on stand-by takes randomly between 2W and 40W. Take it to your companies, make them think about working smarter to save power.
Phillip.
Sony seized the opportunity and the Lawrence Tube became the Trinitron in 1968
There may have been a delay between the patent being filed and being granted (so 68/69 could have been Patent Pending), hence it may have just run out?
Phillip.
I tried Opera, but I didn't like the way it opened new web pages as windows within one large window. I much prefer having each web page as a separate window on the desktop as I like to have multiple pages open at once mixed in with windows from other applications. Can Opera 5.0 do this?
:-( Updating IE has no effect. I am forced to use Netscape with its inferior UI.
So unfortunately I am stuck with IE or Netscape, both with their own problems. I have 4 PCs with IE of which only one copy works properly. On my main dev machine IE "View source" does nothing, which makes it useless for a server-side programmer
And none of the browsers progressively renders tables any more! This means that if the whole page is one big table then you get a pregnant pause before the whole page is blapped to your screen at once. Damn I miss my Acorn.
Phillip.
"doing a linear search or a bubble sort is sometimes acceptable"
Doing a bubble sort is never acceptable. No matter what data set you have, there is always a better sort algorithm than bubble sort. Not only that but the algorithm is of O(n^2) so scales catastrophically. Knowing your basic algorithms is far more important than your ability to push Java or C++.
Worrying about performance later is not best practice. It is unprofessional. Performance is always part of the equation, along with maintainability amongst other things. There is no point wasting your time on a first pass on a product to get the functionality right if the software does not get the job done in the time available. If I write a search script that takes 30 seconds to return results I may as well not have written it in the first place.
Other factors may override performance but it will never stop being a contributing factor. Java is a popular server-side programming language because programmers are expensive and thin on the ground. Java is easier to maintain and less prone to bugs (the most common C/C++ one being memory leaks which Java almost eliminates). It may not perform as well as C/C++ but thrown enough hardware it performs well enough.
If I calculate the performance of a Java implementation and it fails on the performance needed by the spec given, then I will have to either implement in a higher performance language (and interface back to the Java backend if necessary) or report that the project is not possible under the conditions given.
Sorry, but relying on a second pass and profiling will lead you to doomed projects. If you stick to using the right algorithms then profiling will only allow you to shave off a limited amount of time. If this does not give you the necessary performance gain then you will need to totally re-architect your solution.
Phillip.
When I started to learn Pascal during my first year of Uni, we were made to use ex to teach us how to use a line editor and had points docked if we were caught using something like vi. Now maybe this is a bit extreme, but I think the reason the UK has more programming talent than any other country (currently) in Europe can be summed up in two words: Acorn Computers.
The standard computer in the UK used to be called the BBC Model B, and this was followed by the Acorn Archimedes. These computers differed from the standard PC in two major ways. First is that the OS was always in ROM and was indestructable. This allowed (nay encouraged) you to experiment on the computer without any fear. You knew no matter how far you pushed things, what dangerous things you tried, reset was only one button away.
The second thing is one keypress drops you into Basic, which is also built into ROM. This ran interpreted, so no compiling and you could debug as you go along. Simple and flexible, you could also write windows applications in it with easy (which ran like greased lightening despite being interpreted).
When you get to college, learning a more formal methodology and language may be appropriate. At least you go into it with an eager exploratory attitude. You know to learn things by trying rather than just copying out of books.
Unfortunately even in the UK we now use standard PCs. Instead of producing another generation of IT professionals we will have just a generation of secretaries, and we will quickly lose our place in Europe. All the less competition for me!
Phillip.
Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz
The old StrongARM processors (talking about 2-3yrs ago) ran easily overclocked at 280MHz, but you cannot compare the clock speed of a StrongARM with the clock speed of a x86 chip. My 8MHz ARM machine easily outstripped a 66MHz x86 all those years ago, and the intelligent elegant ARM architecture still retains that advantage today. The 200MHz RISC chip can easily play full screen video, what more do you need in terms of power from a laptop?
Phillip.
Sorry but there isn't enough bandwidth for video over your mobile. All these large companies in the UK have just forked out around 4 billion pounds sterling per UMTS license with all these grandiose schemes such as video phones and Vodaphone planning to download MP3s over your mobile. According to NTT who have rolled out UMTS in Japan it's, "uh uh guys, it just ain't happening". They now plan to offer short download video clips of only a few seconds as teasers and snippets of new singles as previews. There are more details in the FT (yesterday I think) but I can't find a link to the article on their site.
A few claims were made about UMTS, including the speed. Right next to the base station, in theory, you can get 2Mb/s to your handset, at a distance 64kb/s, and on average around 384kb/s. The problem is how this is achieved. Each license allocates a fixed band of spectrum. This is broken down into a number of channels and down each of these channels the data is multiplexed. With UMTS you have the ability for one user to boost capacity by borrowing bandwidth from the channel (ie grabbing more of those multiplexed slots). *BUT* there is still only a fixed about of bandwidth to go around.
A lot of telecoms theory is aimed at tailoring a system to allow for peak loads whilst minimising systems cost. Doesn't matter if it's a phone exchange or an ISP planning how many modems to put in the rack. A voice channel is 16kb/s. Let's put forwards the assumption that there is one mobile cell where they estimate a peak of 20 calls at any one time. Thus they put in one channel which at an average distance should provide enough capacity for 24 simultaneous calls (384kb/s divided by 16kb/s). Now let's imagine one person decides to video-conference over his mobile. "Medium Multimedia" is quoted at 384kb/s here . Hence one person making that call locks out all phone calls in the entire vinciny of that cell.
I'm sure you can all see the crunch coming. Nobody knows if videophones will take off and so the mobile companies aren't going to invest in billions of pounds just in case. You can't just throw in extra base stations, each new mast needs a back-feed to the land-line network. If people *do* start taking up video over mobile it will cripple the networks and there won't be any quality of service.
I hear it's a similar story for GPRS. You may say, "ah but there are protocols that allow video streaming as low as 9600bp/s". Unfortunately it's been designed as a packet system for short bursts and not for everyone to lock GPRS streams open permanently.
I don't mean to sound downbeat and I'm not saying GPRS and UMTS aren't the future. I *would* pay extra for the web pages on my laptop to download in a second or two instead of crawling at 9600. I'd prefer to pay a fixed subscription for mobile access instead of paying for time online using an analogue modem. However, in the foreseeable future if I need streamed video or HQ audio then I'll be looking to wireless modem (eg 802.11) or similar bandwidth-orientated technology.
Feel free to disagree or point out any factual errors I have made. I hope that this has provided both a little light and food for thought.
Phillip.
The entire world except for the USA uses GSM, whilst the USA thumbed its nose and opted for an inferior proprietary system (the excuse being that it needed the Clipper chip to eavesdrop on American citizens whereas GSM phones are secure).
Similarly USA has decided to go its own way with 3rd generation mobile, digital TV, etc. The independant nature a decade ago of USA telecoms and broadcasting compared to the over-regulated European regulations has done a full turn. Now the cohesive nature of EU regulations compared to the divisive in-fighting and lobbying of self-interested American parties has meant the Europeans shooting ahead of America in terms of technology. Unless the US can pull together as a team I can't see them catching up any time soon.
Phillip.
People talk about increasing the power generated to cover the world's power consumption needs. Personally I think it should be a two-pronged approach. Firstly increasing renewable energy sources, and secondly reducing overall consumption so that the percentage of power that comes from renewable energy is again increased.
This is why I read Future Energies. It tries to cover both. For example a compressed-air powered car that can travel 60km/h for 120km on a 30cents charge. Solar-powered parking meters that don't need to be on the grid at all.
There is no point upgrading to state-of-the-art radiators if you are going to leave your windows open.
Phillip.
Obviously this friend hasn't heard of RogerWilco then. You can chat live with the rest of your team over the microphone whilst playing CS and it adds a whole new dimension. Trouble is that it's not integrated enough into CS so when you die you are still able to talk to the live players :-/
Phillip.
When I get labelled a cheat playing CS I get a nice warm feeling as it means I'm playing well :-) Though there are times when I'm sure an opponent is cheating (ie consistently shooting me through walls and boxes with awp). If I suspect someone is cheating, as soon as I die I cam-lock on them. If they appear to be irrationaly shooting and getting kills I can be fairly sure they are cheating.
In conclusion, then, I'd like to say that cheaters suck.
Phillip.
So if two allied forces (at the time of programming) turn on each other, what does the RFP do under these rules?
:-))?
If one party fools the RFP into thinking it a friendly force, don't these rules prevent the error from being corrected by ground control (read terminated for corrected
The 'and its partners' in rule 3 is redundant as this is covered under rule 1?
I have a suspicion that these three broad rules would rather fall down when the actual details are thrashed out. Not living in Hollywood, you can't pick out a "bad guy" by the enemy pilot sporting a moustache and smoking a cigarette.
Phillip.
I worked on a commercial web browser, and users would tell us their favourite porn sites weren't working. So we would have to look at them (for scientific purposes, stop giggling down the back) and tweak the rendering code to be a bit more tolerant of their often sloppy HTML or whatever trick they were trying to pull. Porn sites have always been way ahead of the curve in terms of Internet technology so if a browser will cope with them it will cope with most sites. We did find it highly amusing to be handed very formal looking project management sheets, which were then splattered with references to sites like 'sex.com'.
Phillip.