Their charts only showed the average frames per second, which is nice to know. But if I am looking at a card, I don't want to see wildly diverging frame rates... I think they should have an extra factor on their charts showing the slowest frame rate noted during the fly by.
34 fps might be alright if you never dip below 30. But I seriously doubt that to be the case.
Maybe they should even give a percentage of time during the fly by spent at less than 30 fps.
Pretty decent read, but one thing they said got me thinking a little bit.
They said that at Thinking Machines they built a super fast computer, but it required a new way of thinking about things in order to program it. And then they called this a mistake, because they couldn't attract any customers.
This seems like a real problem that would lead to technological stagnation. At least from a market place point of view.
It is kind of similar to a company making games off of pre-existing engines, like quake, instead of some new non-quake compatible engine.
Or everybody making x86 compatible CPUs.
It also seems that when a company does come up with some new way of doing things, they get burned, and it is the second generation of companies that pick up the torch that make the money. So nobody wants to be that first company, they are all waiting for someone else to break the ground.
Maybe the only people/companies that come up with new stuff are the ones that are insanely rich, and won't get hurt by doing something new, or the insanely poor who have nothing to lose anyway.
I can't help thinking that this clustering boom going on is just like what 3dfx was trying to do. The difference right now is that clustering actually *does* outperform the super fast single chip. I wonder when technological advances will change this fact.
As 400 other people have pointed out, that person was talking about the hydrogen economy, not any laws of thermodynamics.
With that in mind, I think the author meant "(That it takes more of our generated energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it.)"
This idea is a conversion from solar energy to the potential energy of a load of hydrogen. It doesn't really matter that it is very inefficient, and that we are using way more solar power to get the hydrogen than the hydrogen contains itself. It doesn't matter because solar power is abundant, virtually inexhaustible, and our only expense is harnessing it.
Someone doesn't know their thermodynamics, hmmm....
Someone is pretty arrogant and assumes everyone around them is stupid, hmmmm...
It was pretty clear to me that TACD was suggesting putting the servers *in* the freezers. Not on top of, or next to the freezers. I don't know how you even could have come to that conclusion. Nowhere in TACD's message did he state that he expected the room to be cooler.
"...Rambus has too high of a lawyer-to-engineer ratio for my tastes."
That sounds pretty reasonable...but:
"I prefer a company that chooses innovation over litigation because I have a lot more faith in their product down the road."
We are talking about memory here. What possible impact could future innovative products have on whether you buy an intel system that uses rambus or not, today?
I say buy the fastest thing you can at the price you are willing to pay. If rambus fits the bill, then go for it. Who cares what they put out down the line. It isn't likely to be compatible with your current system.
Re:Doesn't seem THAT small to me...
on
Portable GameCube
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· Score: 1
I think it is. It might be a little awkward by itself, but in a carrying bag with the top open it'd be great.
I've got one (the cube that is), and a carrying bag made for it as well. It isn't big at all, about as awkard as a lunchbox in gradeschool.
I don't forsee myself using this in a car, but I do fly a lot, and I could easily see enough room for this.
Glasstron from sony or I-glasses if they still make those would be better, but they cost more too.
Exactly. I bought a game cube because I like nintendo's games. Not all of them of course, but the mario bros of old and the zeldas are some that I liked in the past. Pikmin sounds interesting, although the name isn't so good...
Yeah, I've had to deal with changing requirements. It sucks.
But that is why you have deadlines, and enforce the deadlines. That is why you enter into contracts.
You should have a contract with the customer, and in that contract are the requirements and specifications that the customer gave you, or that you create and the customer approved.
After that, the requirements are fixed and the design is done. If the customer wants something else, it requires a new contract and usually more money.
It is a long and arduous process to get to the stage where the requirements are fixed, and a contract is entered into. My last design took about 6 months to lock down the requirements. It took about 3 weeks to code.
After you have the contract, and the requirements are fixed, is when you begin coding. And not a moment before. But don't get me wrong, I am not saying don't do research or trade studies (which might involve coding), but those are separate projects and should be treated as such (with their own requirements and specs).
The design process and methodology is really for the project leader/techinical director to enforce. If you have a crappy boss, don't sit there and bitch about it. Come up with a design process, and pitch it to him/her. Take an active role in your company.
I think most of the people around slashdot who bitch about idiot bosses, are really the idiots themselves. If your program is broken, don't bitch about it--fix it. If your company is broken, don't bitch about it--fix it. If it isn't fixable, then don't work there--the company probably won't be around long anyway.
The digital equivalent of such an act would be, for example, the lending of a CD to another person. Not making a copy, but lending them the original that you own and paid for.
It seems clear to me that about half of you guys didn't understand the points Joel was making.
He didn't say "don't fix it." He was saying that you shouldn't buy a new car because you got a flat tire on your current car. Unless it is a ford explorer.
If you feel you have to redesign from the ground up "with all of your goals in mind" then you don't know how to design software.
If you are designing a project, you should be blocking it out, writing a specification outlining every single piece of functionality and every single requirement (derived by you, or given to you by the customer) before you write the first line of code.
Of course crap always sneaks up on you, and you probably won't think of everything--so you'll add a little functionality later on that maybe wasn't in your spec. But if there are so many of these add-ons that you feel you have to re-design, then you should be re-trained or fired.
Are there any open source virus detection software available?
Hmmm... answered my own question at source forge. There are several projects there that are related to a specific worm or virus, but this seems to be what I was looking for.
There doesn't seem to be much interest though. Perhaps because open source projects are predominantly non-windows, and windows seems to be where most of the virii are.
I think the trick to getting this type of project going might be a set of tools for creating/finding new virus signatures. Maybe an intelligent hex editor/dis-assembler that can heueristcally suggest portions of code to look closely at.
And an easy way for users to submit strings to the project.
The problem with posting as an Anonymous Coward is that it is more difficult to keep track of your own posts...so you probably won't read this.
I didn't say I thought it was valid. That is just nerdspeak for showing your approval of something anyway (as if that matters). What I said was that I liked it, and that it managed to express how I feel about the ability to make money off of gpl'd software.
Basically, it said to me that while I could pay someone for sunshine, why would I bother if I can just go out and get it for free.
They can charge whatever the fuck they want. If they decide they need to charge $35 + $10 per GB, then they'll do that. They don't have to justify it to anyone.
If people are willing to pay X, it would be stupid to charge less than that.
I love my high speed modem enough to pay at least $20 more than I used to. Any more than that and I would revert to 56k or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Their charts only showed the average frames per second, which is nice to know. But if I am looking at a card, I don't want to see wildly diverging frame rates... I think they should have an extra factor on their charts showing the slowest frame rate noted during the fly by.
34 fps might be alright if you never dip below 30. But I seriously doubt that to be the case.
Maybe they should even give a percentage of time during the fly by spent at less than 30 fps.
Pretty decent read, but one thing they said got me thinking a little bit.
They said that at Thinking Machines they built a super fast computer, but it required a new way of thinking about things in order to program it. And then they called this a mistake, because they couldn't attract any customers.
This seems like a real problem that would lead to technological stagnation. At least from a market place point of view.
It is kind of similar to a company making games off of pre-existing engines, like quake, instead of some new non-quake compatible engine.
Or everybody making x86 compatible CPUs.
It also seems that when a company does come up with some new way of doing things, they get burned, and it is the second generation of companies that pick up the torch that make the money. So nobody wants to be that first company, they are all waiting for someone else to break the ground.
Maybe the only people/companies that come up with new stuff are the ones that are insanely rich, and won't get hurt by doing something new, or the insanely poor who have nothing to lose anyway.
I can't help thinking that this clustering boom going on is just like what 3dfx was trying to do. The difference right now is that clustering actually *does* outperform the super fast single chip. I wonder when technological advances will change this fact.
As 400 other people have pointed out, that person was talking about the hydrogen economy, not any laws of thermodynamics.
With that in mind, I think the author meant "(That it takes more of our generated energy to make the hydrogen than you gain in using it.)"
This idea is a conversion from solar energy to the potential energy of a load of hydrogen. It doesn't really matter that it is very inefficient, and that we are using way more solar power to get the hydrogen than the hydrogen contains itself. It doesn't matter because solar power is abundant, virtually inexhaustible, and our only expense is harnessing it.
"You can also emulate a Pentium with paper and pencil."
That made my day!
I always thought that 80% of the population was just plain stupid. But now I realize they are actually autistic.
ti 99/4a by chance?
Someone doesn't know their thermodynamics, hmmm....
Someone is pretty arrogant and assumes everyone around them is stupid, hmmmm...
It was pretty clear to me that TACD was suggesting putting the servers *in* the freezers. Not on top of, or next to the freezers. I don't know how you even could have come to that conclusion. Nowhere in TACD's message did he state that he expected the room to be cooler.
"...Rambus has too high of a lawyer-to-engineer ratio for my tastes."
That sounds pretty reasonable...but:
"I prefer a company that chooses innovation over litigation because I have a lot more faith in their product down the road."
We are talking about memory here. What possible impact could future innovative products have on whether you buy an intel system that uses rambus or not, today?
I say buy the fastest thing you can at the price you are willing to pay. If rambus fits the bill, then go for it. Who cares what they put out down the line. It isn't likely to be compatible with your current system.
I think it is. It might be a little awkward by itself, but in a carrying bag with the top open it'd be great.
I've got one (the cube that is), and a carrying bag made for it as well. It isn't big at all, about as awkard as a lunchbox in gradeschool.
I don't forsee myself using this in a car, but I do fly a lot, and I could easily see enough room for this.
Glasstron from sony or I-glasses if they still make those would be better, but they cost more too.
Exactly. I bought a game cube because I like nintendo's games. Not all of them of course, but the mario bros of old and the zeldas are some that I liked in the past. Pikmin sounds interesting, although the name isn't so good...
"You are in a store. You can either buy one bottle of water for three dollars, or fifty bottles of water for six. Which do you choose?"
You forgot to mention that at the end of the day, all the water you don't drink is thrown away.
Yeah, I've had to deal with changing requirements. It sucks.
But that is why you have deadlines, and enforce the deadlines. That is why you enter into contracts.
You should have a contract with the customer, and in that contract are the requirements and specifications that the customer gave you, or that you create and the customer approved.
After that, the requirements are fixed and the design is done. If the customer wants something else, it requires a new contract and usually more money.
It is a long and arduous process to get to the stage where the requirements are fixed, and a contract is entered into. My last design took about 6 months to lock down the requirements. It took about 3 weeks to code.
After you have the contract, and the requirements are fixed, is when you begin coding. And not a moment before. But don't get me wrong, I am not saying don't do research or trade studies (which might involve coding), but those are separate projects and should be treated as such (with their own requirements and specs).
The design process and methodology is really for the project leader/techinical director to enforce. If you have a crappy boss, don't sit there and bitch about it. Come up with a design process, and pitch it to him/her. Take an active role in your company.
I think most of the people around slashdot who bitch about idiot bosses, are really the idiots themselves. If your program is broken, don't bitch about it--fix it. If your company is broken, don't bitch about it--fix it. If it isn't fixable, then don't work there--the company probably won't be around long anyway.
It really is that simple.
The digital equivalent of such an act would be, for example, the lending of a CD to another person. Not making a copy, but lending them the original that you own and paid for.
1)Since when does maintain mean re-write?
2)Well, gee, they are the customer. If they don't know what they want, then why are you giving them anything at all?
If you are creating something new, you would hopefully know what it is you wanted to create.
And yes, I am a programmer. A damn good one at that.
It seems clear to me that about half of you guys didn't understand the points Joel was making.
He didn't say "don't fix it." He was saying that you shouldn't buy a new car because you got a flat tire on your current car. Unless it is a ford explorer.
If you feel you have to redesign from the ground up "with all of your goals in mind" then you don't know how to design software.
If you are designing a project, you should be blocking it out, writing a specification outlining every single piece of functionality and every single requirement (derived by you, or given to you by the customer) before you write the first line of code.
Of course crap always sneaks up on you, and you probably won't think of everything--so you'll add a little functionality later on that maybe wasn't in your spec. But if there are so many of these add-ons that you feel you have to re-design, then you should be re-trained or fired.
"but some of the stupid things these companies do is their own damned fault." [emphasis mine]
All of the stupid things these companies do is their own fault.
"What is it about laptops that makes them automobile fodder?"
Usually rage.
Well, somebody marked that as a troll, but I thought it was hilarious. The scary thing is that it actually gave me hope. hehe
This is a case of "Winner Take All"
Are there any open source virus detection software available?
Hmmm... answered my own question at source forge. There are several projects there that are related to a specific worm or virus, but this seems to be what I was looking for.
There doesn't seem to be much interest though. Perhaps because open source projects are predominantly non-windows, and windows seems to be where most of the virii are.
I think the trick to getting this type of project going might be a set of tools for creating/finding new virus signatures. Maybe an intelligent hex editor/dis-assembler that can heueristcally suggest portions of code to look closely at.
And an easy way for users to submit strings to the project.
--Scott
Do your research before you start making fun of someone. "knows" [dictionary.com] is a word and he used it correctly.
You won't find grammar rules in most dictionaries. Apparently your English is not any better.
The problem with posting as an Anonymous Coward is that it is more difficult to keep track of your own posts...so you probably won't read this.
I didn't say I thought it was valid. That is just nerdspeak for showing your approval of something anyway (as if that matters). What I said was that I liked it, and that it managed to express how I feel about the ability to make money off of gpl'd software.
Basically, it said to me that while I could pay someone for sunshine, why would I bother if I can just go out and get it for free.
It has nothing to do with man made or not.
True, but being in the majority doesn't make you right. I firmly believe that the majority of people are stupid.
I like your comment about "...just like you can't sell sunlight exclusively."
That fragment expresses my thoughts and feelings on selling GPL'd software very well.
They can charge whatever the fuck they want. If they decide they need to charge $35 + $10 per GB, then they'll do that. They don't have to justify it to anyone.
If people are willing to pay X, it would be stupid to charge less than that.
I love my high speed modem enough to pay at least $20 more than I used to. Any more than that and I would revert to 56k or something.