I have a full-time software development job during normal working hours, but I work part-time in a bike shop (usually only on the weekends or holidays).
Most of the time, I do minor repairs and assembly on new bikes, also safety checks for test rides. Sometimes I help customers on the sales floor. Either way, it's totally rewarding, and gives me a huge sense of satisfaction (unlike spending time at the office writing email, sitting in meetings, writing reports, etc.). Also, it's really nice to be around people who are relaxed and not on some big fscking power-trip while trying to climb the corporate ladder.
I totally agree with the parent post - wiki is good for internal use, maybe sharing company information, etc. But as soon as you turn it to the global audience with the intention of being a general information source, it becomes a worse information reference than any random web page out there. In fact, it might be worse, because random web pages that talk about things like "astronauts never walked on the moon", etc., aren't culled together and presented as fact the way that wiki presents all information. It's been shown repeatedly that there is little to no validation of real-world wiki information. I've read several stories (some here on/.) about people making totally bogus wiki entries that other people support.
Don't get me wrong, I think wiki has it's place, but experience indicates that it should not serve as a generic information source for the general population. At least, not in it's current form. If they hired a squadron of editors and fact checkers, things might be better, but that's not how wiki is supposed to work...
Re:Nuclear energy works!
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Not only does nuclear energy work, but it is a major source of power all over Europe. For instance, France currently generates 75% of its total power from nuclear sources (from this BBC story). Like many things, nuclear power can be a good thing if it is generated safely, and it can be very dangerous if not. The key is to be safe in how the nuclear power plant is built, operated and maintained.
You are right on the money. Apple has not invented anything other than a DRM scheme, as the file format for an AAC audio file is defined by the MPEG group. You can find out more information at www.m4a.com, including a list of players that are capable of playing AAC audio.
So Apple is using an open standards media format for playing content - regular mp3s, non-DRM'd AAC (or m4a) files, in addition to a DRM'd version of AAC. Everybody seems to slam Apple for being jerks about the DRM mechanism, "I should be able to make a million copies of that song", or "i want to play this song on some other player". But people consistently miss a fundamenetal point: the iTunes Music Store is a store, they sell products, and if they don't sell products you like, go shop somewhere else.
Are you gonna slam a record shop for only carrying vinyl when you want to buy CDs? No, you would just go to a record store that sells CDs (or whatever other medium you're looking for). If you want to buy music and play it on your Linux box, or you want to convert it into Ogg Vorbis, go buy it somewhere else. I half-expect to hear things like this from the iTunes Music Store slamming crowd: "McDonald's doesn't have any good vegetarian options for me, I'm going to sue them!", "I can't buy a steak at a donut shop, those bastards!", etc.
I'm not trying to be flamebait here, I'm serious. I really do not understand why so many people can blame a business for selling a different range of products than you might like. People, that's not how our economy works. If I sell products and people buy them, then I am meeting a demand and have market support.. If my product is not what people want (think RealPlayer subscription b.s.), people will not pay for it.
The other key point that seems lost on so many people is that, prior to (and even after) Apple's introduction of the iTunes Music Store with their very specific DRM mechanism, no other store had the same kind of awesome content, most music stores sucked (or still do), and consumers didn't give a shit. What's different with Apple is that they devised a DRM scheme that the record companies were happy with, and now they have hundreds of thousands of songs, many of which are awesome. Why is it Apple's fault that they recognized (and followed-through with) what it takes to play with the big boys in Hollywood?
In fact, bitrate and sound quality are only relevant for a particular encoding scheme. For instance, I could take a 128kbps AAC (aka, "mp4" or m4a) file and compare that to a 160kbps mp3 file, and the lower bitrate AAC file usually would sound better than the mp3 (or at the very least would sound the same as the mp3). Because AAC (which, by the way, is an open standard defined by the MPEG Group) is a better encoding mechanism than mp3, you can produce a smaller file with a lower bitrate and still capture the same quality (if not higher) of an mp3.
So bringing this point to the current discussion, we know that Microsoft is offering downloads at a higher bitrate, but who says the quality is better? If it is, then it's better than what? A 128kbps Windows Media File?
I think the question is this: how does a 128kbps AAC file (like you would get from iTunes Music Store) compare in actual sound quality (not bitrate) to a 160kbps Windows Media file from Microsoft's site?
"Overall, this book will tell professionals what they need to do, and novices everything that professioanls ought to know, but probably don't."
While I agree that novices probably ought to know a lot of the topics covered, there is something fundamentally missing when many (most?) novices still barely realize they have an alternative to using Windows. I interface with lots of people who basically think you have two choices - owning "a computer", or owning "a Mac" (as though owning a Mac wasn't a real computer).
The bigger problem, aside from addressing security problems, is educating the general public that they have choices, and there are different security impacts based on your choices. We live in a world where hundreds of thousands of Windows users don't even know about Windows Update, which is arguably the simplest thing you can do to avoid security vulnerabilities (yeah, yeah, I know sometimes they introduce problems through WU, but Microsoft seems to fix half a dozen "critical" security flaws per month).
So what novice out there is going to even take note that there's a book that covers security problems/issues and offers fixes for problems they're not even aware of?
The article says that the receiver was mounted in the team cars for 10 select riders, not physically attached to the riders themselves. On a time trial, each rider gets a follow vehicle to help with any mechanical issues or crashes, and the follow vehicles are usually very, very close to the rider (it looks like 10 to 15 feet). So any weight would be fine, since it'll be dragged around by a gasoline motor.
"Dell is also offering free shipping, free software, and 25 free songs through MusicMatch and brings the overall cost for the DJ down to $99."
As an iPod owner (and a former owner of several other mp3 players), I think this plan is not going to accomplish much for Dell.
Think about it, nobody has ever said you should by an iPod for it's low cost. On the contrary, it's just about the most expensive player on the market. So who buys one? People who want to be trendy (Apple is way trendier than Dell), and people who want the best mp3 player out there (not trying to start a flame war here, but the iPod interface is head and shoulders above the rest). So by offering free shipping, free songs, etc., I don't see how Dell will be able to woo very many people away from an iPod (even if it's a dead iPod).
For the people who want the least expensive player out there, or who don't really mind the lesser interfaces of the other players, I don't see that crowd having bought an iPod in the first place, so they won't be affected by this offer either.
This leaves me wondering, who this offer is really targeted at? It sounds more like a PR stunt designed to steal some of Apple's thunder for owning the digital music player market.
For the first time ever, I recently came up with a problem that could be solved rather nicely with something like Jini or Rendezvous. Until now, Rendezvous meant "OS X only", and obviously would be much less usable in the real-world than Jini, which is Java-based.
I think it will be interesting to see if Rendezvous can really fly (I would like to see it succeed). I doubt we'll see apps like Hydra (Rendezvous-enabled text editor) on any OS other than OS X, but maybe we'll see other cool apps that leverage the flexible networking technology of Rendezvous.
I live in Austin, and was pleased to read that we're going to see free wireless in new locations. And I don't mean more restaurants and pubs, but also in some of the local parks and public areas. I don't have any references to cite, but I recently read that Schlotzsky's (local sandwich shop that has offered free wireless access to customers for several years) has teamed up to set up wireless access in some of the parks near the downtown area. This might move beyond the downtown parks to include other locations, but for now it's another great step toward unwiring the city of Austin.
A lot of what was written in the parent post could have easily been written about me. I'm just a hair under 30 years old, and have come a long way since entering college. For now, I work a full-time job writing software, and a part-time job (on the weekends) in a bike shop. I enjoy writing software, and the pay is heads and shoulders above what I could get in another profession, but I also enjoy working on bikes and being in a social environment. Sitting in an office all day bites, and the social atmosphere is strange at best. Outside of work, I do all kinds of other things with my time - used to sing in a few music groups, still play music (guitar, synths) for fun, lots of cycling (mountain and road bikes), still go skateboaring sometimes, play video games (in moderation), watch lots of movies, read books, surf the web, work on small software side-projects, build things for use around the house, hang out with friends, drink beer, etc...
The upshot is, I've got a ton of interests, and I'm constantly faced with the dilemma of how to spend my time. On any given night, there are half a dozen things I'd like to do. I think the biggest piece of advice I could give would be to go easy on yourself if you can't find the time to do all of the things you want to do. Stick to a few things, and if you find yourself getting bogged down, where things are no longer enjoyable, scale it back a bit and remember to enjoy life. If you haven't already found out, there are a lot of people who are in a huge goddamn hurry throughout their lives, rushing around and ignoring all kinds of things in order to reach their "goals". Life can be great for you, especially since you're talented and skilled in many ways. Just take the time to enjoy it, give yourself the time to grow and change, and get the most out of your experiences. It's only an opinion, but I believe that as soon as a person takes that plunge into hyperactivity (doing eighty things simultaneously), that's when you really start to miss out on what makes life cool. Just have fun, enjoy your talents, keep yourself entertained and interested, and keep exploring and learning. I've been doing that for the past 15 years, and have absolutely no regrets at all.
So should architects stop doing structural analysis? Should car manufacturer's quit doing crash tests? I think the point of any kind of design or product analysis is to verify that it is robust and reliable. Why should it be any different for software?
... which they will get with the 10D's all-metal body. The Digital Rebel does has some kind of plastic body, and seems less sturdy/durable.
I'm far from a professional, but I've heard about people hacking their Rebel's to unlock the 10D feature set for a while, yet I would still rather own a camera built out of a solid piece of metal and not some plastic/composite body.
To your point about professionals wanting fully functional, fully supported equipment (not hacked), I would expect they'd also want the most durable options out there.
When they pull up the address of my PO Box, I'll just shrug it off. Sure, my mailing address information is shared left and right (and without my consent), but at least I have a layer of abstraction between my physical residence and the mailing address people associate with me, so this scare tactic stuff ("they know where you are!") won't matter. It will have to be changed to, "they know where your postal mail is delivered!".
I first got a PO Box address in 2002, and the only thing I regret is that I didn't get one sooner. The UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes, Etc.) rents PO boxes out, too, and offer lots of other perks over the straight US Postal variety. For instance, you can call the store and ask them if you got any mail today, they'll check it and let you know, saving you the trip.
I lived in Wellington, New Zealand for a while, and I sure hope this guy is using this to steal access from somebody else, not to share his bandwidth with other people. Internet connectivity was very expensive down there, and metered (we had dsl through Telstra). Even the much-hyped CityLink wireless service is pay-as-you-go. But with his $5 setup, this guy can scan around his neighborhood until he finds somebody with an open network, and presto! Free 'net access.
I remember a few years ago, seeing a bunch of high-end wrist watches that charged up through regular motion while wearing the watch. Or you could just flick your wrist a few times to store some extra energy. I think one of them was called "Kinetic" or something clever like that.
I wonder if there's any possibility for motion-charging batteries to succeed as a power source for soldiers. I admit I didn't rtfa, but obviously the overall power requirements would be relevant to the success of something like this.
All projects are an exercise in scheduling, and something is always bound to fall of the radar given the real-world time constraints. In my experience, the right thing to do is get a few smart people together to isolate any problem areas of the product, and try to determine whether that code might produce performance bottlenecks in high-demand situations. If you find any warning areas, throw your limited resources there. Don't fret too much about the rest of the product.
In the business world, you have to satisfy market demands and thus cannot take an endless amount of time to produce a highly optimized product. However, unless you are Microsoft, it is very difficult to succeed by quickly shoving a slow pile of crap out the door and calling it "version 1".
So where do you optimize? Where do you concentrate your limited amount of time before you miss the window of opportunity for your product?
I know plenty of folks in academia who would scoff at what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway... just because something could be faster, doesn't mean it has to be. If you could spend X hours or Y days tweaking a piece of code to run faster, would it be worth it? Not necessarily. It depends on several things, and there's no really good formula, each case ought to be evaluated individually. For instance, if you're talking about a nightly maintenance task that runs between 2am and 4am when nobody is on the system, resource consumption doesn't matter, etc., then why bother making it run faster? If you have an answer, then good for you, but maybe you don't and should thus leave that 2 hour maintenanc task alone, spend your time doing something else.
For people who are really into performance optimization, I say get into hardware design or academia, because the rest of the business world doesn't really seem to make time for "doing things right" (just an observation, not my opinion).
"The salaries of entry level patent examiners presently range from $32,819 to $70,959. Overtime is strongly encouraged after several months of experience is accrued, and it is not unusual for a junior examiner with three or four years experience to make more than $100,000 annually with overtime and bonuses."
Sounds like they're trying pretty hard to entice people to become patent officers, because the pay scale seems abnormally high for a governmental job. Starting salaries up to $70k per year? Geeez.... Or maybe the salary range is required because the job sucks so much.
"What more could a cheap, impatient Spielberg wannabe ask for?"
how about this?
"extra bandwidth to handle the impending server doom after somebody posted my page on/."
(in all fairness, his site loaded pretty quickly for me, but given the voracious behavior of/. readers, I'm sure it won't take long to bring his server to its knees.)
"...bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles..."
Dammit, why are marketing/business people so dense? One of the things that's appealing about buying music online is that you only get the songs you want, and none of the songs you don't want. I've spent about $100 at iTMS, but that's only because I can buy one track here and one track there. If they take that away and force me to pay more and/or get extra shitty songs that I don't fscking want, I'll be annoyed as hell and probably just stop buying tracks individually.
"The PowerPC 970 design starts by remapping one of the POWER4 processor cores to 0.13-micron technology and increasing its frequency up to 1.8 GHz. Next, one of the L2 cache banks was resized to 512 KB. These POWER4 features were then complemented with a vector-processing engine and a redesigned bus interface to keep the 970 fed with data. The result is a higher-performance single-core POWER4 derivative that includes enhanced multimedia processing on a smaller, lower-power die."
I imagine what they really mean is that there can be up to 200 instructions in flight in the pipeline at a time.
Actually, I believe the wording is intended to communicate the notion of vector processing. Rather than doing the "fetch operand, perform operation, store result" repeated again and again, vector processing allows you to fetch a bunch of operands in a row, then perform a single operation to that vector of data (that is, the data you just fetched), and then store all the results. It turns out it's much faster to do data processing in this fashion.
Supercomputers have done this for years, and it's one of the key ingredients in creating a system which is extremely fast at doing repetitive operations.
Note that the benefits of vector processing are minimal if you're not processing the same type of data again and again. For those cases, a reasonably fast processor is sufficient. It's when you get into repetitive stuff (for an average home user, this might be decoding DVD data) that you'll see the real performance benefits of vector processing.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a full-time software development job during normal working hours, but I work part-time in a bike shop (usually only on the weekends or holidays).
Most of the time, I do minor repairs and assembly on new bikes, also safety checks for test rides. Sometimes I help customers on the sales floor. Either way, it's totally rewarding, and gives me a huge sense of satisfaction (unlike spending time at the office writing email, sitting in meetings, writing reports, etc.). Also, it's really nice to be around people who are relaxed and not on some big fscking power-trip while trying to climb the corporate ladder.
I totally agree with the parent post - wiki is good for internal use, maybe sharing company information, etc. But as soon as you turn it to the global audience with the intention of being a general information source, it becomes a worse information reference than any random web page out there. In fact, it might be worse, because random web pages that talk about things like "astronauts never walked on the moon", etc., aren't culled together and presented as fact the way that wiki presents all information. It's been shown repeatedly that there is little to no validation of real-world wiki information. I've read several stories (some here on /.) about people making totally bogus wiki entries that other people support.
Don't get me wrong, I think wiki has it's place, but experience indicates that it should not serve as a generic information source for the general population. At least, not in it's current form. If they hired a squadron of editors and fact checkers, things might be better, but that's not how wiki is supposed to work...
Not only does nuclear energy work, but it is a major source of power all over Europe. For instance, France currently generates 75% of its total power from nuclear sources (from this BBC story). Like many things, nuclear power can be a good thing if it is generated safely, and it can be very dangerous if not. The key is to be safe in how the nuclear power plant is built, operated and maintained.
You are right on the money. Apple has not invented anything other than a DRM scheme, as the file format for an AAC audio file is defined by the MPEG group. You can find out more information at www.m4a.com, including a list of players that are capable of playing AAC audio.
So Apple is using an open standards media format for playing content - regular mp3s, non-DRM'd AAC (or m4a) files, in addition to a DRM'd version of AAC. Everybody seems to slam Apple for being jerks about the DRM mechanism, "I should be able to make a million copies of that song", or "i want to play this song on some other player". But people consistently miss a fundamenetal point: the iTunes Music Store is a store, they sell products, and if they don't sell products you like, go shop somewhere else.
Are you gonna slam a record shop for only carrying vinyl when you want to buy CDs? No, you would just go to a record store that sells CDs (or whatever other medium you're looking for). If you want to buy music and play it on your Linux box, or you want to convert it into Ogg Vorbis, go buy it somewhere else. I half-expect to hear things like this from the iTunes Music Store slamming crowd: "McDonald's doesn't have any good vegetarian options for me, I'm going to sue them!", "I can't buy a steak at a donut shop, those bastards!", etc.
I'm not trying to be flamebait here, I'm serious. I really do not understand why so many people can blame a business for selling a different range of products than you might like. People, that's not how our economy works. If I sell products and people buy them, then I am meeting a demand and have market support.. If my product is not what people want (think RealPlayer subscription b.s.), people will not pay for it.
The other key point that seems lost on so many people is that, prior to (and even after) Apple's introduction of the iTunes Music Store with their very specific DRM mechanism, no other store had the same kind of awesome content, most music stores sucked (or still do), and consumers didn't give a shit. What's different with Apple is that they devised a DRM scheme that the record companies were happy with, and now they have hundreds of thousands of songs, many of which are awesome. Why is it Apple's fault that they recognized (and followed-through with) what it takes to play with the big boys in Hollywood?
Bitrate and sound quality are not the same thing.
In fact, bitrate and sound quality are only relevant for a particular encoding scheme. For instance, I could take a 128kbps AAC (aka, "mp4" or m4a) file and compare that to a 160kbps mp3 file, and the lower bitrate AAC file usually would sound better than the mp3 (or at the very least would sound the same as the mp3). Because AAC (which, by the way, is an open standard defined by the MPEG Group) is a better encoding mechanism than mp3, you can produce a smaller file with a lower bitrate and still capture the same quality (if not higher) of an mp3.
So bringing this point to the current discussion, we know that Microsoft is offering downloads at a higher bitrate, but who says the quality is better? If it is, then it's better than what? A 128kbps Windows Media File?
I think the question is this: how does a 128kbps AAC file (like you would get from iTunes Music Store) compare in actual sound quality (not bitrate) to a 160kbps Windows Media file from Microsoft's site?
"Overall, this book will tell professionals what they need to do, and novices everything that professioanls ought to know, but probably don't."
While I agree that novices probably ought to know a lot of the topics covered, there is something fundamentally missing when many (most?) novices still barely realize they have an alternative to using Windows. I interface with lots of people who basically think you have two choices - owning "a computer", or owning "a Mac" (as though owning a Mac wasn't a real computer).
The bigger problem, aside from addressing security problems, is educating the general public that they have choices, and there are different security impacts based on your choices. We live in a world where hundreds of thousands of Windows users don't even know about Windows Update, which is arguably the simplest thing you can do to avoid security vulnerabilities (yeah, yeah, I know sometimes they introduce problems through WU, but Microsoft seems to fix half a dozen "critical" security flaws per month).
So what novice out there is going to even take note that there's a book that covers security problems/issues and offers fixes for problems they're not even aware of?
The article says that the receiver was mounted in the team cars for 10 select riders, not physically attached to the riders themselves. On a time trial, each rider gets a follow vehicle to help with any mechanical issues or crashes, and the follow vehicles are usually very, very close to the rider (it looks like 10 to 15 feet). So any weight would be fine, since it'll be dragged around by a gasoline motor.
"Dell is also offering free shipping, free software, and 25 free songs through MusicMatch and brings the overall cost for the DJ down to $99."
As an iPod owner (and a former owner of several other mp3 players), I think this plan is not going to accomplish much for Dell.
Think about it, nobody has ever said you should by an iPod for it's low cost. On the contrary, it's just about the most expensive player on the market. So who buys one? People who want to be trendy (Apple is way trendier than Dell), and people who want the best mp3 player out there (not trying to start a flame war here, but the iPod interface is head and shoulders above the rest). So by offering free shipping, free songs, etc., I don't see how Dell will be able to woo very many people away from an iPod (even if it's a dead iPod).
For the people who want the least expensive player out there, or who don't really mind the lesser interfaces of the other players, I don't see that crowd having bought an iPod in the first place, so they won't be affected by this offer either.
This leaves me wondering, who this offer is really targeted at? It sounds more like a PR stunt designed to steal some of Apple's thunder for owning the digital music player market.
For the first time ever, I recently came up with a problem that could be solved rather nicely with something like Jini or Rendezvous. Until now, Rendezvous meant "OS X only", and obviously would be much less usable in the real-world than Jini, which is Java-based.
I think it will be interesting to see if Rendezvous can really fly (I would like to see it succeed). I doubt we'll see apps like Hydra (Rendezvous-enabled text editor) on any OS other than OS X, but maybe we'll see other cool apps that leverage the flexible networking technology of Rendezvous.
... a way to blame the outage on Microsoft instead of (or in addition to) Akamai?
(come on, it's funny. at least I didn't suggest blaming SCO...)
I live in Austin, and was pleased to read that we're going to see free wireless in new locations. And I don't mean more restaurants and pubs, but also in some of the local parks and public areas. I don't have any references to cite, but I recently read that Schlotzsky's (local sandwich shop that has offered free wireless access to customers for several years) has teamed up to set up wireless access in some of the parks near the downtown area. This might move beyond the downtown parks to include other locations, but for now it's another great step toward unwiring the city of Austin.
A lot of what was written in the parent post could have easily been written about me. I'm just a hair under 30 years old, and have come a long way since entering college. For now, I work a full-time job writing software, and a part-time job (on the weekends) in a bike shop. I enjoy writing software, and the pay is heads and shoulders above what I could get in another profession, but I also enjoy working on bikes and being in a social environment. Sitting in an office all day bites, and the social atmosphere is strange at best. Outside of work, I do all kinds of other things with my time - used to sing in a few music groups, still play music (guitar, synths) for fun, lots of cycling (mountain and road bikes), still go skateboaring sometimes, play video games (in moderation), watch lots of movies, read books, surf the web, work on small software side-projects, build things for use around the house, hang out with friends, drink beer, etc...
The upshot is, I've got a ton of interests, and I'm constantly faced with the dilemma of how to spend my time. On any given night, there are half a dozen things I'd like to do. I think the biggest piece of advice I could give would be to go easy on yourself if you can't find the time to do all of the things you want to do. Stick to a few things, and if you find yourself getting bogged down, where things are no longer enjoyable, scale it back a bit and remember to enjoy life. If you haven't already found out, there are a lot of people who are in a huge goddamn hurry throughout their lives, rushing around and ignoring all kinds of things in order to reach their "goals". Life can be great for you, especially since you're talented and skilled in many ways. Just take the time to enjoy it, give yourself the time to grow and change, and get the most out of your experiences. It's only an opinion, but I believe that as soon as a person takes that plunge into hyperactivity (doing eighty things simultaneously), that's when you really start to miss out on what makes life cool. Just have fun, enjoy your talents, keep yourself entertained and interested, and keep exploring and learning. I've been doing that for the past 15 years, and have absolutely no regrets at all.
So should architects stop doing structural analysis? Should car manufacturer's quit doing crash tests? I think the point of any kind of design or product analysis is to verify that it is robust and reliable. Why should it be any different for software?
... which they will get with the 10D's all-metal body. The Digital Rebel does has some kind of plastic body, and seems less sturdy/durable.
I'm far from a professional, but I've heard about people hacking their Rebel's to unlock the 10D feature set for a while, yet I would still rather own a camera built out of a solid piece of metal and not some plastic/composite body.
To your point about professionals wanting fully functional, fully supported equipment (not hacked), I would expect they'd also want the most durable options out there.
When they pull up the address of my PO Box, I'll just shrug it off. Sure, my mailing address information is shared left and right (and without my consent), but at least I have a layer of abstraction between my physical residence and the mailing address people associate with me, so this scare tactic stuff ("they know where you are!") won't matter. It will have to be changed to, "they know where your postal mail is delivered!".
I first got a PO Box address in 2002, and the only thing I regret is that I didn't get one sooner. The UPS Store (formerly Mailboxes, Etc.) rents PO boxes out, too, and offer lots of other perks over the straight US Postal variety. For instance, you can call the store and ask them if you got any mail today, they'll check it and let you know, saving you the trip.
I lived in Wellington, New Zealand for a while, and I sure hope this guy is using this to steal access from somebody else, not to share his bandwidth with other people. Internet connectivity was very expensive down there, and metered (we had dsl through Telstra). Even the much-hyped CityLink wireless service is pay-as-you-go. But with his $5 setup, this guy can scan around his neighborhood until he finds somebody with an open network, and presto! Free 'net access.
I remember a few years ago, seeing a bunch of high-end wrist watches that charged up through regular motion while wearing the watch. Or you could just flick your wrist a few times to store some extra energy. I think one of them was called "Kinetic" or something clever like that.
I wonder if there's any possibility for motion-charging batteries to succeed as a power source for soldiers. I admit I didn't rtfa, but obviously the overall power requirements would be relevant to the success of something like this.
All projects are an exercise in scheduling, and something is always bound to fall of the radar given the real-world time constraints. In my experience, the right thing to do is get a few smart people together to isolate any problem areas of the product, and try to determine whether that code might produce performance bottlenecks in high-demand situations. If you find any warning areas, throw your limited resources there. Don't fret too much about the rest of the product.
In the business world, you have to satisfy market demands and thus cannot take an endless amount of time to produce a highly optimized product. However, unless you are Microsoft, it is very difficult to succeed by quickly shoving a slow pile of crap out the door and calling it "version 1".
So where do you optimize? Where do you concentrate your limited amount of time before you miss the window of opportunity for your product?
I know plenty of folks in academia who would scoff at what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyway... just because something could be faster, doesn't mean it has to be. If you could spend X hours or Y days tweaking a piece of code to run faster, would it be worth it? Not necessarily. It depends on several things, and there's no really good formula, each case ought to be evaluated individually. For instance, if you're talking about a nightly maintenance task that runs between 2am and 4am when nobody is on the system, resource consumption doesn't matter, etc., then why bother making it run faster? If you have an answer, then good for you, but maybe you don't and should thus leave that 2 hour maintenanc task alone, spend your time doing something else.
For people who are really into performance optimization, I say get into hardware design or academia, because the rest of the business world doesn't really seem to make time for "doing things right" (just an observation, not my opinion).
From the article:
"The salaries of entry level patent examiners presently range from $32,819 to $70,959. Overtime is strongly encouraged after several months of experience is accrued, and it is not unusual for a junior examiner with three or four years experience to make more than $100,000 annually with overtime and bonuses."
Sounds like they're trying pretty hard to entice people to become patent officers, because the pay scale seems abnormally high for a governmental job. Starting salaries up to $70k per year? Geeez.... Or maybe the salary range is required because the job sucks so much.
"What more could a cheap, impatient Spielberg wannabe ask for?"
/."
/. readers, I'm sure it won't take long to bring his server to its knees.)
how about this?
"extra bandwidth to handle the impending server doom after somebody posted my page on
(in all fairness, his site loaded pretty quickly for me, but given the voracious behavior of
"...bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles..."
Dammit, why are marketing/business people so dense? One of the things that's appealing about buying music online is that you only get the songs you want, and none of the songs you don't want. I've spent about $100 at iTMS, but that's only because I can buy one track here and one track there. If they take that away and force me to pay more and/or get extra shitty songs that I don't fscking want, I'll be annoyed as hell and probably just stop buying tracks individually.
shouldn't this post be titled "Walking, Buses, and Trains to Save Stupid Drivers"...?
From this article on the PowerPC 970:
"The PowerPC 970 design starts by remapping one of the POWER4 processor cores to 0.13-micron technology and increasing its frequency up to 1.8 GHz. Next, one of the L2 cache banks was resized to 512 KB. These POWER4 features were then complemented with a vector-processing engine and a redesigned bus interface to keep the 970 fed with data. The result is a higher-performance single-core POWER4 derivative that includes enhanced multimedia processing on a smaller, lower-power die."
I imagine what they really mean is that there can be up to 200 instructions in flight in the pipeline at a time.
Actually, I believe the wording is intended to communicate the notion of vector processing. Rather than doing the "fetch operand, perform operation, store result" repeated again and again, vector processing allows you to fetch a bunch of operands in a row, then perform a single operation to that vector of data (that is, the data you just fetched), and then store all the results. It turns out it's much faster to do data processing in this fashion.
Supercomputers have done this for years, and it's one of the key ingredients in creating a system which is extremely fast at doing repetitive operations.
Note that the benefits of vector processing are minimal if you're not processing the same type of data again and again. For those cases, a reasonably fast processor is sufficient. It's when you get into repetitive stuff (for an average home user, this might be decoding DVD data) that you'll see the real performance benefits of vector processing.
So this isn't about Orange County? I did the "read a few words to get the gist of the article" and got all excited that J.B. made it onto /.