VAX's just worked. They did what the documentation said they would do with very little errata. They were stable, easy to program.
Back in 1990 we were having trouble getting any other network to really work for our group on a global scale. Decnet worked for us - we were able to move our operational data around the world (ESA, NASA, NASDA) easily.
They were not cheap. They cost 5-10 times as much as rival Unix mini-computers per unit of computation power. That is what did them in.
I respectfully disagree. It's certainly not a general purpose language. But one can arange commands in a logical sequence to produce a desired outcome. That pretty much programming as we all knew it as beginners.
Learning HTML would be a good way for her to get some basics down. After she bumped into the limits of HTML maybe she would see why someone would go for VB or perl script.
CS degrees really don't teach you how to program. Getting a BSCS shows you have some analytical skills, some writing skills, and enough intelligence (or stubborness) to finish a college degree.
There are mathematicians that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag - but all good programmers seem to have some faculty with math. I think the analytical skills needed to debug a nasty bit of code are pretty similar to those needed to constuct a complex proof.
I have a an MS in Math - I was mostly interested in numerical methods and digital Time Series Analysis so I was doing some programming. The math department was a small one. One sememster I needed a class and the only thing available was Database so I took it.
The class consisted mostly of doing "proofs" in relational algebra. Being a math major I was good at this. I think I had to write a very basic SQL select statement - but I learned almost no SQL. This teacher was interested in theoretical underpinnings of relational database. Getting a A in this class started a 20 year career in database programming - although it should be clear that I got almost no practical skill in the class. Within 5 years I was a DBA of a database in which each row represented hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's the thing you run into in the University setting in Computer Science. These people don't program; they write papers for journals. What they know best is how to do theoretical CS. This is a cool thing to be exposed to - it gives you a view of what people are working on and what's next. And math is the window to this view. But it doesn't teach you anything about programming.
Bottom Line - I haven't done an integral at work ever, I did some spherical trig (because I had the math degree) once 15 years ago, and a little 9th grade algebra from time to time. You wont use math to program most applications. However, math makes you a better analyst. (however it does nothing for your spelling)
You are overlooking the fact that the water expands when it warms up
In the case of Ice -> water it contracts. Ice is less dense than liquid water - which is why it floats. Liquid water does change desity as it warms up, but not very much. Averaged with all the temperature changes of all the oceans of the world this is not going to be a significant factor.
In order for sea levels to rise ice that isn't currently floating would have to melt. And it is, most of the glaciers in North America are loosing mass as is the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Antartic Ice sheet is loosing its Ice shelf in clumps (something that happened in the 60's in the artic).
But that's precisely why home insulation, no matter how much you put in it, is essentially worthless.
Spend few winters in the arctic and you'll realize how patently silly the above statement is. If you have R9 walls, frost will form on the inside of your walls; if you have R26 it wont. Extra insulation is only worthless if you place no worth on several hundred gallons of heating oil per year.
-
I saw a comment from the president of a game company a few months back. He said that his company would make full use of 64 bit when it came out. In about 16 months when these systems are more common, windows for AMD64 is out, the 64 bit video drivers are out and patched, and software development cycle pumps out a product you'll see some game titles come out that barely run on a 32 bit machine but fully scream on a 64 bit machine.
The new game titles that are coming out soon (half life2 for instance) will barely run on a 700MHz system. I don't know if that is justification for purchasing a $700 cpu when a $160 one is perfectly adequate. There is a large market for people who are willing to spent $3000 on something that is esentially a game console.
The best news about all of this is that in 2 years we'll be able to buy these for 30% of what they cost today. When your 700 Duron finally releases its magic smoke you'll be able to replace it with an XP 2000+ for about $50.
One of the subjects that really put it all together for me was Linear Algebra. It doesn't require calculus so much as a certain mathematical sophistication. The book that made it interesting for me was "linear algebra and its applications" by Gilbert Strang
I found that work was work. And it didn't matter so much what you do. Having a "Great" job doesn't make ALL the difference in life.
I started a microbrewery in Fairbanks, AK. It was hard work for a long time - sometimes puncuated by periods of time waiting for bueracracy. It was very satisfying to see your dream get up and running.
There's a nice story about it here: http://lemming.polarnet.com/NewLemming/Inte r/hal.h tml
But it turns out that although I can make beer I'm no good at marketing and the brewery in its best year came close to breaking even and in its worst years wasn't even close. It was heart breaking to watch it go under.
I know if I hadn't tried I would have wondered my whole life what would have been. But dreams may serve their function best as unrealized things to aspire to. I spent about 3 years without dreams - at least big ones.
Now I'm back in IT - currently drawing unemployment and trying hard to get my next contract. And I'm certainly happier than I was for much of the time my brewery was running.
Data miners use the GUIDs in these cookies to see how often a given user comes back to the site. If everybody set their cookies to expire it would drive them up a wall.
Either that or we should all standardize on one MSN cookie so we all have the same GUID.
I cam across my old "Starting Forth" book the other day.
We used it to run lab equipment in 1984.
I was convinced that it would be a major player in programming languages - it seemed to have all the advantages of C and lisp. Maybe thats why it didn't catch on.
I was disapointed that you didn't get much information for your $10. I don't refer to the tech tree - I just ask my science advosor for the big picture. The tin box is nice but hardly adds to my Civ experience. I haven't had time to watch the making video yet - must play Civ 3.
If they could find a few thousand employees running Seti@Home they could sue them for a half million each. That would put a big dent in that $4 billion.
I own a dietzgen metal slide rule and a Post bamboo slide rule.
I was in the last class in high school to learn how to use a slide rule in chemistry. When I went to engineering school I was in the first class to require a scientific calculator.
As a freshman I carried my slide rule with me in my pack as calculators were still to expensive and a little delicate to be walking around with. My Econ prof asked the class if someone would divide two numbers for him. A few students pulled out calculators as I pulled out my sliderule. Natuarlly I had the answer first - sliderules are so much faster than calculators - so I answered his question. He turned to thank me when He stopped mid sentence to ask me "What is this?" - I told him it was an energy efficient calculator. "What will they think of next;)"
Koolance water cooled cases. They go for about $200 but they're much quieter. The power supply and CPU fans are replaced with water blocks. There are two fans but they are large fans that turn slowly and therefore make less noise.
Slashdot Mirror
... how much does a IBM 4758 cost?
IE is this something that small orginizations can do or do you have to be able to print your own money?
VAX's just worked. They did what the documentation said they would do with very little errata. They were stable, easy to program.
Back in 1990 we were having trouble getting any other network to really work for our group on a global scale. Decnet worked for us - we were able to move our operational data around the world (ESA, NASA, NASDA) easily.
They were not cheap. They cost 5-10 times as much as rival Unix mini-computers per unit of computation power. That is what did them in.
Back in the days of VAX's computing was more communal. We would place the mouse on ouiga board and we all put our fingers on it ...
It's coming, be patient. AMD has to let your wallet recover from buying the dual core chip before they bring out the 4 core units.
"Honest dear, we need 4 2.4 GHz opteron processors to check our email - our e-mail client is outlook.net"
Maybe he should check out this. It would allow him to combine your advice with his game addiction.
I respectfully disagree. It's certainly not a general purpose language. But one can arange commands in a logical sequence to produce a desired outcome. That pretty much programming as we all knew it as beginners.
Learning HTML would be a good way for her to get some basics down. After she bumped into the limits of HTML maybe she would see why someone would go for VB or perl script.
CS degrees really don't teach you how to program. Getting a BSCS shows you have some analytical skills, some writing skills, and enough intelligence (or stubborness) to finish a college degree.
There are mathematicians that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag - but all good programmers seem to have some faculty with math. I think the analytical skills needed to debug a nasty bit of code are pretty similar to those needed to constuct a complex proof.
I have a an MS in Math - I was mostly interested in numerical methods and digital Time Series Analysis so I was doing some programming. The math department was a small one. One sememster I needed a class and the only thing available was Database so I took it.
The class consisted mostly of doing "proofs" in relational algebra. Being a math major I was good at this. I think I had to write a very basic SQL select statement - but I learned almost no SQL. This teacher was interested in theoretical underpinnings of relational database. Getting a A in this class started a 20 year career in database programming - although it should be clear that I got almost no practical skill in the class. Within 5 years I was a DBA of a database in which each row represented hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's the thing you run into in the University setting in Computer Science. These people don't program; they write papers for journals. What they know best is how to do theoretical CS. This is a cool thing to be exposed to - it gives you a view of what people are working on and what's next. And math is the window to this view. But it doesn't teach you anything about programming.
Bottom Line - I haven't done an integral at work ever, I did some spherical trig (because I had the math degree) once 15 years ago, and a little 9th grade algebra from time to time. You wont use math to program most applications. However, math makes you a better analyst. (however it does nothing for your spelling)
You are overlooking the fact that the water expands when it warms up
In the case of Ice -> water it contracts. Ice is less dense than liquid water - which is why it floats. Liquid water does change desity as it warms up, but not very much. Averaged with all the temperature changes of all the oceans of the world this is not going to be a significant factor.
In order for sea levels to rise ice that isn't currently floating would have to melt. And it is, most of the glaciers in North America are loosing mass as is the Greenland Ice Sheet. The Antartic Ice sheet is loosing its Ice shelf in clumps (something that happened in the 60's in the artic).
but do they actually realize they are trading accuracy?
I don't think most Rush Limbaugh (for instance) listeners care if its accurate. It supports "their" point of view and that's all that matters.
I think that some people do care how accurate their news source is - and they will gravitate to sources that have good reputations.
I used to work here. Most of Alaska and surrounding environs is available at 10m:
http://www.asf.alaska.edu/
-
I saw a comment from the president of a game company a few months back. He said that his company would make full use of 64 bit when it came out. In about 16 months when these systems are more common, windows for AMD64 is out, the 64 bit video drivers are out and patched, and software development cycle pumps out a product you'll see some game titles come out that barely run on a 32 bit machine but fully scream on a 64 bit machine.
The new game titles that are coming out soon (half life2 for instance) will barely run on a 700MHz system. I don't know if that is justification for purchasing a $700 cpu when a $160 one is perfectly adequate. There is a large market for people who are willing to spent $3000 on something that is esentially a game console.
The best news about all of this is that in 2 years we'll be able to buy these for 30% of what they cost today. When your 700 Duron finally releases its magic smoke you'll be able to replace it with an XP 2000+ for about $50.
In the words of the immortal John Candy:
"If these people told you 'Wolverines make good house pets' would you believe that too?"
A nice bottle of scotch (say Mcallan 18) and a Linux Fish for my car.
One of the subjects that really put it all together for me was Linear Algebra. It doesn't require calculus so much as a certain mathematical sophistication. The book that made it interesting for me was "linear algebra and its applications" by Gilbert Strang
I found that work was work. And it didn't matter
e r/hal.h tml
so much what you do. Having a "Great" job doesn't
make ALL the difference in life.
I started a microbrewery in Fairbanks, AK. It was hard work for a long time - sometimes puncuated by periods of time waiting for bueracracy. It was very satisfying to see your dream get up and running.
There's a nice story about it here:
http://lemming.polarnet.com/NewLemming/Int
But it turns out that although I can make beer I'm no good at marketing and the brewery in its best year came close to breaking even and in its worst years wasn't even close. It was heart breaking to watch it go under.
I know if I hadn't tried I would have wondered my whole life what would have been. But dreams may serve their function best as unrealized things to
aspire to. I spent about 3 years without dreams - at least big ones.
Now I'm back in IT - currently drawing unemployment and trying hard to get my next contract. And I'm certainly happier than I was for much of the time my brewery was running.
You could call it the North Pole and name your
servers after Santa and the reindeer.
Data miners use the GUIDs in these cookies to see
how often a given user comes back to the site. If
everybody set their cookies to expire it would drive
them up a wall.
Either that or we should all standardize on one MSN
cookie so we all have the same GUID.
Alice Hill can be found at: www.alicehill.com
I cam across my old "Starting Forth" book the other day.
We used it to run lab equipment in 1984.
I was convinced that it would be a major player in programming languages - it seemed to have all the advantages of C and lisp. Maybe thats why it didn't catch on.
I was disapointed that you didn't get much information for your $10. I don't refer to the tech tree - I just ask my science advosor for the big picture. The tin box is nice but hardly adds to my Civ experience. I haven't had time to watch the making video yet - must play Civ 3.
/. article I've read today
This is the only
Is John Ashcroft being infuenced by Microsoft's $10,000 donation to his senate campaign?
It seems that you as a lobbiest would have a unique insight on this.
If they could find a few thousand employees running Seti@Home they could sue them for a half million each. That would put a big dent in that $4 billion.
I own a dietzgen metal slide rule and a Post bamboo slide rule.
;)"
I was in the last class in high school to learn how to use a slide rule in chemistry. When I went to engineering school I was in the first class to require a scientific calculator.
As a freshman I carried my slide rule with me in my pack as calculators were still to expensive and a little delicate to be walking around with. My Econ prof asked the class if someone would divide two numbers for him. A few students pulled out calculators as I pulled out my sliderule. Natuarlly I had the answer first - sliderules are so much faster than calculators - so I answered his question. He turned to thank me when He stopped mid sentence to ask me "What is this?" - I told him it was an energy efficient calculator. "What will they think of next
Koolance water cooled cases. They go for about $200 but they're much quieter. The power supply and CPU fans are replaced with water blocks. There are two fans but they are large fans that turn slowly and therefore make less noise.