I stopped by GameStop trying to get a second nunchuk for Wii Boxing and he said the second wave of Wii shipments was sold out in 10 minutes flat. He's had several people return PS3's now that they aren't getting the prices they expected on ebay only to have the next transaction in the register be someone buying the PS3, to try to sell on the internet.
I find it strangely curious and sad that the holiday season has spawned a new industry of parasites. People who will buy up whatever the hot toy is only to put it up for an online auction trying to make a massive profit off someone who couldn't buy it in the store because everyone who bought one got it with the intention of selling it on ebay.
The answer to your question is: Your Wii is now up for auction on the internet, once supply picks up, it will be returned to the store after its temporarily inflated value goes back down.
We did the same thing with our installer when we first had a beta site running Java on Linux. We rolled our own RPM file that would install everything in our directory so it was impossible for the customer to screw it up. Of course I still got support calls about Java on Linux on my personal cell phone at 11 pm on a Saturday evening from that customer, but after 10 minutes of digging it comes out "Well its not really for your product, that works great, which is why I'm calling you to get this other application working."
Actually even with wireless connected you have to manually initiate the update by going to the channel. You may be blocked from using the channel without the update though, but when the channel doesn't load you get 2 giant buttons at the bottom of your screen:
(Wii Menu) (System Update)
Or something to that effect. I just updated my firmware 2 nights ago and I swear my the remotes are more accurate then the firmware it shipped with (that or I'm getting used to them).
Its my understanding that the hardware is unlikely to change between Draft-802.11n and the final 802.11n spec. Once the spec is finalized you'll need to update your firmware. I believe thats what Apple and Intel are counting on. Apple is in bed with Intel at the moment so I highly doubt the centrino chipset will be incompatible with the one Apple put in the C2d MacBook Pros.
Spoken plainly as one who doesn't understand the job market.
The heart of most Computer Science *jobs* is in "painting forms" and "playing with DB rows".
Funny, I graduated in '03 and have been gainfully employed doing embedded programming for the last 5 years. Between contracts I'm beating the head hunters off with a stick because they can't find anyone capable of doing C and Assembly for embedded targets. You can keep your "painting forms and playing with DB rows," I'll stick to safety critical real time applications.
I was just thinking it may be more appropriate to change the Novell icon from the big red 'N' to a picture of Admiral Ackbar. I don't think it would be necessary to caption it with "Its a Trap," that internet meme has been around for a while. The Bill Gates Borg icon could use an update as well.
Last I checked the president doesn't get to introduce legislation. Maybe he could make a War Time Executive Order since the enemy could compromise the security of the nation by implanting back doors in open source software.
I'd say the release of Vista is less relevant than the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but more relevant than another point release of the Linux Kernel.
A better faster linux kernel is a dog bites man story.
Microsoft finally getting another OS out the door 5 years after Windows XP after countless delays and feature killfests is more in the realm of man bites dog.
The article claimed it didn't have Voice Support for Google Talk. Lack of Voice Support for any protocol (Yahoo, MSN, etc...) is a real drawback to using GAIM for me. The only voice chat that anyone I know uses that's supported on Linux is Skype.
Part of what makes you an asset is the ability to create new intellectual property. The fact you contributed to many innovative patents at your last job is a credit to your ability, not a litigation liability. Unless you've been hired to do exactly what you did at your last job for the new job, at which point your typecasting yourself in my opinion. Best to keep yourself flexible by always doing new things, and doing them well. Variety is the spice of life, which is why I like consulting.
Not true. If he made it freely available online, they probably wouldn't read it. By forcing them to spend their money on it, they now have a vested interest in listening to it at least once so as to not waste even more money. By missing a lecture you're blowing something around $5 - $50 bucks depending on what school you go to. Most kids don't realize how much money they waste by skipping class. At least this way he's increasing their chances of actually reviewing the material and doing well in his course.
Lets say he sells 50 lectures on a good week, thats only an extra $125, he's not charging an impoverishing amount, just enough to make them appreciate what they're getting. Its by no means extortion, he's not really making a profit, and odds are the students will get more out of it. Its a Win, Win. Whats the point of paying for it and not listening to it, I had tons of professors make all sorts of stuff available online I never touched, but they never charged me to download it either. I think its a good lesson for the kids which will help them realize the value of their education.
ISO9000 is just part of it, and ISO9000 audits are a joke. Right now I'm testing avionics code, tracability of requirements is of course big. To use a 3rd party tool in verification that tool must be verified to the same standard that the project is being verified against. So for Level C code, all 3rd party tools must be verified for DO-178B Level C, and for Level A projects, the tools have to be verified to Level A as well.
There are various loopholes as well. To speed things up writing C unit tests for an embedded target, I wrote a test code generator. The reason my generator doesn't need to be certified, is the output still needs to be reviewed by a human. Since I'm only generating code templates, the tool generating that source does not need to be certified. If I were generating all the test code and not reviewing it, it would need to be a 'qualified tool' which means it needs to be verified. I hope that helps.
The article concluded that he refused the Field's Medal because of a lack of ethics surrounding who is credited with the work.
"As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice," Perelman explained. "Either to make some ugly thing"--a fuss about the math community's lack of integrity--"or, if I didn't do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit."
The article, while quite lengthy, describes how some of the Chinese, Yau and those who work for him, have been "fixing" people's proofs and claiming them as original work. Yau tried to do it again with Perelman's proof and got shot down, again. Considering that Yau is still a respected member of the Math community, Perelman does not want to belong to that community. It is nice to see some people in this world still have some integrity. Perelman refuses to make a fuss out of this, he's not in it for his own gain.
The only thing I find really fishy about this is their lack of product.
If they really did make a break through, why not build a few power plants and start selling energy at the going rate per Watt. Since their energy is "Free" then after the initial investment of the power plant, everything is pure profit. Power a few cities like this and then invite the scientists to evaluate the tech a few years down the line after the rising energy costs have already made you richer than you'll ever need to be.
The fact they're not capitalizing on this discovery makes me suspicious. People acting altruistic in a position where they can legitimately make astronomical profit in a capitalistic society makes my hackles go up. Especially when they're asking for money.
It would be pointless to name a bridge after Chuck Norris. If they did no one would dare use it, because everyone knows that no one crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
I've actually had code reviews be very helpful, it really depends on who's running the show. The last formal review of my code was done by 5 senior developers, myself being a junior developer writing baseline code for a new feature in an existing product. Basically they reviewed my code on their own time, followed by a 2 hour meeting in which each issue from all 5 reviewers was brought up on an overhead projector. The types of things I got hit for were things you don't learn in school about embedded programming. It was mostly about how to save a few bytes here and there with C code, since my design had already passed a design review a month previous.
The issues that were raised had nothing to do with whitespace or style, but mostly when to use MACROs instead of functions, which functions should be inline, etc... Of course for a quality code review, you need high quality reviewers who conduct themselves professionally. Working as a consultant there was a treat, on a team of several hundred developers on multiple continents, the development had just the right amount of red tape to support that many developers, testers, field techs, etc...
Thanks for posting that article, I just made it my homepage on my web browser.
Its pretty funny the timing on this article, since I've been struggling with a few of these problems, after having only worked as a programmer for a few years now. I've been really focusing on pinpointing small changes I can make to live a healthier and happier existence.
The first change I made after I graduated college a few years back, I kicked my Mountain Dew habit and switched to Diet Coke, its still soda, but at least its not rotting my teeth and raising my blood sugar to levels which would make me at high risk for adult onset diabetes.
The next change I've been making is to actually cook food and snack on fruit rather than eat fast food and junk food. Its difficult when you work 12 hour days, but I find it relaxing to go from a very precise environment to one with a much greater tolerance for error, a more right brain rather than left brain activity.
What I'm still trying to figure out is how to stabilize my sleep schedule. Its like I have no circadian rhythym. I find myself up until 4 am some nights on work nights when I know I should be going to sleep at 11pm, but for some reason I can never manage to make it to bed on time. This is a serious problem, at the beginning of a week, Sunday night, I can get to bed by 11am and be at work by 8am. By Weds, I find myself up until 3 am and getting to work just before 11am. This makes the time at night I actually do sleep vary tremendously over the course of the week.
I think it may tie in with procrastination, which is why I'm grateful you posted that link. I'm usually an upbeat sort of guy, but when my sleep pattern and my work habits get out of control to the point where it effects my job security I find myself getting depressed, calling myself lazy and worthless, etc... Of course, being depressed takes away all my energy which makes it hard to sleep on a normal schedule. Until reading that article, I thought it may be attributed to a media addiction, since I most often find myself watching television, playing video games, or just chatting with people on IM. The main thing I took away from that article is that I have been reinforcing these negative habits for a long time, longer than I've been smoking, and it will probably take just as long to break them. I'd been considering some pretty drastic measures, unfortunately, being a programmer, I can't put my computer in a closet or disconnect it from the internet since I need both those things to do my job. So seeing that article every time I open my web browser will hopefully help me break some of these bad habits.
I disagree with one main point this doctor makes about ADD though. I was diagnosed with ADD back in High School, when I first started taking ritalin my grades went from A's and D's to straight A's. Its a real phenomenom and while I'm not sure if meds are the best way to treat it, they are effective. ADD is a duality of symptoms though, first and most commonly known is lack of focus, the second lesser known one is hyper-focus. Hyper-focus is what allows ADD sufferers to sit and play a video game or read a book for 10 hours straight and not notice the passage of time. This mainly applies to activities of interest which in many geek cases includes programming. Programming is a lot like solving puzzles for hours on end, which is something that comes as easily to me as playing video games. So saying I don't have ADD because I can tinker with code and build a computer program for 5 hours uninterrupted does not mean I am not ADD. I still forget to put my bills in the mail during my lunch break, and many other tasks are very difficult to focus on or remember to do.
Too late, ever flown in something made by boeing or airbus. I've worked for subcontractors for both. Also you captured my intent when you corrected me, I should know better than to post before I've had coffee in the morning.
Slashdot Mirror
My parents sold all our old gaming systems at a garage sale. I'm just waiting for some decent virtual console games to be released.
I stopped by GameStop trying to get a second nunchuk for Wii Boxing and he said the second wave of Wii shipments was sold out in 10 minutes flat. He's had several people return PS3's now that they aren't getting the prices they expected on ebay only to have the next transaction in the register be someone buying the PS3, to try to sell on the internet.
I find it strangely curious and sad that the holiday season has spawned a new industry of parasites. People who will buy up whatever the hot toy is only to put it up for an online auction trying to make a massive profit off someone who couldn't buy it in the store because everyone who bought one got it with the intention of selling it on ebay.
The answer to your question is:
Your Wii is now up for auction on the internet, once supply picks up, it will be returned to the store after its temporarily inflated value goes back down.
We did the same thing with our installer when we first had a beta site running Java on Linux. We rolled our own RPM file that would install everything in our directory so it was impossible for the customer to screw it up. Of course I still got support calls about Java on Linux on my personal cell phone at 11 pm on a Saturday evening from that customer, but after 10 minutes of digging it comes out "Well its not really for your product, that works great, which is why I'm calling you to get this other application working."
Actually even with wireless connected you have to manually initiate the update by going to the channel. You may be blocked from using the channel without the update though, but when the channel doesn't load you get 2 giant buttons at the bottom of your screen: (Wii Menu) (System Update) Or something to that effect. I just updated my firmware 2 nights ago and I swear my the remotes are more accurate then the firmware it shipped with (that or I'm getting used to them).
Its my understanding that the hardware is unlikely to change between Draft-802.11n and the final 802.11n spec. Once the spec is finalized you'll need to update your firmware. I believe thats what Apple and Intel are counting on. Apple is in bed with Intel at the moment so I highly doubt the centrino chipset will be incompatible with the one Apple put in the C2d MacBook Pros.
Funny, I graduated in '03 and have been gainfully employed doing embedded programming for the last 5 years. Between contracts I'm beating the head hunters off with a stick because they can't find anyone capable of doing C and Assembly for embedded targets. You can keep your "painting forms and playing with DB rows," I'll stick to safety critical real time applications.
I was just thinking it may be more appropriate to change the Novell icon from the big red 'N' to a picture of Admiral Ackbar. I don't think it would be necessary to caption it with "Its a Trap," that internet meme has been around for a while. The Bill Gates Borg icon could use an update as well.
Last I checked the president doesn't get to introduce legislation. Maybe he could make a War Time Executive Order since the enemy could compromise the security of the nation by implanting back doors in open source software.
I'd say the release of Vista is less relevant than the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but more relevant than another point release of the Linux Kernel.
A better faster linux kernel is a dog bites man story.
Microsoft finally getting another OS out the door 5 years after Windows XP after countless delays and feature killfests is more in the realm of man bites dog.
I wish I had a newsletter. *sigh*
The article stated they are attempting to ban modders, which is not the same as able to accurately detect and ban modded XBOX's
The article claimed it didn't have Voice Support for Google Talk. Lack of Voice Support for any protocol (Yahoo, MSN, etc...) is a real drawback to using GAIM for me. The only voice chat that anyone I know uses that's supported on Linux is Skype.
Part of what makes you an asset is the ability to create new intellectual property. The fact you contributed to many innovative patents at your last job is a credit to your ability, not a litigation liability. Unless you've been hired to do exactly what you did at your last job for the new job, at which point your typecasting yourself in my opinion. Best to keep yourself flexible by always doing new things, and doing them well. Variety is the spice of life, which is why I like consulting.
Not true. If he made it freely available online, they probably wouldn't read it. By forcing them to spend their money on it, they now have a vested interest in listening to it at least once so as to not waste even more money. By missing a lecture you're blowing something around $5 - $50 bucks depending on what school you go to. Most kids don't realize how much money they waste by skipping class. At least this way he's increasing their chances of actually reviewing the material and doing well in his course.
Lets say he sells 50 lectures on a good week, thats only an extra $125, he's not charging an impoverishing amount, just enough to make them appreciate what they're getting. Its by no means extortion, he's not really making a profit, and odds are the students will get more out of it. Its a Win, Win. Whats the point of paying for it and not listening to it, I had tons of professors make all sorts of stuff available online I never touched, but they never charged me to download it either. I think its a good lesson for the kids which will help them realize the value of their education.
ISO9000 is just part of it, and ISO9000 audits are a joke. Right now I'm testing avionics code, tracability of requirements is of course big. To use a 3rd party tool in verification that tool must be verified to the same standard that the project is being verified against. So for Level C code, all 3rd party tools must be verified for DO-178B Level C, and for Level A projects, the tools have to be verified to Level A as well. There are various loopholes as well. To speed things up writing C unit tests for an embedded target, I wrote a test code generator. The reason my generator doesn't need to be certified, is the output still needs to be reviewed by a human. Since I'm only generating code templates, the tool generating that source does not need to be certified. If I were generating all the test code and not reviewing it, it would need to be a 'qualified tool' which means it needs to be verified. I hope that helps.
That's OK. She uses Google Search.
The only thing I find really fishy about this is their lack of product.
If they really did make a break through, why not build a few power plants and start selling energy at the going rate per Watt. Since their energy is "Free" then after the initial investment of the power plant, everything is pure profit. Power a few cities like this and then invite the scientists to evaluate the tech a few years down the line after the rising energy costs have already made you richer than you'll ever need to be.
The fact they're not capitalizing on this discovery makes me suspicious. People acting altruistic in a position where they can legitimately make astronomical profit in a capitalistic society makes my hackles go up. Especially when they're asking for money.
It would be pointless to name a bridge after Chuck Norris. If they did no one would dare use it, because everyone knows that no one crosses Chuck Norris and lives.
I've actually had code reviews be very helpful, it really depends on who's running the show. The last formal review of my code was done by 5 senior developers, myself being a junior developer writing baseline code for a new feature in an existing product. Basically they reviewed my code on their own time, followed by a 2 hour meeting in which each issue from all 5 reviewers was brought up on an overhead projector. The types of things I got hit for were things you don't learn in school about embedded programming. It was mostly about how to save a few bytes here and there with C code, since my design had already passed a design review a month previous.
The issues that were raised had nothing to do with whitespace or style, but mostly when to use MACROs instead of functions, which functions should be inline, etc... Of course for a quality code review, you need high quality reviewers who conduct themselves professionally. Working as a consultant there was a treat, on a team of several hundred developers on multiple continents, the development had just the right amount of red tape to support that many developers, testers, field techs, etc...
Thanks for posting that article, I just made it my homepage on my web browser.
Its pretty funny the timing on this article, since I've been struggling with a few of these problems, after having only worked as a programmer for a few years now. I've been really focusing on pinpointing small changes I can make to live a healthier and happier existence.
The first change I made after I graduated college a few years back, I kicked my Mountain Dew habit and switched to Diet Coke, its still soda, but at least its not rotting my teeth and raising my blood sugar to levels which would make me at high risk for adult onset diabetes.
The next change I've been making is to actually cook food and snack on fruit rather than eat fast food and junk food. Its difficult when you work 12 hour days, but I find it relaxing to go from a very precise environment to one with a much greater tolerance for error, a more right brain rather than left brain activity.
What I'm still trying to figure out is how to stabilize my sleep schedule. Its like I have no circadian rhythym. I find myself up until 4 am some nights on work nights when I know I should be going to sleep at 11pm, but for some reason I can never manage to make it to bed on time. This is a serious problem, at the beginning of a week, Sunday night, I can get to bed by 11am and be at work by 8am. By Weds, I find myself up until 3 am and getting to work just before 11am. This makes the time at night I actually do sleep vary tremendously over the course of the week.
I think it may tie in with procrastination, which is why I'm grateful you posted that link. I'm usually an upbeat sort of guy, but when my sleep pattern and my work habits get out of control to the point where it effects my job security I find myself getting depressed, calling myself lazy and worthless, etc... Of course, being depressed takes away all my energy which makes it hard to sleep on a normal schedule. Until reading that article, I thought it may be attributed to a media addiction, since I most often find myself watching television, playing video games, or just chatting with people on IM. The main thing I took away from that article is that I have been reinforcing these negative habits for a long time, longer than I've been smoking, and it will probably take just as long to break them. I'd been considering some pretty drastic measures, unfortunately, being a programmer, I can't put my computer in a closet or disconnect it from the internet since I need both those things to do my job. So seeing that article every time I open my web browser will hopefully help me break some of these bad habits.
I disagree with one main point this doctor makes about ADD though. I was diagnosed with ADD back in High School, when I first started taking ritalin my grades went from A's and D's to straight A's. Its a real phenomenom and while I'm not sure if meds are the best way to treat it, they are effective. ADD is a duality of symptoms though, first and most commonly known is lack of focus, the second lesser known one is hyper-focus. Hyper-focus is what allows ADD sufferers to sit and play a video game or read a book for 10 hours straight and not notice the passage of time. This mainly applies to activities of interest which in many geek cases includes programming. Programming is a lot like solving puzzles for hours on end, which is something that comes as easily to me as playing video games. So saying I don't have ADD because I can tinker with code and build a computer program for 5 hours uninterrupted does not mean I am not ADD. I still forget to put my bills in the mail during my lunch break, and many other tasks are very difficult to focus on or remember to do.
Note to self: don't write code for airplanes or post to slashdot before morning coffee. ^_^
Too late, ever flown in something made by boeing or airbus. I've worked for subcontractors for both. Also you captured my intent when you corrected me, I should know better than to post before I've had coffee in the morning.