The current work that I did in C# is moving to Java. C#, as a language, is better then Java. However, we're part of a distributed application that uses SOAP. Java's SOAP support is much better then Mono's support; and in my opinion, much better then Microsoft's SOAP frameworks. We chose to move to Java because of our strong preference for SOAP.
C# really isn't a "write once, run everywhere" language like Java; it's really more of an improvement over C and C++. C# on Mono has a different set of APIs then C# on.Net. This really means that C# is a better choice if you don't need truly portable code, or if you can deal with having separate Mono and.Net portions of a program.
So as an ISV or IHV, do you deal with the randomly moving target that is Linux and its 140 distros, OR do you target something like one of the BSDs (Free/Net/Open) or Solaris. All of these projects actually have real coordination and goals.
Vindicated! It seems that HP just came out with their own custom Linux!
So as an ISV or IHV, do you deal with the randomly moving target that is Linux and its 140 distros, OR do you target something like one of the BSDs (Free/Net/Open) or Solaris. All of these projects actually have real coordination and goals.
I dunno, Apple wrote their own OS and they seem to be doing well! (Granted, developing for Apple is a pain compared to Windows, but that's another story!)
The real motivation, as I see it, for a company like Dell or HP to have their own version of Linux is to give themselves control over their own Desktop. Right now Microsoft still has a high level of control over the what Dell and HP can and can not put on their desktop.
No you're wrong. There's no requirement that NBC, FOX, CW, et cetera "have" to broadcast. They could just as easily decide to shutdown their transmitters and go completely cable. The reason they don't is because they still make a profit off antenna viewers.
Then why do they complain about the expense of running the analog antenna? I really don't see how your reply is relevant to my comment; I'm arguing that the remaining analog-only viewers would currently be in densely-populated low-income areas. They would only be able to support 1-2 analog channels. What does that have to do with the major networks deciding to go cable-only?
The mistake is using legislative means to force an upgrade in technology onto a market. The problems now are a consequence of the initial misguided decision made many years ago.
Not quite. It's more like "legislative means" delayed an upgrade in most cases. I think if we let free-markets prevail, by now we'd be down to 1-2 channels in dense low-income areas.
Sorry folks, Linus essentially conceded this just yesterday. There will never be a 'year of the Linux desktop' because there will never be a single Linux desktop. Nobody seems to want it - or even to want to try to get as close as possible. Not the various distros, not Linus, not a hell of a lot of Linux fans.
Of course ISV's still want it. Businesses with a need for low-cost IT want it. I want it. So do [some of] you.
Someday, it might be the "year of Ubantu." Or it might be the year of Dell's custom OS. I anticipate that a "Linux Desktop" will be like the "BSD Desktop" that Apple sells.
I can only imagine how many people are going to be confused by a slow, staggered changeover instead of the solid Feb. 17 deadline. Its kind of like ripping off a band aid on a hairy arm. Its a lot more painful if you do it slowly.
I would consider 3-10 years a "slow, staggered changeover." 3-4 months is more of a "we're turning it off now, and we really mean it... Yes, we really really really mean it."
The real mistake isn't the changeover date or lack of coupons; it's that every TV sold since 1998 should have had a big sticker declaring the changeover date.
Big question - did this happen on the Comcast SD digital tier, HD digital tier, the analog tier, or some combination? If it was both analog and digital SD, I would suspect a video router crosspoint misconfiguration. If it was just digital SD or digital HD, I would suspect a multiplexer misconfiguration.
The incident only happened on Comcast's network, and only on the analog channel. Comcast's feed comes from a fiber link to COX, which was fine.
Basically, it sounds like someone took a run-of-the-mill RF modulator*, plugged it into a grey-market amplifier, and then plugged it into the cable. It's a pretty good prank if they can get away with it!
*Those devices that let you use a DVD player with a TV that can only be hooked up to an antenna.
I would have agreed a few years ago, but the last two Superbowl matchups have been excellent, exciting games. For that matter I thought Springsteen did a great job with the halftime show, no gimmicks or voiceovers.
Yeah, the halftime shows used to really suck until the year after the "wardrobe malfunction" incident. Then they got good.
Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilizations in the Milky Way to ensure that you'll see one of them
Probability dictates that some galaxies will be more dense with civilizations then other galaxies. Furthermore, our existence is such a tiny blip in time that a society could exist slightly before or after us, yet we'd never get in contact.
What I really wonder is how likely we are to find a "space fossil," IE, evidence of life that is now extinct.
Seriously...I've asked as many low-income people I know or run into, and I've yet to find ANYbody that gets their TV through rabbit ears or a roof antenna.
That depends on where you live. I live in San Francisco, a couple of miles away from the towers. Reception is great in the city. For retirees who need to control costs, cable television is simply a waste of money.
When my retired neighbor showed me his converter box, I was SHOCKED. The quality of TV and channel selection that he was getting from a set of rabbit ears was comparable to what I had on cable TV in the 80's.
Needless to say, I bought a TV adapter for my computer and canceled cable TV. Now I save myself $80 a month!
The same thing that happened to vinyl records and CDs.
It'll be here because a lot of people switch slowly, or will somehow delude themselves into thinking it's better. Broadcast TV is still better for shows with a high viewership; like the Super Bowl, because of bandwidth issues. Frankly, broadcast HDTV still trumps most stuff I get over the 'tubes in quality; although I would expect that to change within 10 years.
The real question is "What happens to broadcast TV in 50 years?
At my first job, we used some Rational tool to manage our bugs... I forget the name of it, but it got the job done. Where I work now, we use Bugzilla. I think Bugzilla has some room for improvement, but it gets the job done.
My real issue with how my company uses Bugzilla is that if I don't work with it all day long; I really don't understand the conventions in place needed for the proper workflow. I don't think this is a technological problem, as any collaboration application used by a lot of people will have a learning curve..
If they don't want children playing on the slide, they should tear it down.
If they don't want children to get hurt playing on the slide... how will a single guard help? In that case, it would be better to install a sandpit or wood chips.
If you dig in a bit and see pictures of the slide, it's a monster! The slide is probably 20-30 feet tall and 50+ feet long.
I'm on the fence about whether or not the change is worthwhile -- by all accounts the digital transmissions have worse reception and worse issues with multipath
Not true at all! With my $16 rabbit-ears, the analog channels are snowy; but the digital channels are perfect.
There should have been a central government review of the options prior to the latest run
That's how communism operated. It failed. Complete central management of everything doesn't work, especially when options need to be explored through experimentation and risk.
Centralization might work later once different technologies are tried out and there is empirical data about what works and what doesn't.
I wouldn't go 100% with *thin* clients, but some smarts would be quite adequate. Set up one or two superservers, and a whole bunch of VIA C7 boxen with cheap 17" LCD's and the barest hard drive. Just enough to boot up an X server and connect via XDMCP to t he superserver. That way you can set them up without any optical drives, and safely keep the USB disconnected. You don't really need to worry that the terminal is underpowered, as long as the network that it's connecting to has the bandwidth for XDMCP.... 100mbit (which every C7-board I've ever seen has onboard) is more than adequate... maybe connected into a gigabit or 10gbit switched connection to the server.... client to switch is 100mbit, switch to server is gigabit.
Disclaimer: I work for VMware.
VMware has a pretty good desktop virtualization system. http://vmware.com/solutions/desktop/. Each VM is centrally managed. Furthermore, each student could have their own VM, which eliminates the issues that happen when students start installing stuff on shared desktops.
Sort on CPU utilization. See if anyone is hogging the CPU.
Enable the "Page Faults Delta" column. Sort on this column. (This sort-of tells you how often virtual memory is being swapped.) A frequent offender here is Scan32.exe; it's a poorly-written McAffee process that bogs down a computer whenever it scans the system.
If things are still inconclusive; get Process Manager. (Google it) It has an "IO delta" column that can tell you who's munching on your disk. It also has a "CPU History" and "IO History" column that don't change as fast, so things don't move around as fast.
But, in general, if McAffee is installed on the system, Scan32.exe is a likely culprit. The network administrator can remotely launch it if they suspect a nasty virus outbreak on the network. You can safely kill it if you're sure that you don't have a virus.
If you ever see iexplore.exe or firefox.exe being the culprit, look for a page/tab with lots of animations. It could be a badly-written flash animation. (Remember some of the Dice ads that Slashdot used to serve a year ago? They would always max out a core, even if the page was in the background!) Consider using Google Chrome, which runs different pages in different processes as a way to mitigate this issue.
That's because the digital signal simply breaks when static is encountered, as opposed to analog which degrades gracefully. Digital transmission does provide a lovely image, often better than cable, but only when the signal is strong; analog has a far wider reach, which is very important for anybody not in the middle of a city.
I'm encountering the opposite effect. A few weeks ago, I plugged a $16 set of rabbit ears into my HDTV. The analog channels were all snowy, but the digital equivalents were crystal clear.
Frankly, the digital broadcast is so good that I canceled cable! The only real drawback is that I sometimes need to rotate my antenna for different channels; but that's what happens with a $16 set of rabbit ears.
I recently bought a USB TV Adapter for a "premium" computer from the "premium" computer store in the mall. The "premium" computer's web site had a 5-star rating.
The first device stopped working after 3 hours. I exchanged the device; but now the included software is very unreliable for scheduled recordings. (It works fine for live TV; my computer significantly exceeds the requirements.)
I don't understand how something that's so unreliable can get a 5-star rating.
I'm not so sure I agree. When you build a bridge or a dam, you get something tangible that will be with you for 30+ years. Its there, and you can use it until it is demolished or replaced. The Brooklyn bridge, the Hoover Dam, etc have been with us for a very long time.
Not quite. Bridges and dams require a lot of maintenance.
The Golden Gate Bridge is repainted every year. (Or is it every other year? I know that re-painting the bridge is a full-time job.)
Half of the Bay Bridge is being rebuilt. (The part that keeps collapsing in earthquakes.) However, in the case of the Bay Bridge, the tunnel through an island that connects the two haves is being kept; and all the on-off ramps are being kept.
While open-source software itself might be completely re-written every 15-years or so; the value isn't the actual source code. The value is having a set of reliable and well-known APIs, file formats, data exchange protocols, and user interfaces.
A set of well-defined APIs, file formats, protocols, and UIs will be as valuable to our society as our languages and works of culture.
Who is actually surprised that consuming large amounts of a brain stimulant can cause hallucinations and paranoia? It should be no shocker that when you are over stimulated, your brain starts finding new outlets.
Newsflash: Lack of sleep causes hallucinations.
Newsflash: People who consume 7 cups of coffee on a daily basis don't get enough deep sleep.
Newsflash: Other stimulants, like Meth, Ritalin, and Adderall also cause hallucinations.
All soft drinks are evil. They cause insulin spikes, which contribute to obesity. They cause insulin resistance long term. And the phosphoric acid leaches calcium from your bones causing brittle bones in old age. Diet soft drinks are no better. Stop drinking them before it's too late.
I quit sugar soda a few years ago. Last month, someone fed me a Christmas Peep. The sugar rush was so intense, I thought I had been slipped something illegal.
Who ever installed the panels mounted them directly flat on the roof. That is bad.
But they look better! Besides, the roof has so much surface area that it's possible to add an extra panel.
You also need to take into consideration the structural integrity of the roof. My friend who is a professional roofer tells me that some solar panel installations cause the roof to leak after a few years. It's much better for the roof to put the solar panels in when the roof is built; this way the roofers can put in a mounting point.
The fact is that software development is very difficult. I think there are several reasons why it is more difficult to develop robust software now than it was 20 years ago. Some of these reasons are:
Here's one more:
The "free ride" from Moore's Law: The assumption that computers double in speed and memory every 18 months is often mis-interpreted as a reason for writing sloppy code. Customers expect that a program will run twice as fast and handle twice as much data every 18 months; thus programmers don't get to ride Moore's Law as much as we're taught in school.
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The current work that I did in C# is moving to Java. C#, as a language, is better then Java. However, we're part of a distributed application that uses SOAP. Java's SOAP support is much better then Mono's support; and in my opinion, much better then Microsoft's SOAP frameworks. We chose to move to Java because of our strong preference for SOAP.
C# really isn't a "write once, run everywhere" language like Java; it's really more of an improvement over C and C++. C# on Mono has a different set of APIs then C# on .Net. This really means that C# is a better choice if you don't need truly portable code, or if you can deal with having separate Mono and .Net portions of a program.
So as an ISV or IHV, do you deal with the randomly moving target that is Linux and its 140 distros, OR do you target something like one of the BSDs (Free/Net/Open) or Solaris. All of these projects actually have real coordination and goals.
Vindicated! It seems that HP just came out with their own custom Linux!
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/06/177231
So as an ISV or IHV, do you deal with the randomly moving target that is Linux and its 140 distros, OR do you target something like one of the BSDs (Free/Net/Open) or Solaris. All of these projects actually have real coordination and goals.
I dunno, Apple wrote their own OS and they seem to be doing well! (Granted, developing for Apple is a pain compared to Windows, but that's another story!)
The real motivation, as I see it, for a company like Dell or HP to have their own version of Linux is to give themselves control over their own Desktop. Right now Microsoft still has a high level of control over the what Dell and HP can and can not put on their desktop.
No you're wrong. There's no requirement that NBC, FOX, CW, et cetera "have" to broadcast. They could just as easily decide to shutdown their transmitters and go completely cable. The reason they don't is because they still make a profit off antenna viewers.
Then why do they complain about the expense of running the analog antenna? I really don't see how your reply is relevant to my comment; I'm arguing that the remaining analog-only viewers would currently be in densely-populated low-income areas. They would only be able to support 1-2 analog channels. What does that have to do with the major networks deciding to go cable-only?
The mistake is using legislative means to force an upgrade in technology onto a market. The problems now are a consequence of the initial misguided decision made many years ago.
Not quite. It's more like "legislative means" delayed an upgrade in most cases. I think if we let free-markets prevail, by now we'd be down to 1-2 channels in dense low-income areas.
Sorry folks, Linus essentially conceded this just yesterday. There will never be a 'year of the Linux desktop' because there will never be a single Linux desktop. Nobody seems to want it - or even to want to try to get as close as possible. Not the various distros, not Linus, not a hell of a lot of Linux fans. Of course ISV's still want it. Businesses with a need for low-cost IT want it. I want it. So do [some of] you.
Someday, it might be the "year of Ubantu." Or it might be the year of Dell's custom OS. I anticipate that a "Linux Desktop" will be like the "BSD Desktop" that Apple sells.
I can only imagine how many people are going to be confused by a slow, staggered changeover instead of the solid Feb. 17 deadline. Its kind of like ripping off a band aid on a hairy arm. Its a lot more painful if you do it slowly.
I would consider 3-10 years a "slow, staggered changeover." 3-4 months is more of a "we're turning it off now, and we really mean it... Yes, we really really really mean it."
The real mistake isn't the changeover date or lack of coupons; it's that every TV sold since 1998 should have had a big sticker declaring the changeover date.
Big question - did this happen on the Comcast SD digital tier, HD digital tier, the analog tier, or some combination? If it was both analog and digital SD, I would suspect a video router crosspoint misconfiguration. If it was just digital SD or digital HD, I would suspect a multiplexer misconfiguration.
The incident only happened on Comcast's network, and only on the analog channel. Comcast's feed comes from a fiber link to COX, which was fine.
Basically, it sounds like someone took a run-of-the-mill RF modulator*, plugged it into a grey-market amplifier, and then plugged it into the cable. It's a pretty good prank if they can get away with it!
*Those devices that let you use a DVD player with a TV that can only be hooked up to an antenna.
I would have agreed a few years ago, but the last two Superbowl matchups have been excellent, exciting games. For that matter I thought Springsteen did a great job with the halftime show, no gimmicks or voiceovers.
Yeah, the halftime shows used to really suck until the year after the "wardrobe malfunction" incident. Then they got good.
Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilizations in the Milky Way to ensure that you'll see one of them
Probability dictates that some galaxies will be more dense with civilizations then other galaxies. Furthermore, our existence is such a tiny blip in time that a society could exist slightly before or after us, yet we'd never get in contact.
What I really wonder is how likely we are to find a "space fossil," IE, evidence of life that is now extinct.
Seriously...I've asked as many low-income people I know or run into, and I've yet to find ANYbody that gets their TV through rabbit ears or a roof antenna.
That depends on where you live. I live in San Francisco, a couple of miles away from the towers. Reception is great in the city. For retirees who need to control costs, cable television is simply a waste of money.
When my retired neighbor showed me his converter box, I was SHOCKED. The quality of TV and channel selection that he was getting from a set of rabbit ears was comparable to what I had on cable TV in the 80's.
Needless to say, I bought a TV adapter for my computer and canceled cable TV. Now I save myself $80 a month!
What happens to broadcast in 10 years?
The same thing that happened to vinyl records and CDs.
It'll be here because a lot of people switch slowly, or will somehow delude themselves into thinking it's better. Broadcast TV is still better for shows with a high viewership; like the Super Bowl, because of bandwidth issues. Frankly, broadcast HDTV still trumps most stuff I get over the 'tubes in quality; although I would expect that to change within 10 years.
The real question is "What happens to broadcast TV in 50 years?
At my first job, we used some Rational tool to manage our bugs... I forget the name of it, but it got the job done. Where I work now, we use Bugzilla. I think Bugzilla has some room for improvement, but it gets the job done.
My real issue with how my company uses Bugzilla is that if I don't work with it all day long; I really don't understand the conventions in place needed for the proper workflow. I don't think this is a technological problem, as any collaboration application used by a lot of people will have a learning curve..
If they don't want children playing on the slide, they should tear it down. If they don't want children to get hurt playing on the slide... how will a single guard help? In that case, it would be better to install a sandpit or wood chips.
If you dig in a bit and see pictures of the slide, it's a monster! The slide is probably 20-30 feet tall and 50+ feet long.
I'm on the fence about whether or not the change is worthwhile -- by all accounts the digital transmissions have worse reception and worse issues with multipath
Not true at all! With my $16 rabbit-ears, the analog channels are snowy; but the digital channels are perfect.
There should have been a central government review of the options prior to the latest run
That's how communism operated. It failed. Complete central management of everything doesn't work, especially when options need to be explored through experimentation and risk.
Centralization might work later once different technologies are tried out and there is empirical data about what works and what doesn't.
I wouldn't go 100% with *thin* clients, but some smarts would be quite adequate. Set up one or two superservers, and a whole bunch of VIA C7 boxen with cheap 17" LCD's and the barest hard drive. Just enough to boot up an X server and connect via XDMCP to t he superserver. That way you can set them up without any optical drives, and safely keep the USB disconnected. You don't really need to worry that the terminal is underpowered, as long as the network that it's connecting to has the bandwidth for XDMCP.... 100mbit (which every C7-board I've ever seen has onboard) is more than adequate... maybe connected into a gigabit or 10gbit switched connection to the server.... client to switch is 100mbit, switch to server is gigabit.
Disclaimer: I work for VMware.
VMware has a pretty good desktop virtualization system. http://vmware.com/solutions/desktop/. Each VM is centrally managed. Furthermore, each student could have their own VM, which eliminates the issues that happen when students start installing stuff on shared desktops.
But, in general, if McAffee is installed on the system, Scan32.exe is a likely culprit. The network administrator can remotely launch it if they suspect a nasty virus outbreak on the network. You can safely kill it if you're sure that you don't have a virus.
If you ever see iexplore.exe or firefox.exe being the culprit, look for a page/tab with lots of animations. It could be a badly-written flash animation. (Remember some of the Dice ads that Slashdot used to serve a year ago? They would always max out a core, even if the page was in the background!) Consider using Google Chrome, which runs different pages in different processes as a way to mitigate this issue.
That's because the digital signal simply breaks when static is encountered, as opposed to analog which degrades gracefully. Digital transmission does provide a lovely image, often better than cable, but only when the signal is strong; analog has a far wider reach, which is very important for anybody not in the middle of a city.
I'm encountering the opposite effect. A few weeks ago, I plugged a $16 set of rabbit ears into my HDTV. The analog channels were all snowy, but the digital equivalents were crystal clear.
Frankly, the digital broadcast is so good that I canceled cable! The only real drawback is that I sometimes need to rotate my antenna for different channels; but that's what happens with a $16 set of rabbit ears.
I recently bought a USB TV Adapter for a "premium" computer from the "premium" computer store in the mall. The "premium" computer's web site had a 5-star rating.
The first device stopped working after 3 hours. I exchanged the device; but now the included software is very unreliable for scheduled recordings. (It works fine for live TV; my computer significantly exceeds the requirements.)
I don't understand how something that's so unreliable can get a 5-star rating.
I'm not so sure I agree. When you build a bridge or a dam, you get something tangible that will be with you for 30+ years. Its there, and you can use it until it is demolished or replaced. The Brooklyn bridge, the Hoover Dam, etc have been with us for a very long time.
Not quite. Bridges and dams require a lot of maintenance.
While open-source software itself might be completely re-written every 15-years or so; the value isn't the actual source code. The value is having a set of reliable and well-known APIs, file formats, data exchange protocols, and user interfaces.
A set of well-defined APIs, file formats, protocols, and UIs will be as valuable to our society as our languages and works of culture.
Who is actually surprised that consuming large amounts of a brain stimulant can cause hallucinations and paranoia? It should be no shocker that when you are over stimulated, your brain starts finding new outlets.
Newsflash: Lack of sleep causes hallucinations.
Newsflash: People who consume 7 cups of coffee on a daily basis don't get enough deep sleep.
Newsflash: Other stimulants, like Meth, Ritalin, and Adderall also cause hallucinations.
All soft drinks are evil. They cause insulin spikes, which contribute to obesity. They cause insulin resistance long term. And the phosphoric acid leaches calcium from your bones causing brittle bones in old age. Diet soft drinks are no better. Stop drinking them before it's too late.
I quit sugar soda a few years ago. Last month, someone fed me a Christmas Peep. The sugar rush was so intense, I thought I had been slipped something illegal.
Who ever installed the panels mounted them directly flat on the roof. That is bad.
But they look better! Besides, the roof has so much surface area that it's possible to add an extra panel.
You also need to take into consideration the structural integrity of the roof. My friend who is a professional roofer tells me that some solar panel installations cause the roof to leak after a few years. It's much better for the roof to put the solar panels in when the roof is built; this way the roofers can put in a mounting point.
The fact is that software development is very difficult. I think there are several reasons why it is more difficult to develop robust software now than it was 20 years ago. Some of these reasons are:
Here's one more: