What interests me is not the percentage of people that have broadband (by whatever definition). I'm more curious about median cost per unit bandwidth. Also, I get sick of people trying to say what is enough for others -- and set "minimum standards" for others.
My mom and dad, at their place, use the internet still for email & an occasional youtube video. They wouldn't know what to do with 4MB if they had it. I on the other hand, at my place, have just/started/ Netflix streaming over the net, and it runs just fine on my DSL connection... Not HD, but still just fine for now, and I'm happy with what I have for what I pay for bandwidth. If I want to see something in truly high definition, I get it shipped to me on Blue-Ray.
And if I need more, I'll PAY for it. I may switch from DSL to something of a higher rate... I just don't want to spend $80 right now for it. I'll wait until it comes down more -- until the market decides that it should be cheaper.
So, when more mom and pops discover Netflix streaming, the price will come down, and we'll all have better bandwidth for low price. And that's what I want to see... Bandwidth price curves... How do we compare with other nations here?
Actually, GSM/EDGE -- if you really look at it from a technology perspective is definitely crap compared to CDMA. CDMA is truly better & results in a much better in terms of voice quality experinece, bits transmitted, and battery life. In fact, it is so good, that the next generation -- UMTS -- is based upon CDMA technology. Also the technology following that, "LTE," is/also/ based upon CDMA.
So -- sorry, Anonymous -- you really don't know WTF you are talking about, except that you think the European SIM cards are cool -- not knocking that... I think it's cool too... But as far as the modulation standards are concerned -- you are way out in left field.
Then that would mean that the USA is only working for the greater good!!! By depleting the population of the world of foriegn religious stupid people and replacing it with fewer of our own, we are truly doing something good, noble and worthwhile for the planet... I feel goosebumps!!!
As an IT "customer" I loathe this kind of centralized environment.
At our company, we have both environments -- the highly centralized one built on traditional UNIX, and the PC world -- along with a few people that live outside the norm with "unsupported" Linux PCs. The centralized world is truly difficult when you need something perceived "new." For instance, I have had three weeks of pulling my hair out cajoling UNIX IT (being supported by a temp out of India) just to get the latest version of subversion client installed on the corporate network. What a joy it is when I can "just do it myself" on my own PC.
Also -- another "for instance"... I was forced into weeks of meetings where I was asked to reduce disk space on the UNIX filer for my project -- for less than 2TB worth of storage... That seemed a complete waste of time to me -- because our corporate laptops have 320GB personal space backed up daily, while the space on the filer was way more important -- supporting mission critical work for greater than 25 engineers.
So, having admin access on your very own decentralized tool is very empowering -- and a tool that can be customized for a particular person's style of work can be a _very_ powerful tool. Also, having the freedom to have your own tool rids you of so much bureaucratic CRAP. Centralization is good to a point -- yes -- but only the things that you _know_ will never/seldom/rarely have to change. Everything else -- decentralize. Give people the freedom to do dangerous and wonderful things.
Or it could result for the better & people/companies that handle and vend Software that enables critical infrastructure start taking a passing thought about security -- and at the VERY least stop programming/controlling PLC's with Windows.
If the customer cares about Bandwidth to a particular service that is discriminated against, then given the availability of competition the customer will move on. Heck, maybe a particular customer agrees with the discriminatory choices -- in this way, it is a gain and a feature for him. The issue for me is not with network neutrality, it's if companies don't tell you up-front about their practices, and if government allows no competition in the space.
While I agree with the subject -- you really need to learn & understand calculus -- you may not end up using it day-in-day-out in engineering. In some engineering jobs statistics is orders of magnitude more important than calculus.
I end up using statistics (stdev, cp, cpk) as a basis of my job (production test engineering) & rarely resort to calculus. Where calculus is useful for me is in understanding the equations used in design, or in understanding discrete/fast fourier transform. Thorough understanding of logarithms and exponentials, trigonometry and algebra is important to my job too... but, not so much calculus.
So, now they suggest that we build roads intentionally that will make us waste more time on the road, reduce visibility and cause more accidents? That is total brain damage!
Go to http://freshmeat.net/ search for "Java", find a java project that interests you, download the source -- see if you can understand it & get it to run, contact the author to see if there is anything you can work on or tweak.
Port Nethack (http://nethack.alt.org) from ANSI C to Java?
Build an Android application?
IOW -- find a way to apply your knowledge. Program a little every day -- just for the fun of it.
unfortunately the core problem is the fucking stupid users, no way to smat [sic] them up, nor to sack them...
the second problem is the presence of more than 100 different programs, about 2 to 15 are to install in every single station in seemly random assortment that vary wildly depending on the single user...
I'm sorry, but this attitude of treating people as idiots is the reason that IT is failing it's users. Truth is, many people in your organization are every bit as savvy as you, but in a different way. Idiots have a way of screwing themselves out of the organization... so, let them, but don't punish those that are truly effective.
If people in a company need applications on their PC's, whether to experiment with them, or to do meaningful work, the IT staff better be able to deal with it, or they are doing a disservice to their company, and are making the company less agile and able to cope with a volatile business environment. So, develop the attitude within your group that/ALL/ applications are supported, but some are "standard," and suggested. You need to support the business needs of your company -- so, just deal with it.
BTW -- stay out of the leaf nodes. Anyone with physical access to their PC's, & with enough savvy, has root access anyway -- so, give your people the respect they deserve. IOW, give everyone (the equivalent of) sudo access to their own PC's & LET THEM screw themselves and (hopefully) let them learn. Let idiots prove their ineptitude and let them get weeded out of the organization.
I discovered and watched this movie due to the negative press, and it is my loss... because it sucks. My thanks to Nintendo for killing something so utterly dreadful -- if only it were possible for them to do so in such a way that news of it would be taken likewise into the abyss with it.
Really guys, do the world a favor and go shoot this post down, and recommend something better instead -- Never-ending story, Plan 9, whatever -- anything is better than this tripe.
That's kind of funny... 900 CPU's (clients) and 2600 users for you? At our place of business, we have much more like a 2:1 ratio of CPU's to people... Not counting VPN connected foreign hosts... How does it work out that you have fewer than 1:1? Are you leaving out dumb terminals and network connected embedded systems?
"It gives you dreadful programming style." -- beg to differ. Teaches you pointers, teaches you to be careful, and to be careful specifically about memory allocation/deallocation. If you choose to program procedurally, that's fine with C. If you chose to program functionally, you may do so via pointer to function... If you choose Object Oriented Programming, such is facilitated via. structures and pointers. As a bonus, when you compile to assembly, you can actually make sense of the output.
"not a right tool for applications programming" -- beg to differ. Most serious programming efforts are in C. Many, if not most, compilers and interpreters are written in C. GTK is written in C. Most all basic applications in the UNIX tool chain are written in C. As a bonus, you can libraries natively.
"It Isn't even a high level language." -- Um... that's a bad thing?
"All those buffer overruns[...]" -- were cause by people that learned BASIC, Pascal, or Java as their first language & couldn't be bothered to compile with -Wall and run with Valgrind.
"You can mod me as a troll[...]" -- Um... OK... so long as we have your permission... I'll not presume to say that C is the language to start off a 12 year old, but I would say that I believe it is the lingua franca or even the root of all portable computer languages -- of which no programmer should be without a thorough understanding and appreciation.
[Almost-a-troll]... but chooses an in-grown (GNU) tool instead of the best of breed -- i.e. git? Yeah... same-old, same-old RMS. Funny that BZR is now sponsored by Canonical...[/Almost-a-troll]
WRT to the "who put you in charge" question -- I apologize deeply, and did not mean to offend... I thought the truth so evident! Without the scales of history to defend me, I admit contradiction. So, I do not speak for myself. Any society that is so weak as to not defend itself with arms has been overrun by its aggressors -- be it Mayan, Roman, Chinese, Judaic, whatever -- no matter how "civilized."
I agree with you that "${CURRENCY_UNIT}" is rather poorly spent no matter the government involved. Government is/always/ (did I make this statement exclusive enough?) the most inefficient means to produce a good or service. I have been in US Civil Service; so, I have first hand experience. Government entirely leaches off the private sector for any given innovation.
And, I challenge you -- which pork (in accord with your experience) was involved in the most effective weapons of our day? -- Of the "Predator" drones, the B2, or the Raptor? Which of these was more the result of competition, or of pork? I am very interested in your first-hand opinion.
A father molds his children and establishes an heritage. this is the meaning of being a father -- by definition. If you want to raise bastards, by all means do so by taking no interest in molding your children. Please do not discourage this father from doing his job.
That being said, the challenge in molding is to do so in accord with the child's natural inclinations -- his "bent." Many children are not naturally inclined to proficiency in programming, but all need to learn it -- and not only to understand their heritage. The talent of instructing a computer to "do things" for humans will be the most essential basic tool for a person to learn in the next century, if not the next millennium.
Consider a man of yesteryear -- what does he look like? My grandfather was a preacher -- but to make ends meet he worked on the first flying wing... he riveted. He plied his trade honorably with yeoman's work, but his labors are now replaced by robots controlled by computer.
My father wanted to be independent and own his own business -- but is a man without skill... he turned to the craft of a shoe repairman. This is a job that is now being replaced by a combination of technologies including robotic repair. This trade will also not survive another generation.
My employ is something that may last a little while, but definitely not without change. I do test engineering on wireless devices (yes, a great departure from my forebears). Most of us use tools delivered to us by our suppliers. My differentiator, is that I have learned how to program. I can manipulate the programming environment(s) that our suppliers have delivered to make our organization more efficient, and allow us to target more than one vendors' tool set -- IOW, we are defeating vendor lock-in (or are at least convincing our vendors so) to the effect that we are "comoditizing" them.
This is the future: leveraging "machines" (in the classical sense) and the languages of machines to do the work of our forebears -- and of that illusory "cheap labor" from China, et al. Perhaps... it also means to use machines to program biology to perform the next level of programming -- but in all it will be "programming of machines." No matter then end technology, whether biologic, radiologic, philosophic, whatever -- the man that can leverage machines to do his bidding and program in any given field will be supreme in that field -- if only to reduce economics of advanced technologies to that of comoditization.
Corollary -- even if it's not a mistake, you provide support for a lifetime; so, learn to make simple tools that do only one thing. Make your customer responsible for building upon your simple tools to do complex things -- and make the "children" your customer's problem.
Honestly, I have a six year old -- he's already learned the basics of VIM -- and he actually calls it his favorite "game." He presses "i" or "a" and types away & giggles as his daddy pronounces his silly made-up words. He knows to hit ESC and dd to start over again (IOW, he gets modality)... Kids are adaptable & can grasp more than we give them credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
What interests me is not the percentage of people that have broadband (by whatever definition). I'm more curious about median cost per unit bandwidth. Also, I get sick of people trying to say what is enough for others -- and set "minimum standards" for others.
My mom and dad, at their place, use the internet still for email & an occasional youtube video. They wouldn't know what to do with 4MB if they had it. I on the other hand, at my place, have just /started/ Netflix streaming over the net, and it runs just fine on my DSL connection... Not HD, but still just fine for now, and I'm happy with what I have for what I pay for bandwidth. If I want to see something in truly high definition, I get it shipped to me on Blue-Ray.
And if I need more, I'll PAY for it. I may switch from DSL to something of a higher rate... I just don't want to spend $80 right now for it. I'll wait until it comes down more -- until the market decides that it should be cheaper.
So, when more mom and pops discover Netflix streaming, the price will come down, and we'll all have better bandwidth for low price. And that's what I want to see... Bandwidth price curves... How do we compare with other nations here?
Actually, GSM/EDGE -- if you really look at it from a technology perspective is definitely crap compared to CDMA. CDMA is truly better & results in a much better in terms of voice quality experinece, bits transmitted, and battery life. In fact, it is so good, that the next generation -- UMTS -- is based upon CDMA technology. Also the technology following that, "LTE," is /also/ based upon CDMA.
So -- sorry, Anonymous -- you really don't know WTF you are talking about, except that you think the European SIM cards are cool -- not knocking that... I think it's cool too... But as far as the modulation standards are concerned -- you are way out in left field.
As for me and my laptop... $ uname -a Linux mmm 2.6.35-22-generic #35-Ubuntu SMP Sat Oct 16 20:45:36 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux
We could do mass sterilization of the conquered? How about just sterilizing all stupid people? (Ever seen Idiocracy?)
Then that would mean that the USA is only working for the greater good!!! By depleting the population of the world of foriegn religious stupid people and replacing it with fewer of our own, we are truly doing something good, noble and worthwhile for the planet... I feel goosebumps!!!
WAR!!!
As an IT "customer" I loathe this kind of centralized environment.
At our company, we have both environments -- the highly centralized one built on traditional UNIX, and the PC world -- along with a few people that live outside the norm with "unsupported" Linux PCs. The centralized world is truly difficult when you need something perceived "new." For instance, I have had three weeks of pulling my hair out cajoling UNIX IT (being supported by a temp out of India) just to get the latest version of subversion client installed on the corporate network. What a joy it is when I can "just do it myself" on my own PC.
Also -- another "for instance"... I was forced into weeks of meetings where I was asked to reduce disk space on the UNIX filer for my project -- for less than 2TB worth of storage... That seemed a complete waste of time to me -- because our corporate laptops have 320GB personal space backed up daily, while the space on the filer was way more important -- supporting mission critical work for greater than 25 engineers.
So, having admin access on your very own decentralized tool is very empowering -- and a tool that can be customized for a particular person's style of work can be a _very_ powerful tool. Also, having the freedom to have your own tool rids you of so much bureaucratic CRAP. Centralization is good to a point -- yes -- but only the things that you _know_ will never/seldom/rarely have to change. Everything else -- decentralize. Give people the freedom to do dangerous and wonderful things.
Or it could result for the better & people/companies that handle and vend Software that enables critical infrastructure start taking a passing thought about security -- and at the VERY least stop programming/controlling PLC's with Windows.
If the customer cares about Bandwidth to a particular service that is discriminated against, then given the availability of competition the customer will move on. Heck, maybe a particular customer agrees with the discriminatory choices -- in this way, it is a gain and a feature for him. The issue for me is not with network neutrality, it's if companies don't tell you up-front about their practices, and if government allows no competition in the space.
Private offices -- bar none -- are the best seating arrangement for quality developers.
While I agree with the subject -- you really need to learn & understand calculus -- you may not end up using it day-in-day-out in engineering. In some engineering jobs statistics is orders of magnitude more important than calculus.
I end up using statistics (stdev, cp, cpk) as a basis of my job (production test engineering) & rarely resort to calculus. Where calculus is useful for me is in understanding the equations used in design, or in understanding discrete/fast fourier transform. Thorough understanding of logarithms and exponentials, trigonometry and algebra is important to my job too... but, not so much calculus.
So, now they suggest that we build roads intentionally that will make us waste more time on the road, reduce visibility and cause more accidents? That is total brain damage!
Go to http://freshmeat.net/ search for "Java", find a java project that interests you, download the source -- see if you can understand it & get it to run, contact the author to see if there is anything you can work on or tweak.
Port Nethack (http://nethack.alt.org) from ANSI C to Java?
Build an Android application?
IOW -- find a way to apply your knowledge. Program a little every day -- just for the fun of it.
View Source? NoScript Plug-in?
unfortunately the core problem is the fucking stupid users, no way to smat [sic] them up, nor to sack them...
the second problem is the presence of more than 100 different programs, about 2 to 15 are to install in every single station in seemly random assortment that vary wildly depending on the single user...
I'm sorry, but this attitude of treating people as idiots is the reason that IT is failing it's users. Truth is, many people in your organization are every bit as savvy as you, but in a different way. Idiots have a way of screwing themselves out of the organization... so, let them, but don't punish those that are truly effective.
If people in a company need applications on their PC's, whether to experiment with them, or to do meaningful work, the IT staff better be able to deal with it, or they are doing a disservice to their company, and are making the company less agile and able to cope with a volatile business environment. So, develop the attitude within your group that /ALL/ applications are supported, but some are "standard," and suggested. You need to support the business needs of your company -- so, just deal with it.
BTW -- stay out of the leaf nodes. Anyone with physical access to their PC's, & with enough savvy, has root access anyway -- so, give your people the respect they deserve. IOW, give everyone (the equivalent of) sudo access to their own PC's & LET THEM screw themselves and (hopefully) let them learn. Let idiots prove their ineptitude and let them get weeded out of the organization.
I discovered and watched this movie due to the negative press, and it is my loss... because it sucks . My thanks to Nintendo for killing something so utterly dreadful -- if only it were possible for them to do so in such a way that news of it would be taken likewise into the abyss with it.
Really guys, do the world a favor and go shoot this post down, and recommend something better instead -- Never-ending story, Plan 9, whatever -- anything is better than this tripe.
BECAUSE IT SUCKS!!!
I watched it, and it really sucks.
That's kind of funny... 900 CPU's (clients) and 2600 users for you? At our place of business, we have much more like a 2:1 ratio of CPU's to people... Not counting VPN connected foreign hosts... How does it work out that you have fewer than 1:1? Are you leaving out dumb terminals and network connected embedded systems?
"It gives you dreadful programming style." -- beg to differ. Teaches you pointers, teaches you to be careful, and to be careful specifically about memory allocation/deallocation. If you choose to program procedurally, that's fine with C. If you chose to program functionally, you may do so via pointer to function... If you choose Object Oriented Programming, such is facilitated via. structures and pointers. As a bonus, when you compile to assembly, you can actually make sense of the output.
"not a right tool for applications programming" -- beg to differ. Most serious programming efforts are in C. Many, if not most, compilers and interpreters are written in C. GTK is written in C. Most all basic applications in the UNIX tool chain are written in C. As a bonus, you can libraries natively.
"It Isn't even a high level language." -- Um... that's a bad thing?
"All those buffer overruns[...]" -- were cause by people that learned BASIC, Pascal, or Java as their first language & couldn't be bothered to compile with -Wall and run with Valgrind.
"You can mod me as a troll[...]" -- Um... OK... so long as we have your permission... I'll not presume to say that C is the language to start off a 12 year old, but I would say that I believe it is the lingua franca or even the root of all portable computer languages -- of which no programmer should be without a thorough understanding and appreciation.
It needs native VI key bindings -- though I suppose there is a mode for that...
$ which emacs
$ which vi
/usr/bin/vi
$
[Almost-a-troll]... but chooses an in-grown (GNU) tool instead of the best of breed -- i.e. git? Yeah... same-old, same-old RMS. Funny that BZR is now sponsored by Canonical...[/Almost-a-troll]
WRT to the "who put you in charge" question -- I apologize deeply, and did not mean to offend... I thought the truth so evident! Without the scales of history to defend me, I admit contradiction. So, I do not speak for myself. Any society that is so weak as to not defend itself with arms has been overrun by its aggressors -- be it Mayan, Roman, Chinese, Judaic, whatever -- no matter how "civilized."
I agree with you that "${CURRENCY_UNIT}" is rather poorly spent no matter the government involved. Government is /always/ (did I make this statement exclusive enough?) the most inefficient means to produce a good or service. I have been in US Civil Service; so, I have first hand experience. Government entirely leaches off the private sector for any given innovation.
And, I challenge you -- which pork (in accord with your experience) was involved in the most effective weapons of our day? -- Of the "Predator" drones, the B2, or the Raptor? Which of these was more the result of competition, or of pork? I am very interested in your first-hand opinion.
A father molds his children and establishes an heritage. this is the meaning of being a father -- by definition. If you want to raise bastards, by all means do so by taking no interest in molding your children. Please do not discourage this father from doing his job.
That being said, the challenge in molding is to do so in accord with the child's natural inclinations -- his "bent." Many children are not naturally inclined to proficiency in programming, but all need to learn it -- and not only to understand their heritage. The talent of instructing a computer to "do things" for humans will be the most essential basic tool for a person to learn in the next century, if not the next millennium.
Consider a man of yesteryear -- what does he look like? My grandfather was a preacher -- but to make ends meet he worked on the first flying wing... he riveted. He plied his trade honorably with yeoman's work, but his labors are now replaced by robots controlled by computer.
My father wanted to be independent and own his own business -- but is a man without skill... he turned to the craft of a shoe repairman. This is a job that is now being replaced by a combination of technologies including robotic repair. This trade will also not survive another generation.
My employ is something that may last a little while, but definitely not without change. I do test engineering on wireless devices (yes, a great departure from my forebears). Most of us use tools delivered to us by our suppliers. My differentiator, is that I have learned how to program. I can manipulate the programming environment(s) that our suppliers have delivered to make our organization more efficient, and allow us to target more than one vendors' tool set -- IOW, we are defeating vendor lock-in (or are at least convincing our vendors so) to the effect that we are "comoditizing" them.
This is the future: leveraging "machines" (in the classical sense) and the languages of machines to do the work of our forebears -- and of that illusory "cheap labor" from China, et al. Perhaps... it also means to use machines to program biology to perform the next level of programming -- but in all it will be "programming of machines ." No matter then end technology, whether biologic, radiologic, philosophic, whatever -- the man that can leverage machines to do his bidding and program in any given field will be supreme in that field -- if only to reduce economics of advanced technologies to that of comoditization.
QED.
Corollary -- even if it's not a mistake, you provide support for a lifetime; so, learn to make simple tools that do only one thing. Make your customer responsible for building upon your simple tools to do complex things -- and make the "children" your customer's problem.
Honestly, I have a six year old -- he's already learned the basics of VIM -- and he actually calls it his favorite "game." He presses "i" or "a" and types away & giggles as his daddy pronounces his silly made-up words. He knows to hit ESC and dd to start over again (IOW, he gets modality)... Kids are adaptable & can grasp more than we give them credit for.