Someone else mentioned that age is the cure. They're right, at least in my case. I was definitely a primadonna programmer. I started programming when I was 10 years old and I was probably 25 and had been doing it for a living for at least 7 years before I even met a programmer who came close to my skills.
Then I started a job that had at least 3 programmers who were much better than me. They became my mentors. The system architect was one of those very bright guys who told you to do things one way, but wouldn't tell you why. You couldn't get it out of him by asking. I finally realized that if I just refused to do it his way and said something like, "I'm going to do it this way because blah blah blah.." He would say, "That won't work because blah blah blah..." And hence, I learned from him, despite his best efforts to the contrary.
Now, I'm in a company where I am the best programmer (I'm also the architect and the manager), but I'm not the primadonna I once was (I don't think, maybe my programmers would differ in opinion). It's kind of strange, I had lunch today with one of those mentors of mine, and he may be looking for work, and I'm way ready to hire him. For one thing, he'll be able to be the best programmer on the team. It's not a good thing to be when you're the manager. It takes up too much of your time dealing with technical problems.
But, I'm digressing in many directions. I think the point I'm making is that age and experience (particularly, experience with programmers who are as good or better than you), will fix the problem in most cases.
The ozone hole is real, and for a really good description of it and how close we came to killing off most life on this planet, I suggest you read Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan, which has a great chapter on exactly this.
He explains why it takes years for our changes in emissions to take effect and how we really came close to wiping out all the plankton in our oceans. Plankton is, the beginning of the food chain, and you wipe it out, and you pretty much wipe out the entire chain.
Is Sagan an alarmist or an extremist? I guess that's the question you have to ask. His essay provides enough annotations and evidence that I give it a great deal of creedance. He was also one of the most respected scientists of the late 20th century.
You're absolutely right. I was thinking the same thing. IBM did the same thing with mainframes. They provided them to universities at a huge discount and software was free, if I recall correctly. In return, students got free time on IBM mainframes and when they went off to look for jobs, they (and I) were getting jobs writing software for IBM mainframes.
Of course, I've been away from the mainframe world for years now, but it definitely helped IBM. If Microsoft is smart, they'll provide software at greatly reduced prices or even free to educational institutions. It encourages young people to use their software. They should do this for the same reason that they always released the Windows SDK for free. I began programming for the Windows SDK and the fact that it was free, certainly encouraged me to write Windows software.
Here's the simple answer: If you have content that people are willing to pay for, they'll pay for it. Ask any site that charges money and makes money. I guarantee you there are plenty of porn sites out there making money? Why? Because they have content that people are willing to pay for.
If someone wants to charge for their content, that's fine. If they price it in such a way that I'm willing to pay for it and I think it's worth the price, then I'll pay, otherwise I wont.
Why is this even an issue. It's basic economics. Who here doesn't understand the concept? I thought Slashdot readers tended to be on the more intelligent side.
Sounds like AT&T and ComCast are both using @Home, so what's the real difference?
I've got ComCast. It's pretty decent, but you suffer from the same thing all cable modem users suffer from: Shared bandwidth, which means not so much bandwidth during peak hours. On the other hand, on off peak hours, I get some really excellent transfer rates
The one thing that does bother me is the limiting of my upstream bandwidth. I'd certainly like to have more, especially since I regularly move data back and forth between home and work.
I never got into the whole Starbucks thing. I like good coffee and I like coffee made right, but I can do it pretty simply.
First of all, you start with good coffee. Most people can get it at their grocery store (I'm not talking Folgers). Second, you get a coffee maker. Even a Mr. Coffee is fine, but I prefer a percolator myself. Once the coffee is made, you put it in a thermos. The only thing that makes good coffee go bad is to let it cook.
I may be a simple person, but just like I know good beer and wine, I know good coffee, and the mechanics don't make much of a difference.
And not to beat a dead horse, but here's an article from a source, which we all know is somewhat unreliable, but it's the best I could do. It's called Slashdot. As you'll see, a number of the posters were talking about the Sprint PCS system which was GSM based.
You're right. This happened to me once. I guess I need SMS and didn't realize it. It would have been perfect for that one time I needed it.
That sounds facetious, of course, but it's true. I've had one situation where things were too noisy for me to use my cell phone. In that situation, I simply said "hold on one second," and walked outside to make the call.
I'm not saying it doesn't have a use. I just don't think there's enough demand for it in the States. That's the only point I was trying to make.
Actually, Sprint switched to CDMA from PCS 1920, which was a GSM based system. They originally deployed in the Washington DC area, Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, and a few other cities using a GSM based system called PCS 1920. After they deployed these systems they decided to switch to CDMA. At that point, they did a buildout of CDMA systems but maintained the PCS 1920 system for a while and eventually phased it out.
This system was definitely GSM based, though. My company was intimately involved in the original buildout. We designed it. I and others, wrote the software that the engineers used to design the system. Now, if Sprint is still using the term PCS or someone else is using it, for some other type of system, that's fine. The originaly PCS system from Sprint, was a GSM based system at 1920 mHz.
Now, I can't prove everything above, but here's a GSM PCS 1920 phone by Nortel but maybe there was never a PCS 1920 GSM based network for this phone. Maybe it was just something they made as a joke. You be the judge.
We have GSM in the US. It's called PCS. PCS is GSM at 1920mHz, whereas GSM in Europe and elsewhere, runs at 800-900mHz, which is where TDMA is in the U.S.
I worked for an RF consulting company that helped launch Sprint's PCS system. Part of the software I wrote interpreted low-level messaging (this is basically the protocol that the phone uses to speak to the base station). The protocol is identical to GSM. In fact, all my code was based on GSM documentation and standards, simply modified for frequency.
Not that this is particularly important to the question at hand.
CDMA provides better quality of service and a higher traffic load at the same bandwidth, as TDMA or GSM/PCS. While the protocols are completely different, it has little to do with SMS. SMS has little to do with the phone protocol, at least from my knowledge. It would seem to have more to do with the switch at the provider. Therefore, I can't see why protocol (i.e. TDMA, CDMA, GSM, PCS) would have anything to do with it.
I would hazard a guess that the reason for the lack of adoption in the States has more to do with a lack of demand than anything else. I have SMS MT (mobile terminated) service, but I rarely use it, and if I had SMS MO (mobile originated), I doubt I'd use it much either.
Everyone I know, in the U.S. (and I'm speaking of friends, family, etc), have e-mail (let me clarify that I realize not every U.S. citizen has e-mail, I'm just speaking of people I know personally), and because e-mail is so prevalent and available here, I think people have little use for SMS. I have e-mail at home, and I have it at work. What do I need SMS for??? Everyone I communicate with regularly has e-mail day and night.
Even internationally, most of my friends in other countries, are more likely to have e-mail than a cell phone, let alone a cell phone with SMS. I think it's just a general difference between North America and the rest of the world.
Choice of programming languages comes down to what fits your needs and what fits your skills.
I've been programming in C++ for 7 or 8 years, and find it to be fantastic for expressing what I want to produce. I find it much easier to write code that's easy to debug and maintain than any other language I've ever dealt with.
Now, granted, a lot of that is due to a very detailed process that we go through before even writing the code, but well designed C++ systems can be quite easy to maintain.
I've written several large systems in C++ and found it to be very easy to maintain and debug. My last major system had over 150 classes in a very well designed architecture. Although more than 30 people were involved at various times during it's implementation (over a 5 year period), in the end, there were two of us maintianing it and adding new features. And when I say new features, I'm talking about major additional functionality.
Now, could Java do what this system did? Yes, but probably not at the same speed. This was a very mathmatically intensive system. It modeled cellular telephone networks (the antennas at base stations as well as the mobile phones).
I still like C++. I like it a lot. It has made my life much easier. Until I find a language that's going to make my life easier, I have no intention of changing.
That said, is C++ the best language for every task? Of course not, and I certainly don't use it for web scripts. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing a language, though, and as I'm very C++ oriented, a C style scripting language would probably be very easy for me to adapt to. Perl sure as hell wasn't easy for me to adapt to.
I know someone is going to put a hit out on me for saying this, but why not do what Win95/98 do. Put up a picture of something and if the user wants to see diagnostic messages, they just hit a key...
I bought an IBM PC300GL (actually, my company bought it for me, but I digress)... I don't know what kind of hard drive it has, but I've never heard it.
Personally, I feel more confident if I hear something. I like it quiet, but when it's seeking, I like to hear that, just a little. I don't know why.
The only thing I can really hear on my 300GL is the fan, which itself is awefully quiet.
Now, as someone else commented about CDs and DVDs, YES, PLEASE, QUIET THESE HORRIBLE CONTRAPTIONS. My CD on my work computer has a cache that's just big enough to allow the drive to spin down for about 1/2 a second during a big transfer. Then it spins back up and transfers more. It's loud, it's annoying, and it turns this 40 some odd X CD Rom to about 10X.
Not only that, but the different neutrino flavours must have different masses in order to oscillate.
But what's REALLY exciting, is they'll probably figure out how to use this in the first episode of Star Trek Enterprise as some sort of new kind of weapon or something.
"Lieutenant, fire the Neutrino Cannon!!!"
"I am sir, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect on the ship. It's almost as if the neutrinos are just passing right through it."
I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
This reminds me of a comedian who was talking about the police in L.A. putting up photo-speed traps. He said, "I got a picture of my car and license plate in the mail with a ticket, so I sent them a picture of $50." He said, "Two weeks later, they sent me a picture of handcuffs. I sent in the money right away."
I somehow get to keep bringing up the subject that I lived in Mexico for 2 years. I actually lived about 4 hours north of Belize... I lost plenty of CDs to this CD eating fungus. It's annoying as hell. I lost tons of software (including my favorite game while I was down there: Total Annihilation).
I had maybe 150 music CDs and probably some 50+ computer related CDs and would imagine I lost somewhere in the vicinity of 20 CDs total, so maybe 10% of my CDs were killed by this horrible fungus.
It does look kind of cool, though. It grows out in these little strings that look like tiny worms.
It took me about 4 or 5 CDs before I realized it had to be some sort of fungus spurred on by the incredibly high humidity (I didn't have A/C and fungi are quite common down there).
Without solving the last mile problem we can't evolve to the next generation systems that could be possible. Now everything you do is constrained by bandwidth to the home. I don't know if this is the solution, but we need it solved, much like the US highway system paved the way for vast increases in growth.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. The solution is needed, but I just don't see the widespread need anytime soon (next year or two), and maybe that's the kind of time they'd need to get it ready for "prime time".
There's a big problem, because all the backbone providers spent tons of money building up infrastructure for bandwidth that, in the end, couldn't be supplied to enough home users at a high-enough speed. We've got all these fat backbones waiting for either more users or faster connections to the home. Unforunately for many of these companies, it was a matter of bad timing and cost them dearly, financially.
I'm not saying it won't be needed, of course, it will be eventually, and maybe the apps are just waiting for the service, but I'd see it as being a year or two off before there's really any sort of serious demand for this kind of speed. That's all I was saying.
Yeah, it's cool but honestly, do we really need it? I guess for on-demand TV and that kind of stuff, maybe, but I see the applications as pretty limited. Let's face it: 90% of internet users out there right now, given this kind of technology, would only use it for faster downloads of music and movies. I don't see it as really being much of a necessity. I'm a heavy duty internet user and my shared DSL connection at work and my cable modem at home, are more than sufficient for my needs, even when I am downloading entire movies;-)
I'm no knocking it and honestly, I'd probably get it 'cause I'm a geek, but do I really need it? It looks like a technology waiting for a purpose.
I've done port scans several times for very valid reasons:
1: For my current job, we were trying to set up a VPN. When I got home, I realized I didn't remember the exact IP address of the machine we had set up the VPN on, so I did a port scan of some IP addresses. Our office has 8 (I believe) real IP addresses, and I'm not sure which ones they were out of the 255 that I scanned, but I finally found the server with the expected ports exposed, and then was able to start testing the VPN (which we still don't have working, but I digress)
2: I have a friend who isn't really technically oriented. He runs two small ISPs in Mexico, one of which I used to work for. The one I worked for sold out, and he bought it, because they were the providers for his ISP in another town and he needed to maintain his service, which was running quite well, before that time.
When he bought his provider, he was having trouble setting up and configuring certain machines. As part of the diagnostics, I was doing port scans, from the U.S., on various machines to check to make sure services were running.
Now.... Who decides my port scanning was illegal? The provider for my company? My ISP? The providers in Mexico for the ISP I was scanning?
Port scanners are tools. Like an ice pick, you can use it for good or bad. I agree there are a lot of people that use them for trying to hack into machines. The actual act of port scanning shouldn't be illegal, though. There are just too many legitimate uses for port scanning. Isn't this the argument Napster used to stay in business? Fair use? I didn't hear many people here complaining about fair use in Napster's case, and let's face it, they were certainly enabling a great deal of piracy. Did they have a fair use right? I think so, despite the great deal of piracy. (and to digress again, I think they actually helped the music industry, despite its claims.)
Another user mentioned checking the security of a potential host. I find this to be a perfectly legitimate use. If you're putting money in a bank, you're going to put it in First Union, Citibank, etc. You're not going to put it in Fred's Bank, unless you've checked out Fred's bank and you know Fred's real tight on security.
Owning an knife is not against the law. Stabbing someone with the knife is. Port scanners are no different and shouldn't be treated any different (though I grant, it's harder to stab someone with a port scanner). And the laws for use of port scanners should be just as applicable and sensible as they are regarding the use of knives. If you use it for legitimate purposes and cause no harm, then what's the problem?
If you hack into a system and do damage, that's clearly against the law, and that's all there is to it.
The real success of stock options, as I recall, began with Micro$oft. I'm sure other companies were doing it, but Micro$oft was certainly in the forefront of the tech companies doing it.
Everyone has heard the stories of millionaires made at Micro$oft, and these aren't fairy tales, they're true stories. Micro$oft created more millionaires than any other company in history (sorry, don't have the links on hand to back that up). And some came out during the.com boom, but not as many as advertised. Most of those were on paper and turned to nothing in the following "crash".
Today's smart tech worker should be more concerned with salary and benefits than stock options, especially with companies without an established history.
What you need to remember, as a tech worker, is that stock options are more of a benefit for the company, than for the workers. As mentioned by other posters, you need money to exercise your options. You also have to wait to be fully (or even partially) vested, and that usually takes a few years, at least. Finally, you have to hope and pray that your options are worth something when you exercise them.
For the company, on the other hand, they get to write off the options they provide. It's a huge tax boon for them. Go to Google and do a search on: "stock option taxes microsoft cisco"
As you'll see, they've avoided paying MASSIVE amounts of taxes by using stock option writeoffs. In fact, for 1999, Microsoft and Cisco didn't pay A DIME in federal taxes. Other sites agree with this story, this just happens to be one of the ones I found first.
So, that's my analysis, but hey, I'm only one guy.
My own personal thought has always been that the best way to deal with all this radioactive waste is just to shoot it all into the sun or something. I mean, it's not going ot damage the sun at all, and the problem disappears.
The only problem is the cost. If we can just step up the pace on that space elevator, getting it from Earth orbit to the sun would be a relatively cheap proposition.
How could anyone possibly even think of complaining about this. They're not demanding payment. They're not forcing you to buy their product. They're in a touch financial situation and they want to continue supporting their community of users. They're ASKING for donations form people who want to help support them. I don't care if they're for profit or not. Clearly they're not making a good enough profit and they're trying to find a way to subsidize paying their people.
The fact that you get to choose, in some general way, how that money is used is just a bonus in my opinion.
You can't fault them for trying to stay in business by requesting donations. Not to mention, the donations will likely indicate which areas their customers really care about.
Back pain due to bad posture is generally muscle related (IANAD, so take this with a grain of salt), unless you're talking about really long term damage, like decades. Muscle related back pain can generally be cured with proper exercise. Strengthening the muscles keeps everything where it should be and reduces or stops pain altogether.
I injured my back almost 20 years ago. The result was a severely strained muscle which left one hip a little higher than the other. Hard to believe a muscle strain can do that.
Through exercise, though, I have been able to keep the pain away for the past 8 years or so. It takes discipline, though. You need to exercise your back regularly. Not every day, once you've strengthened it, but at least once a week (in my case).
For lower back pain, I've found the most successful exercise, by far, is lying on the floor on my stomach with my arms at my side. You then arch your back and lift up your chest. Do this slowly, and repeat as many times as you can. You'll feel it. Also, touching your toes is a good way to stretch your back.
Finally, and probably most importantly, get a good chair. Nothing pays for itself better than a good work chair. I have bought my own for work and for home, simply because there are few things as disabling as back injuries and having been through severe back pain, I'll do what's needed to keep it away.
If pain persists though, see a doctor. Avoid pain killers as a long term treatment. For temporary relief, they'll do fine. A chiropractor is a good quick fix as well, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem, it's simply a short term solution in most cases (unless you'd like to pay to go regularly).
Slashdot Mirror
Someone else mentioned that age is the cure. They're right, at least in my case. I was definitely a primadonna programmer. I started programming when I was 10 years old and I was probably 25 and had been doing it for a living for at least 7 years before I even met a programmer who came close to my skills.
Then I started a job that had at least 3 programmers who were much better than me. They became my mentors. The system architect was one of those very bright guys who told you to do things one way, but wouldn't tell you why. You couldn't get it out of him by asking. I finally realized that if I just refused to do it his way and said something like, "I'm going to do it this way because blah blah blah.." He would say, "That won't work because blah blah blah..." And hence, I learned from him, despite his best efforts to the contrary.
Now, I'm in a company where I am the best programmer (I'm also the architect and the manager), but I'm not the primadonna I once was (I don't think, maybe my programmers would differ in opinion). It's kind of strange, I had lunch today with one of those mentors of mine, and he may be looking for work, and I'm way ready to hire him. For one thing, he'll be able to be the best programmer on the team. It's not a good thing to be when you're the manager. It takes up too much of your time dealing with technical problems.
But, I'm digressing in many directions. I think the point I'm making is that age and experience (particularly, experience with programmers who are as good or better than you), will fix the problem in most cases.
The ozone hole is real, and for a really good description of it and how close we came to killing off most life on this planet, I suggest you read Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan, which has a great chapter on exactly this.
He explains why it takes years for our changes in emissions to take effect and how we really came close to wiping out all the plankton in our oceans. Plankton is, the beginning of the food chain, and you wipe it out, and you pretty much wipe out the entire chain.
Is Sagan an alarmist or an extremist? I guess that's the question you have to ask. His essay provides enough annotations and evidence that I give it a great deal of creedance. He was also one of the most respected scientists of the late 20th century.
You're absolutely right. I was thinking the same thing. IBM did the same thing with mainframes. They provided them to universities at a huge discount and software was free, if I recall correctly. In return, students got free time on IBM mainframes and when they went off to look for jobs, they (and I) were getting jobs writing software for IBM mainframes.
Of course, I've been away from the mainframe world for years now, but it definitely helped IBM. If Microsoft is smart, they'll provide software at greatly reduced prices or even free to educational institutions. It encourages young people to use their software. They should do this for the same reason that they always released the Windows SDK for free. I began programming for the Windows SDK and the fact that it was free, certainly encouraged me to write Windows software.
Here's the simple answer: If you have content that people are willing to pay for, they'll pay for it. Ask any site that charges money and makes money. I guarantee you there are plenty of porn sites out there making money? Why? Because they have content that people are willing to pay for.
If someone wants to charge for their content, that's fine. If they price it in such a way that I'm willing to pay for it and I think it's worth the price, then I'll pay, otherwise I wont.
Why is this even an issue. It's basic economics. Who here doesn't understand the concept? I thought Slashdot readers tended to be on the more intelligent side.
Sounds like AT&T and ComCast are both using @Home, so what's the real difference?
I've got ComCast. It's pretty decent, but you suffer from the same thing all cable modem users suffer from: Shared bandwidth, which means not so much bandwidth during peak hours. On the other hand, on off peak hours, I get some really excellent transfer rates
The one thing that does bother me is the limiting of my upstream bandwidth. I'd certainly like to have more, especially since I regularly move data back and forth between home and work.
I never got into the whole Starbucks thing. I like good coffee and I like coffee made right, but I can do it pretty simply.
First of all, you start with good coffee. Most people can get it at their grocery store (I'm not talking Folgers). Second, you get a coffee maker. Even a Mr. Coffee is fine, but I prefer a percolator myself. Once the coffee is made, you put it in a thermos. The only thing that makes good coffee go bad is to let it cook.
I may be a simple person, but just like I know good beer and wine, I know good coffee, and the mechanics don't make much of a difference.
And not to beat a dead horse, but here's an article from a source, which we all know is somewhat unreliable, but it's the best I could do. It's called Slashdot. As you'll see, a number of the posters were talking about the Sprint PCS system which was GSM based.
You're right. This happened to me once. I guess I need SMS and didn't realize it. It would have been perfect for that one time I needed it.
That sounds facetious, of course, but it's true. I've had one situation where things were too noisy for me to use my cell phone. In that situation, I simply said "hold on one second," and walked outside to make the call.
I'm not saying it doesn't have a use. I just don't think there's enough demand for it in the States. That's the only point I was trying to make.
Actually, Sprint switched to CDMA from PCS 1920, which was a GSM based system. They originally deployed in the Washington DC area, Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, and a few other cities using a GSM based system called PCS 1920. After they deployed these systems they decided to switch to CDMA. At that point, they did a buildout of CDMA systems but maintained the PCS 1920 system for a while and eventually phased it out.
This system was definitely GSM based, though. My company was intimately involved in the original buildout. We designed it. I and others, wrote the software that the engineers used to design the system. Now, if Sprint is still using the term PCS or someone else is using it, for some other type of system, that's fine. The originaly PCS system from Sprint, was a GSM based system at 1920 mHz.
Now, I can't prove everything above, but here's a GSM PCS 1920 phone by Nortel but maybe there was never a PCS 1920 GSM based network for this phone. Maybe it was just something they made as a joke. You be the judge.
We have GSM in the US. It's called PCS. PCS is GSM at 1920mHz, whereas GSM in Europe and elsewhere, runs at 800-900mHz, which is where TDMA is in the U.S.
I worked for an RF consulting company that helped launch Sprint's PCS system. Part of the software I wrote interpreted low-level messaging (this is basically the protocol that the phone uses to speak to the base station). The protocol is identical to GSM. In fact, all my code was based on GSM documentation and standards, simply modified for frequency.
Not that this is particularly important to the question at hand.
CDMA provides better quality of service and a higher traffic load at the same bandwidth, as TDMA or GSM/PCS. While the protocols are completely different, it has little to do with SMS. SMS has little to do with the phone protocol, at least from my knowledge. It would seem to have more to do with the switch at the provider. Therefore, I can't see why protocol (i.e. TDMA, CDMA, GSM, PCS) would have anything to do with it.
I would hazard a guess that the reason for the lack of adoption in the States has more to do with a lack of demand than anything else. I have SMS MT (mobile terminated) service, but I rarely use it, and if I had SMS MO (mobile originated), I doubt I'd use it much either.
Everyone I know, in the U.S. (and I'm speaking of friends, family, etc), have e-mail (let me clarify that I realize not every U.S. citizen has e-mail, I'm just speaking of people I know personally), and because e-mail is so prevalent and available here, I think people have little use for SMS. I have e-mail at home, and I have it at work. What do I need SMS for??? Everyone I communicate with regularly has e-mail day and night.
Even internationally, most of my friends in other countries, are more likely to have e-mail than a cell phone, let alone a cell phone with SMS. I think it's just a general difference between North America and the rest of the world.
Choice of programming languages comes down to what fits your needs and what fits your skills.
I've been programming in C++ for 7 or 8 years, and find it to be fantastic for expressing what I want to produce. I find it much easier to write code that's easy to debug and maintain than any other language I've ever dealt with.
Now, granted, a lot of that is due to a very detailed process that we go through before even writing the code, but well designed C++ systems can be quite easy to maintain.
I've written several large systems in C++ and found it to be very easy to maintain and debug. My last major system had over 150 classes in a very well designed architecture. Although more than 30 people were involved at various times during it's implementation (over a 5 year period), in the end, there were two of us maintianing it and adding new features. And when I say new features, I'm talking about major additional functionality.
Now, could Java do what this system did? Yes, but probably not at the same speed. This was a very mathmatically intensive system. It modeled cellular telephone networks (the antennas at base stations as well as the mobile phones).
I still like C++. I like it a lot. It has made my life much easier. Until I find a language that's going to make my life easier, I have no intention of changing.
That said, is C++ the best language for every task? Of course not, and I certainly don't use it for web scripts. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing a language, though, and as I'm very C++ oriented, a C style scripting language would probably be very easy for me to adapt to. Perl sure as hell wasn't easy for me to adapt to.
Do I type this at the DOS prompt ;-)
I know someone is going to put a hit out on me for saying this, but why not do what Win95/98 do. Put up a picture of something and if the user wants to see diagnostic messages, they just hit a key...
I bought an IBM PC300GL (actually, my company bought it for me, but I digress)... I don't know what kind of hard drive it has, but I've never heard it.
Personally, I feel more confident if I hear something. I like it quiet, but when it's seeking, I like to hear that, just a little. I don't know why.
The only thing I can really hear on my 300GL is the fan, which itself is awefully quiet.
Now, as someone else commented about CDs and DVDs, YES, PLEASE, QUIET THESE HORRIBLE CONTRAPTIONS. My CD on my work computer has a cache that's just big enough to allow the drive to spin down for about 1/2 a second during a big transfer. Then it spins back up and transfers more. It's loud, it's annoying, and it turns this 40 some odd X CD Rom to about 10X.
Not only that, but the different neutrino flavours must have different masses in order to oscillate.
But what's REALLY exciting, is they'll probably figure out how to use this in the first episode of Star Trek Enterprise as some sort of new kind of weapon or something.
"Lieutenant, fire the Neutrino Cannon!!!"
"I am sir, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect on the ship. It's almost as if the neutrinos are just passing right through it."
Okay, stupid, I know. Sorry.
I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
This reminds me of a comedian who was talking about the police in L.A. putting up photo-speed traps. He said, "I got a picture of my car and license plate in the mail with a ticket, so I sent them a picture of $50." He said, "Two weeks later, they sent me a picture of handcuffs. I sent in the money right away."
I somehow get to keep bringing up the subject that I lived in Mexico for 2 years. I actually lived about 4 hours north of Belize... I lost plenty of CDs to this CD eating fungus. It's annoying as hell. I lost tons of software (including my favorite game while I was down there: Total Annihilation).
I had maybe 150 music CDs and probably some 50+ computer related CDs and would imagine I lost somewhere in the vicinity of 20 CDs total, so maybe 10% of my CDs were killed by this horrible fungus.
It does look kind of cool, though. It grows out in these little strings that look like tiny worms.
It took me about 4 or 5 CDs before I realized it had to be some sort of fungus spurred on by the incredibly high humidity (I didn't have A/C and fungi are quite common down there).
Without solving the last mile problem we can't evolve to the next generation systems that could be possible. Now everything you do is constrained by bandwidth to the home. I don't know if this is the solution, but we need it solved, much like the US highway system paved the way for vast increases in growth.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. The solution is needed, but I just don't see the widespread need anytime soon (next year or two), and maybe that's the kind of time they'd need to get it ready for "prime time".
There's a big problem, because all the backbone providers spent tons of money building up infrastructure for bandwidth that, in the end, couldn't be supplied to enough home users at a high-enough speed. We've got all these fat backbones waiting for either more users or faster connections to the home. Unforunately for many of these companies, it was a matter of bad timing and cost them dearly, financially.
I'm not saying it won't be needed, of course, it will be eventually, and maybe the apps are just waiting for the service, but I'd see it as being a year or two off before there's really any sort of serious demand for this kind of speed. That's all I was saying.
Yeah, it's cool but honestly, do we really need it? I guess for on-demand TV and that kind of stuff, maybe, but I see the applications as pretty limited. Let's face it: 90% of internet users out there right now, given this kind of technology, would only use it for faster downloads of music and movies. I don't see it as really being much of a necessity. I'm a heavy duty internet user and my shared DSL connection at work and my cable modem at home, are more than sufficient for my needs, even when I am downloading entire movies ;-)
I'm no knocking it and honestly, I'd probably get it 'cause I'm a geek, but do I really need it? It looks like a technology waiting for a purpose.
I've done port scans several times for very valid reasons:
1: For my current job, we were trying to set up a VPN. When I got home, I realized I didn't remember the exact IP address of the machine we had set up the VPN on, so I did a port scan of some IP addresses. Our office has 8 (I believe) real IP addresses, and I'm not sure which ones they were out of the 255 that I scanned, but I finally found the server with the expected ports exposed, and then was able to start testing the VPN (which we still don't have working, but I digress)
2: I have a friend who isn't really technically oriented. He runs two small ISPs in Mexico, one of which I used to work for. The one I worked for sold out, and he bought it, because they were the providers for his ISP in another town and he needed to maintain his service, which was running quite well, before that time.
When he bought his provider, he was having trouble setting up and configuring certain machines. As part of the diagnostics, I was doing port scans, from the U.S., on various machines to check to make sure services were running.
Now.... Who decides my port scanning was illegal? The provider for my company? My ISP? The providers in Mexico for the ISP I was scanning?
Port scanners are tools. Like an ice pick, you can use it for good or bad. I agree there are a lot of people that use them for trying to hack into machines. The actual act of port scanning shouldn't be illegal, though. There are just too many legitimate uses for port scanning. Isn't this the argument Napster used to stay in business? Fair use? I didn't hear many people here complaining about fair use in Napster's case, and let's face it, they were certainly enabling a great deal of piracy. Did they have a fair use right? I think so, despite the great deal of piracy. (and to digress again, I think they actually helped the music industry, despite its claims.)
Another user mentioned checking the security of a potential host. I find this to be a perfectly legitimate use. If you're putting money in a bank, you're going to put it in First Union, Citibank, etc. You're not going to put it in Fred's Bank, unless you've checked out Fred's bank and you know Fred's real tight on security.
Owning an knife is not against the law. Stabbing someone with the knife is. Port scanners are no different and shouldn't be treated any different (though I grant, it's harder to stab someone with a port scanner). And the laws for use of port scanners should be just as applicable and sensible as they are regarding the use of knives. If you use it for legitimate purposes and cause no harm, then what's the problem?
If you hack into a system and do damage, that's clearly against the law, and that's all there is to it.
The real success of stock options, as I recall, began with Micro$oft. I'm sure other companies were doing it, but Micro$oft was certainly in the forefront of the tech companies doing it.
.com boom, but not as many as advertised. Most of those were on paper and turned to nothing in the following "crash".
Everyone has heard the stories of millionaires made at Micro$oft, and these aren't fairy tales, they're true stories. Micro$oft created more millionaires than any other company in history (sorry, don't have the links on hand to back that up). And some came out during the
Today's smart tech worker should be more concerned with salary and benefits than stock options, especially with companies without an established history.
What you need to remember, as a tech worker, is that stock options are more of a benefit for the company, than for the workers. As mentioned by other posters, you need money to exercise your options. You also have to wait to be fully (or even partially) vested, and that usually takes a few years, at least. Finally, you have to hope and pray that your options are worth something when you exercise them.
For the company, on the other hand, they get to write off the options they provide. It's a huge tax boon for them. Go to Google and do a search on: "stock option taxes microsoft cisco"
As you'll see, they've avoided paying MASSIVE amounts of taxes by using stock option writeoffs. In fact, for 1999, Microsoft and Cisco didn't pay A DIME in federal taxes. Other sites agree with this story, this just happens to be one of the ones I found first.
So, that's my analysis, but hey, I'm only one guy.
My own personal thought has always been that the best way to deal with all this radioactive waste is just to shoot it all into the sun or something. I mean, it's not going ot damage the sun at all, and the problem disappears.
The only problem is the cost. If we can just step up the pace on that space elevator, getting it from Earth orbit to the sun would be a relatively cheap proposition.
How could anyone possibly even think of complaining about this. They're not demanding payment. They're not forcing you to buy their product. They're in a touch financial situation and they want to continue supporting their community of users. They're ASKING for donations form people who want to help support them. I don't care if they're for profit or not. Clearly they're not making a good enough profit and they're trying to find a way to subsidize paying their people.
The fact that you get to choose, in some general way, how that money is used is just a bonus in my opinion.
You can't fault them for trying to stay in business by requesting donations. Not to mention, the donations will likely indicate which areas their customers really care about.
Back pain due to bad posture is generally muscle related (IANAD, so take this with a grain of salt), unless you're talking about really long term damage, like decades. Muscle related back pain can generally be cured with proper exercise. Strengthening the muscles keeps everything where it should be and reduces or stops pain altogether.
I injured my back almost 20 years ago. The result was a severely strained muscle which left one hip a little higher than the other. Hard to believe a muscle strain can do that.
Through exercise, though, I have been able to keep the pain away for the past 8 years or so. It takes discipline, though. You need to exercise your back regularly. Not every day, once you've strengthened it, but at least once a week (in my case).
For lower back pain, I've found the most successful exercise, by far, is lying on the floor on my stomach with my arms at my side. You then arch your back and lift up your chest. Do this slowly, and repeat as many times as you can. You'll feel it. Also, touching your toes is a good way to stretch your back.
Finally, and probably most importantly, get a good chair. Nothing pays for itself better than a good work chair. I have bought my own for work and for home, simply because there are few things as disabling as back injuries and having been through severe back pain, I'll do what's needed to keep it away.
If pain persists though, see a doctor. Avoid pain killers as a long term treatment. For temporary relief, they'll do fine. A chiropractor is a good quick fix as well, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem, it's simply a short term solution in most cases (unless you'd like to pay to go regularly).
Hope you find this information useful.