You don't have to find an animal previously believed extinct. There are millions of species around. Just put together case studies of known living animals. Then have a group unfamiliar with the species of interest try to predict its characteristics from genealogical family members.
"When we hire C programmers, we give a programming test. Most applicants don't realize it's not good to lose a reference to allocated memory, have no problem passing stack variables back to the calling function, and can't spot a variable that's used before initialization."
These are experience related issues. You can't expect someone with a little college training to know about memory allocation issues. They don't even teach those languages anymore. At my school they start with Java. How are you supposed to know about the stack when you start in Java? I wrote something about this exact issue.
Freedom and openness is good for almost everyone except maybe the middlemen (publishers, RIAA, etc.). The web has flourished under the free content paradigm. Could you imagine if you had to pay for everything (email, search, maps, news, and so on)? Who could afford it?
Many businesses have proven they can make money this way. Others may still have to prove themselves. But it works! There are many ways to generate cash flow - ad revenues, consulting, sale of related items. I think if you offer a service of value to people or valuable content, you can find a way to earn money.
I know a few recruiter/head hunters have found me using some technology that searches the web for resumes. (Hint - Set up a web page and put your resume there.) I even got spammed by one. He had his introduction letter automated. It was even automated for replies I believe. After I received the same letter three times, I complained and they stopped coming.
A better technology than all the online job boards would be one that searches the internet for your resume. Maybe this would be a google resume search. If you have a useful website, your resume would probably be higher in the rankings. I don't know -- it's a start. In the mean time, I've just started applying to everything that's even remotely related to my skills.
The real test of software comes when millions of people are using it. One of the benefits of the open source model is continuous improvement and immediate feedback; although, I suppose it might be possible to make other software work this way (such as windows updates). We won't know for sure how good/bad or useful it is until the complaints start rolling in. I personally would wait for service pack one or two. It will almost certainly be better.
That article was very short and short on details. I read an article about this recently. For the interested, the other studies were in reference to a phenomenon known as cognitive reserve. This theory holds that really smart/educated people have a grey matter buffer so to speak. When old age diseases attack their brains, the brain can continue to function at a high level for quite a long time.
I think what this article is referring to is the speed at which deterioration appears to happen once the disease is discovered. However, as this poster alluded to, the educated are actually better off. The symtoms don't appear because their braind is fighting off the disease, but once they finally do appear, it's over (sadly).
Back when I was an undergrad, I wrote a paper on how asynchronous design would be a partial solution to the clock speed problem. Then this multicore thing seemed to come out of nowhere. I don't think it's all that much different (and I'm not familiar with the details) from having multiple cpus. It's less space and might be lower cost/heat/power. But it is also a good solution for many problems.
There are a number of posts that mention threaded code. But remember, it's not just threads, but processes. New services and apps are being introduced all the time. You may have things like ftp, ssh, email, bluetooth (in my case) running on your machine. I also tend to have a lot of applications open - browser, editor, and compiler just to start with. None of these are incredible cpu hogs, but if you're downloading a file while compiling and typing into text editor, you could use a little more power. Have you ever gone into a library and seen dozens of computers (or just terminals) in use or waiting to be used? Imagine if there was just one multicore machine (say 32) and all the terminals were working with that machine. That would save a lot of money, possibly space, and power. You might want to have one physical server hosting dozens of services. In these situations, no (or little) extra work is necessary to make use of the additional cores.
However, there are still those problems that need Hz. Many scientific/math problems are not parallelizeable. Unfortunately, multicore does nothing here. Oh well, I'm happy with my dual cpu machine. If only it would stop hanging...
I thought he made a good point of why having a "stupid" internet has been good for everyone. Many of the services we have now may never have developed had big business gotten complete control of the net. And think about all those little extra charges you pay on your phone bill. I don't watch TV, but I think it's similar with cable. Now imagine the the dozens of things you'll be charged for just to browse for a few hours. There is a lot of demand for internet services. They aren't going to charge lightly.
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You don't have to find an animal previously believed extinct. There are millions of species around. Just put together case studies of known living animals. Then have a group unfamiliar with the species of interest try to predict its characteristics from genealogical family members.
"When we hire C programmers, we give a programming test. Most applicants don't realize it's not good to lose a reference to allocated memory, have no problem passing stack variables back to the calling function, and can't spot a variable that's used before initialization."
o cmem.html
These are experience related issues. You can't expect someone with a little college training to know about memory allocation issues. They don't even teach those languages anymore. At my school they start with Java. How are you supposed to know about the stack when you start in Java? I wrote something about this exact issue.
http://www.signalsguru.net/articles/cexample/call
Freedom and openness is good for almost everyone except maybe the middlemen (publishers, RIAA, etc.). The web has flourished under the free content paradigm. Could you imagine if you had to pay for everything (email, search, maps, news, and so on)? Who could afford it?
Many businesses have proven they can make money this way. Others may still have to prove themselves. But it works! There are many ways to generate cash flow - ad revenues, consulting, sale of related items. I think if you offer a service of value to people or valuable content, you can find a way to earn money.
I know a few recruiter/head hunters have found me using some technology that searches the web for resumes. (Hint - Set up a web page and put your resume there.) I even got spammed by one. He had his introduction letter automated. It was even automated for replies I believe. After I received the same letter three times, I complained and they stopped coming.
A better technology than all the online job boards would be one that searches the internet for your resume. Maybe this would be a google resume search. If you have a useful website, your resume would probably be higher in the rankings. I don't know -- it's a start. In the mean time, I've just started applying to everything that's even remotely related to my skills.
The real test of software comes when millions of people are using it. One of the benefits of the open source model is continuous improvement and immediate feedback; although, I suppose it might be possible to make other software work this way (such as windows updates). We won't know for sure how good/bad or useful it is until the complaints start rolling in. I personally would wait for service pack one or two. It will almost certainly be better.
That article was very short and short on details. I read an article about this recently. For the interested, the other studies were in reference to a phenomenon known as cognitive reserve. This theory holds that really smart/educated people have a grey matter buffer so to speak. When old age diseases attack their brains, the brain can continue to function at a high level for quite a long time.
I think what this article is referring to is the speed at which deterioration appears to happen once the disease is discovered. However, as this poster alluded to, the educated are actually better off. The symtoms don't appear because their braind is fighting off the disease, but once they finally do appear, it's over (sadly).
Back when I was an undergrad, I wrote a paper on how asynchronous design would be a partial solution to the clock speed problem. Then this multicore thing seemed to come out of nowhere. I don't think it's all that much different (and I'm not familiar with the details) from having multiple cpus. It's less space and might be lower cost/heat/power. But it is also a good solution for many problems.
There are a number of posts that mention threaded code. But remember, it's not just threads, but processes. New services and apps are being introduced all the time. You may have things like ftp, ssh, email, bluetooth (in my case) running on your machine. I also tend to have a lot of applications open - browser, editor, and compiler just to start with. None of these are incredible cpu hogs, but if you're downloading a file while compiling and typing into text editor, you could use a little more power. Have you ever gone into a library and seen dozens of computers (or just terminals) in use or waiting to be used? Imagine if there was just one multicore machine (say 32) and all the terminals were working with that machine. That would save a lot of money, possibly space, and power. You might want to have one physical server hosting dozens of services. In these situations, no (or little) extra work is necessary to make use of the additional cores.
However, there are still those problems that need Hz. Many scientific/math problems are not parallelizeable. Unfortunately, multicore does nothing here. Oh well, I'm happy with my dual cpu machine. If only it would stop hanging...
I read a long article about this not too long ago - http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8673
I thought he made a good point of why having a "stupid" internet has been good for everyone. Many of the services we have now may never have developed had big business gotten complete control of the net. And think about all those little extra charges you pay on your phone bill. I don't watch TV, but I think it's similar with cable. Now imagine the the dozens of things you'll be charged for just to browse for a few hours. There is a lot of demand for internet services. They aren't going to charge lightly.