The other guys in the thread were trying to establish CERN as a 'mature public Linux installation in Europe' - i.e. one that Gartner missed - not claim that CERN migrated from windows to Linux. Check elrous0's post at the beginng of the thread. Quoting: "Well, ARE there any 'sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop' in Europe". The part about migration is only mentioned in your post.
How typical of modern times. You see something that you don't like, or something that is different between nations, and you call it racist.
On the other hand, it's not so hard to see how the sentence "your averge diaper-headed cafe bomber that you find driving around a cab in NYC." could be construed as racist. I, for one, doubt that the poster is referring to white anglo-saxon protestants, and I can also see how the terms 'diaper-headed' and 'cafe bomber' can be construed as negative.
Read again.
He said WWW was created on a unix machine to support the claim that they never were big on windows. He didn't say anything about what kinds of machines they are using today. (Though other posters mention CentOS)
I seem to remember an article on slashdot from not too long ago about someone doing real-time raycasting on ATI hardware... (looking, looking... Can't find the slashdot post, but I did find it mentioned in an article...):
"Watch out, Larrabee: Radeon 4800 supports a 100% ray-traced pipeline using DirectX 9": http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/
Btw, the article actually mentions that the code works on nvidia hardware too, but that the lack of a tesselation unit makes it slower.
If you look around for the guy behind it (Jules Urbach), you'll also find a number of youtube videos where the guy explains the tech and shows some demos.
I'm not working with graphics myself, so I can't really tell if the tgdaily link is equivalent to what nvidia are showing off in this story, but if we look at the statement...
The genius of what NVidia is doing here,...
... it does indeed sound a like nvidia are trying to spin things.
Have interesting projects that push boundaries and you (or your co.) moves into the grapevine....
Agreed, but I think you have be careful about how you present it. Presented wrongly, this may be a magnet for all kinds of people, not just the super programmers. Stacking buzzwords, for example, will have a strong attraction on salespeople, recruiters and newbies, of which only the newbies are interested in a job. Plus it will make you look like you don't have a clue.
On the other hand, I think 'quality' attracts good programmers. Being good at something implies that you do it better than most others. For this to happen, you have to 'invest' in what you do, and this in turn implies that you have to care about it. When you care about building something, you don't just mash it together and go home at 5. So... You look for organizations that can help you raise the quality of what you do...
Some things I would be looking for
- The organization has internal structures for continuously improving the competence of its workforce. Mandatory education/conferences/camps/hired speakers etc.
- You don't work alone. Exchanging information with other programmers is a very good way to learn new idioms and patterns. Having a discussion partner on the same level as you may help when you program yourself into a corner. (Yes, I admit, I do that)
- You get to talk directly to the customer/end-user/orderer and don't have to go by second-hand (or worse) information.
- The sales department doesn't get to promise both functionality and deadlines. (Yes, had that happen to me in my last job. I resigned after a few months.)
- Not having a noisy environment where you program.
The items on the list are sure to be disputed, but I'm pretty confident about 'quality' being the main thing.
"Hello, I'm the current copyright holder. I bid ONE HUNDRED BILLION TRILLION ZOMG BBQ DOLLARS. OK, I win, now I just pay myself and keep my invention. Since I paid out and received the same amount of money, my net gain/loss is zero."
... except you will now be taxed for owning property provably worth "ONE HUNDRED BILLION TRILLION ZOMG BBQ DOLLARS", so your net gain/loss is a tad on the negative side.
I disagree with this; Mono is a great system which works extremely well (on Linux, at least - the OS X one is hampered by its not being made by Apple, as most stuff on that platform that isn't made by Apple is*). There's a reason a large number of newer Linux desktop projects use Mono.
The development tools for Mono, however, appear to suck hard compared to the.NET tools that are available on Windows.
I have to say I agree with this. Mono seems to work splendidly, but MonoDevelop and its tools are not working so well.
While MonoDevelop currently isn't comparable to MS Visual Studio, I very much hope that it will be in the future. Mostly because developing in VS is a breeeze compared to everything else I've tried, and I really don't want to run Windows anymore. Also, part of MS Windows popularity has to be because of the comparatively easy-to-learn programming tools that have always been coming out of Redmond, and thus generated droves of home-hacked apps with at least somewhat nice user interfaces. Maybe a something similar could happen to Linux if the set of available development tools were better.
... if it wasn't for DRM, I wouldn't be able to download TV shows from various TV networks online. DRM for no reason sucks ass, but if it lets me get content that I couldn't get before, how can I be upset? If it *is* a sucky situation, surely the problem isn't DRM but the economic structures in place that requires DRM to be used. I think it'd make more sense to get our society to a place where we don't need DRM than to a place where we shoot ourselves in the foot by not attacking the actual cause of DRM, and waste all our time and money screaming at acronyms.
Wait, let me get this...
You imply that DRM is beneficial for the customer.
You refer to some 'economic structures' that somehow 'requires DRM to be used'.
You then widen the scope to imply that the society as a whole is a place where we need DRM.
You imply that the fight against DRM is a waste of time
One thing that amazes me of Microsoft is how, having so many bright people at MS reasearch, most of their stuff is so bad, and/or lacks innovation.
Seriously? It's the same in any industry. Just look at the 'concept' cars released by major car manufacturers - the actual cars made seldom have more than a glancing resemblance with those cars. Making a sweet prototype is not nearly the same as making something for mass consumption.
... except in the case of cars, it's a lot about expense of the manufacturing process. Not making the body out of hand-molded carbon fibre will make the car less cool, but a lot easier and cheaper to manufacture. In software, you can make an exact duplicate of the 'carbon skin' for your app at virtually no cost at all.
Not disputing what you say, and I agree the guy's are most likely bogus, but... If one was looking for deep-sea wrecks, how would one do it?
The wrecks consist of a lot of iron. It is not unlikely that the iron content will somehow show up as changes in the sea-life around the wreck. Maybe as far out as 500-1000 metres from the wreck. Unfortunately, if the wreck is sitting in 3000 meters of water, that sea-life will still be invisible to us unless there is a deep-sea current surfacing nearby.
However, earthquakes can trigger tsunamis. According to wikipedia, the waves may have wavelengths of several hundred kilometres. Looking up ocean-wave physics, Wikipedia also says "By a depth equal to half the wavelength , the orbital movement has decayed nearly to zero.". In my primitive understanding of the subject, this means that some of the water from around the wreck could quite easily get stirred up to the surface, even if the tsunami just passes over the wreck and the actual earthquake is far away.
Now, wouldn't it be possible to observe the resulting changes in the water's absorption of some suitable frequencies of light (I'm thinking detection of iron-eating bacteria or other microorganisms that typically don't swim by themselves) some time after a tsunami? Naturally, compensating for drift and such by taking winds, sea currents and directon of the tsunami into account. Perhaps fine-tuning the position further by doing observations after multiple different tsunamis...
So.. which of the above is true, possible, unlikely, and bogus, respectively?
I too found "heads-up" writing to be useful. Unfortunately, someone seriously screwed up Graffiti somewhere between Palm V and Tungsten. If I want to write '-1', I have to WAIT after drawing the hyphen, otherwise the drawn '-' and '|' turn into '+', not '-1'. Considering I enter a fair amount of numbers on it, this is very annoying. There are more issues, but this is one that crops up a few times every day. I know I can enter a 'space' after the hyphen, but then I have to move the stylus to the letter-side, and it still interrupts my flow... And makes the entered numbers look crappy.
Battery time and handwriting were two of the things that were good about my Palm V, so I assumed the Tungsten would be, if not better, then at least 'good' in these areas. Currently I'm just waiting for my Tungsten to die of natural causes, and I have no idea whatsoever what to replace it with.
Getting a little off-topic here, but...
I recently assembled a new rig which I intended to run Linux on. I had previously had some bad experiences with the drivers for an nVidia nForce4 motherboard (SATA-drivers corrupted files on disk and hardware CPU offloading for networking caused corrupt downloads and BSODs), but people were telling me how much better nVidia's Linux support was, so I went for a 7600GS anyway.
I'm not saying I regret going for a 7600GS, but I don't think I've ever had the misfortune to use such buggy graphics drivers before. It's so bad that I'm starting to suspect that people are mixing in opinions of OpenGL performance in their view of 'stable'. If nVidias Linux drivers are indeed better than ATI's, then ATI's drivers are a pile of stink indeed.
I very much doubt DirectX 10 will be adopted as quickly as previous versions, as it would alienate a vary large portion of the potential userbase.
Of course, it probably will eventually get used, otherwise MS will probably just release it for XP.
Since games are one of the very few things that may lure people over to Vista, I seriously doubt MS has any interest whatsoever in porting DX10 to XP. Unless - of course - their port runs horribly slow, just hinting at the marvelous graphical effects possible in a 'True (tm) DX10 Operating System'.
Slashdot Mirror
The other guys in the thread were trying to establish CERN as a 'mature public Linux installation in Europe' - i.e. one that Gartner missed - not claim that CERN migrated from windows to Linux. Check elrous0's post at the beginng of the thread. Quoting: "Well, ARE there any 'sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop' in Europe". The part about migration is only mentioned in your post.
On the other hand, it's not so hard to see how the sentence "your averge diaper-headed cafe bomber that you find driving around a cab in NYC." could be construed as racist. I, for one, doubt that the poster is referring to white anglo-saxon protestants, and I can also see how the terms 'diaper-headed' and 'cafe bomber' can be construed as negative.
Read again.
He said WWW was created on a unix machine to support the claim that they never were big on windows. He didn't say anything about what kinds of machines they are using today. (Though other posters mention CentOS)
I seem to remember an article on slashdot from not too long ago about someone doing real-time raycasting on ATI hardware... (looking, looking... Can't find the slashdot post, but I did find it mentioned in an article...):
"Watch out, Larrabee: Radeon 4800 supports a 100% ray-traced pipeline using DirectX 9":
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/
Btw, the article actually mentions that the code works on nvidia hardware too, but that the lack of a tesselation unit makes it slower.
If you look around for the guy behind it (Jules Urbach), you'll also find a number of youtube videos where the guy explains the tech and shows some demos.
I'm not working with graphics myself, so I can't really tell if the tgdaily link is equivalent to what nvidia are showing off in this story, but if we look at the statement...
Just FYI: Your friends have been pulling your leg. You don't hunt reindeer. At least not in Sweden. They are herded like cattle.
Made me laugh out loud for real, not just chuckle. I wish I had modpoints. Thank you, sir.
On the other hand, I think 'quality' attracts good programmers. Being good at something implies that you do it better than most others. For this to happen, you have to 'invest' in what you do, and this in turn implies that you have to care about it. When you care about building something, you don't just mash it together and go home at 5. So... You look for organizations that can help you raise the quality of what you do...
Some things I would be looking for
- The organization has internal structures for continuously improving the competence of its workforce. Mandatory education/conferences/camps/hired speakers etc.
- You don't work alone. Exchanging information with other programmers is a very good way to learn new idioms and patterns. Having a discussion partner on the same level as you may help when you program yourself into a corner. (Yes, I admit, I do that)
- You get to talk directly to the customer/end-user/orderer and don't have to go by second-hand (or worse) information.
- The sales department doesn't get to promise both functionality and deadlines. (Yes, had that happen to me in my last job. I resigned after a few months.)
- Not having a noisy environment where you program.
The items on the list are sure to be disputed, but I'm pretty confident about 'quality' being the main thing.
Oh, well. My 2 cents.
I wonder if those CERN types would appreciate it if they knew that you don't need a Large Hardon Collider to find it.
While MonoDevelop currently isn't comparable to MS Visual Studio, I very much hope that it will be in the future. Mostly because developing in VS is a breeeze compared to everything else I've tried, and I really don't want to run Windows anymore. Also, part of MS Windows popularity has to be because of the comparatively easy-to-learn programming tools that have always been coming out of Redmond, and thus generated droves of home-hacked apps with at least somewhat nice user interfaces. Maybe a something similar could happen to Linux if the set of available development tools were better.
Anyone need 6000000 tons of giant stone blocks? Real cheap. Was to be used in pyramid project that never got off the ground.
- You imply that DRM is beneficial for the customer.
- You refer to some 'economic structures' that somehow 'requires DRM to be used'.
- You then widen the scope to imply that the society as a whole is a place where we need DRM.
- You imply that the fight against DRM is a waste of time
Are you on drugs? I must ask.Not disputing what you say, and I agree the guy's are most likely bogus, but... If one was looking for deep-sea wrecks, how would one do it?
The wrecks consist of a lot of iron. It is not unlikely that the iron content will somehow show up as changes in the sea-life around the wreck. Maybe as far out as 500-1000 metres from the wreck. Unfortunately, if the wreck is sitting in 3000 meters of water, that sea-life will still be invisible to us unless there is a deep-sea current surfacing nearby.
However, earthquakes can trigger tsunamis. According to wikipedia, the waves may have wavelengths of several hundred kilometres. Looking up ocean-wave physics, Wikipedia also says "By a depth equal to half the wavelength , the orbital movement has decayed nearly to zero.". In my primitive understanding of the subject, this means that some of the water from around the wreck could quite easily get stirred up to the surface, even if the tsunami just passes over the wreck and the actual earthquake is far away.
Now, wouldn't it be possible to observe the resulting changes in the water's absorption of some suitable frequencies of light (I'm thinking detection of iron-eating bacteria or other microorganisms that typically don't swim by themselves) some time after a tsunami? Naturally, compensating for drift and such by taking winds, sea currents and directon of the tsunami into account. Perhaps fine-tuning the position further by doing observations after multiple different tsunamis...
So.. which of the above is true, possible, unlikely, and bogus, respectively?
I have a friend who can whistle 300 baud. I'll surf to goatse and hand him the phone while the page loads.
.. wait for it.
Ok. here goes
I guess it's time to start uncurling all those hidden dimensions hinted at in string theory. Maybe they'll hold the data.
I too found "heads-up" writing to be useful. Unfortunately, someone seriously screwed up Graffiti somewhere between Palm V and Tungsten. If I want to write '-1', I have to WAIT after drawing the hyphen, otherwise the drawn '-' and '|' turn into '+', not '-1'. Considering I enter a fair amount of numbers on it, this is very annoying. There are more issues, but this is one that crops up a few times every day. I know I can enter a 'space' after the hyphen, but then I have to move the stylus to the letter-side, and it still interrupts my flow... And makes the entered numbers look crappy.
Battery time and handwriting were two of the things that were good about my Palm V, so I assumed the Tungsten would be, if not better, then at least 'good' in these areas. Currently I'm just waiting for my Tungsten to die of natural causes, and I have no idea whatsoever what to replace it with.
Getting a little off-topic here, but...
I recently assembled a new rig which I intended to run Linux on. I had previously had some bad experiences with the drivers for an nVidia nForce4 motherboard (SATA-drivers corrupted files on disk and hardware CPU offloading for networking caused corrupt downloads and BSODs), but people were telling me how much better nVidia's Linux support was, so I went for a 7600GS anyway.
I'm not saying I regret going for a 7600GS, but I don't think I've ever had the misfortune to use such buggy graphics drivers before. It's so bad that I'm starting to suspect that people are mixing in opinions of OpenGL performance in their view of 'stable'. If nVidias Linux drivers are indeed better than ATI's, then ATI's drivers are a pile of stink indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress