Listen, you Labview fan boy, I am not smoking crack. (Although I will admit it: Labview makes me wish I was a toothless meth addict, hitting rock bottom, giving blowjobs to married, middle-aged closeted gay men in a movie theater for drug money.)

I spent more than 10 minutes learning that crap. More than a few weeks in fact. I got to know some Labview tech support "engineers" by name. The problem, I later realized, was that I knew exactly what I wanted the hardware to do, except I had to jump through all kinds of Labview hoops to get there. In C or C++, I could have had the majority of the hard parts done in a few days, and then polish up the details. Not so in Labview.

Ever try to force yourself to do something the hard way, when you know there is a much easier way to do it? Ever try to pee sitting down when you're a few pints in, and you really have to go? That's what working with Labview is like -- it will block your peehole until you are calmly sitting on the toilet like a good boy. If you are a girl it will make you pee standing up through one of those cardboard funnels.

Let's look at what you'd have to spend to get a hardware and software package that lets you look at signals at 10MHz.

Here is the "Buy Labview" (a.k.a. get raped in the ass with a cactus branch) web page:

http://www.ni.com/labview/buy/

I could go with Labview Base or Labview Full, but since I want to deploy stuff to customers' machines without forcing them to buy Labview, I'm going to go with Labview Professional for US$4299, although I should probably go for NI Developer Suite for US$4699 because it's the "best value."

Next, I want to sample at 10MHz or greater. In 5 minutes of searching, these are the only products that I could find, that will let me do that. Note that these both have a maximum rate of 10MHz; there don't seem to be NI products that can go higher.

• PXI-6115 for US$4199, or if we go with the "NI recommended" version, US$5249
• PCI-6115 which is just the PCI bus version of the PXI-6115, for US$3799, or US$4849 for the "NI recommended" version

If you go with the PCI version, you will need a PC with some pretty good horsepower to handle the 10MHz data stream. This may add an extra $1000 or $2000 to your total price.

If you go with the PXI version, then bend over and grab your ankles again, for into your bleeding rectum NI shall happily insert a well-lubricated PXI chassis of your choice, for an additional few thousands of $$$.

Add in all taxes and other costs (shipping, and oh yeah, $600 cables, anybody??) and it's pretty damn near $10k if not well above. Just for the privilege of writing multi-colored spaghetti code in order to make your measurements.

In conclusion, it is better to just get a real 60MHz digital scope for a few grand. Labview treats intelligent humans like dogs.

By all means, buy National Instruments hardware. It is fantastic. I have deployed it on a number of production systems that run for days and days and days without a glitch.

As for Labview, stay the fuck away from that steaming pile of dogshit. It is a great way to waste lots of time and give up your sanity (and possibly your anal virginity) unless you feel like fucking around at your lab bench and drag-n-dropping some blinky lights and text boxes to impress your PHB. Oh yeah, and it's also great if you enjoy having fresh-out-of-college, inexperienced National Instruments tech support fuckwads (i.e. never having done any actual work with data acquisition or signal processing in their lives) repeatedly tell you, "OMG, change the way you think! You're so wrapped up in the text-based language tunnel vision! LOL!" whenever you get frustrated because Labview actually slows you down and doesn't help you get your results.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it will also cost you an arm and a leg. A hardware and software (i.e. Labview) package will let you look at signals in the 10MHz range and above will probably run you at least $10-15k.

In my day to day work, I prefer to remain in the "text-based language tunnel vision." That is, I prefer to use a well-designed C or C++ API to write programs that actually work in a predictable and reliable manner. (The NI-DAQmx API is actually very powerful and easy to use.) That way, I don't have to scroll around in a blinding maze of brightly colored connector lines and boxes and stuff, just because some National Instruments fucktard decided that "text-based languages" are just too, like, texty and complicated and not very much fun, yay! Yuck.

You're not qualified to answer the question. Information technology is not computer science. They are called different things for a good reason.

There is little or no similarity between computer science and IT because they are completely different fields. In IT, you use programs and systems that real computer scientists created, and write scripts and Visual Basic things to glue them together, in order to get something that does what you want. IT is about integrating systems. Computer science is about math, scientific analysis, designing optimal algorithms, and so on. Therefore your lack of need for math in your IT work has no connection to the question being asked.

I don't follow. How would it make Abbott a hypocrite if he opposes internet filtering?

"Its minimum processor configuration are two specialty mainframe processors designed for Linux."

What the fuck kind of grammar is that?

I believe I did provide evidence. Did you read my initial comment?

Thank you for your correction. Using "origin" would have indeed made more sense.

Not to be a nit picker, but I did clearly state that I kept reading in spite of the cringe-inducing opening of the article. I'm not sure why you're calling me unwise because of that. But, your trite network communication metaphors are almost as cringe-inducing as Mr. Spiegel's writing.

You're right, the article is in fact "a stream of information not forced onto [my] consciousness." But it appeared on the Slashdot front page, and when there is something on the front page of Slashdot that annoys us, we speak up.

I fail to understand your generalization that "attack is a primitive response to a stream of information not forced onto your consciousness." To clarify, are you saying that when information is not forced on me, and I am primitive, my response is to attack? I beg your pardon. That makes no sense at all. I hope that English is not your first language; if it is, you are probably a sloppy programmer.