the person asserting that a 40+ yr old programmer isnt relevant is probably talking about sweatshop conditions where pointy-haired bosses measure productivity by lines of code.

my mentor as a programmer was over 60 years old — and he had more experience and knowledge about not only how to code, but deeper insight at how to set things up so that they worked in the greater context, and showed me 'how to fish' — by building functions to test other functions. without his help and insight, it would have taken an order of magnitude to finish the project.

his vastly superior knowledge came with almost 40+ years of coding experience. it was often that a short quick reply from 'the master' would save what would have taken me weeks or even monsh as a younger programmer to figure out.

older coders have a huge amount of domain knowledge and experience that cheaper newer workers cant match.

the software company would be better off if they sacked msr V R Ferose, and retained some real talent.

2cents
jp

its cheap, and the smell brings in people that the rational mind would not.. :-p

of coure —you've got to get them out from behind their computer at home first.. :-p

j

we are quick to attribute a causal relationship: a certain anatomy causes genius; but this is, strictly speaking, an interpretation. we can not dismiss out of hand that a sense of genius works into a given environment, and moulds and forms the brain from habits that result from genius, rather than genius resulting from habits — the brain the enscribed result of the history of your thinking — the history of your perception of thoughts and mental effort (or lack thereof).

2cents from sunny and cold toronto island
jp

some think time isnthe fourth dimension..

for others, the Fourth Dimension is Heat!!

2cents
jp

and colour arises from the interaction of light and dark..

goethe's theory of colours: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours_(book)

two books:

left brain — rudolf steiner — philosophy of freedom:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html

right brain — george macDonald — phantastes:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/325/325-h/325-h.htm

desert island keepers

to quote nikola Tesla — "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack,
he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine
straw after straw until he found the object of his search.

I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour.
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)

likewise msr torvalds — you advocate stable processors — elegance be damned.
true enough, stability is paramount for reliability — but it is also important to
not preserve a perverse or arcane standard.

knowing what features to consolidate and prune can save a great deal of useless
backwards compatibility work, and save labour down the road.

two examples: i) we could do well to learn from the feat of the late s.jobs — where he
was able to poll the developers about what APIs they were actually using — and
prune out a bunch of dead CRUFT, and leave a core set of stable APIs (the now
defunct CARBON) that would bridge developers — by tweaking a little code,
they could gain the benefit of the new OSX architecture, while maintaining
backwards compatibility. ii) the move from parallel printer, and PS2 style
keyboard and mouse vs the move to USB — it was wise to eliminate multiple
incompatible standards which were being used in wrong ways (parallel printer
ports being used for ZIP drives!?!?) — total USB and elimination of legacy ports
was a good call.

instead of MONOLITHIC & CRUFTY — lean and well-defined.
please.

  2cents from toronto island
jp

mechanical typewriters might actually cost more to build.. :-p

a lil context for the landlubbers out there — having gone sailing just yesterday (qc races, toronto harbour) on an alberg30 — and gone below decks (where the radio and power are kept) — everything that was on a shelf anywhere had been dumped back and forth.. bags, computers, boots and frying pans all being heaved to and fro as we had to tack the boat repeatedly.. the wind was moderate, we managed about 7knots and burried the rails. there was water flying everywhere.. if you had a cell phone or a GPS in your pocket, it would have been drenched — this was on a clearly beautiful day under typical conditions, not even any serious waves to consider.

bottom line — if your tech cant survive being tossed about like a salad with bags, shoes and frying pans while getting periodically doused with a bucket of water.. unless it is secured and installed right, it probably is pretty useless. the main radio is mounted on a bracket underside the main cabin.. and the control surfaces and antenea connectors have been routed through waterproof connectors.. which is a minimum to think it will work.

one must remember to consider these sorts of standard operating conditions when recommending sailing tech.

jp

The key observation is that, in most things in life, the dynamic range between average quality and the best quality is, at most, two-to-one. For example, if you were in New York and compared the best taxi to an average taxi, you might get there 20 percent faster. In terms of computers, the best PC is perhaps 30 percent better than the average PC. There is not that much difference in magnitude. Rarely you find a difference of two-to-one. Pick anything.

But, in the field that I was interested in -- originally, hardware design -- I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.

Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. You can then build a team that pursues the A+ players. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. That's what I've tried to do.

(Steve Jobs, In the Company of Giants)

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/coladvice/book/bk981106.htm

it sounds like you're etching a field of micro-lenses (why do you call them anteneas??) - like grooves on a record, the angles of these grooves are tuned to have a slope which graduates across the array - directing the light in a way that finely matches a convex or concave pattern.

if this is the case, it sounds like much more would be possible - perhaps you could go on to simulate custom glass geometries by modulating the algorithm by which you apply the angles and spacing using some sort of stipplegen??

very cool work.. probably necessary to develop light-gates for optical computers.. :-)
the future is wide open on this one.
john penner, toronto island.

    The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. (La Rochefoucauld)

almost anybody can pluck up their vocal chords, and sing an incredible song like 'let it be'.. but it takes a john lennon or paul mcCartney to originate and write the song.. everyone had access to the same technologies and components, but apple made a series of deliberate design decisions which raised the bar to what was expected in a phone. samsung copied, just like microsoft windows copied apple — which got its concepts form xerox, and those back to douglas englebart.

now it looks like samsung has now got to give a billion bucks o credit where it is due — wonder if apple should go back and pay xerox parc for developing the concepts for the GUI, network, and object-oriented code (oh wait, they already did).

microsoft oto got away without paying anything for ripping off the mac (thx to msr bush) when they were found engaging in monopolistic practices by (foolishly, by technical standards) tying the browser to the OS in order to gain dominance over netscape (the original entry, and explorer was a clone; just as excel was a clone off dan bricklin's visicalc)..

back in the birth of the PC computer daaays it was ALL sharing - you gave your circuit designs away (apple II schematics and source code came with the machine - as was common practice - and still is today with open source today). it wasnt until the money people came into it that people started getting all legal about what should come naturally -- sharing and playing nice in the sandbox of the tech world.. :-^

2cents from toronto island
jp

you may be able to get a clueless user to launch VNC server in under ten minutess of painful explanation..

but to then be able to talk a clueless user through how to enable port forwarding for port 5900 to their router IP on any given router they may happen to have.. over the phone... i have done it, but it was more than painful -- get them to find out the router ip; get them to type it into browser. pray they havent lost the posty w the router admin password.. no not the wifi password. ok, i found you a list of default router passwords.. yess hold the paperclip for 30 seconds.. login (half hour later).. okay, send me a screenshot of the router's webpage, instruct them how to do a screenshot over the phone (cmd shift 3.. no, dont hold the 3...!!).. instruct them how to attach a file to their yahoo mail.. email it to me.. half hour later.. okay, now we know what youre seeing, do blah blah blah to enable port forwarding of port 5900 to your ip, and click apply.. back to finding, downloading and installing vnc server, because youre still running osx 10.4..!?! another half hour. great.. types password, and we're in -- good, now i can install that scanner driver that was hanging on you because you tried to install the version for snow leopard.. :-%

it is truly niave to think you can talk a clueless user through setting up vnc and enabling port forwarding over the phone if you havent previously been there yourself in person to setup the session.

2cents from toronto island
jp

The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media. (Former CIA Director, William Colby)

the chineese can build backdoors into the chips, because they do the manufacturing, but this sort of spying activity is not so much different than the american government / snoops requiring installation of their IP sniffers at google and every major ISP.. :-\\

they are both a form of censorship / control of communication — however, whereas the chineese govt tries to simply block dissenting traffic, the americans allow the traffic to flow, in order to allow it to lead them to the identify of whom they're after..

you might have a fancy club n all - but if all yr friends are down at the pub, where you gonna go??

nobody's going to switch from facebook unless all 300 of their friends have magically switched to another service at the same time as they have - this is why google's social network never caught on. having another social network with only twenty of yr friends is useless if the other 270 are still on facebook.

2cents from toronto
jp