Its a flawed poll. Its not setup to discern the amount of first modem users, because the question is when everyone moved off modems. So there's no need for the >20 years users; remove it. "Right this minute" can be merged with dropped carrier. Then they can set better start dates for when broadband rolled out, or change 10-20 years to "more than 10 years".
If you don't care how long your programs take to solve a problem, avoid coding in cuda. If you want to keep your job, and your employer needs to run the app on nvidia cards as fast as possible, you're writing it in cuda.
No, AMD hardware outperforms Nvidia hardware, computational units/$1, for bitcoin mining. That's why bitcoin miners use OpenCL; its about the card. (When one cares about protein folding, programmers that need speed, are going to CUDA and nvidia cards.) Pot, meet Kettle.
I suggest that it is about time programmers started getting used to coding in assembly once again.
You can give up right there. The days of humans getting 100x more efficiency out of a CPU using assembler rather than a higher level language are over. Optimizing compilers are able to devise efficiencies at large scale/detail that a human can at this point. Enterprise level software requiring millions of lines of code are just too large to be optimizable by one human writing in assembler. Speed efficiencies with out of order execution, deep pipelines consumer CPUs will be better utilized by compilers able to make better predictive arrangement of code.
Don't get me wrong. You'll always be able to find ONE "John Henry" that will be able to outcode the "stream compiler". But you can't build a world economy on one programmer. And forget about finding COMPETENT assembler programmers. The people you need to extract these kind of efficiencies are like finding prima ballerinas. Sadly, the world's economy needs more mediocre programmers to generate more working code, and more higher-level, software engineers to implement new solutions for problems addressable by a computer.
Businesses are structured for the quarterly stock profit. For the suggestion your making, the management team would have to be in position to maintain the strategy for years, while taking a killing in profitability. Basically, AMD would have to be taken over by a Japanese company for even a *chance* of a comeback. AMD will have to hope that its pivot to gaming consoles gives it enough oxygen to sustain a radical, new CPU architecture. AMD is a dead man walking.
Marissa Meyer's tumblr purchase strategy isn't nuts, just the price ($1.1 billion?!?!)
Meyer wants to improve Yahoo's current products, and move Yahoo to a focused social media/portal platform. She's counting on Yahoo grabbing a piece of the mobile social media pie, which no big player has right now. (Google would be closest.) This is what will fuel Yahoo's "comeback" into relevance. The problem is that Yahoo has zero product presence in mobile. She's buying tumblr as an infrastructure purchase.
The next issue is pretty cool. Turns out, Facebook will probably not grow anymore. The tweens don't like Facebook. Kids don't like to treat their social media as maintenance work. And Facebook's zeal to grab eyeballs means parents have moved to Facebook, which makes it uncool. Kids want to maintain communication with their peers, so they're gravitating towards low maintenance social media, like twitter, tumblr, and instagram (which Facebook is borging to death). So Meyer buys tumblr to get more presence in social media, and deny another avenue Facebook can acquire to fix their mobile/tween growth. The problem is there's no way tumblr is worth $1.1 billion, unless Meyer is grabbing brains as well, and sees some sort of general social media on mobile framework she can build Yahoo on top of tumblr.
Apple, back in 1998-1999, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Even the early years of Jobs return, Apple was putting out colorful plastic, underpowered computers. It wasn't until the introduction of the Ipod, and Apple's redirection into the consumer device market, did Apple dig itself out of its 1990's stupor.
Did reality prove you wrong? Hasn't the Red Hat stock grown in multiples of its 1990's value? Did she sell it in the early 2000's?
A service pack is a form of configuration management. Think of every binary in the Windows operating system as a program with a version. Microsoft wants to encourage developers to support the latest version of their patched OS. That is, of course, feasibly impossible, especially when some developers are confronted with major behavioral change in one OS program update that their application is dependent upon. So having a "blessed" minimal collection of binary versions makes Microsoft only responsible for those versions. It then becomes incumbent for the developers to make sure their application works to SP1 versions of all those OS programs, and the developers cease to be responsible for making their app work with the original OS binary/daemon that was released with the Windows 7 rollout. (And yes, this is a descriptive simplification of the issue.)
There is more going on with a service pack than just throwing together the latest version of each OS binary. Yes, I wish Microsoft would put out an SP2 already, even if they want to commit corporate suicide by abandoning Windows 7 to get customers to move to Windows 8.
Of course, no one is going to notice, since everyone will be using cloud computing accounts.
Have you taken a good look at how FIOS arranges its channels blocks? Fiber has so much bandwidth, they're broadcasting the same channel in SD, HD, and 1080i, simultaneously. (FIOS may charge extra to access the high end.) I seriously doubt the production company is compressing their signal; there's no advantage for them to do so. I suspect you're using a low-bandwidth channel to tape via TiVo. (In fact, I think that AMC only recently got a 1080i channel, here in the Northeast.)
Your question is vague and dependent on many circumstantial details. Generally, I don't see it possible to gain contract work without experience.
But the OP says he has years of VB/.NET coding experience. Then it boils down to what region of the country, what industries the programming work came from, what is his competence in what he is being asked to do, and how good are his professional networking skills.
You generally do not land "entry level" contract work from job websites from headhunters and HR departments. They will often ask for 5 years of experience in X, when the language didn't exist 5 years ago. (That's because they don't know how to properly do their job.)
But when trying to shove a foot in the door, you will get wind of a possible short-term work from old bosses, former coworkers, and headhunters (not through classifieds). The people who hire will be the (senior) project managers who only give a rats ass about getting a task completed. If you can sell *them*, and placate their HR, that's how you get contract work. But its not enough to make a living on without a previous programming jobs, and you can't be demanding the "going rate" until you develop a reputation as someone who delivers.
The OP said he was disinclined to go into project management. And MBAs now are a dime a dozen. Its certainly not worth spending a crap load of money to get a piece of paper that no one will hire.
As much as I hate to be dogmatically negative, I'd say he's too old to be retrained for coding jobs.
1) Look very carefully at what he said: he specialized in VB.NET. He never bothered to learn C#, which is a centerpiece language for
2) The only expense to him at this point should be a few books and his time. One shouldn't need to go back to college in to learn how to use C#; particularly if you were adept with computing concepts, algorithms, and development methodologies. If he thinks he needs to obtain paid certification to be "hireable" as a programmer, then he's not really cut out to be a programmer. If he feels the need to ask opinions over whether to make an effort to stay in the industry, then he's as good as done. A professional in his position would be learning C#, latest
3) Frankly, if he was competent at math, he wouldn't even need to retrain on C#. Retrain on F#, and get a job coding for quants, labs, and large organizations.
4) The only thing I can see him doing that is still computer related, and not programming, would be to recertify as a network administrator. That environment is unlikely to change radically, and there will always be networks needing to upgrade. But you'd have to ask network techs if that is worth bothering at this point.
5) He'd be better off (if living in an non-union state) to retrain as a plumber or electrician. I would imagine after a decade, he'd make more money doing that, than as a programmer.
Everything in Windoze 7 OS is built to the
What has Pelosi done that is "bat-shit crazy"? (Please back up with news links.)
Is anything a politician does/says that you disagree with "bat-shit crazy"?
Could it be possible that Pelosi acts rationally, and you're the one with the "bat-shit crazy" notions about Pelosi?
Common sense; mosquitoes need weeks to gestate. The RV will have driven off in a few days.
All your files have been destroyed (sorry). Paul.
