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Comment Faster, better, cheaper? (Score 1) 339

What occurs to me is that 15-20 years ago, when Sun iron dominated Wall Street, is that all the Sparcstations came IIRC with 10baseT on the motherboard, and I don't recall there being faster NICs available. And even if there were, in a lot of cases all the machines slots were populated with graphics cards.

Then three things all sort of happened around the same time: Linux (kernel and user land) reached a level of maturity and stability, inexpensive 100baseT and later 1000baseT NICs became available, and Intel closed the CISC/RISC performance gap. I don't know when Sun started shipping faster networking, but if the only way to get it was to buy a whole new machine, as opposed to plugging in a $30 NIC, it isn't hard to imagine which way the purchasing decision would go, even for money-is-no-object Wall Street.

No surprise then that Linux whupped Solaris' butt. Sun didn't help things by dawdling on fixing known Solaris performance problems. By the time Sun fixed them it was too late; Linux had already gained a foothold.

Comment Re:Dec1999 - MS's Market Cap Surpasses 600 Billion (Score 1) 378

Translation: Apple's won't be at the top forever, any more than Microsoft's was.

Everyone wants to know what happens when SJ leaves. I suspect a lot of people will be shorting AAPL big time when he does.

And I don't wish for it, but there's no denying that SJ's health issues are in the forefront of everyone's thoughts.

Comment Battling it out? Really? (Score 2) 378

Is that SJ and Tillerson duking it out, mano a mano?

Are they launching missiles at each other's corporate HQs?

No, I didn't think so. They're just minding their businesses and the stock market is setting a price on their shares. Hardly what I'd call battling it out. Strange metaphor.

Comment Re:Flawed (Score 1) 542

Oh sure, and in three years when I move to the next job then I can perhaps move back where I started. Or somewhere else.

In the mean time I will have torn my children out of their school and away from their friends, made my wife's commute to her job longer, and I'll have sunk thousands of dollars in commissions to the realtor who sells my house, hopefully not at a loss, all for what?

So I can have a reasonable length bike ride to work nine months out of the year?

If that's what the pundits are suggesting, then they're even bigger fools than I already thought they were.

Comment Re:Flawed (Score 1) 542

Clearly you're still young and haven't reached the phase of life where your metabolism slows down.

If I don't get at least an hour of strenuous, i.e. aerobic, exercise every day I gain weight.

And it's not like I eat a lot, or eat junk. If you'd told me 25 years ago how little I'd be eating today, I'd have laughed in your face.

Comment Re:Flawed (Score 1) 542

There are no buses, subways, or trains that go anywhere near my office. The most direct route is 17 miles on freeways and what I consider to be bike unfriendly roads. Getting there on a bike on friendlier roads is probably more like 20 miles, and is probably at least a two hour trip each way -- not really how I want to spend 25% of my waking hours each day. Not to mention the prospect of riding 20 miles in a blizzard leaves leaves me cold, even if that's only a potential problem two months out of the year.

But thanks for playing.

Comment What is this booting up that you speak of? (Score 1) 557

I never shut my laptop off. I close the lid and it goes to sleep for the duration of my commute to and from work. If I don't close the lid it'll go to sleep after 30 minutes.

I only reboot after an update or upgrade that requires it. And then I only do it when I don't mind the wait, usually because I'll go off and do something else.

Boot-up time? Not an issue.

Comment Flawed (Score 5, Funny) 542

Let's see, walking is not zero carbon because of the food energy.

After the carbon cost of making the bike, biking's not zero carbon either, for the same reason.

But I only ride my bike for exercise, thus I don't save anything vis-a-vis my commute to work, and I have the food energy cost. Therefore my bike riding definitely has a carbon footprint.

Oh noes. Guess I better stop riding and turn into an obese blob for the sake of the environment.

Programming

Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Learn New Programming Languages? 772

ProgramadorPerdido writes "I have been a developer for 25 years. I learned Basic, VB, C, FoxPro, Cobol, and Assembler, but the languages I used the most were Pascal and Delphi. I then concentrated on a now-non-mainstream language for 11 years, as it was used at work. One day I had the chance to move into Project Management and so I did for the last 2 years. Now, at almost 40 years old, I'm at a crossroad. On one side I realized developing is the thing I like best, while on the other side, the languages I'm most proficient with are not that hot on the market. So I came here looking for any advice on how to advance my career. Should I try to learn web development (html, xhtml, css, php, python, ruby)? Should I learn Java and/or C#? Or am I too old to learn and work a new language? Should I go back to PM work even if I do not like it that much? Any similar experiences?"

Comment Re:LG sells Android phones... connection? (Score 2) 196

And forgive me for possibly stating the obvious---

If LG were to sue Apple directly, Apple might throw a hissy and stop buying LG's panels.

So to prevent that, LG creates a shell/shill to bring the suit, on the presumption that Apple won't see right through it and continue to buy panels as if nothing was wrong.

Anybody else buying that?

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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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