The standard desktop at the company I work for used to be a Sun Ultra 5, and when the company imploded I picked an Ultra 5 with a fast processor (400 MHz), put some more memory in it, took it home and put Debian on it. It worked fine. Entirely decent interactive performance, like a fast Pentium 2. Not a box for video editing or other high-CPU/bandwidth activities, but fine otherwise.

I was amused to note that it wasn't a Windows box, so it was immune to Windows attacks. It wasn't an x86 box, so it was immune to x86 attacks. I guess I amuse easily. :-)

We had a pile of 32 bit SparcStations. We (literally) couldn't give them away.

...laura

Usually the problem is something like, "it isn't giving me the newest driver" or simply the poor quality of the drivers in the first place. (For awhile there, if I clicked on the start button, it would cause my screen to reset!) And a lot of "your driver stopped responding so we turned it off, then back on again."

In some ways, I like that the drivers are being pushed to me automatically, but at the same time, if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day, I've already downloaded the drivers... I don't need them to be downloaded YET AGAIN, every install...

At Facebook, it's memcached, with an HDD backup, eventually put onto tape...

At Google, it's a ramdisk, backed up to SSD/HDD, eventually put onto tape...

For anyone who can't afford half a petabyte of RAM with the commensurate number of computers? I have no good ideas... except maybe RAM cache of SSD, cache of HDD, backed up on tape...

Using something like HDFS to store your data in a Hadoop cluster of file requests, is likely the best F/OSS solution you're going to get for that...

It would appear that the law can be adapted to be either no or never.

Has anyone mentioned that these games were removed for compatibility reasons? Does that make a difference? I'd love to know how nvidia is supposed to fix 3rd party games if they simply don't work on the latest version of the OS? Do they not let people update? Or leave the games there, but just broken? I'm not sure there are any good answers here. Ideally, the developers would fix their own games, but there's probably very little financial incentive for them to do that at this point.

Indeed. As a SHIELD Portable owner I'm bummed by this, but I'm not really surprised. Android software forward compatibility is real hit & miss, a lot of things work and then random things will break for no good reason, even though the sandbox means you can't do anything crazy with the API. We're still in a period of rapid evolution and turnover in the mobile OS space, and having already gone through this on the PC 20-30 years ago I know we'll get past it eventually, but in the early period it kind of sucks. So I don't envy NVIDIA in the least on this, as it's picking between a collection of bad options.

That said, I'm also not losing any sleep over losing Sonic. It looked nice, but it also ran at 30fps since SEGA/NVIDIA prioritized image quality over framerates in order to show how close Tegra 4 was to consoles. I don't think I need to go into depth about why a 2D Sonic game, a fast action platformer, is best played at 60fps, which is the case on the consoles and PC. I haven't played it for more than about 5 minutes as a result.

At the same time I'm also in no rush to upgrade either, since the SHIELD Portable really only does gaming well (i.e. most of Android L's upgrades are lost on it), and Android L isn't necessary for that since the Tegra 4 GPU is OpenGL ES 2.x generation anyhow. Perhaps the takeaway from this should be that Android L is a bad idea for the SHIELD Portable in the first place.

Yeah, I don't normally get feed back either. But it is kind of suspicious when I do get feedback...

I think it's a lot related to the xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/385/

If I spend a bunch of time rewriting code (which everyone does), as a man they might think "oh, well, he's just refactoring, or having a bad day." But when I do it, they think "wow, women can't code..." and then reject me out of hand without attempting to rationalize an explanation for why it should be overlooked...

Not that I'm particularly complaining here... this is just life as a woman in the tech industry... that and "oh wow, what does your boyfriend do at Google?" Actually, he's a literature teacher, I'm the genius programmer troubleshooter who knows almost everything about computers...

Actually, that's precisely the problem with acupuncture working better than placebo. Acupuncture works whether you're following their "rules" or just randomly sticking needles into people...

Basically, it turns out, that forcing a person to lay still for a long time has the same benefits of destressing as just laying on a sofa and chilling... or a massage, or any other relaxing activity...

I thought this was slashdot... when did the target audience STOP being pedants.

TL;DR: THIS... IS... SLASHDOT!!!

Because I've worked for Microsoft, Amazon (as consultant, i.e. well-paid "contractor) and Google, and I have been recognized by SourceForge in a Project of the Month.

And then they return answers like "we want someone with more experience programming". To which my 7 year friend at Google laughed and said, "are they looking for someone who's on the verge of retiring?!"

Seriously, when the answer they tell you doesn't make sense... it doesn't make sense.

Google does not hire by a single managerial decision. They hire by committee, precisely because it reduces the chance of unconscious bias being a factor.

Google intentionally recruits people multiple times. They understand sometimes a person has a bad day, and that they grow and develop. Unless you don't utterly fail the phone screen, you're very likely to get called in a few times, just to make sure that they're not turning you down for arbitrary decisions. (Chances are good that an arbitrary situation won't show up 4 times in a hiring committee")

Which brings me to the second point. It's highly unlikely these people will win, as Google hires by committee... so everything gets documented and recorded. There is no ability for a single bias person to interfere with a hiring decision.

N.B.: I worked a Google, I was "undecided" by my first hiring committee, but the second made an offer like immediately after being presented my packet.

My employers pay me to do cool shit, and we use Linux to do it. Company standard is CentOS, but my personal research/playpen box is Slackware.

FWIW, I've run Linux on x86, 68k, ARM and UltraSPARC. My home computer, the one I actually spend my own money on, is a Mac. It shares desk space with an x86 Linux box and a Raspberry Pi.

...laura

Google actually INTENTIONALLY recruits people multiple times. Unlike many other companies, they realise that people grow, people develop, and sometimes people are just having a bad day.

In any case, they want to ensure that they haven't passed up any arbitrary candidate just because they failed one in-person interview.

N.B.: I worked for Google. I didn't get hired by the first committee, but was hired by the second committee...

Prior to the IBM PC there was enormous diversity in computing. I have some early issues of Byte and the hardware in the ads is all over the place. Most of the names are long forgotten now.

The BBC did Micro Men, a cute (and mostly historically accurate) program about the rise and fall of Acorn, which happened in the same time period. They too got broadsided by IBM, but managed to develop the ARM processor before they imploded.

...laura

Malda also included - and it may still be there - logic based upon how frequently you visit Slashdot, trying to avoid either picking rare visitors or heavy visitors, to moderate.

It's still there. I check the site twice a day and never get any points. When I go on a trip and only get to check it once (at best), I come home to mod points.