| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 2002/7/15-16 [Computer/HW/Languages, Academia/Berkeley/Classes] UID:25362 Activity:low |
7/15 So I have 3 days to (re)learn VHDL. The only EE class I took was
cs152, no 150, no 141. Any advice?
\_ uh, what is this for? And how can you take 152 without 150?
\_ so, is comp arch considered software or hardware?
\_ it's the boundary in between them.
\_ they teach it now in 61c/150.
\_ 141 is probably irrelevant for most vhdl coding tasks. 150 is
more relevant. if you've learned vhdl in the past, just do a
few exercises and you'll be fine. if vhdl is new, find someone
who knows the language well to teach you. of course, this only
addresses syntactical sugar. learning how to design once you've
learned vhdl is another matter.
\_ what's the diff between Verilog and VHDL? Adv/Disadvantages?
\_ the diff? the syntax. they do the same thing but vhdl requires
more typing and in my exp. the latest tools etc. are targetted
more at verilog. vhdl has some higher level constructs like
records and shit that can be nice for some things. verilog
is used by the vast majority of valley companies. |
| 2002/7/15-16 [Computer/SW/Languages/C_Cplusplus, Computer/SW/Languages/Java] UID:25363 Activity:very high |
7/14 Is there any viable way to make a career out of perl stuff?
it seems that everywhere is J2EE, etc.
\_ http://jobs.perl.org
\_ how to get the foot into the door
-- old and inexperienced
\_ Get a code portfolio together. Get some perl gods to look
it over. Send out en masse
\_ Certainly. I work for a large e-commerce site, and our entire
fufillment system is written in perl. (Sorry, no openings.)
\_ I had no idea that people still boast about working at
an e-commerce or b2bi company anymore.
\_ What exactly is a "fufillment" system, anyway?
\_ yer mom?
\_ 1) he wasn't boasting, 2) he has a job, 3) he didn't say
anything about who or what his company is/does. Get over it.
\_ 1) he WAS boasting. "I work for a large e-commerce site"
is bragging. Boasting is okay but at least have something
to boast about. 2) Unless he's a janitor, I don't
consider any position in an e-commerce company to be
a real job. 3) He works at an e-commerce company. You
can infer that it doesn't do anything. See
http://www.trilogy.com for details.
\_ You need to get a grip. He was just providing a picture
of how a decent number of jobs exist for the project.
\_ Uh, no. I was originally being facetious but someone
had a bug up their ass that they had to respond
with 3 points. So I did what any good old motder
does and respond with 3 sardonic points myself.
And no decent jobs exist for the project. The guy
even said that there weren't any openings.
\_ No you were originally being an asshole and still
are. 1 point.
\_ Are you the one who believes in getting
mythical "motd points"?
\_ Perhaps you ought to practice saying, "I'm
wrong."
\_ I'm C00L D00D cuz I do top-notch Perl
coding for a leading e-commerce site
which specializes in B2B integration
and extremely extensible e-solutions.
What do we make? Nothing. We specialize
in "mindshare". You guys need to get
a life. Or better yet, a REAL job for
once.
\_ Still an asshole. Is that another point or
do you not get double points for the same
thing? Just curious.
\_ Aaaawwww. I'm soooo sorry I hurt your
poor little feelings. Is there anything
I can do to ease your pain?
\_ Uh? You're confused. I don't see how
anyone with the tiniest shred of brain
material could think my feeling were
involved in any way. Fucking weirdo.
\_ thanks for answer my question... may
i email you for further questions?
please drop a note
--kngharv
\_ Okay, kngharv. I'll give you some useful
advice if you're actually willing to
listen to it rather than just resorting
to childish insults. If you want to
learn Perl, that's fine. Just don't make
an entire career out of it. And don't
make the same mistake that many EE/CS
grads here have made by joining these
dot-coms/B2Bi/e-commerce companies
thinking that there's some pot of gold
at the end because most of them are just
failing companies that don't really do
anything substantive. And I can assure
you that, if you choose to take this route,
your skills will most certainly not
\_ You're still presupposing that
the poster was "boasting." Sorry,
but "I work for a large
e-commerce site" doesn't quite
qualify as "boasting." Thanks for
playing.
be recognized. I know from working in
industry that many employers look down
on these types of NCG's as just purely
incompetent gold-diggers. But it's your
life so you decide what's right for you.
\_ Wow! Someone is *really* bitter about
missing about on the easy money so many
others here got in the last few years.
May I suggest valium+therapy combo?
\_ No, I think the OP was just trying to
be helpful by answering the original
question. You, on the other hand, seem
to be freaking out. Calm down, man.
\_ No. My original response was that
I found it surprising that people
still boast about working at an
e-commerce site. That was neither
being an asshole or freaking out.
I was just pointing out that this
whole e-commerce thing is just part
of a dead gold-rush and people
should get back to reality. Of course,
there's always somebody who gets so
offended by this that he freaks and
and feels the need to post a 3-point
response.
\_ Stop being a bitch. Get a life.
- yap
\_ No one freaked but you. You're just
bitter you stayed with your $50k job
the last 5 years while others were
raking in more than twice that at fake
companies and some of them even cashed
in big time. Now that things are
settled out, those same folks are
still making $90k or more while you're
waiting for your next 1% COLA. I'm
really truly honestly sorry you chose
poorly but ranting about it on the
motd and bashing some shnook who
merely mentioned on the side what his
company does with perl is not a very
endearing quality. It was a once in a
lifetime free money fest and you
missed out. It isn't the ecommerce
guy's fault.
\_ I graduated in 2001 and was wondering is there any way to make a
career out of Java if you don't want to do web devel. Goddamn, I
wish we actually were able to hone C/C++ skills at Cal. I guess
this seems trollish, but if you graduated in the last 2 years or
are still in school, you'll realize that this is not a troll at all.
\_ agreed
\_ agreed #2
\_ I'm curious about this java craze. I'm not in the job market
so I don't know much about what skills are in demand. For those
of you that are looking, do you see more jobs that need Java/
web stuff or those that need C/C++? -alumni
\_ "alumni" is plural, "alumnus" is singular.
\_ In my experience, most Java work is monkey/grunt coder work.
Phil Greenspun has an amusing saying that Java is a good
language for roping together hundreds of mediocre programmers.
Regardless of what you think of Greenspun, I think it's a
pretty accurate description of Java. Much of Java's
popularity is attributable to the fact that Sun's marketing
team went to town on the middle-managers of the world. At
the end of the day, Java is an okay programming language
with a very wide library of utility classes.
\_Java is a AWESOME programming language, its the JVMs
that are mediocre, thus 90% of "Java's" problems are in
the implementation.
\_ Is there an underlying reason why the JVMs are
mediocre given that quite some time has elapsed
for people to get their act together?
\_ Okay troll. I'll bite. Why is Java AWESOME? And if
Java is so AWESOME, why do all the non-Java engineers at
Sun love to bash on it so much? Java does many things
right, but it also has many serious design flaws. For
example, the stack machine implementation of the JVM
REQUIRED by the Java spec is idiotic (it kills
performance). Another example is the fact that basic
types are not first order classes. This is simply
idiotic.
\_ Cal teaches CS. Cal does not teach C/C++. If you have a
problem with this, go to a vocational school. If you can't
learn C/C++ on your own after learning language basics (and
especially after learning Java), then, well, you deserve what
you get.
\_ This is a nice theory but try getting a C job when your school
didn't teach any C classes. Live in the real world for once
instead of repeating the ancient CS dept. spew.
\_ I found it easy to get a job coding C. My major was mse
and I only took one CS class at cal (cs298 - fuzzy logic).
Most companies care about how well you can code, not
whether or not you took C programming classes.
\_ uh, I got a C job. You should have been able to pick up
C while being an undergrad at Cal. If you don't have a
job, what's keeping you from honing your C skills now?
Sheesh. Do some legwork.
\_ So who the hell hired the two of you (above) to write
C if you hadn't done anything in C before? Is the
stock public? I want to know what to short. Thanks.
\_ Yes. Just find a company where they are into web-based development.
All but three or four of the "engineers" in the linux/web startup I
worked for were perl/php coders who didn't know c/c++, java or
any other real language. Our company was bought by Sun for lots
of money (~ $1 billion) and most of these '1337 P3RL H4X0R5 made
enough on their ISO options to buy homes in Sunnyvale, San Jose
and Cupertino. Some made enough to buy new M3s plus homes.
\_ Well, you can keep your expensive homes and fancy cars, I'd
rather use Java
\_ ...and on an unrelated note, i'd rather live somewhere where
you don't have to be a millionaire to buy a decent (if
you call living in the south bay decent) home.
\_ Uh, son, those days are dead. They didn't get rich by coding
toy web languages like php. They got rich by being lucky. The
entire dotcom lottery was just that, a lottery. Some people got
really rich but most only did moderately well and the bottom
quarter got totally fucked.
\_ did they get fucked as bad as the bottom quarter in 1849?
this is not the first time greedy idiots invaded the Bay
Area.
\_ When my company started folding, we had to eat the
lesser skilled workers in order to survive.
\_ Why'd you wait that long?
\_ Needed to fatten em up a bit. |
| 2002/7/15-16 [Consumer/Audio] UID:25364 Activity:very high |
7/15 Which format, .MP3 or .WAV, usually produces smaller files for the
same song and same reproduction quality? And by how much? Thanks.
--- yuen
\_ MP3 is a lossy compression algorithm. Quality varies widely
based on encoder used and bit rate you encode at. Many folks
feel that encoding with LAME at 256 bits CBR is virtually
indistinguishable from originals. If you want to save more
space, you can use VBR, though, from my understanding, LAME is
the only encoder that does decent VBR. See
http://www.r3mix.net for details.
WAV is not lossy, but file size ranges from 2-10 times that of
MP3s. Understand that when making MP3s, you record WAVs first
then compress to MP3. -dans
\_ I see. I thought MP3 is lossless too. Thx. --- yuen
\_ Anyone try OBB Vorbis? Quality comparable? Winamp now
supports it.
\_ you tried variable bit rate encoding? shrinks my mp3s it does.
\_ from those crazy open source communists? there could be
viruses in it! and wtf does "ogg vorbis" mean anyway? BTW,
I saw some numbers today on total # of cd's sold in this
country over the last few years. In 98/99 when the net was
the new cool thing everyone was doing, cd sales dropped like
a rock and stayed there. Must be Nsync or Britney.
\_ Maybe if they made music that didn't
suck, people would buy it.
\_ Maybe if they made music that didn't suck, people would
buy it. [formatd]
\_ If it sucks so much why are they downloading it? Why
did they buy it before the net was a big deal in 98?
Standard nonsense from a music thief.
\_ Ogg comes from netrek, obviously, and Vorbis is a
Terry Pratchett character.
quality, encode to MP3 using lame at CBR 256 bits or VBR with
the r3mix settings. -dans
\_ DOOSH DOOSH!
\_ Learn to format your posts.
\_ it was formatted. whats yer problem?
\_ Ogg Vorbis is better at lower sampling rates (128 bits or
less), but mp3 is still much better quality at high sampling
rates. So if you want the best tradeoff between size and
quality, encode to MP3 using lame at CBR 256 bits or VBR
with the r3mix settings. -dans
with --alt-preset?
\_ .WAV files usually are uncompressed, but they don't have to be.
.WAV is a container format and can use any of a number of audio
codecs, such as PCM (uncompressed), ADPCM, and--yes--even MP3.
Comparing .WAV to MP3 is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Also,
a lot of people think that the r3mix guy is full of himself,
\_ re-ripping with recent lame versions (compared to
the one from a couple years ago) makes a big difference
even if you stick with the basic presets or custom
settings. but i got a usb/toslink adapter recently
and was amazed how crappy my notebook sound card was
in comparison... much worse than mp3 artifacts.
and as of LAME 3.90, --alt-preset standard generally is
recommended over --r3mix. --jameslin
\_ d'oh! now I have to re-rip all of my cd's again and encode
With --alt-preset?
\_ no one's forcing you to. if you can hear the difference
and if it matters that much to you, then go ahead. |
| 2002/7/15-16 [Computer/SW/Unix/WindowManager] UID:25365 Activity:high |
7/15 Gnome or KDE?
\_ I use KDE because I think saying "GUH-NOME" sounds stupid. - danh
\_ both are too slow
\_ Gnome is a bimbo
\_ Windows.
\_ ho ho ho, troll. I like KDE.
\_ twm!
\_ ctwm!
\_ fvwm2!
\_ olvwm!
\_ Aqua!
\_ Gag me with a hard candy, wet with saliva.
\_ Don't you mean a gel candy?
\_ Sure. in a gaudy pinstripe suit.
\_ pinstripes are vertical
\_ lying down on a park bench in
a gaudy pinstripe suit.
\_ icewm!
\_ screen + emacs!
\_ NeXT!
\_ vi?
\_ ED! ED! ED is the STANDARD! Window manager.
\_ I use #. |
| 2002/7/15-17 [Science/Electric] UID:25366 Activity:high |
07/15 I need to get a replacement AC adaptor for a device which
says 7.5VDC 1.2AMPS. Will a generic AC adaptor
that supplies 7.5V, 1000mAh (like from Fry's) work??
\_ You meant 1000mA instead of 1000mAh?
\_ Maybe, but you're safer if you get one 7.5V, 1200mA, or > 1200
I think you mean ~, not > _/
\_ I think he meant > 1200, since an adapter > 1200mA is guaranteed
to supply a current of 1200mA safely.
\_ I mean 1000mA. So I'm screwed? Fry's carries 300mA, 500, 800 and
1000, but nothing above that (unless I get a $100 laptop-computer
ac-adaptor which supplies the voltage but is too expensive and
I'm not sure would even work.
I'm not sure would even work. I guess the 1000mA that Fry's
sells would not be "safe" to use?
\_ Try radio shack.
\_ what exactly is the device? how sensitive to the input
current is it?
\_ It's not the input device which is the big worry. If you
draw too much power through the adapter, it might melt down
or catch fire. |