• cakesy (unregistered)

    I have similar work. For those application that take a long time to run, I send them off to the cluster. If I don't need to do any live debugging, then why would I run them on my machine? Give them a higher priority, and they will run before the other jobs queued, which I guess is why he didn't do this straight away. Since it is improving his productivity, and they seem happy, it won't make much different the 30 minutes from one machine that he takes away from the cluster, every so often.

  • (cs) in reply to AF
    AF:
    I struggled with this too, and was only left thinking that Bob + NaN != two people.

    Bob + NaN = NaN, who is only one person.

    Well, NaN's registered, and usually has some insightful and/or funny stuff to say. Bob isn't registered. I suppose one person could post with as many identities as they like, but I don't see the point in this case, since they both said the same thing.

  • (cs) in reply to AF
    AF:
    Bob + NaN = NaN, who is only one person.
    FATMOUSE IS THE NEW SCIENCE OF MATHEMATICS. THE FATMOUSE THEOREM IS:

    FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE

    THE PROOF OF THIS THEOREM IS MANIFEST IN FATMOUSE. FOR ANY NUMBER N, FATMOUSE IS GREATER THAN N. YOUR MATH TEXTBOOKS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SHREDDED FOR BEDDING.

  • (cs) in reply to DKNewsham
    DKNewsham:
    DV Henkel-Wallace:
    The real WTF that you won't realize unless you've actually worked in that environment: the length of the lab coat denotes your rank. I wish I were kidding...just look at a lab coat catalogue.

    I hope old Allen F got to wear sandals and a t-shirt. And eat pizza while working....you don't want to do that in the lab either!

    I haven't noticed different lab coat lengths in grad school. Grad students wear t-shirts with lab coats, post-docs wear dress shirts with no coats, and professors wear dress shirts with optional jackets for seminars.

    Also, $200000 will buy you around 4000 twill or 26315 Tyvek lab coats (from VWR with institutional discount). Finding the reason that the lab needs so many coats is left as an exercise to the reader.

    In the physics dept. at my uni, the main difference seems to be how faded the jumpers worn by the person are, with more faded jumpers being worn by more senior staff. Whilst most staff wear collared shirts, a reasonable number of students do too, and almost everyone wears jeans. The only deliberate difference in dress is that staff don't wear hats.

  • Charlie (unregistered) in reply to DV Henkel-Wallace

    In rocket science, seniority is determined by how much of your lab coat has been burned away. Junior scientists are required to get new lab coats after near-death experiences involving fiery explosions. Old hands get to keep and wear their "souvenirs".

    The range supervisor at the test stands where I used to build rocket motors had a lab coat that was 30 years old and missing about a quarter of the fabric.....

  • Brooks (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Actually, in practice I've found virtual machines quite useful for this. The virtual machine bundles everything up into one process, and then you can just nice that process to a priority below anything you're interacting with.

    At least, it always worked fine on Windows. I trust that Unix is equally capable. :)

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to DV Henkel-Wallace

    So should Allen be wearing a lab jacket?

  • Moe. Not Curly (unregistered)

    I'd agree with buying own equipment (within reason) just for the sake of my own happiness/sanity.

    If there isn't budget/willingess to purchase extra hardware, that may be something worth looking for another job over--but it might just be a small roadbump with an easy solution.

  • C1 Esterase (unregistered) in reply to Physics Phil
    The real WTF that you won't realize unless you've actually worked in that environment: the length of the lab coat denotes your rank. I wish I were kidding...just look at a lab coat catalogue.

    This is true in medical education at least.

    Short coat == medical student.
    Long coat == someone higher up the ladder.

  • (cs) in reply to Old fart
    Old fart:
    The program did absolutely nothing except cause tape reels to spin and lights to blink. But it was much more impressive than the programs that did "real work" only in memory.

    Sometimes, I have the impression that this program was actually MS-Windows.

  • Rectal Fury (unregistered)

    Why not just lower the process (or thread)?

  • Rectal Fury (unregistered) in reply to Rectal Fury
    Rectal Fury:
    Why not just lower the process (or thread)?
    *Process priority.
  • (cs) in reply to C1 Esterase
    C1 Esterase:
    The real WTF that you won't realize unless you've actually worked in that environment: the length of the lab coat denotes your rank. I wish I were kidding...just look at a lab coat catalogue.

    This is true in medical education at least.

    Short coat == medical student.
    Long coat == someone higher up the ladder.

    t-shirt == ... I think you can see where this is going.
  • Bored Bystander (unregistered) in reply to C1 Esterase
    C1 Esterase:
    The real WTF that you won't realize unless you've actually worked in that environment: the length of the lab coat denotes your rank. I wish I were kidding...just look at a lab coat catalogue.

    This is true in medical education at least.

    Short coat == medical student.
    Long coat == someone higher up the ladder.

    Until they become consultants and are too important to wear white coats at all.

  • dun (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    Asiago Chow:
    From my perspective: if you want to know whether you are an IT worker or an IT professional, think about how much of your training, how many of your tools, were provided by your employers. If you came to your job untrained, if you didn't even own a computer when you started (and I know IT people who still don't have home computers)... and you don't invest any of your income in yourself... you are a worker. If you bought and education and a tool set with you (including anything from preferred software to your own server farm) and you continue to invest in new knowledge and tools, you are a professional.

    So would you work at a company that didn't provide you with a chair or a desk and just bring your own? What if they didn't have toilet paper, or bathrooms for that matter? Would you bring in your own toilet paper? If they didn't provide you with any hardware or software, would you just bring your own?

    I'm just asking because I have this idea for a startup and I'm wondering how many other semi-retarded pushovers are out there that I can abuse.

    You are an idiot. If you think education can be compared to toilet paper then you completely miss the point, and missing the point implies that you probably aren't very good at your job.

  • CorporateWhore (unregistered) in reply to DV Henkel-Wallace
    DV Henkel-Wallace:
    Allen doesn't even get to wear a lab coat.
    The real WTF that you won't realize unless you've actually worked in that environment: the length of the lab coat denotes your rank. I wish I were kidding...just look at a lab coat catalogue.

    I hope old Allen F got to wear sandals and a t-shirt. And eat pizza while working....you don't want to do that in the lab either!

    So how is this rank denoted? Shorter or longer is higher rank? As for pizza and sandals, yes please! I wish I could at my work, but the only hazardous materials that are around is trades on the verge of going out the window, but alas.

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    "Get rid of the screensaver, dummy."

    is six words

    And trying to simulate a Cray II will not turn a Pentium into a number cruncher either.

  • (cs) in reply to NaN
    NaN:
    I think we can safely ignore someone who things "get rid of the screensaver, dummy" is two more words.

    Yes, indeed!

  • (cs) in reply to AlpineR

    That reminds me of the modern ways of programming:

    If A NOT B Then Else End If

    Why can't these people be positive and write

    If A = B Then Else End If

  • Mikko (unregistered) in reply to DV Henkel-Wallace

    the length of the lab coat denotes your rank

    Not sure about that. Where I work the longest and padded ones are worn by people who need to work in cold rooms. Let me tell you that doing various sorts of chromatography at + 4 C for the better part of the day is not nice.

  • ElCapitan (unregistered) in reply to Azd

    I have an internship in a computational chemistry lab at the university I attend. In other words, I'm a chemist who runs simulations like this (though I don't have a Ph.D. yet.). Needless to say, I have problems with this article.

    First of all, we don't wear lab coats (they aren't necessary since we work exclusively with simulations instead of real chemicals). We do, however collaborate with other non-computational chemists who do wear lab coats. As far as I know, there is no correlation between lab coat length and respect/seniority/prestige/etc.

    Second of all, I felt that the article had overtones of elitism (Those "genius" scientists with PhDs couldn't recognize a screensaver, haha!). I honestly wonder how those scientists could get into such a computer intensive field of science with such little knowledge of computers. I assure you that my colleagues and I would recognize a screensaver if we were to see one, and we definetly would not mistake the matrix code for real code. Most of us know how to program, and some computational scientists develop their own software.

  • ElCapitan (unregistered) in reply to ElCapitan

    P.S. Our programs do not use 100% of every processor in the cluster, though this does mean the simulations take longer.

  • tim (unregistered) in reply to Mark

    Um, are you serious? You missed the point - it pegs the CPU at 100% to get the job done as fast as possible. If you create a virtual maching/cpu environment (MS virtual, or VMware or whatever) your 'virtual CPU, duh' only gets a fraction of the actual 'physical CPU, duh' time.... which means that the 1 hour usually required expands to 1.5-2 hours, and you are less productive. Virtual machine is not intended for what you are suggesting.

  • Black Mantha (unregistered)

    A lot of simulation algorithms, at their core, spend most of their time in large vector calculations. Which he is in complete control of. He can reshape the matrix as he sees fit.

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