xylex

Yes, it would. Almost all of your pointer sizes are doubled since what used to take 32 bits takes 64 bits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#Specific_C-language_data_models

Are both machines using a 64-bit OS? If your production is 64-bit and your dev is 32-bit, that would do it. And you're checking your memory usage with memory_get_peak_usage()?

IBM's often attributed with a claim that a great programmer has 10x the productivity of an average programmer. Joel Spolsky has an awesome blog entry entitled "Hitting the High Notes" also about the really good programmers vs the average programmers. I'm assuming you're U.S. based, which means you're below average for a software engineer's salary, which would seem to line up well with your ideologies. Learning on the job is one thing, but how much can you really learn with an attitude of hack away until it works so the check clears? I'm sure that a lot of people here are willing to put in the time and effort to learn what it takes to make it to the top of the developer skill curve, which requires a lot more work and patience than what you're suggesting. Not to mention the disservice you're doing to the industry with the trainwrecks of hack code you're leaving behind for us to clean up as you bounce from client to client or job to job.

Did you do anything to optimize your query in MySQL? Create relevant indexes, etc? Or are you comparing a highly tuned compiled data source to a fresh drop of a CSV in MySQL? Tuned properly, MySQL should be able to query as fast as the C++ library, though MySQL will always be a much bigger footprint as it gives you a whole lot of other things the C++ library doesn't.

If you do some Googling on Flash sockets, AMF, and SmartFoxServer, you'll get an idea of one possible route to go that's pretty scalable and has been proven on other MMO systems.

Sounds like what you could use is a document repository. If you Google for "document repostiory" or "document management", you'll find a bunch of enterprise class vendors and systems that should meet your school district's requirements. We use Alfresco at work, works okay but I don't know that I'd really recommend it. Or you can always just go with Sharepoint and call it good.

To quote Rasmus, "PHP is a template engine, so why would you build one for it?"

The low pay problem gets compounded with the small insurance agency factor IMO. Decent programmers and ambitious ones out of school might consider taking low paying positions in a dot-com type atmosphere, either with great potential for startup rewards, or surrounded by brilliant engineers with backgrounds top-tier companies. Or a newer programmer might consider low paying jobs for big-name companies, even if it's through a contractor, to get some good experience on their resume. Doesn't sound like any of those potential payoffs are applicable to you. And learning to make tools for a few insurance agents to sell and manage insurance isn't exciting enough that a bunch of people are going to be lining up to do it. So without being able to offer any of the non-pay perks of the IT industry, why would someone want to come work for you for far under market rate?

rad_lat/rad_lon are radian equivalents of the latitude/longitude degree measurements. radians = (degrees * pi)/180

I would guess that it's coded in Java. http://www.accupos.com/manuals/AccuCOUNTInitial.htm

That's really not that big of a load. At those levels, if you do run into performance issues, how the system is compiled or the socket support efficiency or the like is going to be way down on the list of where the bottlenecks are.

Not just can, but that you spent several years learning how to and accomplishing it. I've worked in various environments over the years, and I would say that when working with experienced co-workers, it's difficult to tell who has a CS/technical degree and who has a non-technical degree. But it's very easy to tell who has a degree and who doesn't. At my current company, we wouldn't consider anyone who didn't have a bachelor's in something. As for me, I have my BA in Sociology/Criminal Justice, and I'm slowly working on my master's in software engineering. And making enough to pay the bills with a little left over. This topic makes me think of the Dave Thomas quote - "We have 4,000 restaurants today, but if I had gotten my high-school diploma, we might have 8,000."

I work in an enterprise environment, so the typical flow for us is [*]Business gives us requirements [*]We start building [*]Marketing hears that we're working on something and stops us so they can meet with the business [*]We get new requirements out of that series of meetings with instructions to just develop wireframes to present back [*]We build wireframes in Photoshop, present it back to business & marketing [*]Business and marketing ask why it's not in a browser and why clicking things and typing in forms don't work [*]We explain what a wireframe is for the upteenth time [*]We're told to go back and build it [*]We start coding from the wireframes [*]Business has a new addition they decide is really important, and ask us to add it in [*]Goto step 2

The poorly (machine?) translated site copy is what screams scam to me. I would definitely invest in having some native speakers fix that copy.

I had an unenlightened friend who went for one of these briefly. After the victim accepts the offer for the car, the scammer sends a forged money order or a Paypal payment for well over their offer, asking you to forward the difference to their shipping company. The scammer asks the victim to use the difference to pay the shipping company with a cashier's check, and the victim will usually happily oblige, assuming that the payment has cleared once the bank released the funds. By the time the chargeback or the forged money order hits, the real cashier's check is already on it's way and you're out those funds. You might still be able to get your car back, since there never is a real company to pick it up, but you're already out a few grand of cold hard cash.

One query doesn't mean that it's faster than two. http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/08/28/to-sql_calc_found_rows-or-not-to-sql_calc_found_rows/

I actually had a "potential client" not that long a go who was in the same boat and wanted bids to customize one of these to be just like eBay. Feel free to re-use my response to him.

Damn, that's a good one for the library of explaining why I'm totally justified in charging what I charge. But you can't really looked at a finished piece of work after two years of working on it to gauge whether or not the client over paid for it. Over the course of two years, how many changes did the client make that caused rework? How many of the sites you were scraping changed formats and you had to update that? How much time did you have to spend explaining how the internet works to really non-technical people? As much as we rant about how clueless clients are, when someone finds a developer who will work cheap, for the most part they know, at some level, chances are the developer will have to take some time to learn some things while other things will just take longer to figure out. Having such a long term relationship with this client, the time you spent learning has probably paid off for him in the later work you've done for him. For instance, if he needed an 11th site added in now, at your rate, I would certainly hope that you've reached the point in your development you'd be by far the cheapest option. And most importantly, this client is happy with both you and your work, which counts far more than whether or not he could have gotten the job done for less.

Unless you really want to learn how to build and program a logic controller and wire up your relays/high voltage transistors, I'm thinking the easiest solution for this would be to use the a lighting controller, similar to what's used for animated Christmas lights, and hook that up to your igniters. A controller like http://www.animatedlighting.com/products/DIO-Controllers.asp hooks up to your computer and comes with the software to program the circuit timings out of the box. If you need more channels, you can run the outputs through a switch bank to a second set of igniters. For igniters, model rocket engine igniters were always my favorite, busted christmas mini lights with a higher than rated voltage also work. Good luck, and don't blow yourself up.

The "OMG IT DUZNT ADD UP" comments are a reference to the South Park episode about the 9/11 conspiracy, not a bunch of people who actually believe that crap. http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/1009/

You seem to be assuming that website traffic somehow automatically equates to making money. There's a lot more to making money online than "going viral." Probably the majority of the top 2000 Alexa sites are currently losing money. Twitter, for example, is losing millions of dollars a year right now since they still don't have a profitable business model in place. Great video on the topic by David Heinemeier, the guy who created Ruby on Rails.

I realized today that I've memorized about twice as many passwords as I know phone numbers. I'm wondering if that's just an IT thing, but with how young kids are getting cell phones and how many online services they use, I'm thinking it may be a more general population thing.

You're seriously arguing that by working a steady 84 hour a week job you have plenty to live off of making minimum wage? Anyway, back to the OP's question, it definitely depends on where in the country you are, but if you're looking for a Silicon Valley job, Andi Gutmans summed it up pretty good in an interview - "First of all, the Bay Area isn’t America (laughs). It’s so international, and there are a lot of different cultures." In my experience, if you're good in this field, you're going to be working in environments that have always pulled the best and the brightest from all around the world, and everyone's used to working with "non-native" co-workers from all sorts of different backgrounds. Like wayne was saying, your nationality should be pretty low on your list of concerns.

Chris Shiflett's Essential PHP Security is a book that comes up a lot. Though it doesn't really cover file uploads or get into anything in depth. The presentations on PHP.net are also a good resource - http://talks.php.net/index.php/Security A lot of application security design isn't PHP specific, so general internet security resources are good, and even many geared towards a different language than PHP. And if you want to get really into it, the NIST CSRC has a lot of detailed discussions around security practices - http://csrc.nist.gov/index.html.

Couldn't an atheist person who preaches atheism be considered religious?