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> on the education issue, for the kinds of economic, climatic, infrastructural issues that Brazil has to contend with, I think they are doing a suprisngly good job.

Problem is, we are not. Do not let statistics fool you. Schooling quality is so poor in Brasil, even if most children do attend school they are functionally illiterate -- meaning they do know the alphabet, can sign their own names and perhaps read the headlines in popular newspapers and advertisement, but cannot do any kind of text interpretation nor write passably for their lifes.

There are many causes for this, from the humdrum economical ones to the more fundamental cultural and religious, and I will not explain them here. But education is so much more than instruction, and it does begin with families. See this speech by a NY teacher, for instance. Add to that Brasilian families typically having absent fathers, in addition to other weaknesses, and you have the beginning of an explanation.

Then build the first garbage scow ship of course.

I'll volunteer to take charge of hiring the co-pilot and co-co-pilot.

Then build the first garbage scow ship of course.

I'll volunteer to take charge of hiring the co-pilot and co-co-pilot.

We only need to use the United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol ship to pick up the debris.

Yeah, lookup tables are cool. I recently wrote a Life implementation for an old 890kHz CPU. The CPU itself is approximately a 0.1 MIPS device (0.89 MHz, average instruction length around 8 or 9 cycles).

Even on that slow machine, I had Life running at a respectable clip. I used one lookup table to handle packed arithmetic (I did 8 parallel 2-bit adds in a single 16-bit accumulator), and another to handle the life/death state transitions. I used yet another lookup table to map life cells to pixels on the display (since the display has a funky encoding). In the end, I had a 32x24 life field running at about 8 frames per second on that beast. The entire code was about 1K words, and the RAM footprint was tiny too (about 240 bytes for the life state, 32 words for stack, and 240 words of display memory).

You do have to balance lookup tables against raw calculation though. Keep in mind also that lookup tables can lead to local speedups and global slowdowns. On modern machines, for example, lookup tables can thrash out your L1 caches (or in extreme cases, your L2 cache). Remember that optimization is a global problem.

For instance, if you're writing a Variable-Length Code decoder for something like MPEG video decode, you can't just make a lookup table for the maximum code length. Well, technically you could, but since the maximum code length is 26 bits, you'd be in for a 64 mega-entry table. If each table entry is only four bytes, that's 256 megabytes. So obviously, you have to make some engineering tradeoffs.

My personal rule of thumb is that lookup tables shouldn't be much larger than 4K entries, unless performance is absolutely critical. The tables should actually be smaller if at all possible.

Yeah, lookup tables are cool. I recently wrote a Life implementation for an old 890kHz CPU. The CPU itself is approximately a 0.1 MIPS device (0.89 MHz, average instruction length around 8 or 9 cycles).

Even on that slow machine, I had Life running at a respectable clip. I used one lookup table to handle packed arithmetic (I did 8 parallel 2-bit adds in a single 16-bit accumulator), and another to handle the life/death state transitions. I used yet another lookup table to map life cells to pixels on the display (since the display has a funky encoding). In the end, I had a 32x24 life field running at about 8 frames per second on that beast. The entire code was about 1K words, and the RAM footprint was tiny too (about 240 bytes for the life state, 32 words for stack, and 240 words of display memory).

You do have to balance lookup tables against raw calculation though. Keep in mind also that lookup tables can lead to local speedups and global slowdowns. On modern machines, for example, lookup tables can thrash out your L1 caches (or in extreme cases, your L2 cache). Remember that optimization is a global problem.

For instance, if you're writing a Variable-Length Code decoder for something like MPEG video decode, you can't just make a lookup table for the maximum code length. Well, technically you could, but since the maximum code length is 26 bits, you'd be in for a 64 mega-entry table. If each table entry is only four bytes, that's 256 megabytes. So obviously, you have to make some engineering tradeoffs.

My personal rule of thumb is that lookup tables shouldn't be much larger than 4K entries, unless performance is absolutely critical. The tables should actually be smaller if at all possible.

Or just revoke whatever religious statute they hold, then send off the IRS to collect all the tax money they've been avoiding for the last twenty years. That would surely keep them from throwing the DMCA around.

The IRS has already caved in to the Co$, what makes you think they would have any more success this time?

Ah yes, nothing quite like the familiar "TCH! sssshhHHHHhhhh!" of sending a disc through one of the bad guys. I actually asked Keith Robinson (one of the Mattel Programmers) during a panel at CGExpo why the bad guys were blue and the good guys red in Tron. He dismissed the question as the geekiest question he'd heard. :-) (scroll down the page to see the paragraph mentioning the question.)

I found out later from a friend that apparently Disney had dithered back and forth right up until the end on what colors the good guys and bad guys would have. Apparently, the Mattel folks had worked from a pre-screening which had the good guys in red and the bad in blue. (I tried to find a link to the article my friend sent me, but Dave's Videogame Classics seems to have gone away.)

<plug type=shameless> Speaking of Intellivision, I'm actively developing games for it. I've released one game called 4-Tris and I'm presently working on another. I've even made cartridges! :-) </plug>

No,
she was the Venus, Roman goddess of love. I take it you are refering to this. There a also another painting, with Venus standing in a clam-shell, with a tree to the right, and naked cherbus in the background, but I can't find it.
Its kinda like Le Printemps (The Return of Spring), 1866, but with more background.

This story reminded me of Tesla's Earthquake machine which, if you believe the stories, demonstrates just how much damage you can inflict when you hit the resonant frequency with a modest amount of power.

you REALLY should check your facts... it was the "Erodium P.U.36 Explosive Space Disintegrator" that was employed by the nefarious Marvin the Martian..

Check your own facts, bub. It is quite clearly the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator (spelling of 'Illudium' may vary). If you want to claim something else, find an audio clip.

(I just love the way Marvin the Martian says "modulator".)

This is really nothing new. It seems apparent to me that for the past 100 years, capitalist[1] interests have been intent on capturing and monopolizing the attention of the general public. They don't need an "information society" to get it done, either, though it does make things much easier. As John Taylor Gatto, former NY State Teacher of the Year, said:

The children I teach have almost no curiosity and what they do have is transitory; they cannot concentrate for very long, even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection between the bells ringing again and again to change classes and this phenomenon of evanescent attention?

-- Out of 168 hours in each week my children sleep 56. That leaves them 112 hours a week out of which to fashion a self.
-- My children watch 55 hours of television a week according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in which to grow up.
-- My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about 6 hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an average of 7 hours a week in homework -- a total of 45 hours. During that time they are under constant surveillance, have no private time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, my kids eat, and that takes some time--not much because they've lost the tradition of family dining, but if we allot 3 hours a week to evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time for each child of 9 hours.

And we wonder why so many people have "mental illness."

[1] I'm not a raving Communist or anything, I just call 'em how I see 'em. Capitalism by its nature will seek maximum profits. What better way to maximize profits than brainwashing children into buying your product?

And don't even get me started on the dangers of orbital debris....

Calling Captain Quark!

--Blair
"And Ficus Pederata, and Gene/Jean, and, oh yes, the Two Bettys..."

P.S. The pretty one is the clone.

"Picture 1980. Ted Nelson is running around with his Xanadu guys: Roger Gregory, H. Keith Henson (now waging war against the Scientologists) and K. Eric Drexler, later to build the Foresight Institute. They dream of creating what is to become the World Wide Web. Nowadays guys at hacker cons might dress like vampires. In 1980 they wear identical black baseball caps with silver wings and the slogan: 'Xanadu: wings of the mind.'"

1994-current. Work continues on the second XOC fine-grain hyper-sharin transpublishing server, under Roger Gregory and Keith Henson.

o In 1992, the Church of Scientology had become the first religious organization in Canada to be convicted of criminal conduct. Specifically, stealing documents from law firms, public associations and government entities -- and breach of trust. In addition, in the Casey Hill litigation, Scientology was ordered to pay millions of dollars to Canadian lawyer, Casey Hill, for slandering his reputation.

Great speech by Gatto. Thanks rvr.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its "homework".

The worst part is that for many people, this kind of life doesn't end when you leave high school. I know a lot of people who spend most of their waking hours attached to corporate networks and think they have flexibility. But if you teach yourself and create your own reality, you can go on doing it for the rest of your life.

Public school is but one alternative today. I have home schooled my kids and know first and the benefits. Luckily today there are some great resources on the net. My first read was John Holt. He has taught from kindergarden to Harvard. He started off trying to change the system from within in the early 60s to advocating homeschooling in the late 60s. I still love the book title _burn the schools, save the children_.

A blistering attack on public schools by the NY Teacher of the Year John Gatto - can be found in his acceptance speech Ouch.

Is home schooling for everyone? No.

But is is an alternative and a great one at that. Read lots.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Home Power Magazine
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Unique Mobility
Wilde EVolutions catalog

I wrote a version that I embedded into my game, 4-Tris. This heart of this version was about 430 words of assembly code. I hadn't bothered to optimize for size. I'm sure you could get it somewhat smaller. Anyone?

I know it's in at least one version of Commander Keen (it's built into Keen's wristwatch), and I embedded a version in my Intellivision game 4-Tris.

It's such a simple and straightforward game, it's not surprising it's in so many places.

How come so many Scientologists and Scientology supporters have criminal records? How come so many of them are losers who are taking their personal frustration out on the critics of their crimes?

We have Founder L. Ron Hubbard with his criminal conviction for petty theft for passing bad checks and with a record of wife-beating and drug abuse, who died on psych drugs while hiding from the authorities. Not only did his ex-wife and his own son describe him as a "paranoid schizophrenic" but a judge even described the cult he founded as "paranoid and schizophrenic" and stated that this was a "reflection of its founder." Among his other crimes, L. Ron Hubbard was sentenced to four years of prison for fraud by a French court, but he remained a fugitive from this charge as well.

Hubbard was also a child abuser, who forced his son L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. to take phenobarbitol and who was fined $50 and sentenced to probation for abandoning his own daughter in a vehicle.

Theft conviction
Wife-beating and drug abuse
Death on psych drugs coroner report
Described as a "paranoid schizophrenic" by ex-wife
Described as a "paranoid, schizophrenic megalomaniac" by his own son
Described as "schizophrenic and paranoid" by judge
Convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years in prison
Fined and put on probation for abandoning his daughter in a vehicle
Forced his own son to take drugs

Then we have L. Ron Hubbard's third wife Mary Sue Hubbard, who was convicted of felonies and served jail time for helping her husband mastermind the biggest domestic espionage case in American history, involving burglarizing government offices routinely and committing other crimes. Even her own lawyers admitted that she had committed these crimes, as well as 11 other Scientologists who were convicted of crimes including felonies.

Sentencing memorandum describing crimes as "heinous and vicious"
Stipulation of evidence admitting to multiple felonies by Hubbard and other defendants

Next comes the President of the cult he founded, Heber Jentzsch, who has just recently skipped out on a million dollars bail for felonies in Spain, making him a fugitive from justice and persona non grata in all of Europe. A habitual liar, who constantly claims that his cult has eight million members, this criminal can be seen in handcuffs all around the net, and can accurately be described as a bail-jumping felon.

Heber Jentzsch Spanish criminal charges

In my day job, I'm occasionally charged with the task of writing code that takes our processor architecture to the limit. We're talking every cycle count, codesize is important, and functionality must not be overly compromised. I've been fairly proud of most of my results, and I think they're quite beautiful examples of what can happen when you first design a well-thought-out piece of functionality, and then optimize it to the hilt.

In my application space, this is appropriate. I'm coding for a DSP, and the functions I'm coding are individual DSP processing steps. These are nice, separable functions that some would have us implement directly in silicon. My job is to show them that a programmable processor can do the job.

The following links show some of these "DSP kernels" that I am especially fond of. In my opinion, this code is actually fairly well structured for assembly code. All of the hardware registers have been abstracted behind .asg directives, so that they can be given human-readable names. These names relate back to the C code description of the function (which is also provided in a comment block attached to the code). As an added bonus, comments throughout the code explain the numerous optimizations.

• IEEE-1180 Compliant Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform.
• Forward Discrete Cosine Transform.

In a different realm, I have a mix of beautiful and ugly code for an entirely different platform. Recently, I've written a Falling Tetrominoes Game for Intellivision named 4-Tris. The assembly code for this game is rather clean and heavily documented. The game actually implements a lightweight task scheduler and then builds the game on top of that as a series of event handlers. Of course, there are some definitely UNbeautiful bits around the edges. There's a Pong game hidden in there that's written as nearly complete line-noise. Also, the song format compiler is an absolute hackish mess.

So, it's safe to say that my code runs the gamut from clean and clear to nearly line-noise.

BTW, for those who are interested, I also have a Monitor Program that I wrote for the 8051/8052 microcontroller. I can't decide if it's ugly or beautiful. The problem here is that the architecture itself is downright ugly, but some of the optimization tricks in the code are either beautiful, insane, or par for the 8051 course. :-) At the very least, I consider it ugly compared to 4-Tris and the DCTs above, so...

In my day job, I'm occasionally charged with the task of writing code that takes our processor architecture to the limit. We're talking every cycle count, codesize is important, and functionality must not be overly compromised. I've been fairly proud of most of my results, and I think they're quite beautiful examples of what can happen when you first design a well-thought-out piece of functionality, and then optimize it to the hilt.

In my application space, this is appropriate. I'm coding for a DSP, and the functions I'm coding are individual DSP processing steps. These are nice, separable functions that some would have us implement directly in silicon. My job is to show them that a programmable processor can do the job.

The following links show some of these "DSP kernels" that I am especially fond of. In my opinion, this code is actually fairly well structured for assembly code. All of the hardware registers have been abstracted behind .asg directives, so that they can be given human-readable names. These names relate back to the C code description of the function (which is also provided in a comment block attached to the code). As an added bonus, comments throughout the code explain the numerous optimizations.

• IEEE-1180 Compliant Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform.
• Forward Discrete Cosine Transform.

In a different realm, I have a mix of beautiful and ugly code for an entirely different platform. Recently, I've written a Falling Tetrominoes Game for Intellivision named 4-Tris. The assembly code for this game is rather clean and heavily documented. The game actually implements a lightweight task scheduler and then builds the game on top of that as a series of event handlers. Of course, there are some definitely UNbeautiful bits around the edges. There's a Pong game hidden in there that's written as nearly complete line-noise. Also, the song format compiler is an absolute hackish mess.

So, it's safe to say that my code runs the gamut from clean and clear to nearly line-noise.

BTW, for those who are interested, I also have a Monitor Program that I wrote for the 8051/8052 microcontroller. I can't decide if it's ugly or beautiful. The problem here is that the architecture itself is downright ugly, but some of the optimization tricks in the code are either beautiful, insane, or par for the 8051 course. :-) At the very least, I consider it ugly compared to 4-Tris and the DCTs above, so...

In my day job, I'm occasionally charged with the task of writing code that takes our processor architecture to the limit. We're talking every cycle count, codesize is important, and functionality must not be overly compromised. I've been fairly proud of most of my results, and I think they're quite beautiful examples of what can happen when you first design a well-thought-out piece of functionality, and then optimize it to the hilt.

In my application space, this is appropriate. I'm coding for a DSP, and the functions I'm coding are individual DSP processing steps. These are nice, separable functions that some would have us implement directly in silicon. My job is to show them that a programmable processor can do the job.

The following links show some of these "DSP kernels" that I am especially fond of. In my opinion, this code is actually fairly well structured for assembly code. All of the hardware registers have been abstracted behind .asg directives, so that they can be given human-readable names. These names relate back to the C code description of the function (which is also provided in a comment block attached to the code). As an added bonus, comments throughout the code explain the numerous optimizations.

• IEEE-1180 Compliant Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform.
• Forward Discrete Cosine Transform.

In a different realm, I have a mix of beautiful and ugly code for an entirely different platform. Recently, I've written a Falling Tetrominoes Game for Intellivision named 4-Tris. The assembly code for this game is rather clean and heavily documented. The game actually implements a lightweight task scheduler and then builds the game on top of that as a series of event handlers. Of course, there are some definitely UNbeautiful bits around the edges. There's a Pong game hidden in there that's written as nearly complete line-noise. Also, the song format compiler is an absolute hackish mess.

So, it's safe to say that my code runs the gamut from clean and clear to nearly line-noise.

BTW, for those who are interested, I also have a Monitor Program that I wrote for the 8051/8052 microcontroller. I can't decide if it's ugly or beautiful. The problem here is that the architecture itself is downright ugly, but some of the optimization tricks in the code are either beautiful, insane, or par for the 8051 course. :-) At the very least, I consider it ugly compared to 4-Tris and the DCTs above, so...

In my day job, I'm occasionally charged with the task of writing code that takes our processor architecture to the limit. We're talking every cycle count, codesize is important, and functionality must not be overly compromised. I've been fairly proud of most of my results, and I think they're quite beautiful examples of what can happen when you first design a well-thought-out piece of functionality, and then optimize it to the hilt.

In my application space, this is appropriate. I'm coding for a DSP, and the functions I'm coding are individual DSP processing steps. These are nice, separable functions that some would have us implement directly in silicon. My job is to show them that a programmable processor can do the job.

The following links show some of these "DSP kernels" that I am especially fond of. In my opinion, this code is actually fairly well structured for assembly code. All of the hardware registers have been abstracted behind .asg directives, so that they can be given human-readable names. These names relate back to the C code description of the function (which is also provided in a comment block attached to the code). As an added bonus, comments throughout the code explain the numerous optimizations.

• IEEE-1180 Compliant Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform.
• Forward Discrete Cosine Transform.

In a different realm, I have a mix of beautiful and ugly code for an entirely different platform. Recently, I've written a Falling Tetrominoes Game for Intellivision named 4-Tris. The assembly code for this game is rather clean and heavily documented. The game actually implements a lightweight task scheduler and then builds the game on top of that as a series of event handlers. Of course, there are some definitely UNbeautiful bits around the edges. There's a Pong game hidden in there that's written as nearly complete line-noise. Also, the song format compiler is an absolute hackish mess.

So, it's safe to say that my code runs the gamut from clean and clear to nearly line-noise.

BTW, for those who are interested, I also have a Monitor Program that I wrote for the 8051/8052 microcontroller. I can't decide if it's ugly or beautiful. The problem here is that the architecture itself is downright ugly, but some of the optimization tricks in the code are either beautiful, insane, or par for the 8051 course. :-) At the very least, I consider it ugly compared to 4-Tris and the DCTs above, so...

In my day job, I'm occasionally charged with the task of writing code that takes our processor architecture to the limit. We're talking every cycle count, codesize is important, and functionality must not be overly compromised. I've been fairly proud of most of my results, and I think they're quite beautiful examples of what can happen when you first design a well-thought-out piece of functionality, and then optimize it to the hilt.

In my application space, this is appropriate. I'm coding for a DSP, and the functions I'm coding are individual DSP processing steps. These are nice, separable functions that some would have us implement directly in silicon. My job is to show them that a programmable processor can do the job.

The following links show some of these "DSP kernels" that I am especially fond of. In my opinion, this code is actually fairly well structured for assembly code. All of the hardware registers have been abstracted behind .asg directives, so that they can be given human-readable names. These names relate back to the C code description of the function (which is also provided in a comment block attached to the code). As an added bonus, comments throughout the code explain the numerous optimizations.

• IEEE-1180 Compliant Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform.
• Forward Discrete Cosine Transform.

In a different realm, I have a mix of beautiful and ugly code for an entirely different platform. Recently, I've written a Falling Tetrominoes Game for Intellivision named 4-Tris. The assembly code for this game is rather clean and heavily documented. The game actually implements a lightweight task scheduler and then builds the game on top of that as a series of event handlers. Of course, there are some definitely UNbeautiful bits around the edges. There's a Pong game hidden in there that's written as nearly complete line-noise. Also, the song format compiler is an absolute hackish mess.

So, it's safe to say that my code runs the gamut from clean and clear to nearly line-noise.

BTW, for those who are interested, I also have a Monitor Program that I wrote for the 8051/8052 microcontroller. I can't decide if it's ugly or beautiful. The problem here is that the architecture itself is downright ugly, but some of the optimization tricks in the code are either beautiful, insane, or par for the 8051 course. :-) At the very least, I consider it ugly compared to 4-Tris and the DCTs above, so...

Frank Lloyd Wright designed a mile high building to be built in Chicago in the 50's, and they didn't build it for this exact reason.

PovRay rendering of mile high building

More images

Was the mile high building in Star Wars Episode 1?

I hate my ISP. So to help consume their bandwidth, here is my very own mirror.........


http://www.primenet.com/~rwd/linux-2.4.0.tar.gz

... a 'virtual community' is possible. There's one here in the Phoenix area, and it has many unique characters. There are people in the circles of the Phoenix Linux Users Group, the Arizona chapter of SAGE, the the ASU Linux Users Group, the various BBSes (yes, there are some BBSes with even Fidonet nodes and Tradewars 2002, Legend of the Red Dragon, BarneySplat!, etc still running), and freenets that do have 'community' feel, where many of the technically minded people know each other. These spill over into the Sci-Fi realm with The United Federation of Phoenix, Tardis, and the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society. All of these groups contribute.

also, when one uses protocols like SSH and FTP and older text-mode IRC clients and such, the "dotcom" world doesn't really invade. As far as I am concerned, because of how it's implemented the web just sucks.

"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

this painting, and this one, located at this site:

The following passage was translated from Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to the 15th century BC ... "A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiceless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things became more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun."

this painting, and this one, located at this site:

The following passage was translated from Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to the 15th century BC ... "A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiceless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things became more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun."

this painting, and this one, located at this site:

The following passage was translated from Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to the 15th century BC ... "A circle of fire coming in the sky, noiceless, one rod long with its body and one rod wide. After some days these things became more numerous, shining more than the brightness of the sun."

Don't just contact your congressman or senator, contact your local legislative representatives. Local representatives respond (usually) to pressure from their constituents. The best thing to do is to write a letter. Followed by calling them up. And last (and least) drop them an email message. Find your local representatives at the Nationcal Conference of State Legislatures site. Or try one of these other two directories: here and here.

Some day I hope to have a .plan.

It works pretty good, but it gave me a horrible case of red-eye.

http://www.primenet.com/~im14u2c/intv/

There's also a commercial Mac/MSDOS emulator available for 30 bucks at www.intellivisionlives.com, which comes with about 50 game images and the rest are pretty easy to come by on Usenet or the web.

I'm sure someone wearing a tie would find a reason to object anyway, though.

<RANT>
In my last two contracts, I've spend three years doing my best to save poorly managed projects. It doesn't just apply to how the managers treat the developers. What is also as important, if not more so, is how management deals with the client. If management is consistently dealing with the clients in a less-than-optimal manner, then the end product will be less than the client expects.

This can have a huge demoralizing effect on the developers that worked on the project. There is nothing sweeter than to fulfill the client's every dream, and give them something that they didn't even realize they needed. (Of course, they better realize their needs if you are doing proper life-cycle development. :)

So, here I am, looking to not renew my contract. This time around, I plan on analyzing their development cycles much more thoroughly than I have in the past. Who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get a great environment.

&#60/RANT&#62On a side note, I have found that projects went much smoother when I was around for the initial Analysis phase, rather than coming in during the development phase, and having to re-work previous "documents".


&#60SHAMELESS PLUG&#62
If anyone needs a Sr. Developer/Analyst that specializes in full-lifecycle development of three-tiered applications utilizing (gasp) Microsoft products, feel free to download my Resume.doc or Resume.rtf.
&#60/SHAMELESS PLUG&#62

<RANT>
In my last two contracts, I've spend three years doing my best to save poorly managed projects. It doesn't just apply to how the managers treat the developers. What is also as important, if not more so, is how management deals with the client. If management is consistently dealing with the clients in a less-than-optimal manner, then the end product will be less than the client expects.

This can have a huge demoralizing effect on the developers that worked on the project. There is nothing sweeter than to fulfill the client's every dream, and give them something that they didn't even realize they needed. (Of course, they better realize their needs if you are doing proper life-cycle development. :)

So, here I am, looking to not renew my contract. This time around, I plan on analyzing their development cycles much more thoroughly than I have in the past. Who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get a great environment.

&#60/RANT&#62On a side note, I have found that projects went much smoother when I was around for the initial Analysis phase, rather than coming in during the development phase, and having to re-work previous "documents".


&#60SHAMELESS PLUG&#62
If anyone needs a Sr. Developer/Analyst that specializes in full-lifecycle development of three-tiered applications utilizing (gasp) Microsoft products, feel free to download my Resume.doc or Resume.rtf.
&#60/SHAMELESS PLUG&#62

Liar, huh? Scroll down and see that, yes, I have a significant other. And a beautiful and lovable one at that.

Yeah, whatever.

Liar, huh? Scroll down and see that, yes, I have a significant other. And a beautiful and lovable one at that.

Yeah, whatever.

You wrote: "We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash" which is kind of funny since there are so many ways, and so many organisations doing so.
Rule #1: Buy NO unneccessary plastic items. I make an exception, personally, for my kids' legos. But I don't buy a new case for my computer just because the ATX form came out, I hacksaw the old one. Plastics are essentially a waste product of the petroleum industry.
Rule #2: Buy NOTHING from Exxon. Because we need to convince the Oil Barons that there are some things that don't blow over - and Exxon's had the most egregious crimes as well as being the last vestigal trace of the original Petroleum Trust (Standard Oil = S.O. = Esso = Exxon, you can confirm this easily).
Rule #3: Stop whining and do something. I am converting my truck to gas/electric hybrid ASAP. My bud Pete runs used fryer oil in his (unmodified) Mercedes diesel.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Ballard Fuel Cells
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Greenpeace International Homepage
Home Power Magazine
Hydrogen Web (English/German)
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Roofing Systems
Unique Mobility
Veggie Van (BioDiesel)
Wilde EVolutions catalog
United Solar Systems Home Page

--Charlie

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but FUD will never concern me.

Well, you and most of the others commenting on this issue are sure willing to spread the FUD around....

1) Car battery disposal is not a major pollution problem (manufacture being another issue). Those little ever-readies that you're tossing blithely into the trash are one of the most pressing ecological issues of our time, but people driving electric cars recycle ALL their batteries (the spent cores are quite valuable) and most gas vehicle batteries are also recycled.

2) Point source pollution (i.e. power plants) is easier to control/prevent than distributed pollution (cf. privately operated internal combustion engines). Gas lawn mowers are one of the principal causes of air pollution in the US, incidentally.

3) Many people are supplied power from hydro, wind, or photovoltaic sources. If you actually become a part of the electric vehicle underground you will find that many people are generating their own power, or use power from commercial "green" providers.

Your statement "yes the energy does come from some coal or oil burning plant" is thus incorrect through overgeneralization, which makes it relatively accurate compared to most of what's being posted here. Your comments on ethanol and car prices are similarly FUDular.

Alternative Energy Engineering

Electro Automotive

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

Greenpeace International Homepage

Home Power Magazine

innEVations

Jerry Halstead's Car

Low Rolling Resistance Tires

Phoenix EAA

Roofing Systems

Unique Mobility

Wilde EVolutions catalog

United Solar Systems Home Page

I know I've personally hidden easter eggs in some software I've written. For instance, if you grab my Tetris Clone for Intellivision, it has a Pong clone hidden in it as an easter egg. And, it's all GPL'd.

Also, in one of the programs I maintain at work, I embedded a complete VT-100 Pacman clone that I wrote, although the program I embedded it in does not qualify as open source.

PS. Why, oh WHY did Slashdot change my ~ to %7E in my URL?

I know I've personally hidden easter eggs in some software I've written. For instance, if you grab my Tetris Clone for Intellivision, it has a Pong clone hidden in it as an easter egg. And, it's all GPL'd.

Also, in one of the programs I maintain at work, I embedded a complete VT-100 Pacman clone that I wrote, although the program I embedded it in does not qualify as open source.

PS. Why, oh WHY did Slashdot change my ~ to %7E in my URL?

Here's a link to a site about Aldous Huxley.

- Steeltoe

"The tree of liberty must be periodically watered with the blood of patriots" -Benjamin Franklin

Not to be picky or anything, but that was actually Thomas Jefferson. And he was right... and so are you. When a law is wrong, it MUST be challenged and destroyed; that's why they saw fit to include a little thing known as "Jury Nullification" in the founding laws of this nation. Basically, it means that a jury can find a defendant fully and completely guilty of a violation of law, but refuse to punish him for it because they don't think that law should BE a law. And you will NEVER hear it mentioned in a court of law, on TV, or anywhere except in a few books and movies (and, now, a few websites). Try to guess why. That's right: if We, the Sheeple, knew about it, why, we'd be chopping down laws all over the place! Can't have THAT, now can they? Undermining their hard-fought-for and bought-with-lobbyists laws like that would take away some of Their power, now wouldn't it?

So what better forum to spread knowledge of its existence than right here on good old slashdot?

JURY NULLIFICATION

JURY NULLIFICATION

JURY NULLIFICATION

JURY NULLIFICATION

JURY NULLIFICATION

There. Now go do some research on the topic, and shudder with anger when you realize how you've been lied to all these years by judges and lawyers...

The Fully Informed Jury Association's website
Read some more about it
A list of books on the subject
Even more
More
MORE
MORE MORE MORE

As you can see if you read the links above and fully understand them, the power of Jury Nullification is about the only power left to We the People. We don't have enormous wealth, we aren't in positions of political power, we don't have adequate representation in the legislative bodies of the government (meaning, of course, we can't be taxed either, but that's a whole 'nuther post), we don't have a stranglehold on any particular commodity or service (though think what would happen if we all suddenly configured our firewalls and BGP routers to stop letting packets through :)... Jury Nullification was GIVEN to us by the founding fathers because they knew in their wisdom that we would never have as much power as those who are so easily corrupted by it. It Is Our ONLY Weapon Against Them And Their Evil, People!! Do not let it fall by the wayside again. Tell everyone you know about it. Print out all the above webpages I linked to in 48-point Arial and paste them all up and down the streets of your cities. Don't Let THEM Win!!!

Thank you.

Re: few outsiders working with ACS While there aren't as many people as I would like using it on the outside just yet, there are people who are not working for Ars Digita who are working on the system. You can find these people pretty easily, as they show up at http://www.photo.net/bboard/q- and-a.tcl?topic=web/db, where people discuss using ACS, AOLServer, etc. I think that one of the primary reasons that the system has not been embraced by the open source community is simply that Oracle, while free for development use, is very expensive once you want to go live. However, because of this, a bunch of people decided to port it over to Postgresql--there is now a beta of this effort, available here: http://acspg.benadida.com This means that it is now possible to do development of ACS using 100% free, open-source components (AOLServer 3+ is open-source too, thanks to Philip and Hal Abelson at MIT).

Re: AOLServer not being popular and/or proven Hello? The reason it is called AOLServer is because AOL uses it they bought NaviSoft, makers of NaviServer, which they renamed to AOLServer). That by itself makes it popular and proven--AOL handles 28,000 hits a second using it. Of course there are other people using it too, and not just Ars Digita clients. There are even a few hosting services that'll host AOLServer, like these guys: http://www.am.net

So, what's so great about AOLServer? The nice thing about AOLServer is that out of the box it is ready to handle connections to relational databases. No need to make ODBC calls, etc. AOLServer sets up connections when it starts up and your web pages can get handles from a pool of these connections, use them, then recycle those handles. Again: no overhead for database access. Each AOLServer can handle 8 simultaneous database accesses per second, that is, it can serve up 8 database-backed pages a second. And that's on top of serving up *static* pages, which are an entirely different matter. AOLServer is nice also in that certain high level features are built right in--you can send an email with a one-line command for example or grab a web page from someplace else with a one line command (helpful for doing things like Philip's Bill Gates Wealth Clock, for example) and there's a one line command for scheduling stuff to run (like cron)from the web server. And the Tcl interpreter is built in, too, so no CGI overhead. If you want to read more about AOLServer and how it stacks up to Apache, check this out for a few quick paragraphs from Philip's book about AOLServer or for more information, go to http://www.photo.net/wtr/aol server/introduction-1.html and
http://www.photo.net/wtr/aol server/introduction-2.html

Re: ACS no longer being the greatest thing since sliced bread Well, it does quite a lot out of the box and it is being used to create real, serious, heavy-duty websites. Given that at the moment they are busy expanding like crazy and doing work for clients, it isn't so hard to understand why they may not be driving the toolkit as hard as they could, there's lots in there already, including monitoring services in addition to just a site-building toolkit. And new modules do show up in the toolkit even so and there's a list of possible future improvements on the arsdigita site somewhere with more stuff. And Philip is thinking about this stuff, don't doubt it. In any case, if you want to see for yourself what the toolkit has, check out this page and see if it meets your needs: http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/ toolkit/modules.html

Re: Philip's book Definitely worth reading. Funny, smart, sharp. Definitely look at the technical stuff, though, even if you aren't using ACS, since at the very least the stuff on relational databases is important.

Re: Using Tcl Tcl sucks? Well, you get used to it--now that Tcl 8 has the complete Perl regular expression package, it sucks less. But, an important point is this: when you use AOLServer, you will be using a bunch of AOLServer commands in your Tcl code to get stuff done. So you won't be programming in straight Tcl. There are utility procedures that are part of the ACS toolkit that help too. And over time there will probably be some tools to do some of the grunt work (they already have one out called The Prototyper). But in any event, once you get over a few quirks, it's like programming in any other scripting language. One nice thing is that the language is pretty small, so you can learn it very quickly and get going.

By the way, at Scriptics, the company founded by Tcl's inventor John Ousterhout to support Tcl, Brent Welch, author of one of the better Tcl books and a well known "name" in the Tcl community, has built the Tcl developer's site, dev.scriptics.com, using the Ars Digita toolkit.

And, if you want to learn how to use ACS, Ars Digita offers free 3 week bootcamps in Cambridge, MA and in several other places--look on their site for a "bootcamp" link. Or you can get the problem sets used at bootcamp off their site and learn the stuff at home (if you install everything on your own machine and do the 3 problem sets (note: PS 3 has been replaced with PS 5), you get a $10,000 sign on bonus if you decide to work for Ars Digita--and speaking of working for Ars Digita--check out their salary structure (http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/j obs/tech-jobs.html). Might make you want to start learning Tcl after all :-)

___
DC

P.S. If you decide to work for them, please mention me so I can get a shot at the Ferrari (actually, I'd just as soon take it in cash) :-)

P.P.S. More seriously, if you want to do the problem sets or a bootcamp, here are a few pages I put together for people like you:

Problem Set Zero This is meant to help people bone up on what they'll need to do the problem sets/bootcamp. Meta Cheat Sheet lists a bunch of useful cheat sheets that I and other bootcampers put together and some other stuff.

Re: few outsiders working with ACS While there aren't as many people as I would like using it on the outside just yet, there are people who are not working for Ars Digita who are working on the system. You can find these people pretty easily, as they show up at http://www.photo.net/bboard/q- and-a.tcl?topic=web/db, where people discuss using ACS, AOLServer, etc. I think that one of the primary reasons that the system has not been embraced by the open source community is simply that Oracle, while free for development use, is very expensive once you want to go live. However, because of this, a bunch of people decided to port it over to Postgresql--there is now a beta of this effort, available here: http://acspg.benadida.com This means that it is now possible to do development of ACS using 100% free, open-source components (AOLServer 3+ is open-source too, thanks to Philip and Hal Abelson at MIT).

Re: AOLServer not being popular and/or proven Hello? The reason it is called AOLServer is because AOL uses it they bought NaviSoft, makers of NaviServer, which they renamed to AOLServer). That by itself makes it popular and proven--AOL handles 28,000 hits a second using it. Of course there are other people using it too, and not just Ars Digita clients. There are even a few hosting services that'll host AOLServer, like these guys: http://www.am.net

So, what's so great about AOLServer? The nice thing about AOLServer is that out of the box it is ready to handle connections to relational databases. No need to make ODBC calls, etc. AOLServer sets up connections when it starts up and your web pages can get handles from a pool of these connections, use them, then recycle those handles. Again: no overhead for database access. Each AOLServer can handle 8 simultaneous database accesses per second, that is, it can serve up 8 database-backed pages a second. And that's on top of serving up *static* pages, which are an entirely different matter. AOLServer is nice also in that certain high level features are built right in--you can send an email with a one-line command for example or grab a web page from someplace else with a one line command (helpful for doing things like Philip's Bill Gates Wealth Clock, for example) and there's a one line command for scheduling stuff to run (like cron)from the web server. And the Tcl interpreter is built in, too, so no CGI overhead. If you want to read more about AOLServer and how it stacks up to Apache, check this out for a few quick paragraphs from Philip's book about AOLServer or for more information, go to http://www.photo.net/wtr/aol server/introduction-1.html and
http://www.photo.net/wtr/aol server/introduction-2.html

Re: ACS no longer being the greatest thing since sliced bread Well, it does quite a lot out of the box and it is being used to create real, serious, heavy-duty websites. Given that at the moment they are busy expanding like crazy and doing work for clients, it isn't so hard to understand why they may not be driving the toolkit as hard as they could, there's lots in there already, including monitoring services in addition to just a site-building toolkit. And new modules do show up in the toolkit even so and there's a list of possible future improvements on the arsdigita site somewhere with more stuff. And Philip is thinking about this stuff, don't doubt it. In any case, if you want to see for yourself what the toolkit has, check out this page and see if it meets your needs: http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/ toolkit/modules.html

Re: Philip's book Definitely worth reading. Funny, smart, sharp. Definitely look at the technical stuff, though, even if you aren't using ACS, since at the very least the stuff on relational databases is important.

Re: Using Tcl Tcl sucks? Well, you get used to it--now that Tcl 8 has the complete Perl regular expression package, it sucks less. But, an important point is this: when you use AOLServer, you will be using a bunch of AOLServer commands in your Tcl code to get stuff done. So you won't be programming in straight Tcl. There are utility procedures that are part of the ACS toolkit that help too. And over time there will probably be some tools to do some of the grunt work (they already have one out called The Prototyper). But in any event, once you get over a few quirks, it's like programming in any other scripting language. One nice thing is that the language is pretty small, so you can learn it very quickly and get going.

By the way, at Scriptics, the company founded by Tcl's inventor John Ousterhout to support Tcl, Brent Welch, author of one of the better Tcl books and a well known "name" in the Tcl community, has built the Tcl developer's site, dev.scriptics.com, using the Ars Digita toolkit.

And, if you want to learn how to use ACS, Ars Digita offers free 3 week bootcamps in Cambridge, MA and in several other places--look on their site for a "bootcamp" link. Or you can get the problem sets used at bootcamp off their site and learn the stuff at home (if you install everything on your own machine and do the 3 problem sets (note: PS 3 has been replaced with PS 5), you get a $10,000 sign on bonus if you decide to work for Ars Digita--and speaking of working for Ars Digita--check out their salary structure (http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/j obs/tech-jobs.html). Might make you want to start learning Tcl after all :-)

___
DC

P.S. If you decide to work for them, please mention me so I can get a shot at the Ferrari (actually, I'd just as soon take it in cash) :-)

P.P.S. More seriously, if you want to do the problem sets or a bootcamp, here are a few pages I put together for people like you:

Problem Set Zero This is meant to help people bone up on what they'll need to do the problem sets/bootcamp. Meta Cheat Sheet lists a bunch of useful cheat sheets that I and other bootcampers put together and some other stuff.

... The United States is a democracy, has been a democracy since 1917, and was never intended to be a democracy.

The only Republic like facility we still share is the famed electoral college which also does not operate as intended. US Constitution

To explain further:
Since 1917 Income Taxes Authorized. and United States Senators to Be Elected by Direct Popular Vote.
Now you have to understand how things worked before to appreciate how they work now.

Before 1917, the census roles were used by the federal government to determine the tax burder of each of the *STATES* so it was the states which held the power of the country. The federal governement could not dictate to the states any laws by using monetary incentives. Along with the money that was collected the States (ie. the State Governments) sent Sentors, essentially their limited grip on the -- not infinite supply -- of money. This is why budgets go from house to senate. BTW: If a Senator shirked his responsibility he could be recalled and replaced ... usually the Senator was a very known quantity however, having been a respected member of the State's own house.

Since 1917 we have seen many ways that the federal government as forced states to act according to it's wishes. 55 mph speed, 21 drinking age, sane lanes. These were all accomplished through hold back of payments collected directly from the citizens of the states. Direct taxation is one which cannot be avoided. If you tax land, I can choose not to own land, but I have no choice on whether I choose to have an income. It is therefore unavoidable and before 1917 unconstitutional. Because now the money supply is essentially infinate. We are a democracy because we can, and have, act like one. The processes that have kept us from being a democracy have been derailed.

Who has the gold makes the rules. Who makes the rules and how the rules are made are exactly what is central to a republic.

A rough parallel would be if the UN could tax the citizens of all the world directly and then hold back payment(s) to the countries that the UN wanted to force policy changes within.

And just as Scientology lost with the DMCA (See http://www.primenet.com/~xenubat/un blocked.html for details), I don't think the MPAA is going to win in the long run on this.

I just finished my own cheesy Tetris clone for the Intellivision! I guess I've made my rite of passage.

BTW, if anyone's interested, I have an Intellivision-compatible Software Development Kit as well. :-)

I just finished my own cheesy Tetris clone for the Intellivision! I guess I've made my rite of passage.

BTW, if anyone's interested, I have an Intellivision-compatible Software Development Kit as well. :-)