As long as they know how to properly comment code, I'd rather have socially inept programming gurus writing software than, say, the marketing department.
Programming is still part (black?) art. Portions of the skill set needed to properly write code are mutually exclusive with some accepted western social norms. Computers can't be bullied, bargained with, convinced or bluffed. A good programmer needs to be able to tell his or her boss that what they're asking for is impossible when it is. I don't think I've ever met anyone in, again say, marketing that has this skill. Most people, when painted into a corner, will produce the workplace equivalent of a TV set. Looks fine if you only look at it from one direction -- go 'round the back and there's nothing there. Write code like this and the CD-r discs you distribute it on will still be warm when the first show-stopping bug is found.
Oh, and if someone screws up a couple of hundred lines of code they already are acting like a jerk. Jeez, screw up one line of code and the program won't work. I've written major stuff (eg: a student marks data entry database) in the last year that's used less than 300 lines of code.
How about through advanced modelling of potential designs for said rocket. Modelling of fuel. Course plotting / corrections. I'm sure some actual rocket scientists could add more...
No doubt it's not as bad for you as I've made out, but there are some nasty traps if you prefer friends over trusted cow-orkers. See how long someone stays friends with you when you have to tell them they're doing a bad job. The manager that can't fire an incompetent friend is not a good manager. See what happens in an organisation that is run assuming everyone is friends with everyone else when two people hate each other. Moreover, witness how inflexible and slow to react a company is when everyone thinks the same (which is often the case with friends). Don't even get me started on significant out-of-the-office relationships between cow-orkers and I'm not talking lovers, I'm talking "same church". (*shudder*)
Friendship in the workplace should be a consequence of trust and competence, it should not drive a working relationship.
OK, jokes aside, sure you trust each other, but are you friends with one another? There is a very important distinction and I've found that friendship is far most important than trust. I don't always trust that my co-workers (and subordinates) will do things "correctly" or even their best. But for the most part they are also my friends and I feel comfortable approaching them if there is a problem or just some task to work on.
YUCK!
I'd much rather be able to trust someone to do their jobs than be friends with them. But I suppose that if none of you get anything right you all spend a lot of long days together. Me, I have actual friends outside of the company.
A company full of incompetent friends and an empty sack is worth the sack. Which is what some of your friends sound like they should get.
Are you saying that "team building" exercises are only useful for building teams of people, but don't actually help give them any useful skills for performing their jobs? Well, you could knock me over with a feather.
How about identifying technical training needs of specific individuals and funding some decent training?
I use my old Bung GB Xchanger mostly for: Copying ROMs from cart for my TRGpro with the Liberty emulator, and getting photos off my GB camera. "Significant non-infringing uses".
Which is a right pain. Means I can't use my learning IR remote control cart in my new GBA SP. Also makes my IR, colour electric rat tamigotchi a bit of a waste.
Developer's Pack. Consumer version not released yet.
BTW: I signed up for email notification using my spamgourmet account and they use up two emails just verifying your address. Set your address to five or so messages. I chose three and I'm thinking that I'll have to reset it soon.
Datel made a "SmartCOM" PDA card for the GB that had an alarm that would go off even if the cart wasn't in the GB.
The GB(A) is just a CPU with a screen and battery. If you're not after anything too complicated, it's a nice, supported, QAed device that can save you some development time. In other words, it's a platform. Heck, I bought my mother the Singer sewing machine with the GBC controller. Works fine.
I've got one and my problem is that it's too sensitive to bus timing issues. My VIA chipset motherboard doesn't have the best busmastering in the world and in specific circumstances it causes the card to splutter when playing sound and transferring files to a firewire device (my iPod). You'd think it would have the world's greatest buffer for those tasks where low latency isn't as important.
Maybe I'd be seriously suggesting it if I had an nForce2 chipset motherboard.
We have 3-phase at my home here in Western Australia, but we got it specially for my father's kiln, back in the day. Now I think half the house uses one phase, half uses the other and half the electric oven uses the third.
You honestly think one can't do buisiness using a Macintosh?
Yes. Where I work we're so deep into a Windows-only database that we have no alternative to Windows on every desktop.
Or at least at the moment we don't. We've duplicated heaps of functionality of the database for our linux/php/mysql web interface that we're considering just continuing on until we can get rid of the Windows product altogether. But that's still a few years away.
It looks like the "LS-240" is the drive you're looking for. Most reviews are a couple of years old, but they do exclaim that it can fit 32MB on a normal old 1.44MB floppy. Thing is, you get one write, then if you want to change anything you have to re-write the whole disk, so it wouldn't work for RAID. Still, 32MB is a neat trick, especially if it's a raw size without compression.
Mind you, if I said to one of my friends that I'd bought a superdrive, he'd never speak to me again. Flakey isn't the right word. Evil is getting closer. (At the same time, a sister organisation to where I work has a lab full of the things and no real complaints.)
The 2.88 format stalled mostly because of media price and slow pickup. Factories had been too well setup for the 1.44 drives and disks so that the new 2.88 was seen as too expensive (disks more than drives) by many people. Perhaps once the floppy broke the 1MB barrier, people didn't really think they needed much more, or they needed a lot more. Software started being distributed on CD and anyone with major removable storage needs turned to Syquest and Iomega. (Gee, and didn't that turn out well?)
So, once the installed base of the drives failed to live up to expectations and major players moved to other formats, no one took the time to make the 2.88 more cost effective. Similar to the reason 8cm CDs mostly died (apart from in very specific markets).
It's a shame because the failure of the 2.88MB format stalled the whole floppy scene. In roughly the same time frame that CPUs became 500 times faster, standard floppy drives only doubled in capacity.
Not only is a central repository illegal, the MP3s on the company hard drives can also get your arse sued. My advice to you, get all MP3s of commerical music off company equipment. If staff want to listen to music they can bring in their CDs, the radio or their own MP3 player. Personally I have an iPod and a little pair of Sony speakers.
Updating a course is not a trival thing. Deploying new hardware, writing new course notes, finding new text books are all costly or time consuming things. Students benefit financially from stable courses as there are a greater pool of secondhand text books available. Everyone benefits from a well shaken-down course. If the fundamentals are still present and materials are still available (books and spare parts), you will be unable to convince the appropriate people to change the course.
Meanwhile, and most students don't realise this, but you are allowed to do research of your own beyond the scope of any given class. I know you may not have the funds to pursue everything you want, but neither does the college.
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Programming is still part (black?) art. Portions of the skill set needed to properly write code are mutually exclusive with some accepted western social norms. Computers can't be bullied, bargained with, convinced or bluffed. A good programmer needs to be able to tell his or her boss that what they're asking for is impossible when it is. I don't think I've ever met anyone in, again say, marketing that has this skill. Most people, when painted into a corner, will produce the workplace equivalent of a TV set. Looks fine if you only look at it from one direction -- go 'round the back and there's nothing there. Write code like this and the CD-r discs you distribute it on will still be warm when the first show-stopping bug is found.
Oh, and if someone screws up a couple of hundred lines of code they already are acting like a jerk. Jeez, screw up one line of code and the program won't work. I've written major stuff (eg: a student marks data entry database) in the last year that's used less than 300 lines of code.
How about through advanced modelling of potential designs for said rocket. Modelling of fuel. Course plotting / corrections. I'm sure some actual rocket scientists could add more...
Has someone turned up the stupid on /. today or have my comment filters reset..?
Friendship in the workplace should be a consequence of trust and competence, it should not drive a working relationship.
I'd much rather be able to trust someone to do their jobs than be friends with them. But I suppose that if none of you get anything right you all spend a lot of long days together. Me, I have actual friends outside of the company.
A company full of incompetent friends and an empty sack is worth the sack. Which is what some of your friends sound like they should get.
How about identifying technical training needs of specific individuals and funding some decent training?
Or to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before.
Meanwhile, this product uses MMC, so 128MB not a problem. Not that I'll ever go back to flash-based portable MP3 after my iPod.
That bit's a quote.
What?
I use my old Bung GB Xchanger mostly for: Copying ROMs from cart for my TRGpro with the Liberty emulator, and getting photos off my GB camera. "Significant non-infringing uses".
BTW: I signed up for email notification using my spamgourmet account and they use up two emails just verifying your address. Set your address to five or so messages. I chose three and I'm thinking that I'll have to reset it soon.
The GB(A) is just a CPU with a screen and battery. If you're not after anything too complicated, it's a nice, supported, QAed device that can save you some development time. In other words, it's a platform. Heck, I bought my mother the Singer sewing machine with the GBC controller. Works fine.
Maybe I'd be seriously suggesting it if I had an nForce2 chipset motherboard.
We have 3-phase at my home here in Western Australia, but we got it specially for my father's kiln, back in the day. Now I think half the house uses one phase, half uses the other and half the electric oven uses the third.
Creative Audigy 2 Platinum.
Or at least at the moment we don't. We've duplicated heaps of functionality of the database for our linux/php/mysql web interface that we're considering just continuing on until we can get rid of the Windows product altogether. But that's still a few years away.
I only have one suggestion: "You should know that by now!" should put a semicolon at the end of the last line I was working on.
Mind you, if I said to one of my friends that I'd bought a superdrive, he'd never speak to me again. Flakey isn't the right word. Evil is getting closer. (At the same time, a sister organisation to where I work has a lab full of the things and no real complaints.)
So, once the installed base of the drives failed to live up to expectations and major players moved to other formats, no one took the time to make the 2.88 more cost effective. Similar to the reason 8cm CDs mostly died (apart from in very specific markets).
It's a shame because the failure of the 2.88MB format stalled the whole floppy scene. In roughly the same time frame that CPUs became 500 times faster, standard floppy drives only doubled in capacity.
Meanwhile, I wish April fools was more about stuff like this than just making up stuff.
It's lunch time April 2 where I'm at and this unfunny stuff is getting old.
Not only is a central repository illegal, the MP3s on the company hard drives can also get your arse sued. My advice to you, get all MP3s of commerical music off company equipment. If staff want to listen to music they can bring in their CDs, the radio or their own MP3 player. Personally I have an iPod and a little pair of Sony speakers.
Meanwhile, and most students don't realise this, but you are allowed to do research of your own beyond the scope of any given class. I know you may not have the funds to pursue everything you want, but neither does the college.