You're seriously rating handcoding vs Dreamweaver as a tie?
3. Handcoding takes far more time than is necessary in a changing scenario of today's news. Effort not proportional to returns. As a shareholder, i would sue them for wasting money.
Ummm... ever hear of the term CMS? You handcode the template, and editors/writers/journos who don't grok HTML use the CMS to enter it. They can add/change stories as often as they like without affecting the layout.
4. Dreamweaver allows preview easily and pretty much automates repeatable tasks. Handcoding requires a Mechanical Turk.
Handcoding allows preview easily too. It's called Alt-Tab to Firefox then F5. And I don't think you could convince anyone that Dreamweaver's viewing tools are better than the Firefox + Firebug combination. As for automating repeatable tasks -- there's scaffolding, commands like sed, writing small scripts... all sorts of things designed to easily manipulate huge chunks of text.
Besides the most basic 10-page-or-less-I-have-a-web-page-woohoo situation that last existed 10 years ago, I don't see any reason to use Dreamweaver. Go ahead and sue the NYT -- we could all use a good laugh.
But they'll have to be happy with what they have to be happy with, instead of walking on air. That's just the facts of life. Remember, they're dealing with 21st century schizoid men who talk to the wind here. Let's hope this entire affair is one more red nightmare for the RIAA.
The only three things I can think of where they aren't very open are the iPhone, Aqua, and FairPlay DRM.
The only three things eh? Take away those three from Apple and what do you have left?
They use lock-in to protect their most profitable sources of revenue, ergo, their business model is built on lock-in. Let's not pretend otherwise.
But it's not as though Apple is engaging in the sort of vendor lock-in that Microsoft is.
They should rephrase that into a new glitzy ad:
"Apple. We lock you in less than Microsoft!"
We're currently a 100% LAMP shop, but I've heard a reliable report through the grapevine that the management a few levels above our office wants to standardize our region on MS.NET.
Start looking around for other jobs.
The issue here isn't about.NET vs LAMP, or proprietary vs open source. I would give the same advice if the decision had been the reverse, ie switch from 100%.NET to LAMP.
Basically your company's upper management is going to make a huge decision without any input from developers. If senior developers like yourself weren't consulted before the change, it's unlikely they have a migration plan that is more detailed than "1) Switch from LAMP to.NET 2) ???? 3) Profit!". Is this a company you want to stay in?
up until about 2 years ago, I always intended to legally purchase these cds someday (No, seriously) once I get out of college and into the real world. At ~$15 each it would come to $7500, which I suppose is a lot but spread over a few years, it wouldn't really kill me. The problem is I can't stand to contribute a single cent to the sleazy companies behind the RIAA. On the other hand, I am getting a bit tired of mp3 quality and I'd like to have actual cds to rip into a lossless format.
Any suggestions? Anyone else feeling the same way?
Find the websites of the artists you like, and buy their merchandise: T-shirts, posters, what have you. When others ask about a T-shirt you're wearing, introduce the band to them. Promote their music to your friends and attend their concerts when you get the chance. Write reviews of their albums on Amazon, in your last.fm journal, etc. Hype them on Facebook or whatever social networks you're part of.
Maybe you didn't pay for their CDs. But this way you're bartering your time and services as a freelance promoter for the band in exchange for their albums, and that has a greater overall value to the band than the measly royalties they get from CD purchases.
Even assuming the farmers work just 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, that's 1600 yuan, which is more than janitors, waitresses, or mall service staff. If their lodging is accounted for, that's a pretty good salary. Note the amount vs an entry-level game tester above.
Reading comprehension FTW! Ok I read the salary part wrong -- at 30 cents / 2.5 yuan an hour, that's 400 yuan a month, which is not a good salary at all.
30 cents an hour amounts to about 48 dollars per month. Putting things in perspective, when I lived in Asia, that was more or less the normal wage of a janitor.
Conditions are not uniform in Asia -- US$800 will get you a 30 sq meter room in prime area Tokyo, whereas it would get you a luxury apartment/condo in China.
Here's some numbers for those who want to see how well/badly you can live on gold farmer wages. Bear in mind these are for Beijing, which is probably the 3rd most expensive city in China to live in (after Shanghai and Hong Kong).
500g of chicken/pork/beef: 10 yuan
Box lunch for office workers (meat, vegetable, rice): 5 yuan
McDonald's happy meal: 20 yuan
Can of coke: 2 yuan
Haircut: 10 yuan and up
Bottle of imported beer at expat bar: 30 yuan and up
Rent of 50 sq meter studio 30 minutes from business district: 2000 yuan
"Kung Pao" chicken and rice at average restaurant/take-away: 10-20 yuan
Dinner for two at classy restaurant targeting expats (including wine): 200 yuan and up
Salary for admin assistant: 2000 yuan and up
Salary for entry-level game tester: 1000 yuan and up
Salary for entry-level programmer: 3000 yuan and up
Salary for senior developer: 8000 yuan and up
Even assuming the farmers work just 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, that's 1600 yuan, which is more than janitors, waitresses, or mall service staff. If their lodging is accounted for, that's a pretty good salary. Note the amount vs an entry-level game tester above.
Building something in a hurry is not an accomplishment in itself. Keeping it well-maintained is the real challenge.
Would you rather slap together a DIY PC in 15 minutes or spend time ensuring your cables are positioned to allow good airflow, etc? Same principle applies.
Here is an excellent article giving the background behind the "Loudness War" and a case study of a particular album. It is dated September 2002. This odious practice has been escalating for a long time.
One of their key ideas was having the participants submit music they were intimately familiar with. Unfortunately, they should have taken the idea to its logical conclusion: having each participant tested only with songs they submit. Also, they could have at least published the statistics on how participants performed on the song they submitted.
I find it easy to tell the difference between say lossless or even 320 and 128/192 when listening to music I'm very familiar with. But give me a set of random songs I've never heard before and I'd have a much harder time. You don't have to be an audiophile - you just have to be paying attention.
My grievance with low bit rates and/or inferior sound equipment is simply that you won't know what you are missing. And I'm not one of those gold-plated cable audiophiles either -- my "serious" listening equipment is the Etymotics ER4s with a headphone amp. Used for lossless songs, of course.
I know it's not really what the TFB is about, but does anyone have any tech details about the Great Firewall of China? How does it work, is it some kind of giant NAT? Are there blacklist-based IP filtering, real-time content filtering? Are ISPs routes set up so that foreign IPs can only be reached via a few select routers that do the censoring?
I don't know the exact details, you can extrapolate from my experience with it.
It is not consistent across all of China. At times blogspot may be available in one city and unavailable in another.
Domains that are not blocked by default may be temporarily blocked for a while. For example if blacklisted words appear in GMail, Google Reader, Amazon, etc, your subnet will be blocked off for maybe an hour. Yes this means if your neighbor received "subversive material" from GMail, you will have no access to google for some time
"Are there any great resources, such as websites, wikis or books for someone that wants to find out exactly how Linux works and how to fix and modify it?"
Really, the task of creating this list authoritatively without infringing copyright is monumental. Probably the *only* way to do it is with a community project where people just submit the pronunciations they know.
It's not just about pronunciations, it's about the choices that appear and the order they appear in.
Take the term "guanxi" (meaning "connections"). One term, two characters. For a good dictionary, the correct characters for this term will map it to the default choice available after typing all six letters. A garbage dictionary would have no concept of common terms and perhaps put the characters for "can wash" before the characters for "connections".
Ordering the terms appropriately is important since a pinyin spelling maps to multiple characters. There is a huge difference in efficiency when the exact term you want is within the first couple "hits", as it may. Which is something Google may have some experience in...
There *is* such a community project - SCIM. I wonder why Google didn't use/extend SCIM's database instead.
Could it possibly be true that there are 233 million registered users with this company? That is roughly 1/2 of China's non-rural population (estimated at 40% of 1.3B)... roughly 1/4 of the entire internet (estimated at 1.1B)... approximately 4% of the earth's pupulation (roughly 6B)... is it a little creepy to anyone else that one company has the financial information of this many people? Can that number really be correct?
They don't handle the financial information of 233 million people (China has very few credit card users). Instead, they have alternative payment methods like tie-ins with the national mobile phone providers which deduct a certain amount from a registered phone number each month. Prepaid cards for QQ coins are also available.
In China it is inconceivable for anyone with Internet access to not have a QQ account. To not have one in the urban areas here means you are either a rural hick or a foreigner.
How those machines got infected in the first place is a whole other series of discussions. And one that we really should have sometime. Preferably involving Linux and Free software at the critical points (allowing for Windows workstations).
Imo that set of discussions is relevant right now.
So it's not just ignorant home users who are spreading spam and malware -- it's Fortune 1000 companies with access to IT professionals, people whose job is to prevent such mishaps. Which begs the question, why on Earth are we asking if Linux is ready for the [corporate|office|grandma's] desktop? The question should be, "is Windows ready for the Internet-enabled desktop?"
Hmm that's interesting, I guess I didn't see it from that view point.
Decided to fish around for an example, here's one: Iced Earth's The Glorious Burden. The "Imported" edition has two extra tracks, the same as the Limited edition. I will number them below to avoid confusion.
Confused yet? Alright, in terms of content. #4 = #5 = #2. And #1 = #3. The only difference #2 has from #4 and #5 is that its contents are split onto two cds, which hardly justifies the price premium
Now who in their right mind would buy #2 when #5 was available? Simple, #5 was released 2 months later. The $38.99 version was a complete scam - you will note that Japan has no equivalent (even though #5 has a Japanese cover!). Loyal fans/collectors who *had* to have every song ended up paying more than double the album price for two extra tracks. To pour salt onto the wound, the "limited edition" released later has those tracks for a much lower price.
This practice further complicates things because now Amazon (US) has to have 3 pages for different CDs, each with their own set of reviews (although some reviewers copy-paste their review to every edition). Tagging music becomes confusing because of the proliferation of very similar albums with subtle differences. And of course buyers will have to do extra research to make sure they're getting what they want.
We have to put up with all these inconveniences so that the record industry can price discriminate.
Bonus tracks that are only available on the European or Japanese "Limited Edition". Or a compilation of Greatest Hits with one or two new songs. All designed to make fans pay album prices or more (have you seen the mark-up for imports?) for two or three new tracks. Being able to purchase per track will hopefully put an end to such devious practices*.
*Many labels still do market segmentation geographically as far as I know.
I've been working on different IT positions through my career: support; some networking; DBA; web development; project management; even working on the client side for a little while. However, I don't feel like I am really a specialist on any of those subjects and I feel I need to focus on a particular field.
Which one did you like the most? In your spare time, do you read up more on networking, web development, etc? Since you've tried so many IT positions, you have a good idea of what the different jobs available are like, and that's all you need to make your decision. In IT, asking what is hot will get you different answers every month. If the current flavor of the month becomes obsolete and you never liked it in the first place, you end up in a situation where you have no career path *and* you hate your job. Choose what you love to do.
Hard rock, progressive rock, and heavy metal all usually talk about social and political issues in a manner that is both musical and lyrical, and it's a lot easier to dig into and associate with than the lamenting dorks that populate alternative and indie rock nowadays.
Sociopolitical issues aren't the only draw imo.
I'm not saying listening to it makes you gifted, but progressive rock and progressive metal are inherently more "intelligent" than most other genres. They change time signatures constantly within songs, and song structure isn't fixed. So with them you're not getting the typical 4/4 time verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-modulatedchorus crap that the music industry churns out daily. The songs are complex and have many things going on at the same time -- sometimes different instruments are playing at different rhythms, etc.
Perhaps this (perceived according to detractors) intelligence of certain forms of music is what draws gifted kids to them.
Check out stuff by Spiral Architect, Gordian Knot, or Meshuggah. You may not be able to sing along to them, but they will blow your mind.
I wish these extensions would register when installed with my APT repository. That way it's easier to upgrade along with the rest of my system, especially after an OS upgrade (every 6 months with Ubuntu). And easier to clone to a new machine.
It's very straightforward to duplicate extensions as is -- just copy your profile directory over.
And you could set up/home on a different partition and not have to bother with restoring it when you upgrade your OS, try a different distro, etc.
Namely, that there is absolutely no love of the English language among the majority of it's native speakers. I'm normally not a grammar Nazi, but the irony of this sentence is too much to resist.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm... ever hear of the term CMS? You handcode the template, and editors/writers/journos who don't grok HTML use the CMS to enter it. They can add/change stories as often as they like without affecting the layout.
Handcoding allows preview easily too. It's called Alt-Tab to Firefox then F5. And I don't think you could convince anyone that Dreamweaver's viewing tools are better than the Firefox + Firebug combination. As for automating repeatable tasks -- there's scaffolding, commands like sed, writing small scripts... all sorts of things designed to easily manipulate huge chunks of text.
Besides the most basic 10-page-or-less-I-have-a-web-page-woohoo situation that last existed 10 years ago, I don't see any reason to use Dreamweaver. Go ahead and sue the NYT -- we could all use a good laugh.
But they'll have to be happy with what they have to be happy with, instead of walking on air. That's just the facts of life. Remember, they're dealing with 21st century schizoid men who talk to the wind here. Let's hope this entire affair is one more red nightmare for the RIAA.
Let's see if it works on Slashdot.
Start looking around for other jobs.
The issue here isn't about .NET vs LAMP, or proprietary vs open source. I would give the same advice if the decision had been the reverse, ie switch from 100% .NET to LAMP.
Basically your company's upper management is going to make a huge decision without any input from developers. If senior developers like yourself weren't consulted before the change, it's unlikely they have a migration plan that is more detailed than "1) Switch from LAMP to .NET 2) ???? 3) Profit!". Is this a company you want to stay in?
Find the websites of the artists you like, and buy their merchandise: T-shirts, posters, what have you. When others ask about a T-shirt you're wearing, introduce the band to them. Promote their music to your friends and attend their concerts when you get the chance. Write reviews of their albums on Amazon, in your last.fm journal, etc. Hype them on Facebook or whatever social networks you're part of.
Maybe you didn't pay for their CDs. But this way you're bartering your time and services as a freelance promoter for the band in exchange for their albums, and that has a greater overall value to the band than the measly royalties they get from CD purchases.
Conditions are not uniform in Asia -- US$800 will get you a 30 sq meter room in prime area Tokyo, whereas it would get you a luxury apartment/condo in China.
Here's some numbers for those who want to see how well/badly you can live on gold farmer wages. Bear in mind these are for Beijing, which is probably the 3rd most expensive city in China to live in (after Shanghai and Hong Kong).
- 500g of chicken/pork/beef: 10 yuan
- Box lunch for office workers (meat, vegetable, rice): 5 yuan
- McDonald's happy meal: 20 yuan
- Can of coke: 2 yuan
- Haircut: 10 yuan and up
- Bottle of imported beer at expat bar: 30 yuan and up
- Rent of 50 sq meter studio 30 minutes from business district: 2000 yuan
- "Kung Pao" chicken and rice at average restaurant/take-away: 10-20 yuan
- Dinner for two at classy restaurant targeting expats (including wine): 200 yuan and up
- Salary for admin assistant: 2000 yuan and up
- Salary for entry-level game tester: 1000 yuan and up
- Salary for entry-level programmer: 3000 yuan and up
- Salary for senior developer: 8000 yuan and up
Even assuming the farmers work just 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, that's 1600 yuan, which is more than janitors, waitresses, or mall service staff. If their lodging is accounted for, that's a pretty good salary. Note the amount vs an entry-level game tester above.Building something in a hurry is not an accomplishment in itself. Keeping it well-maintained is the real challenge.
Would you rather slap together a DIY PC in 15 minutes or spend time ensuring your cables are positioned to allow good airflow, etc? Same principle applies.
Here is an excellent article giving the background behind the "Loudness War" and a case study of a particular album. It is dated September 2002. This odious practice has been escalating for a long time.
One of their key ideas was having the participants submit music they were intimately familiar with. Unfortunately, they should have taken the idea to its logical conclusion: having each participant tested only with songs they submit. Also, they could have at least published the statistics on how participants performed on the song they submitted.
I find it easy to tell the difference between say lossless or even 320 and 128/192 when listening to music I'm very familiar with. But give me a set of random songs I've never heard before and I'd have a much harder time. You don't have to be an audiophile - you just have to be paying attention.
My grievance with low bit rates and/or inferior sound equipment is simply that you won't know what you are missing. And I'm not one of those gold-plated cable audiophiles either -- my "serious" listening equipment is the Etymotics ER4s with a headphone amp. Used for lossless songs, of course.
I don't know the exact details, you can extrapolate from my experience with it.
A sampling of blocked domains: wikipedia, blogspot, xanga, geocities, livejournal, ...
My tracepath output is throwing the lameness filter, so let's just say it starts spewing "no reply" after about 7 hops.
Now, for my thorough analysis of what all this implies%)$)*#@)NO CARRIER
Understanding The Linux Kernel is a good resource. For more conceptual stuff, Modern Operating Systems is great.
It's not just about pronunciations, it's about the choices that appear and the order they appear in.
Take the term "guanxi" (meaning "connections"). One term, two characters. For a good dictionary, the correct characters for this term will map it to the default choice available after typing all six letters. A garbage dictionary would have no concept of common terms and perhaps put the characters for "can wash" before the characters for "connections".
Ordering the terms appropriately is important since a pinyin spelling maps to multiple characters. There is a huge difference in efficiency when the exact term you want is within the first couple "hits", as it may. Which is something Google may have some experience in...
There *is* such a community project - SCIM. I wonder why Google didn't use/extend SCIM's database instead.
They don't handle the financial information of 233 million people (China has very few credit card users). Instead, they have alternative payment methods like tie-ins with the national mobile phone providers which deduct a certain amount from a registered phone number each month. Prepaid cards for QQ coins are also available.
In China it is inconceivable for anyone with Internet access to not have a QQ account. To not have one in the urban areas here means you are either a rural hick or a foreigner.
Imo that set of discussions is relevant right now.
So it's not just ignorant home users who are spreading spam and malware -- it's Fortune 1000 companies with access to IT professionals, people whose job is to prevent such mishaps. Which begs the question, why on Earth are we asking if Linux is ready for the [corporate|office|grandma's] desktop? The question should be, "is Windows ready for the Internet-enabled desktop?"
Hmm that's interesting, I guess I didn't see it from that view point.
Decided to fish around for an example, here's one: Iced Earth's The Glorious Burden. The "Imported" edition has two extra tracks, the same as the Limited edition. I will number them below to avoid confusion.
Album #1: US version from Amazon USA: $16.98
Album #2: Imported edition from Amazon USA: $38.99 . Note the Japanese left side of the cover which "proves" that it is an import.
Album #3: US version from Amazon Japan: 2313 yen ~= $19.61. This is titled "[From US][Import]"
Album #4: US limited edition from Amazon Japan: 3130 yen ~= $26.54. This is titled "Limited Edition[From US][Import]"
Album #5: US limited edition from Amazon US: $22.98.
Confused yet? Alright, in terms of content. #4 = #5 = #2. And #1 = #3. The only difference #2 has from #4 and #5 is that its contents are split onto two cds, which hardly justifies the price premium
Now who in their right mind would buy #2 when #5 was available? Simple, #5 was released 2 months later. The $38.99 version was a complete scam - you will note that Japan has no equivalent (even though #5 has a Japanese cover!). Loyal fans/collectors who *had* to have every song ended up paying more than double the album price for two extra tracks. To pour salt onto the wound, the "limited edition" released later has those tracks for a much lower price.
This practice further complicates things because now Amazon (US) has to have 3 pages for different CDs, each with their own set of reviews (although some reviewers copy-paste their review to every edition). Tagging music becomes confusing because of the proliferation of very similar albums with subtle differences. And of course buyers will have to do extra research to make sure they're getting what they want.
We have to put up with all these inconveniences so that the record industry can price discriminate.
Bonus tracks that are only available on the European or Japanese "Limited Edition". Or a compilation of Greatest Hits with one or two new songs. All designed to make fans pay album prices or more (have you seen the mark-up for imports?) for two or three new tracks. Being able to purchase per track will hopefully put an end to such devious practices*.
*Many labels still do market segmentation geographically as far as I know.
Which one did you like the most? In your spare time, do you read up more on networking, web development, etc? Since you've tried so many IT positions, you have a good idea of what the different jobs available are like, and that's all you need to make your decision. In IT, asking what is hot will get you different answers every month. If the current flavor of the month becomes obsolete and you never liked it in the first place, you end up in a situation where you have no career path *and* you hate your job. Choose what you love to do.
Sociopolitical issues aren't the only draw imo.
I'm not saying listening to it makes you gifted, but progressive rock and progressive metal are inherently more "intelligent" than most other genres. They change time signatures constantly within songs, and song structure isn't fixed. So with them you're not getting the typical 4/4 time verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-modulatedchorus crap that the music industry churns out daily. The songs are complex and have many things going on at the same time -- sometimes different instruments are playing at different rhythms, etc.
Perhaps this (perceived according to detractors) intelligence of certain forms of music is what draws gifted kids to them.
Check out stuff by Spiral Architect, Gordian Knot, or Meshuggah. You may not be able to sing along to them, but they will blow your mind.
Let's make it more relevant, then.
Fairytale wedding, no prenuptial agreement, screwed.