Re:I'd like to take this oppertunity..
on
Head First Java
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· Score: 2, Funny
I do suppose I could actually work, too....
Shut the hell up! You don't see anyone else "working" do you? Stop being so damn selfish and get back to posting.
Re:I'd like to take this oppertunity..
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
Actually the only thing I've seen that's prettier for web applications is... here we go: c#:)
I actually don't doubt it. Unfortunately hardly anyone else on/. knows this because "php and mysql is all you need".
Re:I'd like to take this oppertunity..
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 5, Funny
You, sir are 100% correct.
I'm going to send a memo to the top 300 US companies (any index, take your pick) and inform them that all this time they were wrong about implementing business solutions in Java. Why? Because you (mallocchio) took the "oppertunity" to say that it "sux". Instead they should be using something light, like C, or maybe even assembly if they're hardcore enough. I mean, all these hundreds of corporations can't possibly be right. Their projects obviously have all failed because they used Java.
I mean the only reason Java is popular in the enterprise world is because of Sun's wonderful marketing department. Those sneaky bastard marketers... they got the best of us. I mean they totally did their jedi mind trick on me -- I'm gonna have to cut off my head now because it's now known after your esteemed declaration that "Java sux".
"Is the term "punk", as used to describe a social group, still in circulation? When I left off, punks were mohawked Sid Vicious types in the '80s, and seemed to turn into what everyone called "goths" in the '90s (discounting the many splinter groups). What is a modern punk?"
I definitely don't classify myself as a punk, but from observation I've noticed that it's not just about musical preference and style of dress, although recently there is that superficial resurfacing. I believe punk was originally simply a philosophy. It's basically an exploring, convention defying attitude -- finding unnecessary walls and breaking them down without being paranoid about breaking from the mainstream. The punk philosophy has roots in dadaism and futurism, and it's not really about anarchy and destruction, even if this is expressed in typical "punk" music.
s
Not to say I don't appreciate people dedicating themselves to their craft as these guys do, but just because you're an artist doesn't mean you don't have to pick the right technology.
Out of curiousity, what is the "right technology"? Quicktime? MPEG4? Powerpoint slideshow?
When I worked as a temp and my employer refused to buy needed peripheral equipment (I don't think your job could be any worse) I ended up bringing some of my own. It made my job easier and it sent a subtle message to my employer.
Just out of curiousity, what exact message did your actions convey your employer? I guess it's just that everywhere I've worked employees would bring in their own peripherals (keyboards, mice, USB hubs) simply because it's unlikely that the company would get exactly what their employers need, since they buy in bulk, etc. And I don't mind...I prefer spending an extra $60 or so for input devices than I enjoy using rather than go through corporate purchasing. I don't consider it a bad investment.
Tetris lacks depth to its gameplay? Have you ever played the game? Have you ever seen good players play the game?
I agree...and also keep in mind that Tetris has just as much combinatorial depth as Chess or Go. It's unlikely (unlike in a level-up cheap RPG or sidescroller) that you'll be solving the exact same problems over and over again.
'behind the most jaded cynic is a dissapointed idealist.' The users and their lack o' clue has gotten me down over the years after repeatedly encountering it.
I definitely share the sentiment, as can most people on this site. Also, all it takes is one (likely incompatible) site not to work in Mozilla for an end-user to shrug and talk about how Mozilla sucks. I'm convinced that this is part of Microsoft's strategy with IE. As in, keep the proprietary extensions and limit support for DOM2 and other advanced w3c standards so that designers get entrenched. Mozilla almost digs itself into a hole by going with w3c standards, since IE sorta-kinda follows w3c. Obviously MS sees themself as their own standard.
The w3c itself needs to be more aggressive and establish standards that truely meet users' (not developers) needs. Part of this should involve the teams from Mozilla or some other non-IE browser proposing advancements beyond what's available today. The differences between Moz and IE are really quite marginal from the end-user's perspective. As I said before Mozilla needs to introduce something revolutionary (like it's predecessor Netscape) in order to get developers/designers on the boat, with end-users in tow.
The danger here is that most lusers will look at a site in Mozilla and if it doesn't look the same as IE, or if things are misaligned or not displaying correctly, they incorrectly assume that the browser is crap, not the person who designed the site.
Yes, they are incorrect by not considering the fact that the site designer could be a crap at producing good HTML. But honestly, what else do you expect from end-users? They don't care about standards compliance, or about whether Moz is open source, or for that matter, about tabbed browsing. They just want to do task A, B, and C, look up the weather, check the news, and go back to their regular lives. They don't care to get into a discussion about industry specifications, and they hardly want someone telling them that they're incorrect.
So what's the solution? I hardly think that calling people "lusers" is part of it. Mozilla needs to establish a better foothold with web designers/developers. It needs to be a browser that is so good that developers will sit there and think, "man, I wish that everyone was using Mozilla, because then we can take advantage of (whatever great dev feature that IE doesn't have)". I hear comments like this about IE all the time, albeit about extensions (not w3c endorsed) that are only supported in IE. But the fact of the matter is, most designers (granded, they may be uninformed) associate Mozilla with Netscape, which in the 4.x releases was a horrendous beast.
And don't think that I hate Mozilla or anything. More than half of my job right now is making sure a complex web app works on mozilla and IE. Both the Gecko and IE engines have their strengths and weaknesses but I no longer even that users will be interested. They don't care, and part of doing a good job is working hard on things so customers don't have to care. They are the ones paying your bills, after all.
I'm going to second the parent. There's definitely a small learning curve when getting used to the trackpoint, but in my opinion it's well worth it.
I started using the clit mouse on an IBM Thinkpad but liked it so much that I bought similar but full-sized keyboards for my desktop. It might not be hard to track down an old-skoool IBM keyboard WITH a trackpoint built in. It's really nice to be able to keep my hands in one place.
One problem I found. During extended coding/work sessions my wrists would hurt from mousing with the trackpoint. But because trackpoint movements are so short and limited it's easy to overstress one particular area. In my case it was the area right behind my thumb a few cm. below my knuckle(yeah...bizarre). Solution: frequent breaks, which should be the case anyway. Also switching mouse hands helps. These problems, however, are not unique to the trackpoint.
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" would be a good starting point for someone who's fresh out of school and wondering what sort of future their diploma will bring. It might also open your eyes to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of dot-bomb paupers out there who thought a 60-hours-per-week job with a signing bonus was the epitome of success....
Before you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, do some research about the author. I'm not telling you not to read the book, but at least read it with a grain of salt.
Also, provided you've got enough harddrive space you could record the lecture into mp3 (at a low bitrate) and make an archive of the whole thing.
I started doing something similar back in the day, except it was a lot less high tech. I used a little mini-cassette recorder for lecture-oriented classes. One thing I found was that just because the information is captured, doesn't mean that it will help you understand it. I found myself listening to lectures all over again and making notes (paraphrasing, etc) on paper. I could have just as well done it on the first pass while in the lecture room. I never had enough time to go through all the lecture recordings over again, and when riding the bus or walking to/from class I preferred to pass the time listening to Photek or Bjork, not some lame lecture.
Now granted, having a lecture recording on mp3 does allow you to hop around random intervals a lot easier (pain in the ass with tape recorders). The idea is that you want to be able to digest and cross-reference the information. Also one problem with using any recording/capture method is that you start to assume that you can go over it later if you don't understand what the professor's telling you. It would be better to just speak up and ask a question right then and there.
If anyone does try the recording route, I would recommend taking *complete* (not just quick timestamped) notes at the same time. I was never too great at taking notes when I started college, but I slowly improved after observing good note-takers. Note taking is a learned skill, after all.
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
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· Score: 1
Geez...how is my comment modded +1 Informative. I didn't add shit for information to this thread.
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
Ok...I'm gonna assume you work in the graphics industry, or that you're in the know anyway. I'm definitely not in that world (although I can relate). I did some quick googling and yeah, Pixar (as well as other companies, I might add) does seem to be a bit of a bully.
Rather than create better products, they stay on top with money.
...
We could have so much better technology (software and otherwise) if there was more cooperation.
I definitely couldn't agree more. Over-competitive business practices have a history of interfering with the simple act of getting good stuff to the consumer. It seems to me that Pixar is all about advancing the state of the art for delivering good movies, but they want to be the sole contender, or at least the big guy on top. It sucks, but I don't expect any different.
The ironic thing is that the primary reason I've enjoyed Pixar's creations is their stories. In general they've had a good run of fun, original (at least for the genre) and witty stories. I would expect that Pixar would realize this and capitalize on this as their greatest strength, not their fancy technology.
That aside, IF there were more cooperation on the technology front, building 3D animations would be more accessible to the creative public. This in turn would allow a greater diversity of storytelling in the 3D animation medium. I'll have to admit that, while Pixar stories are good, they're rather homogenous and targeted at a lucrative market. Movie offerings would be rather interesting if there were more instances of putting a bunch of creative/technical types in a room and seeing what happens.
Re:Pixar: Good movies, suck-ass company
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
they usually produce good stuff, but they also are incredibly self-serving. I just have a bad feeling about the company.
How are they so horrible because they're self serving? You claim that Pixar's a suck-ass company, but I don't see any valid reason behind this, other than the fact that they don't give away all their (Rendarman) technology. If Pixar is so bad because they keep industry secrets to themselves, then almost every other company in the world must be "suck-ass" as well.
I'm sorry that Pixar's not an open source software company -- I kinda thought that they made movies or something.
The initial concept was that all things were menu based and Macpaint had a palette on screen.
Yeah I believe this had to do with using modes in the interface, something that original Mac designers frowned upon. It's generally a bad idea for an application to have modes that implicitly determine what behavior you can do. A good example of this is the text editor vi, which is powerful but difficult to learn. The tool palette is like this -- you have different editing modes (paintbrush, selector, pencil). But in this case the modes were visually apparent and had strong benefits.
Standards can obviously detract from individual innovation. Both adhering to/creating standards and forging ahead on the bleeding edge (or whatever expression you want to use) takes work. It's almost impossible to do both equally well.
But standardization does in fact benefit innovation in the form of group innovation. Standardizing allows the public to build off the new technology. This allows incremental improvement as well as opens up the new technology for public critique, which can in turn lead to standards improvement or possibly abandonment (for something newer/better).
I've seen enough posts bringing up things like energy (electric, gas, etc) or transportation standards and how essential they are. Very true, but keep in mind that a maturation process was necessary before a standard could be created. It was crucial for respective innovators to work in somewhat of a vacuum before the overall innovation reached a threshold where a standard (for the benefit of the public) could be a created.
Never trust a computer proffesional that doesnt list computer as a hobby.
You can't make a hard rule for this in either direction. The value of a computer-related hobby is really dependent on the particular person.
Candidates that don't have lengthy real-world professional experience absolutely need to show something that demonstrates their ability to understand the problem domain. Personal projects, open source contributions, and elaborate home networks can demonstrate this provided that knowledge gained through these listed hobbies can potentially benefit the business.
For a candidate that has some decent experience it might be beneficial to in fact show that you have a life outside of work, especially if the job being applied for involves dealing with people on a regular basis (think, project management, consulting, etc.).
That said, I'm generally of the opinion that listing of personal hobbies and activities should be left out of resumes and employment conversations as they really shouldn't be a determining factor.
There are certain things the web can do well application wise. Like an online calendar, or email application (yahoo/hotmail). However, things like office applications should not use web-based technologies. It's always slow and clunky. I mean, sure you can do drag-and-drop with dhtml, but it's inconsistant and slow. I'd much rather deal with a java applet, or ActiveX, so as to have a true GUI instead of a GUI-emulator.
Am I totally off base here, or does anyone else agree?
It may not be midi, but I know a lot of people who swear by it for making electronic music and remixes.
It's not a complete midi setup, but it definitely has support for MIDI in/out. I have a midi controller hooked up and I essentially use Reason as a real-time soft-synth. It's dead-easy to use: hit record (with click track on), play your riff, hit stop when done.
Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that there's a PHP/MySQL web app book review once a week. I realize that there is more than one book out there that covers this stuff, but still...
Slashdot Mirror
Shut the hell up! You don't see anyone else "working" do you? Stop being so damn selfish and get back to posting.
I actually don't doubt it. Unfortunately hardly anyone else on /. knows this because "php and mysql is all you need".
I'm going to send a memo to the top 300 US companies (any index, take your pick) and inform them that all this time they were wrong about implementing business solutions in Java. Why? Because you (mallocchio) took the "oppertunity" to say that it "sux". Instead they should be using something light, like C, or maybe even assembly if they're hardcore enough. I mean, all these hundreds of corporations can't possibly be right. Their projects obviously have all failed because they used Java.
I mean the only reason Java is popular in the enterprise world is because of Sun's wonderful marketing department. Those sneaky bastard marketers ... they got the best of us. I mean they totally did their jedi mind trick on me -- I'm gonna have to cut off my head now because it's now known after your esteemed declaration that "Java sux".
P.S. I know you're trolling.
I definitely don't classify myself as a punk, but from observation I've noticed that it's not just about musical preference and style of dress, although recently there is that superficial resurfacing. I believe punk was originally simply a philosophy. It's basically an exploring, convention defying attitude -- finding unnecessary walls and breaking them down without being paranoid about breaking from the mainstream. The punk philosophy has roots in dadaism and futurism, and it's not really about anarchy and destruction, even if this is expressed in typical "punk" music. s
Out of curiousity, what is the "right technology"? Quicktime? MPEG4? Powerpoint slideshow?
Something about stepping away for a few minutes...
Just out of curiousity, what exact message did your actions convey your employer? I guess it's just that everywhere I've worked employees would bring in their own peripherals (keyboards, mice, USB hubs) simply because it's unlikely that the company would get exactly what their employers need, since they buy in bulk, etc. And I don't mind...I prefer spending an extra $60 or so for input devices than I enjoy using rather than go through corporate purchasing. I don't consider it a bad investment.
You forgot "they should use php and mysql...snicker snicker"
I agree...and also keep in mind that Tetris has just as much combinatorial depth as Chess or Go. It's unlikely (unlike in a level-up cheap RPG or sidescroller) that you'll be solving the exact same problems over and over again.
I definitely share the sentiment, as can most people on this site. Also, all it takes is one (likely incompatible) site not to work in Mozilla for an end-user to shrug and talk about how Mozilla sucks. I'm convinced that this is part of Microsoft's strategy with IE. As in, keep the proprietary extensions and limit support for DOM2 and other advanced w3c standards so that designers get entrenched. Mozilla almost digs itself into a hole by going with w3c standards, since IE sorta-kinda follows w3c. Obviously MS sees themself as their own standard.
The w3c itself needs to be more aggressive and establish standards that truely meet users' (not developers) needs. Part of this should involve the teams from Mozilla or some other non-IE browser proposing advancements beyond what's available today. The differences between Moz and IE are really quite marginal from the end-user's perspective. As I said before Mozilla needs to introduce something revolutionary (like it's predecessor Netscape) in order to get developers/designers on the boat, with end-users in tow.
> out what you really believe than
> by being surrounded by people you
> think are wrong
That's why I post to slashdot, not why I spend $18,000 a year to go to school.
Mod parent up... funny.
Yes, they are incorrect by not considering the fact that the site designer could be a crap at producing good HTML. But honestly, what else do you expect from end-users? They don't care about standards compliance, or about whether Moz is open source, or for that matter, about tabbed browsing. They just want to do task A, B, and C, look up the weather, check the news, and go back to their regular lives. They don't care to get into a discussion about industry specifications, and they hardly want someone telling them that they're incorrect.
So what's the solution? I hardly think that calling people "lusers" is part of it. Mozilla needs to establish a better foothold with web designers/developers. It needs to be a browser that is so good that developers will sit there and think, "man, I wish that everyone was using Mozilla, because then we can take advantage of (whatever great dev feature that IE doesn't have)". I hear comments like this about IE all the time, albeit about extensions (not w3c endorsed) that are only supported in IE. But the fact of the matter is, most designers (granded, they may be uninformed) associate Mozilla with Netscape, which in the 4.x releases was a horrendous beast.
And don't think that I hate Mozilla or anything. More than half of my job right now is making sure a complex web app works on mozilla and IE. Both the Gecko and IE engines have their strengths and weaknesses but I no longer even that users will be interested. They don't care, and part of doing a good job is working hard on things so customers don't have to care. They are the ones paying your bills, after all.
I started using the clit mouse on an IBM Thinkpad but liked it so much that I bought similar but full-sized keyboards for my desktop. It might not be hard to track down an old-skoool IBM keyboard WITH a trackpoint built in. It's really nice to be able to keep my hands in one place.
One problem I found. During extended coding/work sessions my wrists would hurt from mousing with the trackpoint. But because trackpoint movements are so short and limited it's easy to overstress one particular area. In my case it was the area right behind my thumb a few cm. below my knuckle(yeah...bizarre). Solution: frequent breaks, which should be the case anyway. Also switching mouse hands helps. These problems, however, are not unique to the trackpoint.
Anyway here's a quick froogle search...
Have fun.
Before you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, do some research about the author. I'm not telling you not to read the book, but at least read it with a grain of salt.
Check this: http://johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html
I started doing something similar back in the day, except it was a lot less high tech. I used a little mini-cassette recorder for lecture-oriented classes. One thing I found was that just because the information is captured, doesn't mean that it will help you understand it. I found myself listening to lectures all over again and making notes (paraphrasing, etc) on paper. I could have just as well done it on the first pass while in the lecture room. I never had enough time to go through all the lecture recordings over again, and when riding the bus or walking to/from class I preferred to pass the time listening to Photek or Bjork, not some lame lecture.
Now granted, having a lecture recording on mp3 does allow you to hop around random intervals a lot easier (pain in the ass with tape recorders). The idea is that you want to be able to digest and cross-reference the information. Also one problem with using any recording/capture method is that you start to assume that you can go over it later if you don't understand what the professor's telling you. It would be better to just speak up and ask a question right then and there.
If anyone does try the recording route, I would recommend taking *complete* (not just quick timestamped) notes at the same time. I was never too great at taking notes when I started college, but I slowly improved after observing good note-takers. Note taking is a learned skill, after all.
Rather than create better products, they stay on top with money.
...
We could have so much better technology (software and otherwise) if there was more cooperation.
I definitely couldn't agree more. Over-competitive business practices have a history of interfering with the simple act of getting good stuff to the consumer. It seems to me that Pixar is all about advancing the state of the art for delivering good movies, but they want to be the sole contender, or at least the big guy on top. It sucks, but I don't expect any different.
The ironic thing is that the primary reason I've enjoyed Pixar's creations is their stories. In general they've had a good run of fun, original (at least for the genre) and witty stories. I would expect that Pixar would realize this and capitalize on this as their greatest strength, not their fancy technology.
That aside, IF there were more cooperation on the technology front, building 3D animations would be more accessible to the creative public. This in turn would allow a greater diversity of storytelling in the 3D animation medium. I'll have to admit that, while Pixar stories are good, they're rather homogenous and targeted at a lucrative market. Movie offerings would be rather interesting if there were more instances of putting a bunch of creative/technical types in a room and seeing what happens.
How are they so horrible because they're self serving? You claim that Pixar's a suck-ass company, but I don't see any valid reason behind this, other than the fact that they don't give away all their (Rendarman) technology. If Pixar is so bad because they keep industry secrets to themselves, then almost every other company in the world must be "suck-ass" as well.
I'm sorry that Pixar's not an open source software company -- I kinda thought that they made movies or something.
Yeah I believe this had to do with using modes in the interface, something that original Mac designers frowned upon. It's generally a bad idea for an application to have modes that implicitly determine what behavior you can do. A good example of this is the text editor vi, which is powerful but difficult to learn. The tool palette is like this -- you have different editing modes (paintbrush, selector, pencil). But in this case the modes were visually apparent and had strong benefits.
But standardization does in fact benefit innovation in the form of group innovation. Standardizing allows the public to build off the new technology. This allows incremental improvement as well as opens up the new technology for public critique, which can in turn lead to standards improvement or possibly abandonment (for something newer/better).
I've seen enough posts bringing up things like energy (electric, gas, etc) or transportation standards and how essential they are. Very true, but keep in mind that a maturation process was necessary before a standard could be created. It was crucial for respective innovators to work in somewhat of a vacuum before the overall innovation reached a threshold where a standard (for the benefit of the public) could be a created.
You can't make a hard rule for this in either direction. The value of a computer-related hobby is really dependent on the particular person.
Candidates that don't have lengthy real-world professional experience absolutely need to show something that demonstrates their ability to understand the problem domain. Personal projects, open source contributions, and elaborate home networks can demonstrate this provided that knowledge gained through these listed hobbies can potentially benefit the business.
For a candidate that has some decent experience it might be beneficial to in fact show that you have a life outside of work, especially if the job being applied for involves dealing with people on a regular basis (think, project management, consulting, etc.).
That said, I'm generally of the opinion that listing of personal hobbies and activities should be left out of resumes and employment conversations as they really shouldn't be a determining factor.
Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Am I totally off base here, or does anyone else agree?
Flash.
It's not a complete midi setup, but it definitely has support for MIDI in/out. I have a midi controller hooked up and I essentially use Reason as a real-time soft-synth. It's dead-easy to use: hit record (with click track on), play your riff, hit stop when done.
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=php+mysql&op=s tories&author=&tid=§ion=books&sort =1
I'll be honest, I'm just bored of seeing reviews of yet another PHP/MySQL book every few days.