It/is/ indeed very hard to write a UI that makes it easy and effective to interact with a complex system, just like any kind of enginering. It takes training, time and lots of resources. Most programmers tend to overlook this, as it's not their chosen field.
I am a lone coder, and I make out just great! My one-person company has managed to design, code, market and sell a very popular suite of Software (suite, even!) and outcompete the existing products in about 2 years, making about USD 200.000 in the process.
I'm not saying it's easy - by no means - but it's far from impossible, and if you succeed, you won't have to split the spoils.
IMHO the biggest mistake people who do software startups make is not to wait for the right idea. Far too many of the startups I know off are not really selling software (which scales), but in various ways (direct or indirect) their time, which DOESN'T scale.
Take it to the next level: Allow the buyer to pre-configure it with a wide selection of popular series (Simpsons, Alias, The Shield, Alias..) + pre-release the new episodes online to the box by a few hours to improve the coolness factor...
OK, this didn't happen to me, but stille the story is sufficiently outrageous to tell...
Some years ago, one of my friends was living in a predominately male and CS/engeneering dorm in Copenhagen. This was at the time when ethernet gear finally hit the price point where even poor students could afford it, but before such things became standard in dorms.
No sweat. They set up their own, with my buddy's old 386 as the central server. In a star topology. By stringing the ethernet cables outdoors from balcony to balcony.
Now imagine what happens when a thunderstorm comes along, and you have what's basically a giant lightning rod - nay, lightning web - strung all over the face of the tallest building in the neighbourghhood...
Alledgedly the innards of the server were not just fried - they were disintegrated! There was nothing left except a slightly disstorted computer case, with a pile of black dust inside it. He claimed that they could pour the remains of the motherboard and components out of the case through the cooling vents.
One twist developed tho: He got compensated quite handsomely by the insurance company. The computer was built by a company which had contracts with (among others) the Danish military, and therefore they had to stock old machines... at outrageously high prices. Unfortunately for the insurance company, his insurance policy specified that he should be reimbused the replacement cost of the machine:D
OK, I thought that the use of --x and ++x was recommended in loops for all types. To think that I have spent so much time re-hacking my brain for that variation of the canonical
The answer is simple:
Unix-related jobs are on the increase. Go with the growing market, rather than the mature one where competition is likely to be higher, and pay + security therefore lower.
Well, I recently had my domain name used as a faked sender address. What I did was to set up filters which moved the bounce-messages to a seperate folder, and then further sifted those out that had a.com address. I then sent a form letter to the postmaster of the domain from whence the spam bounced, telling them that someone had hijacked my address for spamming their users, and that they - as US a US corporation - had the option of tracing them and suing them for faking the originator address on their spam.
The spamming stopped about a week after I started doing this.
So that's my solution: As a non-US citizen (and a little guy) I can't sue them. But Hotmail might;)
Coming from a country where college (and highschool, and public school, and health care, and...) is free, I would like to point out that getting a BS, MS or Ph.D. is always a gamble, even when it's free. The only way it could not be a gamble, as compared to getting "a real job" at age 16 would be if you were paid a comparable wage to the aforementioned "real job" while studying. Having free colleges only lowers the cost of entry - paradoxically it seems to have created a situation here where people don't compete to enter the fields of study that actually pay well, once you are done, as these entail "hard work", which usually means math;)
Getting an education will always be an investment. Investment means taking a risk, expecting a reasonable return later. Learn to deal with it.
Hmmm... The course I teach at the IT University of Copenhagen is not like that. In fact my area of responsibility is development tactics and strategies, including assertions, exceptions, logging, JUnit, Ant, Design by Contract, CVS etc.
We learn from our mistakes and the world moves on... When I enrolled at comp sci at the U of Copenhagen there was no email, no web, no Java, no XP, no UNIX and no CSCW and HCI courses. That was a bad idea, so we learned.
the ballbusting Danish "Jar Jar" National Radio has interviewed the managing director of Kiss "Nobgoblin" Technology, Peter "Muffmuncher" Wilmar Christensen. He gangbangs all fingers of wrongdoing and suggests that if the spews of code are the thrusting same, cuntlapps they were leaked from Kiss "Bastard" Technology and were then used by the Mplayer group. He also charvers that the wad pulling GPL is a weak license which has never been charvered in court. Gabucino from the Mplayer team is creams, and accuses the jerking director of outright lying.
Really! I didn't insult him! The program did! Honest!:D:D:D
I dunno... We export beer, supermodels and popmusic - some of it even made by Superheroes, and the quazi-legal status of cannabis - at least in Christiania - seems to be pretty popular among foreign tourists.
It is cold here in the winter, but then we take revenge in the summer by basking half-nude and usually slightly sloshed in the many public parks. Yes, we are allowed to carry, and even drink, alcohol in public here. Ah, the joys of socialism;)
Ringworld, The Movie?
on
Ask Larry Niven
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Are the plans for a Ringworld movie (or indeed, any LN filmatizations - Gill the ARM would be great) totaly dead, or can we still hope to see Louis Wu and Speaker on the silver screen?
The figure is correct. Denmark is a very small (and very densly populated) country, with just over 5 million inhabitants. And yes, there are certaintly cities larger than that.
There are also countries much smaller that Denmark. Luxemburg springs to mind...
Please don't feel bad about being confused about our small nations. We - inversely - tend to get confused about the myriad of world-dominating, corrupt and arrogant major nations, who are ruled by capitalist oligarchies, and show a (to us)... shall we say SLIGHTLY relaxed attitude towards getting small details (such as major national elections) right;)
Err... You are aware that most non-professional cameras today decide weather to use the flash by themselves, and that you should therefor blame the technology rather than the user in this case?
It is not obvious that Dasher is slower than QWERTY. According to the thesis, the developer projects that trained users should be able to acchieve speeds comparable to QWERTY, ie. 30-40WPM. Obviously a trained touch-typist is able to reach speeds in excess of 100WPM, but most of us only reach the 30-40WPM range.
The problem with Klez is that it uses addresses in the address book as senders. In other words, if my name is "Fred", and I have "Joe" and "Kate" in my address book, it might send an infected mail to "Kate", with forged headers pointing to "Joe".
You strategy would lock out poor innocent Joe, when it was in fact me ("Fred"), who was the source of the infection.
Hmmm... I think this is a case of "Stop complaining, start coding!". Writing a new WM for Plan 9 can't be that hard, considering the number of WM's available for other open platforms.
Re:stronger and smarter - but how to get wiser?
on
The Next Generation
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· Score: 1
There's no technological enhancement that can make us wiser.
Experience, which comes with age? Wouldn't prolonegd life increase the proportion of elders in the population, thereby (supposedly) increasing the average wisdom? OTOH I'm personally not a great fan of "elder statesmen", and how would I ever get my Ph.D. not to mention a position at the faculty sometime in the future without the wonder that is human frailty?
Hmm... Kinda reminds me of Pratchett's description of the life at the Unseen University - the longevity of the elder wizards is ballanced by the ambition and imagination of the young:D
For a great (free!) short story on this exact theme by a great author, check out the story LeftBehind , which is available from Daniel Keys Moran's webpage. Some other shorts are available too.
For those with an interest in Dan's work: Yes - this story is part of the Continuing Time cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
It /is/ indeed very hard to write a UI that makes it easy and effective to interact with a complex system, just like any kind of enginering. It takes training, time and lots of resources. Most programmers tend to overlook this, as it's not their chosen field.
I am a lone coder, and I make out just great! My one-person company has managed to design, code, market and sell a very popular suite of Software (suite, even!) and outcompete the existing products in about 2 years, making about USD 200.000 in the process.
I'm not saying it's easy - by no means - but it's far from impossible, and if you succeed, you won't have to split the spoils.
IMHO the biggest mistake people who do software startups make is not to wait for the right idea. Far too many of the startups I know off are not really selling software (which scales), but in various ways (direct or indirect) their time, which DOESN'T scale.
A fun fact:
http://electoral-vote.com/ is run by Andrew Tanenbaum of MINIX fame (among other things).
Take it to the next level: Allow the buyer to pre-configure it with a wide selection of popular series (Simpsons, Alias, The Shield, Alias..) + pre-release the new episodes online to the box by a few hours to improve the coolness factor...
Some years ago, one of my friends was living in a predominately male and CS/engeneering dorm in Copenhagen. This was at the time when ethernet gear finally hit the price point where even poor students could afford it, but before such things became standard in dorms.
No sweat. They set up their own, with my buddy's old 386 as the central server. In a star topology. By stringing the ethernet cables outdoors from balcony to balcony.
Now imagine what happens when a thunderstorm comes along, and you have what's basically a giant lightning rod - nay, lightning web - strung all over the face of the tallest building in the neighbourghhood...
Alledgedly the innards of the server were not just fried - they were disintegrated! There was nothing left except a slightly disstorted computer case, with a pile of black dust inside it. He claimed that they could pour the remains of the motherboard and components out of the case through the cooling vents.
One twist developed tho: He got compensated quite handsomely by the insurance company. The computer was built by a company which had contracts with (among others) the Danish military, and therefore they had to stock old machines... at outrageously high prices. Unfortunately for the insurance company, his insurance policy specified that he should be reimbused the replacement cost of the machine :D
The answer is simple: Unix-related jobs are on the increase. Go with the growing market, rather than the mature one where competition is likely to be higher, and pay + security therefore lower.
The spamming stopped about a week after I started doing this.
So that's my solution: As a non-US citizen (and a little guy) I can't sue them. But Hotmail might ;)
Getting an education will always be an investment. Investment means taking a risk, expecting a reasonable return later. Learn to deal with it.
We learn from our mistakes and the world moves on... When I enrolled at comp sci at the U of Copenhagen there was no email, no web, no Java, no XP, no UNIX and no CSCW and HCI courses. That was a bad idea, so we learned.
ML? The Mach kernel? :D
It is cold here in the winter, but then we take revenge in the summer by basking half-nude and usually slightly sloshed in the many public parks. Yes, we are allowed to carry, and even drink, alcohol in public here. Ah, the joys of socialism ;)
Are the plans for a Ringworld movie (or indeed, any LN filmatizations - Gill the ARM would be great) totaly dead, or can we still hope to see Louis Wu and Speaker on the silver screen?
Pictures of the ATFI found at NASA.
There are also countries much smaller that Denmark. Luxemburg springs to mind...
Please don't feel bad about being confused about our small nations. We - inversely - tend to get confused about the myriad of world-dominating, corrupt and arrogant major nations, who are ruled by capitalist oligarchies, and show a (to us)... shall we say SLIGHTLY relaxed attitude towards getting small details (such as major national elections) right ;)
Err... You are aware that most non-professional cameras today decide weather to use the flash by themselves, and that you should therefor blame the technology rather than the user in this case?
They don't use markov chains - they use a compression algorithm to determine the probabilities. Read the thesis...
It is not obvious that Dasher is slower than QWERTY. According to the thesis, the developer projects that trained users should be able to acchieve speeds comparable to QWERTY, ie. 30-40WPM. Obviously a trained touch-typist is able to reach speeds in excess of 100WPM, but most of us only reach the 30-40WPM range.
You strategy would lock out poor innocent Joe, when it was in fact me ("Fred"), who was the source of the infection.
The Gamespot review is here. It is linked from the Gamespot article, so obviously this posting is just blatant karma whoring.
Hmmm... I think this is a case of "Stop complaining, start coding!". Writing a new WM for Plan 9 can't be that hard, considering the number of WM's available for other open platforms.
Experience, which comes with age? Wouldn't prolonegd life increase the proportion of elders in the population, thereby (supposedly) increasing the average wisdom? OTOH I'm personally not a great fan of "elder statesmen", and how would I ever get my Ph.D. not to mention a position at the faculty sometime in the future without the wonder that is human frailty?
Hmm... Kinda reminds me of Pratchett's description of the life at the Unseen University - the longevity of the elder wizards is ballanced by the ambition and imagination of the young :D
For those with an interest in Dan's work: Yes - this story is part of the Continuing Time cycle.