It's easy to start on an OSS program to 'scratch an itch' - I started that way myself. 6 months down the line I found I had *real users* who actually (gasp) wanted the program to work for them too.
5 years down the line I probably spend half my development time thinking about how each change impacts the users (yes, even the really annoying ones). I have a rule.. if more than 10 people complain about something I have a design issue that needs fixing (since there's probably another 1000 who didn't get as far as the mailing list to complain).
Too many programmers treat their projects as an excercise in masturbation and forget that there are real, flesh and blood people out there who are relying on you to get it right - some of them have invested money because they believe you can do it.
People don't read documentation, or FAQs, or even google. They want their software to do what *they* want it to do and it is our job as programmers to at least attempt to give them that. Bleating that all the users *must* be wrong because this wizzy new feature is so revolutionary it'll change the world is just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to express it.
Innovation is good, but you do it slowly - first offer the option, make it a bit more obvious over time (once the teething troubles are out), and see how people pick it up and use it. If they all hate it, then dump it. Forget the ego... you'll just piss everyone off and kill the project.
Confusing 'logon' button removed from the main screen. To logon edit/usr/local/etc/.gnome/settings/users/advanced/butt ons and set the yes_i_want_to_log_on_you_stupid_machine flag to 0x85FEDDDE (unless you have more than 1GB of RAM in which case set it to 0x3DE521F), then reboot.
Actually I've found the opposite. Mostly due to the availability of players. more than DVD players at the moment.
Many of the albums on the top 40 in the UK have DVD versions available - at a markup from the CD version - simply because DVD is now ubiquitous. SACD players currently are the preserve of a few enthusiasts (I was unable to find an SACD player on sale for a sane price 6 months ago when I was upgrading my DVD... plays everything else, but not SACD).
My current ISP block all inbound port 25 to stop open relays. All it takes is an email and they'll unblock you, and put you on a list of servers that gets checked for open relays every couple of days (if you fail that check you have to have a damned good reason why they'll unblock you again).
It works really well, and I've never heard any complaints about it. It's a lot easier for them than doing things like traffic monitoring etc. as well.
Mobile phones are cheap commodity hardware. They work, don't break up, and don't require you to invest in an entire network infrastructure just to make a local phone call.
VOIP is great for geeks to play with (heck, I have one at home.. at least as far as the POTS line - I refuse to pay the premium charges that VOIP providers want) but let's not pretend it's some kind of great idea....
This is one of the reasons VOIP can't be justified at the moment.
eg. at home, the cheapest VOIP phone is 50UKP (compared to 2UKP for a cheap POTS phone), and you need an asterisk router to make it all hang together if you have more than one phone. Oh, and an FXO as the VOIP carriers are all 2-3 times more expensive than regular POTS and you'd be stupid to use them at the moment (in the UK it's impossible to have DSL without paying the full rental for a POTS line anyway so there's no rental cost saving).
If the DSL line goes down (not infrequent) all the phones are out, except the main analogue line which has the asterisk machine plugged into it...
It's worst at work - I had to price a system (was in the wrong place when VOIP was mentioned in front of PHB). 60 Grandstreams is still damned expensive, plus a 60 line FXO/PBX. Then I found out that simple things like call forwarding didn't work -you need a more expensive phone for that, so more cost. When I gave the final figure to PHB he nearly had a heart attack! Needless to say the company will not be investigating VOIP for another few years.
Snopes has it wrong this time. They even quote him:
"I took the initiative in creating the internet".
There is no other way to interpret this. He was just trying to sound cool and it backfired on him. Note he did *not* say "I took the initiaive in allowing the internet to flourish", as snopes would have you believe, nor did he say "I created the environment in which the internet was allowed to grow". He said "I took the initiative in creating the internet".
How much of the public though have the slightese clue about encryption?
I once tried using X509 to everyone, but Outlook express just refuses to display the message and puts up a huge warning about a corrupt email (all other mailers handled it fine - OE just doesn't support X509 correctly), so I'd just get an email back that said 'your mail was corrupted and I couldn't read it'.
PGP is worse. It isn't supported by *any* mailer widely uses mailer (installing an extra 'plugin' does not count - most of the people I talk to have absolutely no idea what a plugin is let alone how to install one).
I can try that on my home email and get away with it for a week or two (before being forced back to plaintext)... if a local government tried it it'd piss off thousands (possibly millions) of people and make the local/national papers.
Spam is easily recognized by the subject line? Boy I wish I was getting your spam instead of mine!
Mine's full of:
hi how are you? Please Complete and Return I miss you Fwd: I need your help Re: Your Account
etc... etc...
Any one of these could be legitimate (occasionally you get a headline that's so inocuous I think the spam filter has got it wrong... until I actually read the email).
No, it's not entrapment as they went there willingly.
Recently a public figure narrowly escaped jail and ended his career permanently because he was doing 'research for a book'. 'research' is *not* an excuse in law.
It seems to work out around 1000 spams/user/day round here, so 200,000 spams is 200 users.
It's still not a lot, but I know the way the beancounters think... if it's not free it must be justified, and if it doesn't have an immediate benefit then there's no chance.
OK a lot of the BIOSen suck rocks (for example my K8V used to be able to power off correctly, until I upgraded to the latest 'fixed' BIOS, which broke ACPI completely). But then ACPI sucks anyway... *way* too complex and nobody seems to implement it properly.
I'm currently in the process of finding sponsorship. Sure, I've got promises, but there's no way in hell I'm handing in my notice until there's a contract signed by both parties for at least 12 months.
You also have to be prepared to do some crap just to give value for money outside the project... even if it's a couple of days a week doing something else you've still got 3 days (+weekends depending on your motivation) to do the interesting stuff. So the sponsor wants you to do tech support/sales.. so what? He's giving you a bundle of cash...
There were two personnel in each launch control room with keys which had to be turned simultaneously. They both had pistols. The pistols were to shoot the other one if he went insane.
Or, to put it another way...
They both had pistols, one of them goes insane. Who fires first? The sane guy is more likely to hesitate.
Since these products run Linux, just make them do what you want:) It's a pity they're so expensive over here (retail is 120 ($192) for the WAP54G, and the WRT54G is about 90 but is a better product (!!!)). I saw a WAP54G for 50 the today (slightly damaged) which is the cheapest I've ever seen it even on the internet.
And there's cringley crowing about how they cost around $60 (38) in the US... Baaah.
I've often wondered if you could get a mesh network going where each mesh entity provides a POTS bridge for calls local to their calling area, allowing for "free" long distance calls and connectivity to the POTS world.
Uhh you mean FreeWorldDialup?
It's already there, at least for US numbers.
Unfortunately the US seems to be unique in having free local calls.
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It's easy to start on an OSS program to 'scratch an itch' - I started that way myself. 6 months down the line I found I had *real users* who actually (gasp) wanted the program to work for them too.
5 years down the line I probably spend half my development time thinking about how each change impacts the users (yes, even the really annoying ones). I have a rule.. if more than 10 people complain about something I have a design issue that needs fixing (since there's probably another 1000 who didn't get as far as the mailing list to complain).
Too many programmers treat their projects as an excercise in masturbation and forget that there are real, flesh and blood people out there who are relying on you to get it right - some of them have invested money because they believe you can do it.
People don't read documentation, or FAQs, or even google. They want their software to do what *they* want it to do and it is our job as programmers to at least attempt to give them that. Bleating that all the users *must* be wrong because this wizzy new feature is so revolutionary it'll change the world is just wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to express it.
Innovation is good, but you do it slowly - first offer the option, make it a bit more obvious over time (once the teething troubles are out), and see how people pick it up and use it. If they all hate it, then dump it. Forget the ego... you'll just piss everyone off and kill the project.
It would really suck if every time I wanted a new document from a filing cabinet a new one appeared cluttering up the room...
Gnome 6.0 Changelog:
/usr/local/etc/.gnome/settings/users/advanced/butt ons and set the yes_i_want_to_log_on_you_stupid_machine flag to 0x85FEDDDE (unless you have more than 1GB of RAM in which case set it to 0x3DE521F), then reboot.
Confusing 'logon' button removed from the main screen. To logon edit
500ml cans please... Heck even milk is measured in litres these days.
Haven't seen anything measured in ounces for years. Petrol is the last hanger on (gallons are refusing to die, a bit like Cobol).
Actually I've found the opposite. Mostly due to the availability of players.
more than DVD players at the moment.
Many of the albums on the top 40 in the UK have DVD versions available - at a markup from the CD version - simply because DVD is now ubiquitous. SACD players currently are the preserve of a few enthusiasts (I was unable to find an SACD player on sale for a sane price 6 months ago when I was upgrading my DVD... plays everything else, but not SACD).
My current ISP block all inbound port 25 to stop open relays. All it takes is an email and they'll unblock you, and put you on a list of servers that gets checked for open relays every couple of days (if you fail that check you have to have a damned good reason why they'll unblock you again).
It works really well, and I've never heard any complaints about it. It's a lot easier for them than doing things like traffic monitoring etc. as well.
Was this supposed to be a joke, or just yet another product of the stellar American education system?
Anyone who's done any software development at all will tell you about the 90/90 rule. A can assume from the response that you haven't?
Why was that marked troll?
Mobile phones are cheap commodity hardware. They work, don't break up, and don't require you to invest in an entire network infrastructure just to make a local phone call.
VOIP is great for geeks to play with (heck, I have one at home.. at least as far as the POTS line - I refuse to pay the premium charges that VOIP providers want) but let's not pretend it's some kind of great idea....
It'd be a darned sight cheaper to get here a mobile phone...
Mobile VOIP does seem like a solution looking for a problem.
This is one of the reasons VOIP can't be justified at the moment.
eg. at home, the cheapest VOIP phone is 50UKP (compared to 2UKP for a cheap POTS phone), and you need an asterisk router to make it all hang together if you have more than one phone. Oh, and an FXO as the VOIP carriers are all 2-3 times more expensive than regular POTS and you'd be stupid to use them at the moment (in the UK it's impossible to have DSL without paying the full rental for a POTS line anyway so there's no rental cost saving).
If the DSL line goes down (not infrequent) all the phones are out, except the main analogue line which has the asterisk machine plugged into it...
It's worst at work - I had to price a system (was in the wrong place when VOIP was mentioned in front of PHB). 60 Grandstreams is still damned expensive, plus a 60 line FXO/PBX. Then I found out that simple things like call forwarding didn't work -you need a more expensive phone for that, so more cost. When I gave the final figure to PHB he nearly had a heart attack! Needless to say the company will not be investigating VOIP for another few years.
Snopes has it wrong this time. They even quote him:
"I took the initiative in creating the internet".
There is no other way to interpret this. He was just trying to sound cool and it backfired on him. Note he did *not* say "I took the initiaive in allowing the internet to flourish", as snopes would have you believe, nor did he say "I created the environment in which the internet was allowed to grow". He said "I took the initiative in creating the internet".
I must wander down there some time... that it's of him holding the apple that killed him is rather thought provoking.
However I can find an Alan Turing Road in Guildford but nothing in Manchester as the article implies.
How much of the public though have the slightese clue about encryption?
I once tried using X509 to everyone, but Outlook express just refuses to display the message and puts up a huge warning about a corrupt email (all other mailers handled it fine - OE just doesn't support X509 correctly), so I'd just get an email back that said 'your mail was corrupted and I couldn't read it'.
PGP is worse. It isn't supported by *any* mailer widely uses mailer (installing an extra 'plugin' does not count - most of the people I talk to have absolutely no idea what a plugin is let alone how to install one).
I can try that on my home email and get away with it for a week or two (before being forced back to plaintext)... if a local government tried it it'd piss off thousands (possibly millions) of people and make the local/national papers.
Spam is easily recognized by the subject line? Boy I wish I was getting your spam instead of mine!
Mine's full of:
hi
how are you?
Please Complete and Return
I miss you
Fwd: I need your help
Re: Your Account
etc... etc...
Any one of these could be legitimate (occasionally you get a headline that's so inocuous I think the spam filter has got it wrong... until I actually read the email).
No, it's not entrapment as they went there willingly.
Recently a public figure narrowly escaped jail and ended his career permanently because he was doing 'research for a book'. 'research' is *not* an excuse in law.
It seems to work out around 1000 spams/user/day round here, so 200,000 spams is 200 users.
It's still not a lot, but I know the way the beancounters think... if it's not free it must be justified, and if it doesn't have an immediate benefit then there's no chance.
It's View Source on Windows too.
Except hibernation works OK in Linux already...
OK a lot of the BIOSen suck rocks (for example my K8V used to be able to power off correctly, until I upgraded to the latest 'fixed' BIOS, which broke ACPI completely). But then ACPI sucks anyway... *way* too complex and nobody seems to implement it properly.
I get 384k 3G speeds on my laptop with no trouble in the UK.
Bandwidth limits suck though... 50MB before it gets really pricey.
*Never* go full time based on a promise.
I'm currently in the process of finding sponsorship. Sure, I've got promises, but there's no way in hell I'm handing in my notice until there's a contract signed by both parties for at least 12 months.
You also have to be prepared to do some crap just to give value for money outside the project... even if it's a couple of days a week doing something else you've still got 3 days (+weekends depending on your motivation) to do the interesting stuff. So the sponsor wants you to do tech support/sales.. so what? He's giving you a bundle of cash...
There were two personnel in each launch control room with keys which had to be turned simultaneously. They both had pistols. The pistols were to shoot the other one if he went insane.
Or, to put it another way...
They both had pistols, one of them goes insane. Who fires first? The sane guy is more likely to hesitate.
IIRC the WAP54G version of sveasoft does this.
:) It's a pity they're so expensive over here (retail is 120 ($192) for the WAP54G, and the WRT54G is about 90 but is a better product (!!!)). I saw a WAP54G for 50 the today (slightly damaged) which is the cheapest I've ever seen it even on the internet.
Since these products run Linux, just make them do what you want
And there's cringley crowing about how they cost around $60 (38) in the US... Baaah.
A good reason for everyone to have 666 as their main VOIP extension...
It annoys the baptists!
See http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+bandwidth+i ax2
Running QoS on the router and using a something like ILBC you can get 7 or 8 calls before it gets messy on a 256k upload.
OTOH for most home systems the most you'll have to cope with is about 2, so you can use ULAW and get the quality.
I've often wondered if you could get a mesh network going where each mesh entity provides a POTS bridge for calls local to their calling area, allowing for "free" long distance calls and connectivity to the POTS world.
Uhh you mean FreeWorldDialup?
It's already there, at least for US numbers.
Unfortunately the US seems to be unique in having free local calls.