It was a classic bubble - when it got to the stage that companies were seeing their share price go up for adding ".com" onto the end it was ridiculous. When people at work told me their families and friends were investing in the stock market by blindly following tips on a weekly tech-stocks sheet I knew the end was just around the corner.
What amazed me was that it then went on to last another 9 months _after_ that point. I guess irrational exuberance can take you a long way before you realise that buying your cat food online and having it freighted to you isn't actually terribly efficient.
Before I took my hand off the mouse to type this my elbow was _below_ the level of the desk, rising to my wrist, which rested on the edge of the desk. The mouse moved over the whole of the screen when pushed by just the movement of my hand/fingers. I'm not gripping it tightly at all, it's more nestled in a cage made by my hand. Very comfortable for long periods.
I don't feel like I have enough control over the product when I use Microsoft programming environments
You can compile C# from the command line. There are numerous utilities for editing C# programs in. I'm sure you can even use VI or Emacs if you really want to.
Personally I _like_ the VS IDE, I've not used one that feels better to me, but if you don't, I'm sure you can accomodate yourself...
The company I work for has around 12,000 staff, of which 900-odd are IS, and we're still churning out new code in COBOL (and in Assembler for Z/OS). We don't rewrite systems unless absolutely necessary and we don't outsource programmers because we want them to be sitting as close as physically possible to a business expert - so that when there's a question about how something should work you can just step over there scrawl notes on a piece of paper and come back with an answer.
Outsourcing is fine for projects with a very strict definition, but for anything that might change as you go along it's just not going to work.
And sure, they might move from Java to C# or to some other new language, but retraining has never been a problem in the past.
It used to be that the word 'government' would have people reaching for their flame-retardent suits (and their shotguns), but the vast majority of people now seem to think that maybe, just maybe, markets and businesses aren't the best way to provide all services.
Maybe people have been paying attention for the last few years after all!
I (H) Livejournal. And it fourishes because it allows you to read your friend's posts easily, like RSS, only local. It's a lovely, lovely system, and the only 'social software done right' site I've seen.
Oh goodness yes. Some of them already are. There are vast numbers of Livejournals that consist of "So, this is my new journal. Hello Everyone." and then nothing else.
Cheers for that. I'd be very tempted, but I already use Livejournal, which also have email notification, photo albums, security settings, etc. Your site looks pretty cool too though. Good luck with it.
The whole fuss over people on both sides of the debate "Blogging will change the universe!" and "Blogging is just pointless!" misses the point.
Blogging is _exactly_ what happened at the start of the internet craze - it's _home pages_. Blogs are just home pages that are easier to update than they used to be back in the olden days, so people don't have to worry about HTML in order to create them.
Blogs: Just easy-to-use web pages, nothing more, nothing less.
Well yeah, none of the ideas are new, although they are combined quite nicely in the plot. In fact the "hugely technologically advanced society tries to save a less technologically advanced society from itself without killing too many people" reminds me a lot of Iain Banks' Culture Novels, except with 1984 thrown in. Which works nicely.
Oh, I like some of the ideas, and the structure is fine, but the actual writing itself doesn't flow for me.
Doing a quick re-scan, I think it's the sheer amount of info-dump in the opening parts of the story - he doesn't mix it in well, it stands out as clumsy to me.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a classic bubble - when it got to the stage that companies were seeing their share price go up for adding ".com" onto the end it was ridiculous. When people at work told me their families and friends were investing in the stock market by blindly following tips on a weekly tech-stocks sheet I knew the end was just around the corner.
What amazed me was that it then went on to last another 9 months _after_ that point. I guess irrational exuberance can take you a long way before you realise that buying your cat food online and having it freighted to you isn't actually terribly efficient.
Before I took my hand off the mouse to type this my elbow was _below_ the level of the desk, rising to my wrist, which rested on the edge of the desk. The mouse moved over the whole of the screen when pushed by just the movement of my hand/fingers. I'm not gripping it tightly at all, it's more nestled in a cage made by my hand. Very comfortable for long periods.
I mean, sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but both BSG and Firefly have been excellent in recent times.
Yes, there's great written SF that's far better than almost any TV SF, but it _is_ possible to produce good TV SF.
You're 30 and still having fun?
Shame on you!
I don't feel like I have enough control over the product when I use Microsoft programming environments
You can compile C# from the command line. There are numerous utilities for editing C# programs in. I'm sure you can even use VI or Emacs if you really want to.
Personally I _like_ the VS IDE, I've not used one that feels better to me, but if you don't, I'm sure you can accomodate yourself...
Yes - in small businesses, or when you're the only person in the business.
The company I work for has around 12,000 staff, of which 900-odd are IS, and we're still churning out new code in COBOL (and in Assembler for Z/OS). We don't rewrite systems unless absolutely necessary and we don't outsource programmers because we want them to be sitting as close as physically possible to a business expert - so that when there's a question about how something should work you can just step over there scrawl notes on a piece of paper and come back with an answer.
Outsourcing is fine for projects with a very strict definition, but for anything that might change as you go along it's just not going to work.
And sure, they might move from Java to C# or to some other new language, but retraining has never been a problem in the past.
If there aren't opportunities for Java then I don't want to know!
when is this "Evolution" program being released for Windows?
This happens _all_ the time, except the other way round. The US is regularly a year or more ahead of the UK on some TV.
Has anyone transcribed it?
It used to be that the word 'government' would have people reaching for their flame-retardent suits (and their shotguns), but the vast majority of people now seem to think that maybe, just maybe, markets and businesses aren't the best way to provide all services.
Maybe people have been paying attention for the last few years after all!
I (H) Livejournal. And it fourishes because it allows you to read your friend's posts easily, like RSS, only local. It's a lovely, lovely system, and the only 'social software done right' site I've seen.
Yup. Although you have to manage different browsers , of course.
And mostly I post to my Livejournal using the Semagic client, which does lots of useful stuff for me (like shortcut keys for hyperlinks).
Oh goodness yes. Some of them already are. There are vast numbers of Livejournals that consist of "So, this is my new journal. Hello Everyone." and then nothing else.
Cheers for that. I'd be very tempted, but I already use Livejournal, which also have email notification, photo albums, security settings, etc. Your site looks pretty cool too though. Good luck with it.
The whole fuss over people on both sides of the debate "Blogging will change the universe!" and "Blogging is just pointless!" misses the point.
Blogging is _exactly_ what happened at the start of the internet craze - it's _home pages_. Blogs are just home pages that are easier to update than they used to be back in the olden days, so people don't have to worry about HTML in order to create them.
Blogs: Just easy-to-use web pages, nothing more, nothing less.
Or, for instance, when you look at Slashdot, which pretty much an archetypal blog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog
Actually, my regular phone plugs into a Cisco box that plugs into my router. I then use it just like an ordinary phone. Works fine.
Just south of Scotland.
Well yeah, none of the ideas are new, although they are combined quite nicely in the plot. In fact the "hugely technologically advanced society tries to save a less technologically advanced society from itself without killing too many people" reminds me a lot of Iain Banks' Culture Novels, except with 1984 thrown in. Which works nicely.
Oh, I like some of the ideas, and the structure is fine, but the actual writing itself doesn't flow for me.
Doing a quick re-scan, I think it's the sheer amount of info-dump in the opening parts of the story - he doesn't mix it in well, it stands out as clumsy to me.
Wow, I must have missed the bit in the trailer where Ford rapped. Or was streetwise.
I do like the way he's dissected some of the ideas in Asimov.
It's just a shame his writing style is stilted and ungainly.
I've liked bit of his writing, and a fair few of his ideas, but a great writer he aint.
And both of them are actual, real things that can cause problems for trains!
Gosh, it's amazing that trains might not be utterly impervious to all the variations of their surroundings.