Wow, this whole thing is exceedingly idiotic! I'm embarrassed to say that I write firmware for barcode printers for a living. I don't know whether or not out equipment is used at this school (I rather doubt it; we tend more towards shipping labels and the like), but tagging people is just Bad Juju in my opinion.
What's next? PDF417 or Aztec or some other 2D code that encodes your entire transcript as well? At least that'd be a lot harder to read...
The really annoying thing is that the administrators chose to use the SSN rather than creating a unique number for each person. Or heck, there are linear symbologies that encode text as well. If you *MUST* have a machine-readable ID, just put the kid's name in the barcode.
Coincidentally, I've been beating my head against a wall this morning due to Visio crashing when I try to edit an object embedded in MS Word. Of course, the crash corrupts the object and I loose the work... (I know, don't use Word. Not my choice, unfortunately!)
Is anyone using emWare's "server" in an actual product? I evaluated it about nine months ago (version 2.5, I believe) and found the C version sorely lacking in a few key points. Like, they messed up endedness of variables. 2-byte variables were sent little-endian, whereas 4-byte variables were sent big-endian. Their own code failed to pull one or the other out of the data stream correctly.
Also, calling the embedded emMicro portion a "server" is stretching the definition quite thin. It's a communications stub which only talks to the emGateway portion running on a Windows PC. emGateway is the real web server.
What it does it does quite well. If they've cleared up the bugs it should be a fairly nice niche product.
It's there, Bugzilla #8559. Proxy support is crippled, but not entirely broken. I'm typing this from M7 via a proxy server. From the report:
------- Additional Comments From peter.vanderbeken@pandora.be 06/20/99 14:29 ------- Apparently the necessary callback in netlib (NET_PrefChangedFunc) is not called when the network preference change while loading the prefs50.js file. You can force mozilla to use the proxy info by changing the proxy type in the preference dialog, OKing, then changing it back to the right type (after which NET_PrefChangedFunc is called). The next time you load mozilla, it will fail again, though.
It seems better, but I wouldn't call it "solid" yet. When they get around to adding proxy support I might actually be able to give it a serious test drive.
Re:HR people use Word - deal with it
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
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· Score: 1
I sent my nicely-formatted resume to the headhunter I was working with. It was a clear, concise, single page. After I got hired I saw my resume on my new boss's desk. What a piece of trash! The headhunter had completely mangled it, padded some of my prose (inadvertently altering my meaning) and expanded some of my acronyms (incorrectly, of course). It's a wonder I ever got hired. If I ever use a headhunter's services again, I'm going to be sure to demand final approval on the resume he actually sends out!
I'll second the recommendation for "Death March". I picked it up during the time I worked at Konami. Because of the time I worked at Konami! And you know what? From what I gathered from the other developers who'd worked in other shops, the 80-hour week was the rule rather than the exception. I was called into my manager's office one day because he noticed I habitually left at 5pm, despite being on schedule. Sorry, I actually like my wife and kids. If I'm not behind, I'm going home to spend time with them.
Welcome to game programming, where the motto is "Work harder, not smarter."
Of course, I'd like to know how a web site will be nominated for review, and exactly how much time the censo--I mean, film board will have to make their decision. If they're planning on reviewing the entire Web, they'd better get started now. And the manpower requirements would pretty much deplete the entire Australian legislature, including aides, security guards, secretaries and janitors.
Which brings to mind a good counterstrike to this law. What if Australians started complaining about every web site that's even marginal? The film board would be swamped, unable to cope with the huge number of sites to review.
Now, if they'd decide that any site which uses popup windows is "offensive", I might be able to support the law...:-)
I'm also one of "those" users, mostly out of self-defense. Let's see, now... Our sysadmins regularly take weeks or months to install new software. The standard disk image installed on all engineers' computers is missing vital packages, and many packages installed are out-of-date. There is NO backup plan in place to back up user workstations. I've asked. I do my own backups to the network drive using zip. Oh, and about a week before my hard drive ate itself, the sysadmins lost the share my backups were on! Don't ask me how. It just went away, they don't know where.
And no, I'd never go running to them if I messed something up in my "cool" configuration. It's much faster to fix it myself than to even explain it to them.
You have to be one of "those" users if your network is managed by one of "those" syadmins.
You can't blame Doom, the Internet, or anything else. Look at the millions of counter-examples of kids playing that stuff and turning out perfectly okay! When I was a kid I grew up on Bugs Bunny cartoons ("He does so have to shoot you now!") and Space Invaders, Galaxian, and the like. So did all my friends. As far as I know none of my high school crowd ever went postal. (Or should the new phrase be, "went high school"?)
These kids had other problems. Right now people are looking for something to blame. It's hard to accept that there is nothing to blame. Except maybe the kids' parents and teachers for not recognizing this ahead of time and getting them help. Maybe. What are the warning signs? Being a geek and a loner? Hell, that description probably fits 99% of the people reading this. It certainly fit me back then.
Ever read John Brunner's novel Stand On Zanzibar? That book scares me. It was written in the 60's and takes place about a decade or two into the 21st century. And every day reality matches that book just a little more. One element of the book was something called "muckers" -- people who run amock and go on a killing spree. Well, we seem to have no shortage of muckers these days. I predict it'll only get worse as the population increases, both due to there being more people of every sort and therefore more psychopaths; and because too many people living too close together tend to snap a little bit easier.
Dynamic downloaders are still evil. We're behind a proxy here at work, one that requires userid/password authorization. Do you think the QT4 installer can handle this? Noooooo... Proxy, yes, but not proxy-with-authorization.
Then again, maybe it's just my company's proxy server that's evil.
I see you've never had to tell a six-year old to put the damned thing down and come to dinner...
Of course, I'm not likely to buy my son a Palm Pilot for his birthday. His mom, however, probably shouldn't be told about the Palm Gameboy emulator, or we may never see her at supper again!
I really, really doubt it. Even with all the tools, you wouldn't have the proprietary libraries. Or, for that matter, any way of getting your code into the game machine...
Remember, development system for the original Playstation (at least the one by Psygnosis / SN Systems) uses GCC, too. That doesn't mean that everyone with a Linux box can hack it.
Main Entry:
geek Pronunciation: 'gEk Function: noun Etymology: probably from English dialect geek, geck fool, from Low German geck, from Middle Low German Date: 1914 1 : a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake 2 : a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of
Danged intellectuals, changing the definition of good ol' carny jargon!
Good things can't last forever.
on
Saving MST3K
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· Score: 1
Now I wish the would concentrate on putting the whole shebang out on VHS/DVD. Now that would be cool
I've thought that DVD would be the perfect venue for MST3K. What to do with the extra space on your typical DVD movie? Yet another dreary interview with the Key Grip? No way! Add an MST3K track, of course! Watch the movie straight or, if it's a dud, switch on MST3K mode and watch it with Joel/Mike and the 'bots!
It's not just software. In a previous life I worked for a company that made pinball machines. You could get a patent on darned near anything (software, mechanical, electrical) by taking an existing invention and placing the words "in a pinball machine" on the patent application. Is it really a new invention to combine an existing technology with an existing product? The patent office apparently thinks so.
How do I use Netscape's native support? On my WinNT (ritual spit towards Redmond) box I installed Apple's Quicktime 3 plugin, which takes over the PNG format (and a boatload of others, as well). I'm running Netscape 4.5. How to I tell it to disable the QT plugin for PNGs and render them natively? This is somewhat important to me, as I'm doing some web development with PNGs and I want to see how Netscape handles them. My other recourse is to get another machine in here with a "clean" install.
I looked at the "Applications" entry in the Preferences dialog. "PNG" is listed as being supported by a plugin, but the "Edit" and "Removed" buttons are greyed out. I can't find a way to change it.
An oddity in the Linux (hail Linus!) version of Netscape 4.5: I have no plugins at all installed, and the "Applications" entry in Preferences tells me "PNG file -- Unknown: Prompt User". Netscape does render PNGs, though, even though it claims not to. But it seems that PNG is not its preferred format. On the PNG home page the PNG logo is given in an OBJECT tag, along with a GIF. Netscape renders the GIF instead of the PNG.
Jack Ganssle, columnist for Embedded Systems magazine, had a great quote about VB. To paraphrase, "It's a good language because it encourages prototyping. You can slap something nice-looking together quickly, but your boss can't make you ship it!"
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, this whole thing is exceedingly idiotic! I'm embarrassed to say that I write firmware for barcode printers for a living. I don't know whether or not out equipment is used at this school (I rather doubt it; we tend more towards shipping labels and the like), but tagging people is just Bad Juju in my opinion.
What's next? PDF417 or Aztec or some other 2D code that encodes your entire transcript as well? At least that'd be a lot harder to read...
The really annoying thing is that the administrators chose to use the SSN rather than creating a unique number for each person. Or heck, there are linear symbologies that encode text as well. If you *MUST* have a machine-readable ID, just put the kid's name in the barcode.
Coincidentally, I've been beating my head against a wall this morning due to Visio crashing when I try to edit an object embedded in MS Word. Of course, the crash corrupts the object and I loose the work... (I know, don't use Word. Not my choice, unfortunately!)
Is anyone using emWare's "server" in an actual product? I evaluated it about nine months ago (version 2.5, I believe) and found the C version sorely lacking in a few key points. Like, they messed up endedness of variables. 2-byte variables were sent little-endian, whereas 4-byte variables were sent big-endian. Their own code failed to pull one or the other out of the data stream correctly.
Also, calling the embedded emMicro portion a "server" is stretching the definition quite thin. It's a communications stub which only talks to the emGateway portion running on a Windows PC. emGateway is the real web server.
What it does it does quite well. If they've cleared up the bugs it should be a fairly nice niche product.
It seems better, but I wouldn't call it "solid" yet. When they get around to adding proxy support I might actually be able to give it a serious test drive.
I sent my nicely-formatted resume to the headhunter I was working with. It was a clear, concise, single page. After I got hired I saw my resume on my new boss's desk. What a piece of trash! The headhunter had completely mangled it, padded some of my prose (inadvertently altering my meaning) and expanded some of my acronyms (incorrectly, of course). It's a wonder I ever got hired. If I ever use a headhunter's services again, I'm going to be sure to demand final approval on the resume he actually sends out!
I'll second the recommendation for "Death March". I picked it up during the time I worked at Konami. Because of the time I worked at Konami! And you know what? From what I gathered from the other developers who'd worked in other shops, the 80-hour week was the rule rather than the exception. I was called into my manager's office one day because he noticed I habitually left at 5pm, despite being on schedule. Sorry, I actually like my wife and kids. If I'm not behind, I'm going home to spend time with them.
Welcome to game programming, where the motto is "Work harder, not smarter."
Of course, I'd like to know how a web site will be nominated for review, and exactly how much time the censo--I mean, film board will have to make their decision. If they're planning on reviewing the entire Web, they'd better get started now. And the manpower requirements would pretty much deplete the entire Australian legislature, including aides, security guards, secretaries and janitors.
:-)
Which brings to mind a good counterstrike to this law. What if Australians started complaining about every web site that's even marginal? The film board would be swamped, unable to cope with the huge number of sites to review.
Now, if they'd decide that any site which uses popup windows is "offensive", I might be able to support the law...
Oh, you're one of *those* users...
I'm also one of "those" users, mostly out of self-defense. Let's see, now... Our sysadmins regularly take weeks or months to install new software. The standard disk image installed on all engineers' computers is missing vital packages, and many packages installed are out-of-date. There is NO backup plan in place to back up user workstations. I've asked. I do my own backups to the network drive using zip. Oh, and about a week before my hard drive ate itself, the sysadmins lost the share my backups were on! Don't ask me how. It just went away, they don't know where.
And no, I'd never go running to them if I messed something up in my "cool" configuration. It's much faster to fix it myself than to even explain it to them.
You have to be one of "those" users if your network is managed by one of "those" syadmins.
It still doesn't handle proxies that require authorization. Can't run it on my machine at work... sigh
You can't blame Doom, the Internet, or anything else. Look at the millions of counter-examples of kids playing that stuff and turning out perfectly okay! When I was a kid I grew up on Bugs Bunny cartoons ("He does so have to shoot you now!") and Space Invaders, Galaxian, and the like. So did all my friends. As far as I know none of my high school crowd ever went postal. (Or should the new phrase be, "went high school"?)
These kids had other problems. Right now people are looking for something to blame. It's hard to accept that there is nothing to blame. Except maybe the kids' parents and teachers for not recognizing this ahead of time and getting them help. Maybe. What are the warning signs? Being a geek and a loner? Hell, that description probably fits 99% of the people reading this. It certainly fit me back then.
Ever read John Brunner's novel Stand On Zanzibar? That book scares me. It was written in the 60's and takes place about a decade or two into the 21st century. And every day reality matches that book just a little more. One element of the book was something called "muckers" -- people who run amock and go on a killing spree. Well, we seem to have no shortage of muckers these days. I predict it'll only get worse as the population increases, both due to there being more people of every sort and therefore more psychopaths; and because too many people living too close together tend to snap a little bit easier.
What's the problem? Just download the whole QT package at once and be done with it.
Great. I'd love to. Got a URL for the WinNT version?
Dynamic downloaders are still evil. We're behind a proxy here at work, one that requires userid/password authorization. Do you think the QT4 installer can handle this? Noooooo... Proxy, yes, but not proxy-with-authorization.
Then again, maybe it's just my company's proxy server that's evil.
Dang! I saw the headline and was hoping for Celebrity Deathmatch!
I see you've never had to tell a six-year old to put the damned thing down and come to dinner...
Of course, I'm not likely to buy my son a Palm Pilot for his birthday. His mom, however, probably shouldn't be told about the Palm Gameboy emulator, or we may never see her at supper again!
I really, really doubt it. Even with all the tools, you wouldn't have the proprietary libraries. Or, for that matter, any way of getting your code into the game machine...
Remember, development system for the original Playstation (at least the one by Psygnosis / SN Systems) uses GCC, too. That doesn't mean that everyone with a Linux box can hack it.
Silly user, computers are for geeks!
From the WWWebster Dictionary:
Danged intellectuals, changing the definition of good ol' carny jargon!
Now I wish the would concentrate on putting the whole shebang out on VHS/DVD. Now that would be cool
I've thought that DVD would be the perfect venue for MST3K. What to do with the extra space on your typical DVD movie? Yet another dreary interview with the Key Grip? No way! Add an MST3K track, of course! Watch the movie straight or, if it's a dud, switch on MST3K mode and watch it with Joel/Mike and the 'bots!
Whaddaya think, sirs?
It's not just software. In a previous life I worked for a company that made pinball machines. You could get a patent on darned near anything (software, mechanical, electrical) by taking an existing invention and placing the words "in a pinball machine" on the patent application. Is it really a new invention to combine an existing technology with an existing product? The patent office apparently thinks so.
How do I use Netscape's native support? On my WinNT (ritual spit towards Redmond) box I installed Apple's Quicktime 3 plugin, which takes over the PNG format (and a boatload of others, as well). I'm running Netscape 4.5. How to I tell it to disable the QT plugin for PNGs and render them natively? This is somewhat important to me, as I'm doing some web development with PNGs and I want to see how Netscape handles them. My other recourse is to get another machine in here with a "clean" install.
I looked at the "Applications" entry in the Preferences dialog. "PNG" is listed as being supported by a plugin, but the "Edit" and "Removed" buttons are greyed out. I can't find a way to change it.
An oddity in the Linux (hail Linus!) version of Netscape 4.5: I have no plugins at all installed, and the "Applications" entry in Preferences tells me "PNG file -- Unknown: Prompt User". Netscape does render PNGs, though, even though it claims not to. But it seems that PNG is not its preferred format. On the PNG home page the PNG logo is given in an OBJECT tag, along with a GIF. Netscape renders the GIF instead of the PNG.
Jack Ganssle, columnist for Embedded Systems magazine, had a great quote about VB. To paraphrase, "It's a good language because it encourages prototyping. You can slap something nice-looking together quickly, but your boss can't make you ship it!"