In an IDE, I look for features that will help save my time. Basics liks Search/Replace, syntax highlighting etc, you'd expect in a text editor anyway. The real gains are to be made when you can make your projects modular and component based and being able to utilise these modules easily from within your tools without having to spend hours configuring build environments etc, is a big time saver.
I noticed that someone had mentioned Visaj. Visaj is a Java GUI builder so if you're working on front ends, it's ideal. You can save your custom widgets on a palette and reuse them again at any time. Plus it supports Swing and I was able to download it for free.
This question is pointless. In one respect, the internet connects a large proportion of the globe and thus provides at least a link (hyper or snail) to information about virtually anything. On the other hand, there is a vast, unmeasurable quantity of private information that cannot and never will be available online and attempting to enumerate this would be an eternal task.
There is so much advert hate present in the
slashdot community. The vast majority of its
readership is educated, intelligent and informed.
Yet most of the comments about advertising on
the web is flame, hate, adverts-are-evil etc.
This is a very narrow view and the issue
needs to be considered in a wider context.
Remember that the web is an open media where business ventures are continually being experimented with and new ways of providing services and making money are thought up every week.
Advertising and marketing form an essential part of virtually every business and non-profit organisation. To suggest that all advertising is evil and should be filtered/banned is wholly unrealistic and represents a very childish view of
how the businesses and the capitalist world operates. So try to consider this from the
perspective of advertisers and the businesses they are promoting. A banner-ad at the top of a web
page does not constitute a Hard Sell.
So if you are not interested in what's being advertised, use your willpower and don't follow the link! And if it really annoys you then don't return to the site, ever. Simple.
make web application code open and available for
audit in order to prevent invalid/illegal logging.
cryptographically sign the logs at periodic
intervals and/or when the applications are stopped
and started. This will help prevent tampering.
Even encrypting the logs so that only particular
individuals can access them might be suitable.
Remember that there is a distinction between leadership and management. A leader is followed. A manager looks after resources. A manager may also be a great leader. A leader may be a terrible manager. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish the difference.
It sounds like you have an excellent bed of experience for your leadership role. Your more junior colleagues will look to you for guidance, technical experience and more. Diving headlong into management activities is not necessarily a bad thing, and although it may sound cliched, you'll learn from your mistakes very quickly.
If you are working in a project-oriented environment, I would suggest that you also look at professional qualifications e.g. Prince II project management. You will find that your development experience will put you ahead of other managers who are learning how to project manage but haven't actually been working at the "coal face".
Being a project manager can be very rewarding - you are steering a disparate group of people towards solving problems in creative ways, and bringing about change in your organisation.
Most of the time it's all about keeping the bigger picture in mind. Assessing risks, understanding the impacts of change. So often the reason why managers don't seem to know what's going on is that they are very busy keeping their eye on 100 different issues at once.
Most of all, it'll be a people role. If are aren't a people person, you'll find this difficult. But like any situation, you'll adapt and change and have every chance to make a success of it.
I've mixed both technical and management roles over the last few years and it's helped me understand both sides of the fence. I'm sure I have plenty more to learn.
It is said that behaviour breeds behaviour. In this instance, it has become commonplace for suits and counter-suits to be filed as "normal" part of business practice.
Any company with an edge over its rivals will want to protect their own interests.
Equally, the NDA might be seen as a recruitment tactic. Imagine you sign an NDA, take the interview with Company A and get offered the job. You might also be tempted by Company A's main competitor (Company B) who are offering a higher salary or other benefits. Why would you put your own career at risk by taking the job with Company B if it could result in legal action? So you take the job with Company A instead. Rather than using golden handcuffs they could be considered to use legal handcuffs.
If someone feels bound to a particular company because of the legal ramifications of leaving to join a competitor, is that a form of bonded labor?
The article lacked detail. It'd be useful to know how many people were affected, for how long and the impact.
It does beg the question - how many telcos are covertly operating a sub-standard service, hoping nobody will notice?
Perhaps all telcos should provide open source, impartial network monitoring software in order to self-regulate the quality of service. In Britain we have a telco watchdog that would stomp all over this thing.
Novell still has a considerable installed based of Netware. Many of the large companies who run MVS/OS390 on their IBM mainframes have Novell running their file servers. Therefore it's understandable that IBM might want to a) strengthen relationships with existing customers and b) regain lost ground in the midrange file server NOS market. I'd struggle to see how they might revive Netware though, unless they were to do something radical like open source it. That was conflict with IBM's new-found Linux direction though.
The business models of the major music, TV and film organisations are at an unprecedented turning point. If they don't adapt, they'll lose and they know it. And with the invevitable convergence of internetworking technologies and the digitization of most broadcasting, these companies will fight for survival.
Eventually, the same thing will happen to the oil industry.
In twenty/thirty years time we'll look back, smile and wonder what all the fuss was all about.
finding the answer to a problem means understanding it first. Break it down into small chunks and talk about each with colleagues who you trust are level-headed and/or creative.
spend time mapping out concepts, performing an analysis of whatever technical requirements you face - without going near the computer unless you need to check up specs for a class library or something. Use a paper, pencil and eraser.
take a break. If you can get two or three days off, spend them outside, go to the gym or a jacuzzi. Being physically and mentally relaxed is very important. Try Tai Chi or Yoga.
perhaps most importantly, keep an open mind and experiment. What works for others may not work for you!
I have seen some dreadfully bad support from these so-called 'professional' organisations. Often the reason for bad turn-around on resolving problems is not due to finger-pointing but due to poor prioritisation. If the right people are put on the case quickly resolution of problems can be a breeze. If not, problems will get blown around the place, without ownership, like a bad smell. Obviously, getting priorities clear with your providers takes effort.
The culture of the said organisation (or team within) is also critical. Avoid a backward looking, blamecentric cultures if possible.
If this is true then perhaps John, being a supporter of "alternative" platforms and open source software, will help to influence X-Box development so that things like OSS dev toolkits and/or a X-Box Linux/BSD might become more of a possibility.
If we mine the moon for a million tons of helium what are the side effects on Planet Earth? The Earth has a symbiotic relationship with the moon and I'm concerned that changing the mass and volume of the moon might even have gravitational side-effects that would further disturb the highly sensitive ecological and environment dynamics back home.
I think this is a great idea but I can think of problem areas that might need to be overcome first:
Developing a suitable legal framework
Ensuring authenticity of the signatures
Providing a scalable, secure infrastructure including provision for those who don't have access to the web
Selling the concept to technophobes
And importantly, ensuring the integrity of the results - perhaps more of a challenge in places where corruption is relatively high.
I think this could be done but wouldn't it be great to be part of a bigger picture, where the same voting mechanisms could be used for opinion polls, general elections, perhaps even on a global scale.
You should have to prove delivery before reaping rewards from patents. Where the benefit to society can be measured and is deemed to exceed the benefits to the invididual (read company), the reward should be distributed to society rather than to the individual.
Note, I do not use the words protect, restrict, punish, blame, profit or bureacracy.
Management methodologies can be both very useful and very cumbersome. Half (if not more) of the activities they incorporate are basic common sense that any experienced manager will know off by heart anyway.
No methodology is a substitute for your manager using his ears and brain together (at the same time - yes it can be done!:)
Methodologies are a toolkit. It's all about using the right tools at the right time. Use too many and you're going to irritate the entire team as well as waste time. The real skill (and yes it is a skill) lies in knowing how to balance this.
Methodologies are not a religion. Adhering blindly to any doctrine rarely makes sense, unless your project has come completely off the rails and it needs some discipline to bring it back in to shape. I've seen this happen and the managers who really know what they're doing can really make it work.
Methodologies are common language. If you understand the Prince 2 terminology for example, anyone conversant in it will be able to interpret project documentation quite easily. Often it's a problem if two or more organisations working on the same project all use different terminology.
If your organisation has invested in a methodology, chances are it's been looking for ways to improve how it does things. This is good, as long as enough people buy in to the process. It's also vital that it is sustained by those involved. Often it requires a iron leader to enforce this. At my previous employer, the Year 2000 program manager was hard on the team about following the processes, but in the end it all came together and all of the projects were successful.
Yes, procedure is often the enemy of creativity. It's all about achieving the right balance between the two and if you're pissed at procedures perhaps your boss has got the mix wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
In an IDE, I look for features that will help save my time. Basics liks Search/Replace, syntax highlighting etc, you'd expect in a text editor anyway. The real gains are to be made when you can make your projects modular and component based and being able to utilise these modules easily from within your tools without having to spend hours configuring build environments etc, is a big time saver.
I noticed that someone had mentioned Visaj. Visaj is a Java GUI builder so if you're working on front ends, it's ideal. You can save your custom widgets on a palette and reuse them again at any time. Plus it supports Swing and I was able to download it for free.
Aye, April fool's for sure.
What I'm confused about this is the timing: this is old news. I saw this movie at the theater about four months ago. What's going on?
Rob.
Remember that the web is an open media where business ventures are continually being experimented with and new ways of providing services and making money are thought up every week.
Advertising and marketing form an essential part of virtually every business and non-profit organisation. To suggest that all advertising is evil and should be filtered/banned is wholly unrealistic and represents a very childish view of how the businesses and the capitalist world operates. So try to consider this from the perspective of advertisers and the businesses they are promoting. A banner-ad at the top of a web page does not constitute a Hard Sell.
So if you are not interested in what's being advertised, use your willpower and don't follow the link! And if it really annoys you then don't return to the site, ever. Simple.
Rob.
-
make web application code open and available for
audit in order to prevent invalid/illegal logging.
-
cryptographically sign the logs at periodic
intervals and/or when the applications are stopped
and started. This will help prevent tampering.
Even encrypting the logs so that only particular
individuals can access them might be suitable.
-
use W3C standard log file formats.
-
hire a reputable, independent auditor to validate your metrics at regular intervals.
What's all the fuss about?Rob.
It sounds like you have an excellent bed of experience for your leadership role. Your more junior colleagues will look to you for guidance, technical experience and more. Diving headlong into management activities is not necessarily a bad thing, and although it may sound cliched, you'll learn from your mistakes very quickly.
If you are working in a project-oriented environment, I would suggest that you also look at professional qualifications e.g. Prince II project management. You will find that your development experience will put you ahead of other managers who are learning how to project manage but haven't actually been working at the "coal face".
Being a project manager can be very rewarding - you are steering a disparate group of people towards solving problems in creative ways, and bringing about change in your organisation.
Most of the time it's all about keeping the bigger picture in mind. Assessing risks, understanding the impacts of change. So often the reason why managers don't seem to know what's going on is that they are very busy keeping their eye on 100 different issues at once.
Most of all, it'll be a people role. If are aren't a people person, you'll find this difficult. But like any situation, you'll adapt and change and have every chance to make a success of it.
I've mixed both technical and management roles over the last few years and it's helped me understand both sides of the fence. I'm sure I have plenty more to learn.
Good luck with it!
Rob.
Any company with an edge over its rivals will want to protect their own interests.
Equally, the NDA might be seen as a recruitment tactic. Imagine you sign an NDA, take the interview with Company A and get offered the job. You might also be tempted by Company A's main competitor (Company B) who are offering a higher salary or other benefits. Why would you put your own career at risk by taking the job with Company B if it could result in legal action? So you take the job with Company A instead. Rather than using golden handcuffs they could be considered to use legal handcuffs.
If someone feels bound to a particular company because of the legal ramifications of leaving to join a competitor, is that a form of bonded labor?
Rob.
The article lacked detail. It'd be useful to know how many people were affected, for how long and the impact.
It does beg the question - how many telcos are covertly operating a sub-standard service, hoping nobody will notice?
Perhaps all telcos should provide open source, impartial network monitoring software in order to self-regulate the quality of service. In Britain we have a telco watchdog that would stomp all over this thing.
Rob.
--Rob
Eventually, the same thing will happen to the oil industry.
In twenty/thirty years time we'll look back, smile and wonder what all the fuss was all about.
Rob.
Rob.
The culture of the said organisation (or team within) is also critical. Avoid a backward looking, blamecentric cultures if possible.
Rob.
A poor workman always blames his tools. 'nuf said.
If it's not true then here's an opportunity!
--Rob.
If it's legal to hyperlink to a remote site surely it must be illegal to blatantly copy the text of a remote web page in the link e.g.
Although impractical, who's to stop someone uuencoding an mp3 and then doing the above?
Ridiculous eh? Common sense suggests that this would not stand up in court. Perhaps this has been tested already?
--Rob
- Developing a suitable legal framework
- Ensuring authenticity of the signatures
- Providing a scalable, secure infrastructure including provision for those who don't have access to the web
- Selling the concept to technophobes
- And importantly, ensuring the integrity of the results - perhaps more of a challenge in places where corruption is relatively high.
I think this could be done but wouldn't it be great to be part of a bigger picture, where the same voting mechanisms could be used for opinion polls, general elections, perhaps even on a global scale.Prove the concept and expand later.
--Rob.
And I thought boy bands were bad!
Who knows, by this time next year ppl might be able to buy A0L Linux boxen in department stores by the dozen :)
Nurture ideas and creativity
Entertain concepts
Develop and challenge theories
Reward genuine effort
Celebrate delivery
and learn from mistakes
You should have to prove delivery before reaping rewards from patents. Where the benefit to society can be measured and is deemed to exceed the benefits to the invididual (read company), the reward should be distributed to society rather than to the individual.
Note, I do not use the words protect, restrict, punish, blame, profit or bureacracy.
--Rob.
No methodology is a substitute for your manager using his ears and brain together (at the same time - yes it can be done!:)
Methodologies are a toolkit. It's all about using the right tools at the right time. Use too many and you're going to irritate the entire team as well as waste time. The real skill (and yes it is a skill) lies in knowing how to balance this.
Methodologies are not a religion. Adhering blindly to any doctrine rarely makes sense, unless your project has come completely off the rails and it needs some discipline to bring it back in to shape. I've seen this happen and the managers who really know what they're doing can really make it work.
Methodologies are common language. If you understand the Prince 2 terminology for example, anyone conversant in it will be able to interpret project documentation quite easily. Often it's a problem if two or more organisations working on the same project all use different terminology.
If your organisation has invested in a methodology, chances are it's been looking for ways to improve how it does things. This is good, as long as enough people buy in to the process. It's also vital that it is sustained by those involved. Often it requires a iron leader to enforce this. At my previous employer, the Year 2000 program manager was hard on the team about following the processes, but in the end it all came together and all of the projects were successful.
Yes, procedure is often the enemy of creativity. It's all about achieving the right balance between the two and if you're pissed at procedures perhaps your boss has got the mix wrong.
Rob.