The whole point of the GPL is specifically to allow that sort of sharing and cross pollination. The inability to do that in proprietary code is why Free Software exists in the first place.
As long as you're giving due credit where credit is due (technically not required by the GPL, but I would consider it only honorable), then you're in the right. If the other guy doesn't like it, then his beef is with the way Free Software works in the fist place, not with you specifically.
I for one, welcome our new digital signature questioning overlords. Only old Koreans don't question digital signatures. In Soviet Russia, digital signatures question you! How can I know if those are Natalie Porman's grits, if they aren't digitally signed?
You forgot "imagine a beowulf cluster of signed articles."
That's how a lot of Free Software gets written. Go home, code up something useful, stick it on SourceForge, put it on your resume. You get a line on your resume, the world gets (hopefully) good code. Or help out on some existing project as a bug fixer, documentation person, fringe features (or mainline features if you're that good), etc.
Just because you don't get an immediate paycheck for it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
You have purchased something. A license to play the game on the terms and conditions that are told to you by the company.
No, I purchased (gave money for) a CD that included the game on it. I was not informed of any other conditions on the usage of that piece of pressed plastic until after the sale was over, and I was no longer permitted to refuse the agreement. That makes makes EULAs dispicable. I am NOT "told the terms and conditions of usage by the company" until after the sale transaction is completed.
Of course, the very idea of "terms and conditions of usage" violates the doctrine of First Sale. I paid for it, now go away and let me use it as a coaster if I want, dagnabbit!
(Note: I am using "I" here for argument's sake, although I myself have not purchased or played HL2 and don't intend to, specifically because of this sort of underhanded BS on the part of Valve/Steam. I also don't use Windows XP for the same reason.)
I still won't buy Half-Life 2. Sure, it looks cool, and from what I've seen/heard will likely be a better game than Doom 3. I don't care. It's DRM-restricted. My computer has to spy on me and report back to the mother ship before I can even play single player. That Is Wrong. I will not support it.
Damnit! What are they doing sticking real pr0n into our gadget pr0n! Get out of the way, Mrs. Clause, I'm trying to see the gadgets. Besides, I don't go for married women.
For those who don't know what this is (I didn't), Intel's writeup on it is here. It doesn't look completely evil, but then it is their own marketing docs. Anandtech's writeup is similarly positive, more or less.
If that's not "creative" enough, find some Technics Lego. That stuff is neat to play with, too!
I have to second the call for Lego Technic. I had much fun with those when I was younger. Even if the kid (does need to be at least about 8-9 to deal with them properly) just follows the directions and doesn't make anything new, he'll get to see how basic mechanics work up close without any danger of working with "real" fanbelts and motors and such. You can learn a great deal building a Technic car or motorocycle for far less cost and risk than building a real car or motorcycle.:-)
I recall my major Technic custom project was a Borg arm that I could stick up my sleeve and control via the battery pack tucked into the sleeve. It just opened and closed a gripper arm on the end, but it looked wicked cool, and of course required me to do a lot of design work getting the motion of the spinning motor down the length of this contraption to the gears to turn the hinge to open and close the arm. Ah, good times.:-)
Re:My favorite in game humor... Warcraft/Starcraft
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Humor in Games?
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· Score: 2, Funny
Even better was the shareware version of Warcraft II. My favorites:
Human Footman: "In the full version, I'm much funnier."
Orc Peon: "You go buy full version now." "You buy full version.. pleeeease???" "You buy full version or I sing. Yah yah yah yah..."
Keeping the orc from singing was reason enough to buy the full game, methinks.;-) Or I ended up buying it, at any rate.
It's the need for insta-polls and immediate results and such on the part of the voting populace that, in part, caused the mess of the 2000 election. Everyone wanted to know NOW who won each state, so the networks call elections the instant the polls close. Of course, they forgot that some of Floria's polls close later. Did that affect the turnout in those areas? Maybe. But it also meant that suddenly everyone ASSUMED Gore carried Florida.
Then when Fox News decided to call Florida for Bush instead, just to be biased about it, everyone suddenly reversed it and called the election for Bush, and with it the national results. So everyone ASSUMED that Bush was President-Elect.
Then the recount mess began, and it APPEARED that Gore had lost but was whining about it. In fact, THE ELECTION WAS NOT OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED YET. But because people wanted a reality TV show instead of real news, and the networks of course gave it to them, public perception was screwed to hell. That's what caused the mess in 2000, more than anything else.
You'll find out who won tomorrow morning. Or more likely, you'll find out which states are being contested due to election fraud tomorrow morning. Don't encourage the 3 ring circus.
"It will die." "It's dead already."
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Should Star Trek Die?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Funny, I thought Trek died when DS9 turned into a horrid soap opera that revolved around Sisko being a demi-god with writing that wasn't even internally consistent, much less good.
Then I thought Trek died when every third episode of Voyager was "7 learns to be human thanks to time travel".
Then I thought Trek died when the best example of Enterprise was "Let's find some way to get the Vulcan chick nekkid on camera."
Then I thought Trek died when to improve ratings they ran off to fight the terrorists in the Bermuda Triangle in Space.
Then I thought Trek died when the terrorist plot (Xindii) was word for word predictable based on a thousand scripts before it in a thousand different genres.
Then I thought Trek died when the best they could come up with for the season finale of Enterprise was "We've done aliens and they're bad guys, Nazis aren't cool enough as bad guys, so how about aliens AND Nazis!"
So I figure if Star Trek is a cat, then it has to die three more times under Rick Berman's leadership (and I use the term very loosely) before it will finally be put to bed. Given the rumored plans for Enterprise Season 4, that should be "Shatner returns!", "Spiner returns!", and "Temporal Cold War Part 31!" After that, Trek should be dead by any possible metric.
I grew up on Star Trek, I love Star Trek, I learned a love of science from Star Trek. Berman is not writing Star Trek, he's writing crap. Fire his ass, give it a rest for a few years, then bring in a new staff of professional writers who have a clue. They're out there, Berman just doesn't know how to find them.
Are some outlets of this trash slanted? Sure...a little. Fox is biased toward conservatives and CNN is biased toward liberals...but not to a HUGE degree on either side.
You're talking about the FOX News that begins broadcasts by counting down the number of days "until you get to re-elect George W. Bush". That's more than a little biased. That's criminal false advertising when they claim to be "fair and impartial".
I hear ya, but let me try to explain why it IS important.
Remote working.
Two words: X Forwarding.:-)
Oh yeah, Windows doesn't have that, 10 years after the *nix world got it. *pats his Linux box*
Seriously, though, I do understand where remote access to a document can be useful and necessary. But that doesn't require turning the entire computer into the Web Browser That Ate Tokyo, when in fact the majority of users and applications don't need that level of complexity. If you want to have an extra browser plugin or module or KPart that lets you edit a word processing document from within the read-only-based interface of your web browser, eh, ok. But for my use, having my word processor cluttered with web bookmarks and a reload button and other "web browser" functionality is a hinderence to me getting my job done. And I do work for an Internet company.
Ironically KParts, which is what makes the integration of Konqueror possible, could be handled to make both worlds possible without causing craploads of problems. Assuming they separate the tight file browser / web browser coupling first so that it doesn't end up hindering the rest of the system. (Aside from that problem, I absolutely love the work the KDE folks do.)
Yes, Word is a pile. I hate it. It can be sorta tamed if you play with the settings to turn most things off. (Really on Windows I use it as a glorified text editor to add spelling and grammar checking that's it. Of course, these days I use KWord for the same thing.) Everyone I support (ie, family) hates it even more than I do.
But the solution is NOT to build everything into the web browser! Please, people, get over it. A web browser is for displaying WEB PAGES. My letter to my senator is NOT a web page. Just because something uses XML doesn't mean that it's a web page, or need have anything to do with the web.
Maybe XForms would make a good standardized office file format. Maybe OASIS (aka OO.org's format) would be better. I don't know the technical details well enough to say, but since they're both open XML formats I'm cool with either one.
But dear god I want a SEPARATE PROGRAM for my word processing. I want my web browser to browse the web. I want my file manager to manage my files. I want my word processor to process words. Sure, they can all link to the same XML parser library behind the scenes, but I don't want there to be ANY confusion at the application level about what the program is doing.
Konqueror has started to get confused in KDE 3.x between how it should behave when it's a file browser and when it's a web browser, which is bad enough. I do NOT want my word processor to suffer the same fate. I refuse to open a web browser to do LOCAL work.
If I wanted "one bloated ugly program to do everything even if it's not designed for it", I'd skip X and just install emacs. (*dons flame retardant suit* I don't use vi either, don't worry!)
Bottom line: Use whatever open file format works best for the word processor of tomorrow, but keep the bloody web browser out of it. I'm not interested in pointless bloat and interface methods that don't make any sense in context.
Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)
Try Qt. In its current version (v3.x), the GUI and non-GUI APIs are somewhat merged, but v4 (currently in progress, due out soon) is supposed to have full separation between the two. Even now, it still works. It's write-once, compile-anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac), GPLed if you're writing GPLed code for Linux or Mac, and has an OO library and design that is simply gorgeous. It's like C++ done by people who worship Java but hate Swing.:-)
KDE, Opera, and various others use Qt, so you HAVE seen it in action.
For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.
If you're doing web apps, definitely look at PHP. I use it for all of my web work, and love it. The new PHP5 has a reworked object model that is very Java-ish, but also has a lot of other features that make life simpler. I've also started using their Smarty template engine, which is a godsend (a web front end IS a GUI, just a different kind of GUI), and there's a huge online archive of code you can use in the PEAR archive.
Maybe this is a good thing. The faster and tighter the corporate totalitarian monkeys lock down, the better the chance that people will notice the change and rebel against it. Better than taking generations to slowly pervert the society the way the Olympics have been perverted.
Hey, corporate stooge! Please start banning all unapproved T-shirts (if it doesn't say the home team's name on it, you can't wear it) at baseball games in the US NOW! Think of the advertising revenue!
And think of the anti-corporate backlash it will create, and how desperately needed that is.
I've been running my own mail account off of my own domain for about 2.5 years now, and I don't regret it. I do have the catch-all set to dump to my personal account, and it's not been a major problem. Most of the spam I get is addressed to a "real" address (either mine or one of my older accounts I have forwarded to me), and there's a lot of that, so the amount I get from the catch-all is negligible.
In practice, actually, most of the spam-related stuff I get is mail bounces attempting to a random address with a faked from line of 63745624573@mydomain.com (or something like that). I really should look into implementing SenderID, but that would require hosting the server myself on a my dynamic IP instead of letting my web host take care of it.:-)
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, and I don't know why no one has mentioned it yet, but even more impressive than apt-get for me is Debian's debconf. At any time, you can rerun the install wizard by typing dpkg-reconfigure packagename, and it will take care, cleanly, of making whatever changes you need to the package. It's configurable from "Ask me everything" to "I don't know what I'm doing", but defaults are very intelligent and it takes most of the mystery out of most things, as well as the manual config file editing.
The other big thing Linux needs to survive (other than Quicken and TurboTax) is Office VBA compatibility. In the Enterprise, this is essential. There are plenty of BASICs out there, why hasn't OO.org incorporated one of them?
Because mixing executable code into a user-writable file is precisely how we ended up with a world full of macro viruses. That is a huge leap backward, and OO would be stupid to encourage that sort of self-destructive behavior.
A business that can't survive without making life easy for virus writers doesn't deserve to survive.
Wow, they're quick. Isn't this like half the time between KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2?
That said, *drool*. My main interests in KDE 3.3 is full groupware support in Kontact, a working Kopete, and hopefully some stability cleanups. I look forward to every KDE release, as each one blows me away with how well done it is from an overall design perspective.
Don't frame the comment as, "I'm counter culture and don't like things everyone else finds adaquate." Frame it as "I have special needs, needs that your competition is happy to meet."
I don't consider proper security to be a "special need". IE is a big gaping security hole. There is NO reason why a bank should support it and it only. (Honestly, what does a bank site need that other browsers don't have if their coders are at least moderately intelligent?)
The ability to use a web browser that is not riddled with security holes that make it a threat to your financial existence just to use it is not a special need. It is a basic need of anyone and everyone who uses an online banking system. The only people for whom that is not a case are those who are too ignorant to know better. (Ignorant in the sense of not knowing, not necessarily stupidity, although they can often come together.)
And if you're dumb enough to use a bank that works only with the big neon "Hack Me" sign that is IE, you get what you deserve. Find a bank that works with Mozilla or Konqueror and use those for banking instead.
Oh yes, and be sure to tell your old bank WHY you're closing your account with them. "You're only supporting Internet Explorer as a browser, so I'm not supporting you as a bank."
Not like they'll notice on personal accounts, but maybe if a business or three moves their accounts, they'll sit up and take notice.
Number one, splurge on Aeron chairs. I used one at a consulting job I was at last year. Dear GOD I want one. They only hurt if you're wearing shorts and have hairy legs. Since I wear slacks even as casualwear, that's not a problem for me, and it shouldn't be for the bluejeans set, either. Being able to position myself perfectly to the computer, have my back in just the right place, not have it squeaking under me like the POS I'm sitting in right now, I was easily twice as productive just from the chair, because I could stay comfortable and focused for longer.
Second, don't lock people in their own offices, and don't put them out in one big pile of desks or cubicles. Most development is done by multiple people anyway, so put two people per (spatious) office, specifically two people who are working on the same or related projects. It's nice to be able to ask the guy a question about what he's doing by turning around rather than walking down the hall. It's also nice to be able to take an impromptu break and chat with him about whatever is on my mind for ten minutes, then get back to work. If you're going to be doing any team-development (eg, eXtreme Programming) anyway, this will make things logistically so much easier, while still balancing socialization potential and get-the-hell-away-from-me-while-I'm-working behavior.
I'd also suggest some decorations. I used to spend a fair amount of time just looking at the map of the city that was posted over the water cooler, just for the hell of it. The ability to zone out at a painting, tapestry, poster, or something that requires brainpower to process (complex patterns) is very good exercise for the brain, just as it is for a baby's brain. Maybe some of those computer-generated 3D poster things?:-)
The last company I was at, I arrived only shortly after the VP of IT. (The company had maybe 20 people.) I liked him. His basic attitude was that he was the representative of the IT team to the CEO, and his job was to work with us to see that stuff got done and to keep the CEO away from us. He had his problems, like having a new great idea for where that stupid bug I was trying to track down might be every frickin' day, but I respected him for his "bottom up" style. He was our representative and leader, not our "boss".
Of course, the CEO didn't like that, which is, I believe, why he was fired about a month and a half after I got there. The CEO wanted a yes-man mouth piece who would see to it that we were broken into generating the response numbers he wanted, not tell him what the rest of us knew full well, that his interpretation of the numbers was asinine and counter-productive.
(I lasted about another month after that before I was canned as well. Wheee!)
Before you interview ANYONE, speak to your upper management and make sure you and they are on the same page about what you're looking for. What you want is someone who will go to bat for you and keep upper management and customers out of your way. The CEO may want the same, or he may be looking for someone he can give a directive to who will then crack the whip on the rest of you to do it. If you don't figure that out now, you're going to only scare away potential good managers and the person you get will be so torn and confused that they won't be able to do a good job for anyone.
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The whole point of the GPL is specifically to allow that sort of sharing and cross pollination. The inability to do that in proprietary code is why Free Software exists in the first place.
As long as you're giving due credit where credit is due (technically not required by the GPL, but I would consider it only honorable), then you're in the right. If the other guy doesn't like it, then his beef is with the way Free Software works in the fist place, not with you specifically.
Yes. Hey, it could be worse:
I for one, welcome our new digital signature questioning overlords.
Only old Koreans don't question digital signatures.
In Soviet Russia, digital signatures question you!
How can I know if those are Natalie Porman's grits, if they aren't digitally signed?
You forgot "imagine a beowulf cluster of signed articles."
That's how a lot of Free Software gets written. Go home, code up something useful, stick it on SourceForge, put it on your resume. You get a line on your resume, the world gets (hopefully) good code. Or help out on some existing project as a bug fixer, documentation person, fringe features (or mainline features if you're that good), etc.
Just because you don't get an immediate paycheck for it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.
You have purchased something. A license to play the game on the terms and conditions that are told to you by the company.
No, I purchased (gave money for) a CD that included the game on it. I was not informed of any other conditions on the usage of that piece of pressed plastic until after the sale was over, and I was no longer permitted to refuse the agreement. That makes makes EULAs dispicable. I am NOT "told the terms and conditions of usage by the company" until after the sale transaction is completed.
Of course, the very idea of "terms and conditions of usage" violates the doctrine of First Sale. I paid for it, now go away and let me use it as a coaster if I want, dagnabbit!
(Note: I am using "I" here for argument's sake, although I myself have not purchased or played HL2 and don't intend to, specifically because of this sort of underhanded BS on the part of Valve/Steam. I also don't use Windows XP for the same reason.)
I still won't buy Half-Life 2. Sure, it looks cool, and from what I've seen/heard will likely be a better game than Doom 3. I don't care. It's DRM-restricted. My computer has to spy on me and report back to the mother ship before I can even play single player. That Is Wrong. I will not support it.
Boycott Steam!
Damnit! What are they doing sticking real pr0n into our gadget pr0n! Get out of the way, Mrs. Clause, I'm trying to see the gadgets. Besides, I don't go for married women.
For those who don't know what this is (I didn't), Intel's writeup on it is here. It doesn't look completely evil, but then it is their own marketing docs. Anandtech's writeup is similarly positive, more or less.
If that's not "creative" enough, find some Technics Lego. That stuff is neat to play with, too!
:-)
:-)
I have to second the call for Lego Technic. I had much fun with those when I was younger. Even if the kid (does need to be at least about 8-9 to deal with them properly) just follows the directions and doesn't make anything new, he'll get to see how basic mechanics work up close without any danger of working with "real" fanbelts and motors and such. You can learn a great deal building a Technic car or motorocycle for far less cost and risk than building a real car or motorcycle.
I recall my major Technic custom project was a Borg arm that I could stick up my sleeve and control via the battery pack tucked into the sleeve. It just opened and closed a gripper arm on the end, but it looked wicked cool, and of course required me to do a lot of design work getting the motion of the spinning motor down the length of this contraption to the gears to turn the hinge to open and close the arm. Ah, good times.
Even better was the shareware version of Warcraft II. My favorites:
;-) Or I ended up buying it, at any rate.
Human Footman: "In the full version, I'm much funnier."
Orc Peon: "You go buy full version now." "You buy full version.. pleeeease???" "You buy full version or I sing. Yah yah yah yah..."
Keeping the orc from singing was reason enough to buy the full game, methinks.
It's the need for insta-polls and immediate results and such on the part of the voting populace that, in part, caused the mess of the 2000 election. Everyone wanted to know NOW who won each state, so the networks call elections the instant the polls close. Of course, they forgot that some of Floria's polls close later. Did that affect the turnout in those areas? Maybe. But it also meant that suddenly everyone ASSUMED Gore carried Florida.
Then when Fox News decided to call Florida for Bush instead, just to be biased about it, everyone suddenly reversed it and called the election for Bush, and with it the national results. So everyone ASSUMED that Bush was President-Elect.
Then the recount mess began, and it APPEARED that Gore had lost but was whining about it. In fact, THE ELECTION WAS NOT OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED YET. But because people wanted a reality TV show instead of real news, and the networks of course gave it to them, public perception was screwed to hell. That's what caused the mess in 2000, more than anything else.
You'll find out who won tomorrow morning. Or more likely, you'll find out which states are being contested due to election fraud tomorrow morning. Don't encourage the 3 ring circus.
Funny, I thought Trek died when DS9 turned into a horrid soap opera that revolved around Sisko being a demi-god with writing that wasn't even internally consistent, much less good.
Then I thought Trek died when every third episode of Voyager was "7 learns to be human thanks to time travel".
Then I thought Trek died when the best example of Enterprise was "Let's find some way to get the Vulcan chick nekkid on camera."
Then I thought Trek died when to improve ratings they ran off to fight the terrorists in the Bermuda Triangle in Space.
Then I thought Trek died when the terrorist plot (Xindii) was word for word predictable based on a thousand scripts before it in a thousand different genres.
Then I thought Trek died when the best they could come up with for the season finale of Enterprise was "We've done aliens and they're bad guys, Nazis aren't cool enough as bad guys, so how about aliens AND Nazis!"
So I figure if Star Trek is a cat, then it has to die three more times under Rick Berman's leadership (and I use the term very loosely) before it will finally be put to bed. Given the rumored plans for Enterprise Season 4, that should be "Shatner returns!", "Spiner returns!", and "Temporal Cold War Part 31!" After that, Trek should be dead by any possible metric.
I grew up on Star Trek, I love Star Trek, I learned a love of science from Star Trek. Berman is not writing Star Trek, he's writing crap. Fire his ass, give it a rest for a few years, then bring in a new staff of professional writers who have a clue. They're out there, Berman just doesn't know how to find them.
Are some outlets of this trash slanted? Sure...a little. Fox is biased toward conservatives and CNN is biased toward liberals...but not to a HUGE degree on either side.
You're talking about the FOX News that begins broadcasts by counting down the number of days "until you get to re-elect George W. Bush". That's more than a little biased. That's criminal false advertising when they claim to be "fair and impartial".
"Linux does not exist" --SCO
"SCO's case does not exist" --IBM
Coming soon...
"SCO does not exist" --Wall Street
I hear ya, but let me try to explain why it IS important.
:-)
Remote working.
Two words: X Forwarding.
Oh yeah, Windows doesn't have that, 10 years after the *nix world got it. *pats his Linux box*
Seriously, though, I do understand where remote access to a document can be useful and necessary. But that doesn't require turning the entire computer into the Web Browser That Ate Tokyo, when in fact the majority of users and applications don't need that level of complexity. If you want to have an extra browser plugin or module or KPart that lets you edit a word processing document from within the read-only-based interface of your web browser, eh, ok. But for my use, having my word processor cluttered with web bookmarks and a reload button and other "web browser" functionality is a hinderence to me getting my job done. And I do work for an Internet company.
Ironically KParts, which is what makes the integration of Konqueror possible, could be handled to make both worlds possible without causing craploads of problems. Assuming they separate the tight file browser / web browser coupling first so that it doesn't end up hindering the rest of the system. (Aside from that problem, I absolutely love the work the KDE folks do.)
Yes, Word is a pile. I hate it. It can be sorta tamed if you play with the settings to turn most things off. (Really on Windows I use it as a glorified text editor to add spelling and grammar checking that's it. Of course, these days I use KWord for the same thing.) Everyone I support (ie, family) hates it even more than I do.
But the solution is NOT to build everything into the web browser! Please, people, get over it. A web browser is for displaying WEB PAGES. My letter to my senator is NOT a web page. Just because something uses XML doesn't mean that it's a web page, or need have anything to do with the web.
Maybe XForms would make a good standardized office file format. Maybe OASIS (aka OO.org's format) would be better. I don't know the technical details well enough to say, but since they're both open XML formats I'm cool with either one.
But dear god I want a SEPARATE PROGRAM for my word processing. I want my web browser to browse the web. I want my file manager to manage my files. I want my word processor to process words. Sure, they can all link to the same XML parser library behind the scenes, but I don't want there to be ANY confusion at the application level about what the program is doing.
Konqueror has started to get confused in KDE 3.x between how it should behave when it's a file browser and when it's a web browser, which is bad enough. I do NOT want my word processor to suffer the same fate. I refuse to open a web browser to do LOCAL work.
If I wanted "one bloated ugly program to do everything even if it's not designed for it", I'd skip X and just install emacs. (*dons flame retardant suit* I don't use vi either, don't worry!)
Bottom line: Use whatever open file format works best for the word processor of tomorrow, but keep the bloody web browser out of it. I'm not interested in pointless bloat and interface methods that don't make any sense in context.
Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)
:-)
Try Qt. In its current version (v3.x), the GUI and non-GUI APIs are somewhat merged, but v4 (currently in progress, due out soon) is supposed to have full separation between the two. Even now, it still works. It's write-once, compile-anywhere (Linux, Windows, Mac), GPLed if you're writing GPLed code for Linux or Mac, and has an OO library and design that is simply gorgeous. It's like C++ done by people who worship Java but hate Swing.
KDE, Opera, and various others use Qt, so you HAVE seen it in action.
For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.
If you're doing web apps, definitely look at PHP. I use it for all of my web work, and love it. The new PHP5 has a reworked object model that is very Java-ish, but also has a lot of other features that make life simpler. I've also started using their Smarty template engine, which is a godsend (a web front end IS a GUI, just a different kind of GUI), and there's a huge online archive of code you can use in the PEAR archive.
Maybe this is a good thing. The faster and tighter the corporate totalitarian monkeys lock down, the better the chance that people will notice the change and rebel against it. Better than taking generations to slowly pervert the society the way the Olympics have been perverted.
Hey, corporate stooge! Please start banning all unapproved T-shirts (if it doesn't say the home team's name on it, you can't wear it) at baseball games in the US NOW! Think of the advertising revenue!
And think of the anti-corporate backlash it will create, and how desperately needed that is.
I've been running my own mail account off of my own domain for about 2.5 years now, and I don't regret it. I do have the catch-all set to dump to my personal account, and it's not been a major problem. Most of the spam I get is addressed to a "real" address (either mine or one of my older accounts I have forwarded to me), and there's a lot of that, so the amount I get from the catch-all is negligible.
:-)
In practice, actually, most of the spam-related stuff I get is mail bounces attempting to a random address with a faked from line of 63745624573@mydomain.com (or something like that). I really should look into implementing SenderID, but that would require hosting the server myself on a my dynamic IP instead of letting my web host take care of it.
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, and I don't know why no one has mentioned it yet, but even more impressive than apt-get for me is Debian's debconf. At any time, you can rerun the install wizard by typing dpkg-reconfigure packagename, and it will take care, cleanly, of making whatever changes you need to the package. It's configurable from "Ask me everything" to "I don't know what I'm doing", but defaults are very intelligent and it takes most of the mystery out of most things, as well as the manual config file editing.
:-)
God I love Debian.
The other big thing Linux needs to survive (other than Quicken and TurboTax) is Office VBA compatibility. In the Enterprise, this is essential. There are plenty of BASICs out there, why hasn't OO.org incorporated one of them?
Because mixing executable code into a user-writable file is precisely how we ended up with a world full of macro viruses. That is a huge leap backward, and OO would be stupid to encourage that sort of self-destructive behavior.
A business that can't survive without making life easy for virus writers doesn't deserve to survive.
Wow, they're quick. Isn't this like half the time between KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2?
That said, *drool*. My main interests in KDE 3.3 is full groupware support in Kontact, a working Kopete, and hopefully some stability cleanups. I look forward to every KDE release, as each one blows me away with how well done it is from an overall design perspective.
Don't frame the comment as, "I'm counter culture and don't like things everyone else finds adaquate." Frame it as "I have special needs, needs that your competition is happy to meet."
I don't consider proper security to be a "special need". IE is a big gaping security hole. There is NO reason why a bank should support it and it only. (Honestly, what does a bank site need that other browsers don't have if their coders are at least moderately intelligent?)
The ability to use a web browser that is not riddled with security holes that make it a threat to your financial existence just to use it is not a special need. It is a basic need of anyone and everyone who uses an online banking system. The only people for whom that is not a case are those who are too ignorant to know better. (Ignorant in the sense of not knowing, not necessarily stupidity, although they can often come together.)
And if you're dumb enough to use a bank that works only with the big neon "Hack Me" sign that is IE, you get what you deserve. Find a bank that works with Mozilla or Konqueror and use those for banking instead.
Oh yes, and be sure to tell your old bank WHY you're closing your account with them. "You're only supporting Internet Explorer as a browser, so I'm not supporting you as a bank."
Not like they'll notice on personal accounts, but maybe if a business or three moves their accounts, they'll sit up and take notice.
Number one, splurge on Aeron chairs. I used one at a consulting job I was at last year. Dear GOD I want one. They only hurt if you're wearing shorts and have hairy legs. Since I wear slacks even as casualwear, that's not a problem for me, and it shouldn't be for the bluejeans set, either. Being able to position myself perfectly to the computer, have my back in just the right place, not have it squeaking under me like the POS I'm sitting in right now, I was easily twice as productive just from the chair, because I could stay comfortable and focused for longer.
:-)
Second, don't lock people in their own offices, and don't put them out in one big pile of desks or cubicles. Most development is done by multiple people anyway, so put two people per (spatious) office, specifically two people who are working on the same or related projects. It's nice to be able to ask the guy a question about what he's doing by turning around rather than walking down the hall. It's also nice to be able to take an impromptu break and chat with him about whatever is on my mind for ten minutes, then get back to work. If you're going to be doing any team-development (eg, eXtreme Programming) anyway, this will make things logistically so much easier, while still balancing socialization potential and get-the-hell-away-from-me-while-I'm-working behavior.
I'd also suggest some decorations. I used to spend a fair amount of time just looking at the map of the city that was posted over the water cooler, just for the hell of it. The ability to zone out at a painting, tapestry, poster, or something that requires brainpower to process (complex patterns) is very good exercise for the brain, just as it is for a baby's brain. Maybe some of those computer-generated 3D poster things?
The last company I was at, I arrived only shortly after the VP of IT. (The company had maybe 20 people.) I liked him. His basic attitude was that he was the representative of the IT team to the CEO, and his job was to work with us to see that stuff got done and to keep the CEO away from us. He had his problems, like having a new great idea for where that stupid bug I was trying to track down might be every frickin' day, but I respected him for his "bottom up" style. He was our representative and leader, not our "boss".
Of course, the CEO didn't like that, which is, I believe, why he was fired about a month and a half after I got there. The CEO wanted a yes-man mouth piece who would see to it that we were broken into generating the response numbers he wanted, not tell him what the rest of us knew full well, that his interpretation of the numbers was asinine and counter-productive.
(I lasted about another month after that before I was canned as well. Wheee!)
Before you interview ANYONE, speak to your upper management and make sure you and they are on the same page about what you're looking for. What you want is someone who will go to bat for you and keep upper management and customers out of your way. The CEO may want the same, or he may be looking for someone he can give a directive to who will then crack the whip on the rest of you to do it. If you don't figure that out now, you're going to only scare away potential good managers and the person you get will be so torn and confused that they won't be able to do a good job for anyone.