LOL! You know how you can select different front-ends for that assistant? I would almost consider a) paying money and b) using Office to have a BOFH front-end.
Me: "Where are my files?"
Assistant: "What's your username?"
digitaldiva.com still redirects to someplace on Microsoft's site, and I would say the URL is definitely a source of possible confusion. Who cares if Microsoft's person keeps calling themselves a "diva" or not (okay, we all care, but still)? As long as MICROS~1 has the domain, they will still be getting tons of hits from it.
Anyone remember the Adventure Game Toolkit? All the coding was done with numerical indices (ie, you told the compiler that ROOM 4 exited NORTH to ROOM 7) and a lot of the parser and things were hardcoded, but it was loads of fun. I actually had a significant portion of a game written, but then I switched to the incredibly superior Inform and my procrastinating habits finally caught up with me. I do intend to complete a game at some point though...
Gah! Die Slashcode die! It inserted an extra space in that link. Here's the real URL: http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=86&full =yes&ftpsite=ftp://metalab.unc.e du/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
Or maybe they were just trying to be compliant with Judge Kaplan's ruling...
it's like we're back in the Dark Ages and I'm some sort of black magician
Dude, we are magicians. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." An appropriate reading selection might also be A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Heh. This guy at work got ahold of a C64 in mint condition (unopened manuals!) and brought it in. We hooked it up to our 52" TV, which was quite a sight in itself, and all the engineers sort of congealed around it and we wrote this goofy program that "received alien transmissions from space". Unfortunately it was lost when someone tripped on the power cord, but I then ported it to a Java servlet. =)
It turned out to be our CEO's birthday and there was a party, so I hacked together a little animation program:
1 OFF = RND(4) * 15
5 GOTO 10
8 FOR I = 8 TO 0 STEP -1
9 GOTO 20
10 FOR I = 0 TO 9
20 N = 10 - I
30 FOR J = 1 TO N+OFF: PRINT " ";: NEXT J
40 FOR J = 1 TO (I*2)+1: PRINT "*";: NEXT J
50 PRINT
60 NEXT I
70 IF I > 1 THEN GOTO 8
490 IF RND(691)<.5 THEN PRINT:PRINT:PRINT " HAPPY BIRTHDAY
KIR!!!!":PRINT
494 C = RND(5) * 10
495 PRINT CHR$(150+C);
496 D = RND(6)*1000
497 FOR I=1 TO D:NEXT I
500 PRINT:PRINT:GOTO 1
It was very surreal to be coding BASIC on a C64 in the year 2000...
I do have to admit that I
kind of miss having to change the line numbers of about 30 lines when I had to squeeze in one more damn line and I was out of
available line numbers in that section of the code.;)
Heh... I remember being annoyed at GW-BASIC's RENUM command and thinking it was a tool for lesser coders who didn't plan ahead. Of course, I'm also pretty sure I actually stuck RENUM into one of my programs somewhere, so it reorganized itself during runtime...
The one thing you have to say about BASIC is that it was fun. I remember coding little games and stuff just for the fun of it. Then I went on to coding little games in C, and writing all sorts of other code in other buzzwordy languages. Yeah, it's enjoyable, but the thrill is gone most of the time.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
I'm actually running Xfce at this moment. My first experience with it was rather dismal. At the time I was on an Ultra 10 with 8bpp color and I simply couldn't get it to load correctly. Everything ran, but in monochrome, and after stealing every available color from my other apps. (Have I mentioned that I hate palettes?)
Anyway, at my new job I needed to choose a window manager. I like Enlightenment generally and run it on one of my boxes at home, simply because of its configurability. Unfortunately, this machine (an HP Kayak with 128MB) seems to have problems running efficiently, and since it uses Rambus we couldn't just run out and buy more RAM for cheap, and my machine would take close to 10 seconds to switch virtual screens. (Have I mentioned that I hate Intel?)
I decided to give Xfce another try and was incredibly pleased with the results. It had the first GUI configuration tool that didn't feel insulting to me (but that's probably just my fragile geek ego talking =), and it was smoother even than the excellent WindowMaker to set up through the dialogs.
I've got a few tweaks I'd like to make (remapping certain events, turning off session management), but this configuration has been running for months now without a hitch. And it's lightweight--almost no thrashing.
This guy completely leaves out the possibility (and if he is a MICROS~1 shill, he probably doesn't want to think of it) that if the price of Windows goes up, customers will simply stop buying it. Windows != the computer economy. iMacs are very popular in the mass market recently...
May I suggest that anyone interested in this read Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon. It's fiction, of course, but it deals in some detail with the effect of technology on Chinese politics.
Okay, yes, my First Post was pretty inane, but what did this one do to get smacked down so hard? Anyone care to enlighten me on why I received two -1s?
Okay, now that my first post is out of the way =), I have a few serious points to make. First, the article is right. In all the tech jobs I've held (okay, only 2, but still...) management tends to make the job less fun than if I were running things. That doesn't necessarily make it their fault, though. First, they do sometimes tend to make boneheaded moves based on incredibly silly considerations, from my POV, but that's a side issue from what I think is the main reason behind geek job satisfaction.
Although I manage to be one of the most cynical people I know at times, I still tend to be very idealistic when it comes to technology. Judging from the success of ideas such as free software, I would venture to guess that most of you do as well. Especially if it's something I'm interested in or know it's possible, I want to just go ahead and implement it. The problem is that management generally wants to "prioritize" (triage) and "just get it working for now". This may well be a valid view, but I'm practically unable to comprehend it.
So yes, managers ruin everything, but a large part of the problem may also be that we got these jobs precisely because we're good at and love what we're doing. That means we have an emotional stake in seeing things done The Right Way, and management may have other priorities ahead of The Right Way. I sometimes feel it would be better if we had jobs in other professions and left coding as a hobby, just so we wouldn't have this kind of conflict.
Um, no. You didn't read the agreement, did you? Here's an excerpt:
What You Promise
1. To pay for each installment of The Plant, and to pay each time you download it.
Nothing about the honor system, nothing about liking it. If you read the first part and didn't like it, don't read any more and don't pay, but you've already agreed to pay for the first part. It's as simple as that.
They did this at my high school and at every public library I've been to. I just turned it into a game to see how many distinct ways to bypass the "security" I could find and how fast I could get.
I can sit down at almost any "locked-down kiosk" and be completely in control within 10 seconds (a minute for the well-done ones). Take that, librarians! =)
...and I sincerely hope they don't phase out the ordinary Visor Deluxe in favor of these newer versions, for two reasons:
Color isn't that great. It sucks battery, it makes things less contrasty for reading in extreme lighting situations, and if it's anything like the Palm 3c's color, it's quite painful to look at for more than, say, 3 seconds.
Integrating it with the cell phone would be bad. It's the same reason I probably won't get the MP3 player module or one of those MP3 watches instead of my Rio. I believe in separating essential functions, so that if my Visor dies and loses my appointments, I can call the person and double-check the time, for example. If both the Visor and the phone die, well...
I got suspended from my high school for 5 days due to posters I put up in the aftermath of Columbine (I was in the Jefferson County school district at the time).
After that, I skipped my senior year, got my GED, and now have a great job at a California startup. Now I just shake my head sadly as I hear about each "new study" or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
Me: "Where are my files?"
Assistant: "What's your username?"
I like the X selection mechanism.
Mod that up! Best one I heard yet...
So encrypt from stdin. Duh.
The real Slim Shady.
snicker
how is that different from what i said?
digitaldiva.com still redirects to someplace on Microsoft's site, and I would say the URL is definitely a source of possible confusion. Who cares if Microsoft's person keeps calling themselves a "diva" or not (okay, we all care, but still)? As long as MICROS~1 has the domain, they will still be getting tons of hits from it.
Anyone remember the Adventure Game Toolkit? All the coding was done with numerical indices (ie, you told the compiler that ROOM 4 exited NORTH to ROOM 7) and a lot of the parser and things were hardcoded, but it was loads of fun. I actually had a significant portion of a game written, but then I switched to the incredibly superior Inform and my procrastinating habits finally caught up with me. I do intend to complete a game at some point though...
Worldviews come crashing down...
Like what?
Just look at the exchange rates.
Or maybe they were just trying to be compliant with Judge Kaplan's ruling...
Dude, we are magicians. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." An appropriate reading selection might also be A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .
It turned out to be our CEO's birthday and there was a party, so I hacked together a little animation program:
1 OFF = RND(4) * 15
5 GOTO 10
8 FOR I = 8 TO 0 STEP -1
9 GOTO 20
10 FOR I = 0 TO 9
20 N = 10 - I
30 FOR J = 1 TO N+OFF: PRINT " ";: NEXT J
40 FOR J = 1 TO (I*2)+1: PRINT "*";: NEXT J
50 PRINT
60 NEXT I
70 IF I > 1 THEN GOTO 8
490 IF RND(691)<.5 THEN PRINT:PRINT:PRINT " HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIR!!!!":PRINT
494 C = RND(5) * 10
495 PRINT CHR$(150+C);
496 D = RND(6)*1000
497 FOR I=1 TO D:NEXT I
500 PRINT:PRINT:GOTO 1
It was very surreal to be coding BASIC on a C64 in the year 2000...
Heh... I remember being annoyed at GW-BASIC's RENUM command and thinking it was a tool for lesser coders who didn't plan ahead. Of course, I'm also pretty sure I actually stuck RENUM into one of my programs somewhere, so it reorganized itself during runtime...
The one thing you have to say about BASIC is that it was fun. I remember coding little games and stuff just for the fun of it. Then I went on to coding little games in C, and writing all sorts of other code in other buzzwordy languages. Yeah, it's enjoyable, but the thrill is gone most of the time.
Here's a thought. I, at least, remember the line-number BASICs with great fondness, and apparently so do a lot of us. Do you think that's because BASIC had some properties that made it fun to hack in (I do) or that it's just because most of us were pretty young when we did that and this is just your standard nostalgia?
Anyway, at my new job I needed to choose a window manager. I like Enlightenment generally and run it on one of my boxes at home, simply because of its configurability. Unfortunately, this machine (an HP Kayak with 128MB) seems to have problems running efficiently, and since it uses Rambus we couldn't just run out and buy more RAM for cheap, and my machine would take close to 10 seconds to switch virtual screens. (Have I mentioned that I hate Intel?)
I decided to give Xfce another try and was incredibly pleased with the results. It had the first GUI configuration tool that didn't feel insulting to me (but that's probably just my fragile geek ego talking =), and it was smoother even than the excellent WindowMaker to set up through the dialogs.
I've got a few tweaks I'd like to make (remapping certain events, turning off session management), but this configuration has been running for months now without a hitch. And it's lightweight--almost no thrashing.
This guy completely leaves out the possibility (and if he is a MICROS~1 shill, he probably doesn't want to think of it) that if the price of Windows goes up, customers will simply stop buying it. Windows != the computer economy. iMacs are very popular in the mass market recently...
<spoiler>
Gur jubyr cbvag bs Gur Tvire jnf gung gur fbpvnyvfg fbpvrgl jnf bccerffvat gur vaqvivqhnyf naq xvyyvat onovrf, naq gung vg jnf n Tbbq Guvat jura gur vaqvivqhny oebxr njnl.
Vapvqragnyyl, V qvq jbaqre jung nobegvba nqibpngrf gubhtug nobhg gur xvyyvat onovrf cneg. Gb zlfrys, ng yrnfg (qvfpynvzre: fgebatyl ntnvafg nobegvba), vg jbhyq frrz n ovg pybfr sbe pbzsbeg.
</spoiler>
May I suggest that anyone interested in this read Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon. It's fiction, of course, but it deals in some detail with the effect of technology on Chinese politics.
Okay, yes, my First Post was pretty inane, but what did this one do to get smacked down so hard? Anyone care to enlighten me on why I received two -1s?
Although I manage to be one of the most cynical people I know at times, I still tend to be very idealistic when it comes to technology. Judging from the success of ideas such as free software, I would venture to guess that most of you do as well. Especially if it's something I'm interested in or know it's possible, I want to just go ahead and implement it. The problem is that management generally wants to "prioritize" (triage) and "just get it working for now". This may well be a valid view, but I'm practically unable to comprehend it.
So yes, managers ruin everything, but a large part of the problem may also be that we got these jobs precisely because we're good at and love what we're doing. That means we have an emotional stake in seeing things done The Right Way, and management may have other priorities ahead of The Right Way. I sometimes feel it would be better if we had jobs in other professions and left coding as a hobby, just so we wouldn't have this kind of conflict.
Nothing about the honor system, nothing about liking it. If you read the first part and didn't like it, don't read any more and don't pay, but you've already agreed to pay for the first part. It's as simple as that.
I can sit down at almost any "locked-down kiosk" and be completely in control within 10 seconds (a minute for the well-done ones). Take that, librarians! =)
After that, I skipped my senior year, got my GED, and now have a great job at a California startup. Now I just shake my head sadly as I hear about each "new study" or whatever.