Also, many people research products on the web site and then pick up the phone to place the order. The web site supported the sale, but that fact can't be tracked to any individual web session.
Loband users are not easy to identify in web server access logs, at least by user agent string. Loband apparently echoes the original client browser's user agent string, with a request-specific (possibly random) floating-point number appended.
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 0.8801681055082656"
I guess you can look for the (Perl 5) pattern \s0\.\d{16}$, but why not just identify yourself as loband?
Several people have told me, "I'd like to banish TV from my home, but my spouse is addicted." The looks on their faces as they say this speak of weariness and longing.
Improvements in performance and application size are always welcome, but there are some important outside issues to consider when picking a platform for your project.
One is, how deep is the library? With Java or Perl, there are libraries of open-source tools such as Apache Jakarta Commons and CPAN that often mean that with a quick download an enhancement request is 80% done. All new platforms (naturally) have a disadvantage in the department.
Another is, how easy is it to find developers with applicable skills? If an organization commits to Ruby and their Ruby developer leaves, how hard will it be to find a suitable replacement? This is a problem for all platforms except the juggernauts like Java, but especially new platforms. Looking at this another way, a platform choice can be a multi-decade committment. Choose carefully.
So the summary of the summary of the summary is that software development doesn't take place in a vacuum. Ruby is the coolest scripting language ever, but I can't recommend it until I learn more about its library and community.
I sympathize. Our company's president told us to "copy and paste" our web site to create a web presence for our new European subsidiary. Not static brochure-ware, but a 3-tier Java web application that's been under development for three years.
When we begged for a meeting to get requirements, he said, "I will not submit to a grilling. Show me a fully functional 'draft' website to approve."
We met his deadline, using the Guess-and-Check methodology. A "fully functional" ten percent raise this year sounds about right to me.
In many organizations, IT is pure overhead, like building maintainance. Management has a natural bias against things that cost money but don't generate revenue, at least directly.
Not the entire picture, but a part of it in my experience.
Nothing particularly educational about it, but satellite radio gives you a lot of solid content and variety without having to work very hard to get it. Nothing to sync, you just turn it on and it's there.
No new language has much of a chance, historically speaking. The set of dominant languages changes very, very slowly. Organizations and individual developers have huge investments in their existing skill bases.
Searching monster.com, the keywords java, c++, perl, visual basic, and (regrettably) cobol all yield over a 1,000 hits each.
python finds 447 technology jobs, ruby language 2, but dylan none.
Python and Java are the only newer languages that beat Fortran and Pascal. monster.com is only one way to look for a programming job, but I think these numbers are representative.
Podcasting and satellite radio are ways to deliver topical content and new music to your ears without too much work.
Satellite radio has general news, talk, and live sports covered. The music channels give you essentially a self-updating playlist in a huge number of genres you'd never have time to keep up with on your own.
Podcasting offers the promise of very specialized topical content. Think of a talk show that covers very narrow areas of interest. Things much too specialized to ever be "broadcast".
Platform means less to me as time goes on. Part of my value as a technologist is that I can Make It Work on whatever platform they pick.
Don't misunderstand, I have my favorites and would weigh platform issues when considering a new job. But abandon an existing job over a platform switch? No.
Risque channels are well-labelled, and the general channels don't have to make heroic efforts to extirpate every last ${curseWord} from the music or conversation.
I used a Panera Bread hotspot last weekend to test my employer's new VPN client software. Needed an environment different from my home to isolate a problem.
Two cups of "Colombian Supremo Reserva del Patrón" later, well, I hadn't solved the problem, but I was certainly focused on it.
This insight suggests an experiment: give the wider community a way to mark extremist forums as such. Let everyone see which forums are considered nutty and by what share of the larger community.
Internet workstations definitely provide new kinds of distractions, but don't forget that people get distracted by lots of lower-tech things, too.
phone calls
office visitors
overhead pages
activity outside one's office
These distractions are multiplied if you share an office or work in a cubicle farm.
I Am Not A Psychologist, but managers have to manage. If you remove all computer distractions from the environment, bored people will just walk down the hall and chat with others. Conversely, if people are highly motivated (positively or negatively) they will ignore all kinds of distractions and focus on work.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, many people research products on the web site and then pick up the phone to place the order. The web site supported the sale, but that fact can't be tracked to any individual web session.
Loband users are not easy to identify in web server access logs, at least by user agent string. Loband apparently echoes the original client browser's user agent string, with a request-specific (possibly random) floating-point number appended.
"Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 0.8801681055082656"I guess you can look for the (Perl 5) pattern \s0\.\d{16}$, but why not just identify yourself as loband?
Several people have told me, "I'd like to banish TV from my home, but my spouse is addicted." The looks on their faces as they say this speak of weariness and longing.
I got a laptop with Unix instead of Windows without the need to seek a refund from Microsoft:
I got an Apple PowerBook.
The world is too complex and specialized to do this for every single topic. Things need to be engineered so that non-engineers can use them.
Improvements in performance and application size are always welcome, but there are some important outside issues to consider when picking a platform for your project.
One is, how deep is the library? With Java or Perl, there are libraries of open-source tools such as Apache Jakarta Commons and CPAN that often mean that with a quick download an enhancement request is 80% done. All new platforms (naturally) have a disadvantage in the department.
Another is, how easy is it to find developers with applicable skills? If an organization commits to Ruby and their Ruby developer leaves, how hard will it be to find a suitable replacement? This is a problem for all platforms except the juggernauts like Java, but especially new platforms. Looking at this another way, a platform choice can be a multi-decade committment. Choose carefully.
So the summary of the summary of the summary is that software development doesn't take place in a vacuum. Ruby is the coolest scripting language ever, but I can't recommend it until I learn more about its library and community.
I sympathize. Our company's president told us to "copy and paste" our web site to create a web presence for our new European subsidiary. Not static brochure-ware, but a 3-tier Java web application that's been under development for three years.
When we begged for a meeting to get requirements, he said, "I will not submit to a grilling. Show me a fully functional 'draft' website to approve."
We met his deadline, using the Guess-and-Check methodology. A "fully functional" ten percent raise this year sounds about right to me.
In many organizations, IT is pure overhead, like building maintainance. Management has a natural bias against things that cost money but don't generate revenue, at least directly.
Not the entire picture, but a part of it in my experience.
Nothing particularly educational about it, but satellite radio gives you a lot of solid content and variety without having to work very hard to get it. Nothing to sync, you just turn it on and it's there.
Call it "scrambling" instead of "encryption".
Let's see, automated downloads of Mozilla nightly build, $0. jEdit application download, $0. jEdit plugin installation, 12 time $0 equals $0. Download Skype client for evaluation purposes, $0.
Subtotal, $0. Tax, 5% of $0 equals $0.
Amount contributed to state coffers, $0.
No new language has much of a chance, historically speaking. The set of dominant languages changes very, very slowly. Organizations and individual developers have huge investments in their existing skill bases.
Searching monster.com, the keywords java, c++, perl, visual basic, and (regrettably) cobol all yield over a 1,000 hits each.
python finds 447 technology jobs, ruby language 2, but dylan none.
Python and Java are the only newer languages that beat Fortran and Pascal. monster.com is only one way to look for a programming job, but I think these numbers are representative.
Podcasting and satellite radio are ways to deliver topical content and new music to your ears without too much work.
Satellite radio has general news, talk, and live sports covered. The music channels give you essentially a self-updating playlist in a huge number of genres you'd never have time to keep up with on your own.
Podcasting offers the promise of very specialized topical content. Think of a talk show that covers very narrow areas of interest. Things much too specialized to ever be "broadcast".
Platform means less to me as time goes on. Part of my value as a technologist is that I can Make It Work on whatever platform they pick.
Don't misunderstand, I have my favorites and would weigh platform issues when considering a new job. But abandon an existing job over a platform switch? No.
XM satellite radio is fine the way it is.
Risque channels are well-labelled, and the general channels don't have to make heroic efforts to extirpate every last ${curseWord} from the music or conversation.
Sounds like a DRM opportunity to me:
I prefer head games with a traditional mouse.
I used a Panera Bread hotspot last weekend to test my employer's new VPN client software. Needed an environment different from my home to isolate a problem.
Two cups of "Colombian Supremo Reserva del Patrón" later, well, I hadn't solved the problem, but I was certainly focused on it.
Who is going to jail over this?
If the answer is "no one", then it will happen again.
This insight suggests an experiment: give the wider community a way to mark extremist forums as such. Let everyone see which forums are considered nutty and by what share of the larger community.
I loved that part where that guy had a gun and was pointing it at that other guy.
Internet workstations definitely provide new kinds of distractions, but don't forget that people get distracted by lots of lower-tech things, too.
These distractions are multiplied if you share an office or work in a cubicle farm.
I Am Not A Psychologist, but managers have to manage. If you remove all computer distractions from the environment, bored people will just walk down the hall and chat with others. Conversely, if people are highly motivated (positively or negatively) they will ignore all kinds of distractions and focus on work.
So BSD really is dying, or at least its logo is.
My name's not "Art"! Stop calling me that!
Just repeated the test I did when the Accoona search engine came out in 2004-12: a search on the name "Bill Clinton":
The top result on MSN search is from a .biz domain called The Nostradamus Mabus Project: In Search of the Anti-Christ. Anti-trust jokes aside, this is a crazy result, and makes anyone looking for serious information reach for the page down key immediately.
In contrast, the top result on Google is Bill Clinton's official White House biography.