As opposed to a long-term project plan, where the work is laid out in detail for the entire project, SCRUM and XP say that you only plan in detail for your immediate set of work (vast simplification). Then after you finish that work, you replan.
Even so I am sure that there is in fact a long-term plan at some higher management level.
SCRUM appears to simply be focusing on the most granular level of the breakdown of project elements and responsibilities.
The lowest level team leaders in a large project often do not have the "big picture" and simply work off of a list very much as described in SCRUM.
I would say this book is (essentially) equivalent to a chapter or two from large scale project management methodology.
Am I missing something?
Not to troll but, other than a few different labels for things, I fail to see how this is any different from standard project management procedures that have been around for decades...?
Well done review though! We need more like that!:)
Registration issues not withstanding, I've had good luck getting TurboTax to run under Wine.
(And besides, they've repented, why keep bitching about it? They do a good job.)
Get into tech and make it pay for itself in a few years; you wouldn't be the first, and sure wouldn't be the last.:)
I'll say. I had lots of tech knowledge from misc hacking while in high-school but didn't have anything I could put on a resume' so I joined the USAF for three years (minimum to get GI benefits) and wrote/phrased my resume' in such a way that, without actually lying, anyone reading it would assume that my knowledge had been gained in the service.
It worked out great! I'm taking night-classes for my MBA right now...
There have been several replies already saying "give them a different browser". However, reading the request, it is quite clearly stated that changes to the client machine are not desireable due to the support time involved.
So shaddap about the browsers already!!:)
But, back to the question at hand, I'm afraid that blocking at the ISP level will be:
A - fairly difficult due to obfuscations. The ISP really isn't going to be doing anything different than a normal pop-up blocking mechanism at the client would in terms of figuring out what is or is not pop-up code and the pop-up people (insert scary mental image here) are already doing their level best to defeat that.
B - potentially a legal problem as any blocking mechanism that the ISP implements at the network level will, in effect, be interfering with the clients' "communication" with the website in question. The FCC might have something to say about that.
However, I'm sure there could be a way to set up a database and have people opt-in for pop-up blocking service. IANAL but I would think that them actually requesting such service would clear most legal hurdles.
As for solutions, I wonder how hard it would be to extract the relevant code from Open Source browsers and make a little routine to rewrite/replace scripts on the fly...? It would almost have to be a proxy though so you could track (and allow) pop-ups which were actually requested.
I'll second the zen alarm clocks. They're a bit pricey (>$100 for some) but I always had trouble waking up until I got one of them.
Another option is have an X-10 module gradually turn on a halogen lamp. "Good morning merry sunshine!"
As long as your browser session is still active (and I never close it:) you can go back to the page-state when it allowed you to mod.
You can then go ahead and mod whereupon you receive a warning stating that your comments will be removed, which would be fine in this case because I hadn't commented anywhere else in this article. Et voila'!
1 - the caps should be code anywhere that your average surge protector is. The catch is that the manner of installation must also follow code and that varies from place to place. Your friendly local electrical contractor should be able to tell you what you need to know though.
Also helps to have a couple MOV's to catch spikes.
Or, more conveniently, at least one surge protector (which contain MOV's, among other things) plugged into each phase all by itself.
This may involve adding an outlet for this sole purpose as there are cases where all the outlets were on one phase! It is well worth it though as the surge protectors will catch a lot of transients and will usually absorb a real surge/spike (via MOV's) before it kills your X10 modules. Cheap insurance...
That said, the bridging capacitor also does a very good job of filtering both phases even if you don't need it for anything else (see below).
2 - you're not supposed to have more than one X10 receiver on the same housecode!
One trick (which also takes care of the phase problem) is to just have different housecodes on each phase.
It also helps a lot if you can put the receivers somewhere up in your attic (or basement) so you can reduce the maximum number of walls/floors between them and the remotes.
3 - all X10 devices transmit at 5v.
If you have something transmitting at less than 4.5v then it is defective and you should be calling and getting it repaired/replaced or your money back.
4 - your own weather station is totally the way to go if you need/want accurate and up-to-the-minute data. Just be sure to stream that data over wireless (or direct serial connection) rather than X10.
As someone who has overcome most of those obstacles myself I have to say your objections are, while not necessarily trivial, not insurmountable for the average hardware hacker either:
how about the fact you need to interface tons of input sensors and occupancy sensors (not motion detectors) Motion sensors actually do help with that, the trick is to pay attention to the IR level as well as the state change.
plus be able to RELIABLY control the important things like heat? a RS485 thermostat is $300.00 for the el-cheapo one. the X10 thermostat from RCS is an absolute piece of junk. Reliability on X10 is difficult, I must admit. The key here is to use the more intelligent modules from Leviton and read the current status back after you send a command.
plus you can easily overwhelm your X10 system in the house if you have lots of modules and command consoles.. How big is your house dude?!? Unless you're trying to do something insanely stupid like real-time streaming data from a full-fledged weather station over X10 or something?!? Send your streaming data over 802.11b and let X10 do what it was designed to do...
oh and you had a $200.00 bridge and repeater installed right? Err, no, all you need is a $10 capacitor from your friendly local electronics surplus place to bridge your phases. (X10 even has instructions on their site fer crissakes).
X10 doesn't work work a crap without that. The $10 capacitor has always worked for me and I've done this with several peoples' houses now. Just Google for it and you'll find several dozen sites all telling you the same thing.
Err, you have tried solving some of these problems, right? Or were you just posting to see if somebody would respond...?
(Okay, moving right along before somebody decides to mod me flamebait.:)
Let's add in the weather station so the house can wake you 30 minutes early because of the snowstorm last night or alert you that the cover on the hot-tub has blown off because of high winds. The weather is picked up from the Internet free, and anything physical you care about that much (like the garage door:) just needs a sensor or two with a polling cycle. (Never trust X10 to receive an unexpected signal reliably. Always purchase/fab sensors to be pollable!)
a few X10 modules and misterhouse is NOT a home automation system. Well okay, you are technically correct here, but a few X10 modules and Linux box can be!:)
"Ralsky admits using open relays and virus-infected PCs and not honoring unsubscribe lists."
Unless we're reading different articles (I read both of the ones linked) he only admits to using open relays and he specifically states that he does honor unsubscribe requests.
As for virus-infected PC's the closest he comes to anything even remotely resembling that is this quote: "I have changed the way we mail totally," he said. The spam fighters, he added, "have no idea what I'm mailing. They could never pinpoint it and say this is from Al Ralsky."
So WTF...?
(Not to say I wouldn't like to see him burn in hell though:).
One of our technicians pulls his ethernet plug out of his computer before reading his email every day (he downloads it to local folders before reading)
WTF is he using for an email client?!? Every one I've ever used (dozens) has an option to prompt you before sending the receipt.
You obviously don't conduct any significant or time-sensitive business transactions via email.
Read-receipts are actually quite useful! Kind of like the transmission log on a fax...
I actually found the comments following the article to be more interesting/informative. Unfortunately I can't get them to list out all at once or I'd post them.
Why the heck is the parent modded Troll not once, but twice!?!? If anything it should be Informative or Insightful.
Here is the text of the parent post so the content doesn't get modded into oblivion:
Re:Hmm (Score:0, Troll) by Zeinfeld (263942) on Friday December 05, @06:58PM (#7643963) (http://slashdot.org/) Would have been nice to define a not-often-used word in the article so we all don't have to dig...
The term comes from an election (in Chicago?) where the mayor (Gerry) came up with a set of fixed boundaries, one of which was in the shape of a salamander (lizard). Hence gerymander.
Any experienced pol will tall you that this type of trickery has a much bigger impact on an election than outright fixing of the polls. The way to cheat is by fixing the rules and by keeping opposing voters from the polls. During seggregation that is exactly how they stopped black people voting in Missisippi, any black man who dared to vote was liable to be lynched. The KKK and the police would man roadblocks to keep blacks from the polls and then there were the litteracy tests.
One of the big impacts on the Florida outcome was the state law that prohibits someone who has ever been convicted of a fellony from ever voting. This is another holdover from seggragation, litteracy tests were struck down but not felony disenfranchisement even though the intent (and effect) was largely the same - disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.
Click on my sig and you will see an article by a UK journalist who is one of the few who reported on this aspect of the Florida fix at the time the fix was in.
The answer BTW is not to try to fix the system to make it harder to gerrymander, change the electoral system to Single Transferable Vote and multi-member constituencies. That way you also create a way for the minor parties to be represented. With the increasing corruption of the Republican party Democrats should seriously consider this even if only as a self-interested move.
Regardless, there is a better way to get Tom DeLay and King George out of office. Get so many voters to the polls to vote against them that it does not matter how they try to rig the vote, they fail.
If you mod me redundant then please have the courtesy to mod the parent back up.
If it's just a front end, what do you suppose runs behind it? According to their docs, the "databases" can be read both on Linux and on Zaurus.
As you just said, it's a front end. What you have behind it is up to you. Kind of like using MS-Access with a SQL backend and not having any of the tables in Access.
Heck, they even both support ODBC!:)
Or were you really asking something else and I misunderstood the question...?
Military is a good idea but I would recommend USAF simply because A - it looks better on a resume' B - they have a wider variety of systems C - you don't risk getting stuck on a ship (though you might end up in Omaha, NE or Thule, AL or somesuch:)
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to a long-term project plan, where the work is laid out in detail for the entire project, SCRUM and XP say that you only plan in detail for your immediate set of work (vast simplification). Then after you finish that work, you replan.
:)
Even so I am sure that there is in fact a long-term plan at some higher management level.
SCRUM appears to simply be focusing on the most granular level of the breakdown of project elements and responsibilities.
The lowest level team leaders in a large project often do not have the "big picture" and simply work off of a list very much as described in SCRUM.
I would say this book is (essentially) equivalent to a chapter or two from large scale project management methodology.
(Must be written by a Brit too, "Scrum"...?
Am I missing something?
:)
Not to troll but, other than a few different labels for things, I fail to see how this is any different from standard project management procedures that have been around for decades...?
Well done review though!
We need more like that!
Ah lakh it lakh that...!
Registration issues not withstanding, I've had good luck getting TurboTax to run under Wine.
(And besides, they've repented, why keep bitching about it? They do a good job.)
Not misleading at all. RTFA! :)
However, I would be curious to see the poster in question. Anybody have a link to a screen shot?
Get into tech and make it pay for itself in a few years; you wouldn't be the first, and sure wouldn't be the last. :)
I'll say. I had lots of tech knowledge from misc hacking while in high-school but didn't have anything I could put on a resume' so I joined the USAF for three years (minimum to get GI benefits) and wrote/phrased my resume' in such a way that, without actually lying, anyone reading it would assume that my knowledge had been gained in the service.
It worked out great! I'm taking night-classes for my MBA right now...
once you start filtering - you loose your common carrier status :).
Good point! I hadn't though of that little twist. (I am obviously NAISP either
There have been several replies already saying "give them a different browser". However, reading the request, it is quite clearly stated that changes to the client machine are not desireable due to the support time involved. :)
So shaddap about the browsers already!!
But, back to the question at hand, I'm afraid that blocking at the ISP level will be:
A - fairly difficult due to obfuscations. The ISP really isn't going to be doing anything different than a normal pop-up blocking mechanism at the client would in terms of figuring out what is or is not pop-up code and the pop-up people (insert scary mental image here) are already doing their level best to defeat that.
B - potentially a legal problem as any blocking mechanism that the ISP implements at the network level will, in effect, be interfering with the clients' "communication" with the website in question. The FCC might have something to say about that.
However, I'm sure there could be a way to set up a database and have people opt-in for pop-up blocking service. IANAL but I would think that them actually requesting such service would clear most legal hurdles.
As for solutions, I wonder how hard it would be to extract the relevant code from Open Source browsers and make a little routine to rewrite/replace scripts on the fly...? It would almost have to be a proxy though so you could track (and allow) pop-ups which were actually requested.
I'll second the zen alarm clocks. They're a bit pricey (>$100 for some) but I always had trouble waking up until I got one of them.
Another option is have an X-10 module gradually turn on a halogen lamp. "Good morning merry sunshine!"
As long as your browser session is still active (and I never close it :) you can go back to the page-state when it allowed you to mod.
You can then go ahead and mod whereupon you receive a warning stating that your comments will be removed, which would be fine in this case because I hadn't commented anywhere else in this article. Et voila'!
Couple things:
1 - the caps should be code anywhere that your average surge protector is. The catch is that the manner of installation must also follow code and that varies from place to place. Your friendly local electrical contractor should be able to tell you what you need to know though.
Also helps to have a couple MOV's to catch spikes.
Or, more conveniently, at least one surge protector (which contain MOV's, among other things) plugged into each phase all by itself.
This may involve adding an outlet for this sole purpose as there are cases where all the outlets were on one phase! It is well worth it though as the surge protectors will catch a lot of transients and will usually absorb a real surge/spike (via MOV's) before it kills your X10 modules. Cheap insurance...
That said, the bridging capacitor also does a very good job of filtering both phases even if you don't need it for anything else (see below).
2 - you're not supposed to have more than one X10 receiver on the same housecode!
One trick (which also takes care of the phase problem) is to just have different housecodes on each phase.
It also helps a lot if you can put the receivers somewhere up in your attic (or basement) so you can reduce the maximum number of walls/floors between them and the remotes.
3 - all X10 devices transmit at 5v.
If you have something transmitting at less than 4.5v then it is defective and you should be calling and getting it repaired/replaced or your money back.
4 - your own weather station is totally the way to go if you need/want accurate and up-to-the-minute data. Just be sure to stream that data over wireless (or direct serial connection) rather than X10.
As someone who has overcome most of those obstacles myself I have to say your objections are, while not necessarily trivial, not insurmountable for the average hardware hacker either:
:)
:) just needs a sensor or two with a polling cycle. (Never trust X10 to receive an unexpected signal reliably. Always purchase/fab sensors to be pollable!)
:)
how about the fact you need to interface tons of input sensors and occupancy sensors (not motion detectors)
Motion sensors actually do help with that, the trick is to pay attention to the IR level as well as the state change.
plus be able to RELIABLY control the important things like heat? a RS485 thermostat is $300.00 for the el-cheapo one. the X10 thermostat from RCS is an absolute piece of junk.
Reliability on X10 is difficult, I must admit. The key here is to use the more intelligent modules from Leviton and read the current status back after you send a command.
plus you can easily overwhelm your X10 system in the house if you have lots of modules and command consoles..
How big is your house dude?!? Unless you're trying to do something insanely stupid like real-time streaming data from a full-fledged weather station over X10 or something?!? Send your streaming data over 802.11b and let X10 do what it was designed to do...
oh and you had a $200.00 bridge and repeater installed right?
Err, no, all you need is a $10 capacitor from your friendly local electronics surplus place to bridge your phases. (X10 even has instructions on their site fer crissakes).
X10 doesn't work work a crap without that.
The $10 capacitor has always worked for me and I've done this with several peoples' houses now. Just Google for it and you'll find several dozen sites all telling you the same thing.
Err, you have tried solving some of these problems, right? Or were you just posting to see if somebody would respond...?
(Okay, moving right along before somebody decides to mod me flamebait.
Let's add in the weather station so the house can wake you 30 minutes early because of the snowstorm last night or alert you that the cover on the hot-tub has blown off because of high winds.
The weather is picked up from the Internet free, and anything physical you care about that much (like the garage door
a few X10 modules and misterhouse is NOT a home automation system.
Well okay, you are technically correct here, but a few X10 modules and Linux box can be!
Valar: I set up my filtering system to keep a list of spammers. Then, everytime I get a spam, I forward it to every address on that list.
:)
:)
October_30th: You do realize that most spam headers are forged?
Valar: That's why it is funny
I guess people who actually buy stuff from spammers aren't the only morons...
"Ralsky admits using open relays and virus-infected PCs and not honoring unsubscribe lists."
:).
Unless we're reading different articles (I read both of the ones linked) he only admits to using open relays and he specifically states that he does honor unsubscribe requests.
As for virus-infected PC's the closest he comes to anything even remotely resembling that is this quote:
"I have changed the way we mail totally," he said. The spam fighters, he added, "have no idea what I'm mailing. They could never pinpoint it and say this is from Al Ralsky."
So WTF...?
(Not to say I wouldn't like to see him burn in hell though
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology...past anything.
I read the article but I don't see this paragraph anywhere. Is from some other link?
Just don't put all of your oggs in one basket...
:)
Ohmigawd that's funny!!
(In this context anyway.
If I get mod points any time soon I'll come back and mod you up!
One of our technicians pulls his ethernet plug out of his computer before reading his email every day (he downloads it to local folders before reading)
WTF is he using for an email client?!? Every one I've ever used (dozens) has an option to prompt you before sending the receipt.
Why couldn't they make a bootable downloadable iso image?
I dunno about everyone else but I like to make a backup copy of the old BIOS before I flash it. Can't do that very easily with a CD-only system...
You obviously don't conduct any significant or time-sensitive business transactions via email.
Read-receipts are actually quite useful! Kind of like the transmission log on a fax...
100Mb to your home?!? I want one of those! Who? Where?
$200 a month on toys? Just out of curiosity, how much credit card debt do you carry?
:)
If it's over, say, $50, then I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you can't afford $200/month for toys, either.
Damn, wish I had mod points right now. That's a fer-shure Funny/Insightful!
I actually found the comments following the article to be more interesting/informative. Unfortunately I can't get them to list out all at once or I'd post them.
Why the heck is the parent modded Troll not once, but twice!?!? If anything it should be Informative or Insightful.
Here is the text of the parent post so the content doesn't get modded into oblivion:
Re:Hmm (Score:0, Troll)
by Zeinfeld (263942) on Friday December 05, @06:58PM (#7643963)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Would have been nice to define a not-often-used word in the article so we all don't have to dig...
The term comes from an election (in Chicago?) where the mayor (Gerry) came up with a set of fixed boundaries, one of which was in the shape of a salamander (lizard). Hence gerymander.
Any experienced pol will tall you that this type of trickery has a much bigger impact on an election than outright fixing of the polls. The way to cheat is by fixing the rules and by keeping opposing voters from the polls. During seggregation that is exactly how they stopped black people voting in Missisippi, any black man who dared to vote was liable to be lynched. The KKK and the police would man roadblocks to keep blacks from the polls and then there were the litteracy tests.
One of the big impacts on the Florida outcome was the state law that prohibits someone who has ever been convicted of a fellony from ever voting. This is another holdover from seggragation, litteracy tests were struck down but not felony disenfranchisement even though the intent (and effect) was largely the same - disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.
Click on my sig and you will see an article by a UK journalist who is one of the few who reported on this aspect of the Florida fix at the time the fix was in.
The answer BTW is not to try to fix the system to make it harder to gerrymander, change the electoral system to Single Transferable Vote and multi-member constituencies. That way you also create a way for the minor parties to be represented. With the increasing corruption of the Republican party Democrats should seriously consider this even if only as a self-interested move.
Regardless, there is a better way to get Tom DeLay and King George out of office. Get so many voters to the polls to vote against them that it does not matter how they try to rig the vote, they fail.
If you mod me redundant then please have the courtesy to mod the parent back up.
If it's just a front end, what do you suppose runs behind it? According to their docs, the "databases" can be read both on Linux and on Zaurus.
:)
As you just said, it's a front end. What you have behind it is up to you. Kind of like using MS-Access with a SQL backend and not having any of the tables in Access.
Heck, they even both support ODBC!
Or were you really asking something else and I misunderstood the question...?
Military is a good idea but I would recommend USAF simply because :)
A - it looks better on a resume'
B - they have a wider variety of systems
C - you don't risk getting stuck on a ship (though you might end up in Omaha, NE or Thule, AL or somesuch