Donaldson's "Gap" series was pretty depressing too - lots of anti-heros, a leading lady who spends half of the series being raped, etc. Yes, the series did get to a point in the end, but it's like wading through ten miles of sewers just to find an exit.
This book was clearly rushed to market for two reasons:
The Drupal coding standards are not adhered to when every single line should have been poured over for 100% accuracy, given it is such an important part of "the Drupal way" and how this will be many developer's first book.
One of the most important new concepts of Drupal 7, Entities, is not really given any coverage.
I personally really like Unfuddle as a commercial hosted solution and Redmine if you either want full control. Both work well, and both support git (Redmine does others) giving you a future upgrade path without having to throw everything away.
From my experience the main cause of insecure PHP software is developers not turning the error validation to the highest during development, so when an unsuspecting user downloads the software little do they know that their system can and often is wide open to stupid bugs and security problems. When you leave error_reporting to the default setting you miss lots of important details, like array keys being passed as constants, variables being referenced before they're created (especially with arrays), incorrect return types, etc, etc, yet people wonder why their code is so buggy? I was installing vtiger, which is a pretty comprehensive CRM that has lots of potential to hit it big, the other night for a client and was slamming my had against the wall at the sheer number of stupid syntax bugs that were in the system.
How many programs out there tell you to turn on the old register_globals that everyone knew was a huge security problem?
How many programs tell you to turn down the error_reporting level to hide their development incompetence?
I was actually considering starting a movement to have the PHP community clean up their act, we'll see if its still needed after the dust settles from this.
Personally I think that with PHP 5.2 they should have stopped supporting deprecated coding practices, like accepting invalid variables and invalid array keys, so that this stupidity could finally stop.
That's why I don't do much with PHP anymore, a large portion of the open source projects that clients want you to "make work" are riddled with utterly stupid mistakes that you spend days if not weeks cleaning it up before you can actually start doing any work.
.. blaming your job for your marriage falling apart is like saying you leg fell off because your pants were blue.
I married rather young (22), have been addicted to all things geekly since a kid and have ruined many friendships from this. I have a tendency to get attached to all the blinking lights, the hum, etc, to get obsessed over the latest thing to pass my way (gadgets, TV shows, music, etc), and there have been various points in my life when my addicted & sociopathic tendencies almost ruined my life. I'm just lucky to be married to a wonderful woman who knows there's good in there somewhere and has been willing to fight through it for eight years.
Three years ago we had our first child and in march we're expecting our second, and right now I'm working 9-6 and have a side job to pay off our quite massive quantity of debt (a good deal of which is there because of said addiction). Needless to say this has been difficult few months but we're trying to work through it, to as much time together as we can around the work.
Working so much means that you miss out on the only thing in life that means a damn: the person who at one point in time believed that you were a good enough friend, confidant, play mate, lover, etc, to want to spend the rest of their life with. My wife has put up with a lot over the years and at times I wonder why she sticks with me, but if it were to fall apart I'd have no misunderstanding that it was *me* who caused the problems.
As for putting the children first: horsecrap. Children first and foremost need a stable family to grow up in, if the parents/couple are always arguing, or if one is never there, etc, then there's no stability for them to feel safe with. So put the children second, they need to see you and your spouse enjoying each other's company, being loving with each other.
You see, it takes two to tango, and if one is "too busy" then... you know the rest.
What does your normal voice sound like? Given that you've done so many different character voices, do you ever get stuck and "forget" what your normal voice is supposed to be? Silly bonus question: if you forgot what your normal voice was supposd to be, which of the many character voices do you think you'd like to have instead?
Kaspersky's latest software is great, I've been testing them for several months. They're also the highest rated virus checker on virus.gr, if you want some independent validation. They have a corporate edition called Kaspersky Antivirus for Workstations that has a centralized control panel for managing all of the installations on the network. Talk to them about the fact that you are a not-for-profit organization and see if they'll give you a discount.
... or they could just promote breastfeeding babies longer, rather than promoting formula. Breastfed babies are much healthier than formula and would be much less likely to get the diarrhea in the first place.
Microsoft is a tough bedmate. They'll pay Yahoo a few million as part of the courting process, get a good look at the goods, scr3w them a few times, then cut and run. Yahoo will cry ("you said you loved me"), probably sue, and loose a vast quantity of market share in the process; meanwhile Microsoft will have spent a few million crippling yet another competitor and gain major amounts of insight and technologies. In the end MSFT's focus is turning this into a two-horse race - them and Google, Yahoo is an innocent victim on MSFT's butcher's table.
Do what the book stores do, start with the master category (scifi / fantasy, gardening, geek stuff), then break it down by series or sub-category where needed, then by author. Should work for 90%+ of books, and the rest you can fudge.
My wife has several shelves of her books with different categories in different locations. She also has one shelf dedicated to Anne McCaffrey and one for Mercedes Lackey. I've got all my geek books on one shelf, and my general "to read" pile on another. It works fairly well for us, but we don't have 3500 books to start with.
I seriously hate admins of schools they're the most useless technologically inept people ever.
If they were any good they'd have jobs elsewhere? I have worked at some colleges that did have some hardened geeks working there, but that was in a small town that didn't have many tech jobs anyway. A community college near where I live has a fairly good staff, but there are a few exceptions to that rule.
I've used Mantis for years and it is wonderful - pretty easy to use, flexible, powerful, easy to install, just lovely. There are two things to bear in mind, though, out of the box it doesn't support time keeping of any sort (besides adding a custom field), and also its UI is a bit tricky to configure, it isn't templated so you have to jump into editing its core files. Its PHP & MySQL-based, though they've recently added a database abstraction layer so you can try hooking it up to MSSQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
Another one to consider is the hosted system Backpack, from 37 Signals, the folks you brought Ruby on Rails to the world. They've got a pretty powerful system there, available as a free account or paid if you need extra space, etc.
One easy language to try is Rebol. From one of their pages:
Unlike other languages, REBOL was designed from the start for network communications, not just for writing programs.
REBOL is pronounced "reb-ol" (as in "rebel with a cause") and stands for "relative expression based object language". It was first released in 1997 and has been downloaded more than four million times since. REBOL runs on a wide variety of system platforms, including both servers and clients. REBOL was created by Carl Sassenrath, who is best known for bringing multitasking to personal computers with the Commodore Amiga operating system.
The power of REBOL comes from its unique integration of programming language concepts and metadata language concepts. REBOL expresses and symbolizes both algorithms and data equally well, and the flow between those domains is totally fluid.
As a result, REBOL is optimal for X Internet distributed applications. It provides more effective solutions to modern network distributed applications. When compared to traditional languages, REBOL offers greater expressive power with less code. Most applications are typically measured in 10's of KB, not 10's of MB. And, when it comes to software development and support costs, smaller is better.
You can learn more about How REBOL is Different or for a quick introduction to the REBOL Language, read REBOL in a Nutshell.
You should take a look at their examples page which lists lots of simple apps that were written in a fairly small amount of code.
Most of the facilities of the language are free-as-in-beer and there are some paid options if you want some advanced features.
Mod parent up. This sounds like sleep deprivation more than anything. If you're only getting 5hrs of sleep per night then holy cow, of course you're going to have a hard time concentrating. Duh! Try unplugging for a while, taking breaks, and maybe, you know, getting a life and a girlfriend?
Slashdot Mirror
Donaldson's "Gap" series was pretty depressing too - lots of anti-heros, a leading lady who spends half of the series being raped, etc. Yes, the series did get to a point in the end, but it's like wading through ten miles of sewers just to find an exit.
This book was clearly rushed to market for two reasons:
The flu isn't exactly a major killer, it just makes people be a little ill for a few days, even the CDC says that only about 250 people died from it in 2001 in the USA, not the 36,000 that is promoted.
Am I the only one who read the headline and thought "Sun Microsystems actually had a profitable month?" Doh!
I personally really like Unfuddle as a commercial hosted solution and Redmine if you either want full control. Both work well, and both support git (Redmine does others) giving you a future upgrade path without having to throw everything away.
Damien
In a similar veign, with BSG going into its final year, what are us cable/satellite-free BSG fans to do?
So why isn't there security implemented as standard? Come on, there are lots of perfectly good standards: SSL, TSL, SSH, etc.
Damien
Honestly, what's wrong with JPEG2000? CPU power has come a long way since it was originally released, so why isn't it more standard?
It runs OK on my 2x2.0 Mac Pro, sounds like a MacBook Pro thing :-( I presume you've reported it to Parallels?
Damien
From my experience the main cause of insecure PHP software is developers not turning the error validation to the highest during development, so when an unsuspecting user downloads the software little do they know that their system can and often is wide open to stupid bugs and security problems. When you leave error_reporting to the default setting you miss lots of important details, like array keys being passed as constants, variables being referenced before they're created (especially with arrays), incorrect return types, etc, etc, yet people wonder why their code is so buggy? I was installing vtiger, which is a pretty comprehensive CRM that has lots of potential to hit it big, the other night for a client and was slamming my had against the wall at the sheer number of stupid syntax bugs that were in the system.
How many programs out there tell you to turn on the old register_globals that everyone knew was a huge security problem?
How many programs tell you to turn down the error_reporting level to hide their development incompetence?
I was actually considering starting a movement to have the PHP community clean up their act, we'll see if its still needed after the dust settles from this.
Personally I think that with PHP 5.2 they should have stopped supporting deprecated coding practices, like accepting invalid variables and invalid array keys, so that this stupidity could finally stop.
That's why I don't do much with PHP anymore, a large portion of the open source projects that clients want you to "make work" are riddled with utterly stupid mistakes that you spend days if not weeks cleaning it up before you can actually start doing any work.
Damien
The next version of Horde will have support for CalDAV. Guess what else will in the next update, that's right, iCal!
.. blaming your job for your marriage falling apart is like saying you leg fell off because your pants were blue.
... you know the rest.
I married rather young (22), have been addicted to all things geekly since a kid and have ruined many friendships from this. I have a tendency to get attached to all the blinking lights, the hum, etc, to get obsessed over the latest thing to pass my way (gadgets, TV shows, music, etc), and there have been various points in my life when my addicted & sociopathic tendencies almost ruined my life. I'm just lucky to be married to a wonderful woman who knows there's good in there somewhere and has been willing to fight through it for eight years.
Three years ago we had our first child and in march we're expecting our second, and right now I'm working 9-6 and have a side job to pay off our quite massive quantity of debt (a good deal of which is there because of said addiction). Needless to say this has been difficult few months but we're trying to work through it, to as much time together as we can around the work.
Working so much means that you miss out on the only thing in life that means a damn: the person who at one point in time believed that you were a good enough friend, confidant, play mate, lover, etc, to want to spend the rest of their life with. My wife has put up with a lot over the years and at times I wonder why she sticks with me, but if it were to fall apart I'd have no misunderstanding that it was *me* who caused the problems.
As for putting the children first: horsecrap. Children first and foremost need a stable family to grow up in, if the parents/couple are always arguing, or if one is never there, etc, then there's no stability for them to feel safe with. So put the children second, they need to see you and your spouse enjoying each other's company, being loving with each other.
You see, it takes two to tango, and if one is "too busy" then
How about blocking the offending IP ranges at the firewall level? Anyone know what IPs to block?
What does your normal voice sound like? Given that you've done so many different character voices, do you ever get stuck and "forget" what your normal voice is supposed to be? Silly bonus question: if you forgot what your normal voice was supposd to be, which of the many character voices do you think you'd like to have instead?
Damien
Kaspersky's latest software is great, I've been testing them for several months. They're also the highest rated virus checker on virus.gr, if you want some independent validation. They have a corporate edition called Kaspersky Antivirus for Workstations that has a centralized control panel for managing all of the installations on the network. Talk to them about the fact that you are a not-for-profit organization and see if they'll give you a discount.
Damien
... or they could just promote breastfeeding babies longer, rather than promoting formula. Breastfed babies are much healthier than formula and would be much less likely to get the diarrhea in the first place.
Damien
Just a quick word of congratulations to Mr McDanel and yourself, finally some common sense rears its head in this case.
Microsoft is a tough bedmate. They'll pay Yahoo a few million as part of the courting process, get a good look at the goods, scr3w them a few times, then cut and run. Yahoo will cry ("you said you loved me"), probably sue, and loose a vast quantity of market share in the process; meanwhile Microsoft will have spent a few million crippling yet another competitor and gain major amounts of insight and technologies. In the end MSFT's focus is turning this into a two-horse race - them and Google, Yahoo is an innocent victim on MSFT's butcher's table.
Damien
Do what the book stores do, start with the master category (scifi / fantasy, gardening, geek stuff), then break it down by series or sub-category where needed, then by author. Should work for 90%+ of books, and the rest you can fudge.
My wife has several shelves of her books with different categories in different locations. She also has one shelf dedicated to Anne McCaffrey and one for Mercedes Lackey. I've got all my geek books on one shelf, and my general "to read" pile on another. It works fairly well for us, but we don't have 3500 books to start with.
I seriously hate admins of schools they're the most useless technologically inept people ever.
If they were any good they'd have jobs elsewhere? I have worked at some colleges that did have some hardened geeks working there, but that was in a small town that didn't have many tech jobs anyway. A community college near where I live has a fairly good staff, but there are a few exceptions to that rule.
Damien
I've used Mantis for years and it is wonderful - pretty easy to use, flexible, powerful, easy to install, just lovely. There are two things to bear in mind, though, out of the box it doesn't support time keeping of any sort (besides adding a custom field), and also its UI is a bit tricky to configure, it isn't templated so you have to jump into editing its core files. Its PHP & MySQL-based, though they've recently added a database abstraction layer so you can try hooking it up to MSSQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
Another one to consider is the hosted system Backpack, from 37 Signals, the folks you brought Ruby on Rails to the world. They've got a pretty powerful system there, available as a free account or paid if you need extra space, etc.
Damien
Anyone have a link to AOL's Goodmail signup page? I can't see find it on their site, even under their email guidelines pages. Anyone?
Damien
Note that the IDE is based on the Eclipse platform! Good work Adobe!
Damien
You should take a look at their examples page which lists lots of simple apps that were written in a fairly small amount of code.
Most of the facilities of the language are free-as-in-beer and there are some paid options if you want some advanced features.
Give it a try.
Damien
Mod parent up. This sounds like sleep deprivation more than anything. If you're only getting 5hrs of sleep per night then holy cow, of course you're going to have a hard time concentrating. Duh! Try unplugging for a while, taking breaks, and maybe, you know, getting a life and a girlfriend?
Damien