In some companies, your job is to follow the procedures, not to fix stuff or make life easier.
I don't like it, I didn't make it that way, but I do have to work here.
>I've consulted at some large companies that have so many rules, >mandates, procedures, and forms that it's impossible to get anything >productive done. And most of the good people figure that out and >leave.
Welcome to my nightmare. I wish I had something better to go to.
On a more productive note, you can do real work and make positive changes in those environment, it just takes a veeeerrryyy looooonnnnggg time to jump thru the hoops. You can salvage some of your sanity by having several of your good ideas in the (very long) pipeline at once.
Most of the time (95%+) they take your word for it, but they occasionaly search cars. I suppose nervous or "guilty" looking driver are more likely to be searched.
They're within their rights to do a full body search. I've never seen that happen, and I've been over the border hundreds of times.
>Do people in Canada make trips to the USA to buy those things that cost >significantly less in the US?
Yes, if they live close enough to the border. Where I grew up, some people make weekly runs to get gas/booze/smokes. Those items are a lot cheaper, because the sin taxes in.us are much lower.
>Is there hassles and confications at the border?
Sorta. There are rules about what you can bring over, and what you need to pay duty on. If you know the rules, it's pretty painless.
Example - everyone in the car can bring back 1 pack of smokes without paying duty. If you've got the right # of smokes, it only takes 30 seconds to talk to the customs dude. If you've got 1 too many packs of smokes, you've got to go in, stand in line and pay duty - way too much hassle for the money saved.
Once upon a time I had some nasty.BAT files that used AWK.EXE and SED.EXE for the heavy lifting. Explaining them to a coworker took a while, because he wasn't an awk or sed guy.
WSH is complex, but nontrivial shell scripts are complex too, there's a lot of baggage involved.
I'm an equal opportunity bigot: I hate all the common scripting choices..BAT files are very limited, and annoying. VBscript/WSH syntax is verbose and annoying. Shell syntax is just plain fucked up and annoying.
The above have their place, and I can write scripts in all of 'em, but I don't enjoy it.
When possible I lean on awk/sed/Perl. The DJGPP AWK.EXE and SED.EXE has saved my bacon many times, and these days Perl runs nicely on Win32.
There's a lot to hate about VBScript, but has good points. VBScript/WSH has a lot of hooks to the Win32 guts, and comes pre-installed on all your machines.
BTW, you can't honestly tell me you ENJOY programming in straight bash?!?!?
Micah's text is concise and pithy throughout. Consequently, one of the chief virtues of XForms Essentials is that it is short. To be fair, this partly stems from the conciseness of the XForms recommendation itself. However, it is also an indication that some topics are only covered briefly. For example, there is very little mention of security issues. XForms Essentials certainly doesn't tell you how to deploy forms onto the web. I suspect that some omissions result from the lack of a body of XForms deployment experience as yet as much as from a desire to keep the book short and focused. Micah does, for example, make some useful suggestions about authoring best practices, but these are necessarily sketchy. They do get you thinking, though, about the possibilities opened up by XForms.
You sure used a lot of words to describe how compact the book was.
>the Liberals are only doing this because they dislike the message, not >because of any real copyright infringement.
Sure, the Liberals are wankers.
But that doesn't excuse the "satire" guy for ripping off their artwork etc. Copyright law protects wankers just as much as it protects people you like and agree with.
Don't be an asshole. You can go read a gazillion Google pages on setting up a network farm, but what this guy really wants is to hear from somebody who's gone through the trial and error and can offer their sage advice.
Google isn't everything, nor does it give you the right to be an ass.
Pfft.
If you want expert advice from experienced people, go lurk in the appropriate mailing lists or Usenet groups. Once you get up to speed, you can ask specific questions and get help.
If you "Ask Slashdot" a hopelessly vague question, you deserve a little gentle sarcasm.
BTW, sarcastic guy Googled himself a rough plan of how he'd do it, and is getting lots of corrections and suggestions. Why? Because he's got some actual details to talk about!!
I'm not trying to discourage you from writing reviews. I can tell you enjoyed this book, but your writing style distracts from your message. Please omit phrases that take up space without adding meaning.
Enough about the background, though.
the text was well written [...] and easy to read
Do you work for the Department of Redundancy Department?
This is not a fun topic if you don't know what you are doing
How many times did you say "let's face it" in this article? Once is too many.
Some words add nothing but length to your prose. Use adjectives to make your meaning more precise and be cautious of those you find yourself using to make it more emphatic.
[...] Industrial action is usually industrial inaction, industrial disruption or a strike. A courtesy call is generally a sales offer or an uninvited visit. A substantially finished bridge is an unfinished bridge. Someone with high name-recognition is well known. Something with reliability problems probably does not work.
Free hint for the reviewer: this is not a high school assignment, there is no minimum word count.
The other area that this book really excels in is getting you through replication. This is not a fun topic if you don't know what you are doing and there isn't a lot of literature out there to help you get through PUSH/PULL subscriptions and the like. Pragmatically speaking, of the topics this book covers, Tiffany's coverage of replication is probably going to benefit people the most, because if you can't sync your PDA with your server, you are effectively out of gas. If you aren't a Sql CE user you won't appreciate the value of this chapter, but love MS or hate them, the newsgroups and forums are filled with folks with the same sorts of problems that the author works diligently to get you through.
How about:
This book thoroughly discusses replication, a problematic and under-documented topic of great importance to PDA application developers.
PS - Attn Cmdr Taco: you should allow the <STRIKE> tag so I can write funnier grammar flames.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on the culture of the company.
In some companies, your job is to follow the procedures, not to fix stuff or make life easier.
I don't like it, I didn't make it that way, but I do have to work here.
>I've consulted at some large companies that have so many rules,
>mandates, procedures, and forms that it's impossible to get anything
>productive done. And most of the good people figure that out and
>leave.
Welcome to my nightmare. I wish I had something better to go to.
On a more productive note, you can do real work and make positive changes in those environment, it just takes a veeeerrryyy looooonnnnggg time to jump thru the hoops. You can salvage some of your sanity by having several of your good ideas in the (very long) pipeline at once.
Lunar Lander is a great suggestion.
Another simple game to code is "artillery". It doesn't even have to be interactive in real time.
Ah.
Will IBM's left hand persuade the right hand to produce a native Linux version of Notes?
What are you using for email?
Most of the time (95%+) they take your word for it, but they occasionaly search cars. I suppose nervous or "guilty" looking driver are more likely to be searched.
They're within their rights to do a full body search. I've never seen that happen, and I've been over the border hundreds of times.
Ahem.
top 40 CDs on sale for between $12.99 and 15.99 CDN
>Do people in Canada make trips to the USA to buy those things that cost
.us are much lower.
>significantly less in the US?
Yes, if they live close enough to the border. Where I grew up, some people make weekly runs to get gas/booze/smokes. Those items are a lot cheaper, because the sin taxes in
>Is there hassles and confications at the border?
Sorta. There are rules about what you can bring over, and what you need to pay duty on. If you know the rules, it's pretty painless.
Example - everyone in the car can bring back 1 pack of smokes without paying duty. If you've got the right # of smokes, it only takes 30 seconds to talk to the customs dude. If you've got 1 too many packs of smokes, you've got to go in, stand in line and pay duty - way too much hassle for the money saved.
>How bout your email address displayed as a small image?
That's annoying to people who legitimately want to send you an email.
> YHBT! YHBT! The Fakelstein troll got a bite!
No, I was actually trolling you, and now you're the biter.
>I will boycott your net cafe.
I hope so.
...but Gretzky gets the rebound and SCORES!
I don't own a net cafe. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't let any random customer walk in and boot my machines from their own media.
dd copies the entire partition bit by bit. If you've got empty space on that partition, dd copies that empty space bit by bit.
Once upon a time I had some nasty .BAT files that used AWK.EXE and SED.EXE for the heavy lifting. Explaining them to a coworker took a while, because he wasn't an awk or sed guy.
.BAT files are very limited, and annoying. VBscript/WSH syntax is verbose and annoying. Shell syntax is just plain fucked up and annoying.
WSH is complex, but nontrivial shell scripts are complex too, there's a lot of baggage involved.
I'm an equal opportunity bigot: I hate all the common scripting choices.
The above have their place, and I can write scripts in all of 'em, but I don't enjoy it.
When possible I lean on awk/sed/Perl. The DJGPP AWK.EXE and SED.EXE has saved my bacon many times, and these days Perl runs nicely on Win32.
Here's my favorite argument against HTML email. (don't forget to view the source)
There's a lot to hate about VBScript, but has good points. VBScript/WSH has a lot of hooks to the Win32 guts, and comes pre-installed on all your machines.
BTW, you can't honestly tell me you ENJOY programming in straight bash?!?!?
>But if you save 200 bucks on the OS, but then spend 10 hours trying to
>make it work with a windows domain what good has it done you.
Presumably he's rolling out more then one machine. The prep work will be amortized over a few dozen PCs.
BTW, how long did it take to develop a standardized WinXP image for your shop?
>the Liberals are only doing this because they dislike the message, not
>because of any real copyright infringement.
Sure, the Liberals are wankers.
But that doesn't excuse the "satire" guy for ripping off their artwork etc. Copyright law protects wankers just as much as it protects people you like and agree with.
If you want expert advice from experienced people, go lurk in the appropriate mailing lists or Usenet groups. Once you get up to speed, you can ask specific questions and get help.
If you "Ask Slashdot" a hopelessly vague question, you deserve a little gentle sarcasm.
BTW, sarcastic guy Googled himself a rough plan of how he'd do it, and is getting lots of corrections and suggestions. Why? Because he's got some actual details to talk about!!
Hi, dude.
I'm not trying to discourage you from writing reviews. I can tell you enjoyed this book, but your writing style distracts from your message. Please omit phrases that take up space without adding meaning.
Do you work for the Department of Redundancy Department? How many times did you say "let's face it" in this article? Once is too many.Here's an excerpt from the Economist Style Guide:
Here's another grammar flame, you might find the links of value.PS - good luck with your writing.
>I can't make my Windows machines work in the way I like to (mix of
>command line and GUI)
I hate 'doze as much as the next guy, but I have to disagree.
There are lots of bolt-ons command line tools for your windows box (resource kits, Cygwin etc.)
WSH allows you to script a *lot* of system administration tasks. The syntax sucks, but at least you can do it.
There's still a lot to hate, but Win32 *has* improved since Win95.
Most died-in-the-wool Windows people have a gigantic blind spot and won't use these tools, but they exist.
And look at what that 1% has created! CPAN is arguably the best thing about Perl.
:)
Even if you hate Perl, you should be amazed that people were able to produce so many useful libs in Perl