I have a NetMD device, and I can promise you it doesn't take a whole minute to convert an MP3. It takes a few seconds, and then it takes a few more seconds to transfer the song. I'm sure solid state MP3 devices are much faster, but with Minidisc, you're dealing with MO technology -- but I'm sure you know that already.
distinction between your time and the company's time
There's a distinction? The way many companies don't want you working on your own projects, or holding multiple jobs, it would seem that they believe there is ot dividing line. They way they think they can encroach on your weekends, and personal time.
I'd like to work at home, so I wouldn't have to commute 60 miles every day to a grotty city.
If I worked at home, I wouldn't accept any office calls outside of working hours. You have to train people from the start, or else it never ends.
Lesse... noiseless so a threat to bikers, pedestrians, etc.. Charged in uncertain ways after collision so a threat to others during the accident and after when they try to save your ass.
Oh this is just precious. Let's justify the use of an oversized vehicle through all of it's obnoxious attributes: Big, noisy and gas guzzling.
Face it: It's unethical to knowingly drive something that is proven to kill and mame more people than necessary if it is involed in a collision. It is also unethical to knowingly drive something that consumes more non-renuable resources that necessary. That oil represents plastics and medicines that cannot be produced to better people's lives, because you've burned it.
I realize there's still good reason to burn oil, but there's no good reason to burn more oil than is required.
I fully expect to be flamed for this post, as many people in this country get all bent out of shape when you point our how wrong they are. We will have our SUVs, we will have underpriced fuel, and we won't have any of them new-kleer plants.
Oh Hell, while I'm on a roll, why don't I just ask why the fsck do truck head light have to be so high that they shine staight into my car? Since they're mostly used on the road, they should have their lights at the same height as cars. At present, they are a danger to all other motorists.
Considering the number of people who are impervious to a full sized gasoline guzzler, I don't think adding any sound effects will be of any use. However, a Jetson's style effect would be funny, though I perfer the sound of a TARDIS. Better than being stuck in traffic any day.
Someone decided it would be a good idea to cirulate a contract to every student, whereby each student agreed they would no longer drink or do drugs. The administration kept all the copies.
When I read the contract, I went ballistic, and refused to sign it. All the do gooders couldn't see that it was a blatant admittance to having consumed illegal materials. My parent's saw my logic, and had my brother's copy removed.
The administration didn't come after me, or anyone else, but it just shows how blind people can be. Signing such a document can have damaging repocussions.
Just use the sodding resume style class. It works nicely, and is simple to use. I've hardly used LaTeX, but I pounded out a resume with it in short order.
The idea with LaTeX is to let it do the formatting.
They're as bad as each other. Discovery used to show lots of half-hour programs about this technological thing, and that. Then it became the all animal programming channel, and now it's how to decorate your home.
For a while TLC filled the void that Discovery left behind. They showed programs like the Secret Life of the VCR. They were brillant. Now, they mostly show program on how to renovate a house.
When I first got BBC America, it had a lot of different British shows. Now, it's got a lot of home improvement shows. Yeah, there's Mystery Monday, and the Funnys on Thursday, but the range sure has dried up.
Lotus vs. Paperback Software put a nail in this coffin back in the 1980s. Lotus had a very popular spreadsheet product called 1-2-3 (some may recall). Paperback created a clone product that utilized the same menu structure. Well, Lotus sued them, and Paperback lost, eliminating another source of affordable software.
I have a pretty big collection of 100 Meg Zip drives that I immediately stopped using the day I got my first CD burner.
You're just filling up landfills that way. The CDR is a brilliant thing, but once it's full, there's no way to wipe it and start again.
I still use my Zip 100 drives, and am perfectly happy with them. One at work, one at home. Great for moving 100MB of stuff. Sure, solid state drives are popular today, but why spend a lot of money on new toys, if the old toys continue to serve? It's not like I'm carrying the disks around in my pocket all day.
Your $55 electric bill might be small, but your 570 KWh usage isn't. Here, in SoCal, that would cost you something like $100. I know, because I used that much during the summer. We are alloted a maximum number of KWh per month, based upon location and house size (yada, yada). Usage over that amout is billed considerably higher. I'm allotted 313KWh, used 447 last month, and was billed $35 plus $24 for overage.
XP is compiled with optimizations for the more recent pentiums. This includes sequencing of instructions that run better on a P4 than a P1. It still runs on the P1, just not as nicely as a P4. If you have a '386 or '486, then you're just SOL.
Unfortunately, dodads on your tool tray, and Start folder aren't services, and cannot be started before login.
Those older versions of Windows let you login, too, before everthing had finished loading. I've always waited for the HD to stop thrashing before attempting to log in.
I write a lot of console apps, as well as ASP.Net apps. All of which I develop with VS.Net. It's a nice environment, and I say that as a 10 year MFC/C++ developer. VB6 makes me break out in hives (not to say that you're using it).
It's funny it's taken so long for someone to produce a DVD player that does this. I mean, that was one of the big things DVD players were supposed to do, back when they were first proposed. Auto-sensor R rated films into PG. Choose the rating level you are comfortable with. And now, it's finally available, after how many years?
Maybe this will allow families to watch more adult programming than the usual Disney fare. It would be nice to watch something with some depth, without worring about what new words will my child demonstrate at school tomorrow.
Win XP boots pretty damn quickly. It's certainly many times faster booting that W2K.
Continuing to use NT4 is just going to get more and more difficult. NT4 is no longer supported my MS, and doesn't include APIs that will be required by future applications. It also isn't compiled to take advantage of a P4.
Sadly, there isn't an endless supply of Natural Gas. We will run out it one day in the none too distant future. At which point, you end up with a lot of useless paperweights. With the present system, one can add new generators as needed, using a variety of power sources.
No one wants to aquire the maintainance of a home generator, either.
If you're worried about this, then trust no one but a small circle of "friends", use no electronic communications devices (computers, cell phones, pagers), and never write any of your orders. It's worked for ObL for years, and could work for you too.
I would expect someone would include Asimov's three laws of robotics, IF AND ONLY IF they expected their creation go gain sentience. The creators of Skynet did not, and therefore wouldn't have included the three laws.
To guard yourself, you'd have to add a layer to all of your code to check wether an action would break any of the three laws. You'd have to add this layer to everthing from your basic toaster on up. The layer would have to be on the verge on sentience itself. A simple layer could deduce that the machine was going to fire a lazer cannon at a person, but to catch subtler attacks would be far more difficult.
I think what I'm trying to say is that having a sense of ethics requires sentience.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking design documents at all. I'm a strong believer in them. When I create a highly detailed design document, I expect to be left the hell alone to develop the code. If the manager doesn't trust me after I've proven I understand the problem in the document, then what's going to follow is a scenario of debasement.
Most shops trust that once the developer's been told what the problem is, that he or she will pound out a program that will be a correct solution. That trust is often misplaced. Sometimes the developer doesn't truely understand the problem, or not all of the details were revealed, or there were devils in the details.
A design document is an agreement between you and your boss. It says I understand the problem to be X and is to be solved by Y. The manager agrees and says go forth.
Often times, however, the manager will break this agreement by suddenly saying, oh yes, we need Z. Or, I didn't read your document, and now I've seen the final product, it's not right.
What a lot of people don't understand is that a developer can only produce an application that is as good as the information the developer with given in the first place. If the developer was given the half-truth, or allowed to produce false assumptions, then the application isn't what the manager (or whoever) expected.
Yeah, there's a LOT of incompetent managers. Those who want to keep beating you until the project's complete, and those who have to always be right. People who think they understand technology because they were developers in the 80's, but haven't kept up, and just create shite.
I still have some of those problems today, but at least it's not a debasing experiance like I wrote about before.
Because references in C++ are not like references in Java or C#. A C++ reference cannot be NULL, so you have to come up with other mechanisms to represent that you have nothing. You can't have nothing. You must have something. Also, it's still possible to create some of the same problems C++ references that you can with pointers. If you delete the referenced object, you'll still get a GPF from Windows when you try to address it. If they wanted to have safe code, then using C++ was not the answer. The application didn't require C++ at all. It was simply a MFC app that sent commands to a piece of hardware via sockets.
This same manager didn't understand relational databases either. The company had hired a contractor who had produced a nice little relational database. Over the duration I was there, the database was being scrapped, and repaced by a set of text files.
These text files were named with the INI extension, and were mostly in INI format. However, because we couldn't use the Win32 INI API, someone had to write a class to parse the INIs, and store their contents in memory.
The whole thing was such a friggin joke that all the contractors were laughing our arses off. Adding to the humor was that the whole project was over budget, and behind schedule, yet poor management was permitted to persist.
Imagine a place where you spend a month writing a detailed design document for a simple project, then when you start to code it, the boss gets agitated when you don't see him daily.
Imagine being a developer with 10 years experiance having your code read daily, then being criticized on the following:
Variable names -- BlueDog change to DogBlue, but changed back the next day
Can't use pointers in C++ code, because the manager doesn't understand them. Must use almost useless references.
Can't use INI files because "Microsoft is going to remove support for them from the OS".
Can't use byte or short because the compiler is faster with ints.
Then to add to the stew being threated with:
Contractors fired exactly on the 3rd week.
Contractors fired for voicing an opinion. Any opinion.
Contractors being fired after being told no one was going to be fired.
Being told you need this job more than we need you.
Perhaps this doesn't sound like much, but when it occurs day in, and day out, for months on end, it's a very hostile and unpleasant working environment. It's like being a sock puppet for the village idiot.
This is a company looking to eliminate staff. The whole concept that 5% of the staff "requires action" should be taken as an insult. The hiring manager is responsible for hiring people who can do the work. If a manager is doing his job, he should be taking care of any "problem" employees, as the problems come to light. The only way a company could have 5% dead heads is if management isn't doing it's job. So, the only reasonable view that 5% of the staff must be imcompetent, is that 5% of the staff will be let go soon after appraisals. Most staff should get a 3 or a 4, exceptional cases should get 2's or 5's. Next to no one should be a 1.
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I have a NetMD device, and I can promise you it doesn't take a whole minute to convert an MP3. It takes a few seconds, and then it takes a few more seconds to transfer the song. I'm sure solid state MP3 devices are much faster, but with Minidisc, you're dealing with MO technology -- but I'm sure you know that already.
There's a distinction? The way many companies don't want you working on your own projects, or holding multiple jobs, it would seem that they believe there is ot dividing line. They way they think they can encroach on your weekends, and personal time.
I'd like to work at home, so I wouldn't have to commute 60 miles every day to a grotty city.
If I worked at home, I wouldn't accept any office calls outside of working hours. You have to train people from the start, or else it never ends.
Oh this is just precious. Let's justify the use of an oversized vehicle through all of it's obnoxious attributes: Big, noisy and gas guzzling.
Face it: It's unethical to knowingly drive something that is proven to kill and mame more people than necessary if it is involed in a collision. It is also unethical to knowingly drive something that consumes more non-renuable resources that necessary. That oil represents plastics and medicines that cannot be produced to better people's lives, because you've burned it.
I realize there's still good reason to burn oil, but there's no good reason to burn more oil than is required.
I fully expect to be flamed for this post, as many people in this country get all bent out of shape when you point our how wrong they are. We will have our SUVs, we will have underpriced fuel, and we won't have any of them new-kleer plants.
Oh Hell, while I'm on a roll, why don't I just ask why the fsck do truck head light have to be so high that they shine staight into my car? Since they're mostly used on the road, they should have their lights at the same height as cars. At present, they are a danger to all other motorists.
Considering the number of people who are impervious to a full sized gasoline guzzler, I don't think adding any sound effects will be of any use. However, a Jetson's style effect would be funny, though I perfer the sound of a TARDIS. Better than being stuck in traffic any day.
Long ago, my high school did something simular.
Someone decided it would be a good idea to cirulate a contract to every student, whereby each student agreed they would no longer drink or do drugs. The administration kept all the copies.
When I read the contract, I went ballistic, and refused to sign it. All the do gooders couldn't see that it was a blatant admittance to having consumed illegal materials. My parent's saw my logic, and had my brother's copy removed.
The administration didn't come after me, or anyone else, but it just shows how blind people can be. Signing such a document can have damaging repocussions.
Just use the sodding resume style class. It works nicely, and is simple to use. I've hardly used LaTeX, but I pounded out a resume with it in short order.
The idea with LaTeX is to let it do the formatting.
They're as bad as each other. Discovery used to show lots of half-hour programs about this technological thing, and that. Then it became the all animal programming channel, and now it's how to decorate your home.
For a while TLC filled the void that Discovery left behind. They showed programs like the Secret Life of the VCR. They were brillant. Now, they mostly show program on how to renovate a house.
When I first got BBC America, it had a lot of different British shows. Now, it's got a lot of home improvement shows. Yeah, there's Mystery Monday, and the Funnys on Thursday, but the range sure has dried up.
Lotus vs. Paperback Software put a nail in this coffin back in the 1980s. Lotus had a very popular spreadsheet product called 1-2-3 (some may recall). Paperback created a clone product that utilized the same menu structure. Well, Lotus sued them, and Paperback lost, eliminating another source of affordable software.
I have a pretty big collection of 100 Meg Zip drives that I immediately stopped using the day I got my first CD burner.
You're just filling up landfills that way. The CDR is a brilliant thing, but once it's full, there's no way to wipe it and start again.
I still use my Zip 100 drives, and am perfectly happy with them. One at work, one at home. Great for moving 100MB of stuff. Sure, solid state drives are popular today, but why spend a lot of money on new toys, if the old toys continue to serve? It's not like I'm carrying the disks around in my pocket all day.
Just because it's a sports car, doesn't mean it's not a luxury car. Notice the leather, fine wood, massive engines, and six figure price tags.
But he did see four sparrows and a starling.
Your $55 electric bill might be small, but your 570 KWh usage isn't. Here, in SoCal, that would cost you something like $100. I know, because I used that much during the summer. We are alloted a maximum number of KWh per month, based upon location and house size (yada, yada). Usage over that amout is billed considerably higher. I'm allotted 313KWh, used 447 last month, and was billed $35 plus $24 for overage.
XP is compiled with optimizations for the more recent pentiums. This includes sequencing of instructions that run better on a P4 than a P1. It still runs on the P1, just not as nicely as a P4. If you have a '386 or '486, then you're just SOL.
Unfortunately, dodads on your tool tray, and Start folder aren't services, and cannot be started before login.
Those older versions of Windows let you login, too, before everthing had finished loading. I've always waited for the HD to stop thrashing before attempting to log in.
I write a lot of console apps, as well as ASP.Net apps. All of which I develop with VS.Net. It's a nice environment, and I say that as a 10 year MFC/C++ developer. VB6 makes me break out in hives (not to say that you're using it).
It's funny it's taken so long for someone to produce a DVD player that does this. I mean, that was one of the big things DVD players were supposed to do, back when they were first proposed. Auto-sensor R rated films into PG. Choose the rating level you are comfortable with. And now, it's finally available, after how many years?
Maybe this will allow families to watch more adult programming than the usual Disney fare. It would be nice to watch something with some depth, without worring about what new words will my child demonstrate at school tomorrow.
That's because it's the Taliban Broadcast Network.
Oh, you have air conditioning, too?
Win XP boots pretty damn quickly. It's certainly many times faster booting that W2K.
Continuing to use NT4 is just going to get more and more difficult. NT4 is no longer supported my MS, and doesn't include APIs that will be required by future applications. It also isn't compiled to take advantage of a P4.
Sadly, there isn't an endless supply of Natural Gas. We will run out it one day in the none too distant future. At which point, you end up with a lot of useless paperweights. With the present system, one can add new generators as needed, using a variety of power sources.
No one wants to aquire the maintainance of a home generator, either.
If you're worried about this, then trust no one but a small circle of "friends", use no electronic communications devices (computers, cell phones, pagers), and never write any of your orders. It's worked for ObL for years, and could work for you too.
I would expect someone would include Asimov's three laws of robotics, IF AND ONLY IF they expected their creation go gain sentience. The creators of Skynet did not, and therefore wouldn't have included the three laws.
To guard yourself, you'd have to add a layer to all of your code to check wether an action would break any of the three laws. You'd have to add this layer to everthing from your basic toaster on up. The layer would have to be on the verge on sentience itself. A simple layer could deduce that the machine was going to fire a lazer cannon at a person, but to catch subtler attacks would be far more difficult.
I think what I'm trying to say is that having a sense of ethics requires sentience.
Oh yes, I've seen all that before, too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking design documents at all. I'm a strong believer in them. When I create a highly detailed design document, I expect to be left the hell alone to develop the code. If the manager doesn't trust me after I've proven I understand the problem in the document, then what's going to follow is a scenario of debasement.
Most shops trust that once the developer's been told what the problem is, that he or she will pound out a program that will be a correct solution. That trust is often misplaced. Sometimes the developer doesn't truely understand the problem, or not all of the details were revealed, or there were devils in the details.
A design document is an agreement between you and your boss. It says I understand the problem to be X and is to be solved by Y. The manager agrees and says go forth.
Often times, however, the manager will break this agreement by suddenly saying, oh yes, we need Z. Or, I didn't read your document, and now I've seen the final product, it's not right.
What a lot of people don't understand is that a developer can only produce an application that is as good as the information the developer with given in the first place. If the developer was given the half-truth, or allowed to produce false assumptions, then the application isn't what the manager (or whoever) expected.
Yeah, there's a LOT of incompetent managers. Those who want to keep beating you until the project's complete, and those who have to always be right. People who think they understand technology because they were developers in the 80's, but haven't kept up, and just create shite.
I still have some of those problems today, but at least it's not a debasing experiance like I wrote about before.
Because references in C++ are not like references in Java or C#. A C++ reference cannot be NULL, so you have to come up with other mechanisms to represent that you have nothing. You can't have nothing. You must have something. Also, it's still possible to create some of the same problems C++ references that you can with pointers. If you delete the referenced object, you'll still get a GPF from Windows when you try to address it. If they wanted to have safe code, then using C++ was not the answer. The application didn't require C++ at all. It was simply a MFC app that sent commands to a piece of hardware via sockets.
This same manager didn't understand relational databases either. The company had hired a contractor who had produced a nice little relational database. Over the duration I was there, the database was being scrapped, and repaced by a set of text files.
These text files were named with the INI extension, and were mostly in INI format. However, because we couldn't use the Win32 INI API, someone had to write a class to parse the INIs, and store their contents in memory.
The whole thing was such a friggin joke that all the contractors were laughing our arses off. Adding to the humor was that the whole project was over budget, and behind schedule, yet poor management was permitted to persist.
Imagine a place where you spend a month writing a detailed design document for a simple project, then when you start to code it, the boss gets agitated when you don't see him daily.
Imagine being a developer with 10 years experiance having your code read daily, then being criticized on the following:
Variable names -- BlueDog change to DogBlue, but changed back the next day
Can't use pointers in C++ code, because the manager doesn't understand them. Must use almost useless references.
Can't use INI files because "Microsoft is going to remove support for them from the OS".
Can't use byte or short because the compiler is faster with ints.
Then to add to the stew being threated with:
Contractors fired exactly on the 3rd week.
Contractors fired for voicing an opinion. Any opinion.
Contractors being fired after being told no one was going to be fired.
Being told you need this job more than we need you.
Perhaps this doesn't sound like much, but when it occurs day in, and day out, for months on end, it's a very hostile and unpleasant working environment. It's like being a sock puppet for the village idiot.
This is a company looking to eliminate staff. The whole concept that 5% of the staff "requires action" should be taken as an insult. The hiring manager is responsible for hiring people who can do the work. If a manager is doing his job, he should be taking care of any "problem" employees, as the problems come to light. The only way a company could have 5% dead heads is if management isn't doing it's job. So, the only reasonable view that 5% of the staff must be imcompetent, is that 5% of the staff will be let go soon after appraisals. Most staff should get a 3 or a 4, exceptional cases should get 2's or 5's. Next to no one should be a 1.