That's a really good point. I'm sure they've said something like that in a interview/PR type setting, and I'm sure they wont follow through. So from a technical/legal standpoint, there's probably not much you can do.
However, I'm sure this will lead to tons of activation cracking to keep things going. Heck, I still use XP for my main OS (I know, lazy). I'm fairly certain I don't want to upgrade to Win 7, but I've been very hesitant to switch to linux. When the "can't activate, servers offline" day comes for XP, I'll just crack activation and keep going. That is if I haven't migrated to linux by then.
I forget what the countdown date is. I would download the widget to check (out of morbid curiosity), but I can't run it since I use XP...
True, cost / complexity is an issue. But if the reliability is there, people are often willing to pay an extra for a very fuel-efficient vehicle. Like hybrids.
> Until the electronic system is at least no larger than a typical DOHC head it will receive the same reception as Rover's fully-variable heads.
I dont think the size is that important here. If an electronic system were twice as heavy, and required a much bigger alternator, but also increased fuel efficiency by 15-20%, someone would do it...
I've always wondered why more solenoids aren't used, as in @grishnakh's example.
I suppose it's like power steering - they're just finally starting to get fully-electric power steering in cars, and it's been how long? The capability has been there, but it's taken something special (the need for a very light/efficient car) to drive that kind of change.
I'm guessing when car manufacturer's are trying to optimize their fuel efficient cars, they look at the top X factors that reduce efficiency, and find the most cost-effective fixes. So at one point "Variable valve timing" will come up, and the cost of developing a highly reliable system will be justified, and they'll do it.
Then again, they have fully electronically controlled suspensions out there, yet I have never seen/driven a car with one. Unless valve timing is such an important issue *and* current variable valve timing methods fail miserably, they probably wont be able to justify such a new, complicated, and completely neat idea like computer-controlled solenoid-activated valve timing.
Oh man, I remember reading about that engine. Really innovative idea, especially since gas efficiency was a concern and this was a neat way to get good efficiency out of a carbed card.
As I remember, one of the problems of igniting an air-fuel mixture is getting a complete burn. A large part of pollutants are due to incomplete burn (meaning you're sending gas/chemicals straight through the engine w/o burning or using them). The spark from a sparkplug is very small, and takes time to spread. The sparkplug is also mounted to the wall/ceiling of the cylinder, which is inconvenient.
So the idea here was to pre-ignite a small amount of air/fuel in a small pre-cylinder area, then let that flame spread out into the main cylinder. Created a more complete burn, which (pretty much by definition) creates more power ie. more efficiency.
It's almost sad that this happened at the end of the carburetor-era - it was quickly replaced by fuel injectors, which were more efficient. It was a really neat solution to the carb/fuel problem.
This reminds me of when I was young. I used to listen to classical music in high school while doing homework. My dad would always tell me to "turn off that music" because I couldn't possibly be concentrating with it on. I would explain that it helped, but he would never believe me. It really wouldn't matter what I told him, he had his mind made up; he could not concentrate with music on, so no one could concentrate with music on.
The reasoning the boss has... "he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes". It seems likely that he sees something he doesn't agree with (headphones in the workplace... unprofessional), makes an assumption (this must be a source of distraction), and then makes up an arbitrary justification for changing it (it causes errors). It would make sense if he had followed it from the bottom up; the company is experiencing too many programmer errors, which can be traced back to distractions, which can be shown to be caused by too much personal music. Then there's a justification.
But that's a far cry from looking over a see of headphones and deciding in your head, "I think this is wrong. I'm going to 'fix' it by changing something." It's not clear what the boss' exact reasoning is, but it looks like a poor and shortsighted decision that can only harm things.
Personally, I know sometimes I need music to keep me going. Classical for when I'm cruising along, some high-energy for when I'm really plugging along and getting a ton done, and then complete silence when I have to figure out something complex. Then once I get through that complex segment, it's back on the music. Going without music would be like having an uncomfortable chair for the day, or going w/o my favorite mechanical keyboard, or not having enough light. Not a show stopper, but just a bit more miserable and less productive.
Thinking back on it, whenever I'm working with programmers, it's just about universal that they'll all have their own headphones and use them to tune each other out (concentrate) while working. The headphones come off to discuss programming problems, games, lunch (take out)... then back on to get back to work. I haven't seen another office position where headphones are so ubiquitous.
Just one thought; for dimdim, you have to install a browser plugin to share your screen. This is not a huge deal, but it's not the one-click program that some of us are looking for where dealing with tech support issues. I'd say this is a better solution than some others, esp. compared to installing a whole program. But you'd still have to get your (possibly technophobe) relative/client to do this over the phone: -go to the dimdim website (pain starts here... what's a browser?) -sign up for an account, entering all the right info & choosing a password. -log into the website and start creating a "meeting" to host -install the browser plugin & restart browser -go back to that hosted meeting, find the link and send it to you -now you can see their screen. I'm not sure what additional steps you have to take to control their screen, but I think there might be more.
I like dimdim. I love that they're open source, and I definitely want to try them for my next screen-sharing meeting, esp. with their cool browser-sync tech. But for tech support, I think this still is not an ideal solution. I'd rather try out something like teamviewer.com or ultravnc SC (reverse VNC) instead.
*NOTE: I could be wrong about the above steps. I've tried hosting a meeting a while ago, but I may have remembered things incorrectly.
Logmein is great, and I use it for all my own computers. However, it requires an install on client-side, and for some situations (over the phone support with an ignorant user), trying to get them to install is a long, painful process.
I also use reverse VNC, which is nice. You have to open up a port on our own router, have the VNC viewer listening on the right port, and then setup the reverse VNC binary to connect to your computer (ultravnc has easy programs for this), but it's reliable and pretty simple for end-users... one download, one click, done.
I haven't found a web-based, no-install remote desktop sharing program yet that's free. Would be nice to have.
I think the golden rule applies here; do unto your code what you wish your predecessor's had done to their code. If you write your own code, maintain it yourself, and never have anyone else work on it, then do whatever you want. Heck, use no punctuation, indentation*, or even carriage returns if you can help it.
However, there seem to be two camps; those who see the value in comments, and those who don't. Comments wont detract from those who don't like them (besides more trivial annoyances like wasted screen space), while the lack of comments may significantly hamper those who would appreciate it. It seems safer & more efficient to comment and make understandable code accessible to all, instead of saying that "good programmers" shouldn't need it, and raise the requirements unnecessarily for the maintainability of your code.
Used properly, comments can help. So just find a helpful way to do it. My mindset is that I write for the next guy, assuming that someone's going to hand him the code with an explanation of what he should be doing, and the comments will help guide him. They help the same way as chapter titles. Chapter titles are unnecessary and often can be completely removed without altering the story. But try to skim through a book and find what you're looking for w/o titles, and it's a pain.
I just jumped into an existing project that a genius (really) friend of mine started. He's very smart, but not as experienced a programmer. And the #1 pain point right now is lack of comments. Some of the code is plain spaghetti. That's fine, I'll just refactor it. But since there's no comments describing *why* it's doing what it's doing, I can't yet refactor.
Other things work just fine. But again, lack of comments prevents me from understanding what it's doing without understanding the entire context of the entire system. This is bad design, but that's the point - perfect code may not need comments, but none of us need worry about that (since we wont be working on perfect code anytime soon). It's not a crime to have rough code because the system is still organically growing. It is to have tons of uncommented stuff jumbled together.
Help me to help you. Help your successors maintain your crap. Comment your code. Make things easier on people (I'll put a 1 liner describing this section, since it's a little tricky), rather than harder (Really smart people will understand this, and I don't care about the others).
nahdude's system sounds great... automate all the day-to-day sys admin into a GUI that devs can use.
I use something simpler, a homegrown remote-scripting system like capistrano but in python. I think a web based complex system would be much better, but it's hard to justify for smaller projects (or budgets). However, it's very nice to setup remote scripting. You can do pretty much anything remotely that you can do locally (ie. on each server), but the benefit of having it all centralized makes things easier.
I have a script on my dev machine that updates my dev server with the latest code, migrates the DB, and restarts apache. I have similar scripts for the testing and production servers. I also have a script that exports the DB from the production server and imports it into my dev machine for me to play with. Having these tasks automated is very nice, since all these utilities can be kept in source control for each developer to be able to use. They speed up simple tasks and lower the barrier of entry. When updating the dev server or getting a copy of the live DB is a single-click deal, you're more likely to use it.
For more in-depth server admin, a more complex solution should be considered. But in the OP's post, it seems like the target is simplifying daily server-admin tasks for web dev's, and a remote scripting solution might be a low-effort improvement.
Or do the same thing but add a web gui and get a neat system like nahdude's. I wouldn't mind having that... but it wouldn't really gain me much over my current command-line system.
> For the last 30 years they've been "planning" a system of rail transport on Oahu, and it simply hasn't come to pass. Tell me about it! I kept wondering what they were going to do about the horrendous traffic increases on H1, and it was so disheartening to see all the bickering about the development. I know a lot of locals want to preserve the island as much as they can, but I also hated getting stuck in traffic for 2+ hrs instead of a 30 minute drive home (when there's no traffic).
What is strange to me is that when I left (a year ago), they were having tons of trouble with electrical power generation; the demand was simply ramping up too much for their generators, and they didn't have any concrete workable plans for expansion because new generator development was locked in political limbo (surprise!). It's hard to think how they could go from there to all of the sudden increasing the demand a lot more for all the new electric cars.
Also, while geographically it would be easier to give HI the infrastructure to enable electric cars, for some reason it just doesn't make sense practically for me. First, culturally I wonder how many people would truly buy electric cars out there. There are a lot of old cars on the road, and a lot of people don't want to spend more for an electric. Second, it seems like the gains would be relatively small. What real world benefit would electric cars give? Would it be that much cheaper to operator over the long term? (with the high price of electricity out there, non-leased electric car batteries, disposal problems, etc). They don't have a smog problem (maybe vog though), and their electricity generation (as far as I can remember) was mostly diesel. It's more efficient to generate on a large scale vs. in each vehicle, sure. But I guess it seems like it wouldn't catch on as much there as it would somewhere like CA, even though it'd be harder geographically.
I've been using unfuddle for a couple months now, and I'm not really satisfied with it. The interface is nice, and it seems to have a lot of features that are nice, including the SVN integration, markup used everywhere, ticket views, etc.
However, there's a lot of things I don't like about it. The email format is horrible; groups multiple unrelated messages about different things in single emails, always with the same subject, and does that multiple times a day. Makes no sense to me, and it's really hard to filter through (our team constantly misses messages/tickets because of this).
No end-user documentation. This is really annoying, since there are some things that are not obvious (like certain parts of the markup). I can't edit *or reassign* tickets I didn't create, only the author can. I can't change the status of a ticket (say to make it "pending") unless I also mark it "resolved." That's completely counter-productive. That means everything just sits as "new" until I do something with it, instead of marking them "pending" or "active" as necessary. They do have good filtering, etc.
So overall, if they were to fix a lot of their flaws I think it'd be a great system. However, they're free for 1 project, then $9/mo. Completely infeasible for private/small-time use, so I'm looking for something open source. I'm going to look into redmine, looks like a lot of people here recommend it.
I tried trac, and after using unfuddle I just couldn't get used to the interface. It looks very bare, but also a bit annoying and obtuse. I think unfuddle wins here for having a more intuitive and helpful interface.
Yeah, I agree with Magic5Ball. I clicked through, hoping to see some internet bully being put in his place, instead I see a perfectly civil conversation between two people about technical details. I think the OP is reading into things too much, and being defensive. I'm guessing this, because I know I do quite often.
I constantly have to remind myself to read things in an impartial manner, and assume the other person likes me and is writing in the most congenial manner. Even then, I get really defensive over the stupidest stuff. "What do you *mean* we should use dashes instead of underscores? You jerk!" Any critique of my work seems like a personal attack, even when I know it's not, and I have to constantly remind myself that the other person most likely doesn't mean anything by it.
So "move along, nothing to see here." Could be a shameless plug, who knows.
I actually did the whole T61 vs. MacBook/Macbook Pro thing when I was looking for my laptop a couple months ago. I finally ended up going with the T61, since I couldn't justify the huge price difference (>$1000 difference for similar specs), and the fact that other than the style factor, they seemed equivalent.
However, I've had my T61 for a couples months now, and I can say that the two computers are not equal at all. The first thing I noticed was the screen; it's horrible. If you compare a matt Macbook Pro screen (or even a Powerbook G4 aluminum!), there's simply no comparison. The black level on the T61 is miserable, the horizontal viewing angle is pretty bad, but the vertical viewing angle is probably the worst. It's not a matter of "can I look at the screen from 3 feet above my desk". It's more of "the top of the screen looks blue and the bottom looks green". It bugs my eyes, especially when there's black text on a white screen and the top text looks gray and washed out while they bottom text looks black.
Then there's the fact that the sound on my T61 doesn't work after waking from suspend 25% of the time, the 15" T61 laptop is bigger than the 15" Macbook Pro in size (and possibly in weight too, haven't checked), and the speakers aren't as loud or as clear. And to top it off, the thinkpad came with about 10-15 unnecessary extra programs bundled from Lenovo that turned my "fast" laptop into a wreck. Took me a while to remove enough programs to drop the boot time under 4 minutes. Miserable.
I have been in the habit in the past few years of recommending all my friends get Apples or IBM's (now Lenovo). I've repaired enough laptops to see what happens with other manufacturers, and I've seen a lot of crappy products. However, after this experience I can't wholeheartedly recommend Lenovo anymore. I'd still prefer them over other manufacturer's like dell that simply do not want to support their broken products (too many personal experiences where people are told that Dell wont fix their broken hardware). However, after finally getting to spend a bit of time with a Lenovo, I'd have to say that the two machines are not at all in the same league in regards to overall quality. If I'd known all the little details about the newer thinkpads that are not on the spec sheet (bad lcd, speakers, bugs, etc), I probably would not have chosen a Lenovo. I still think regard them highly for durability. But I now have lost my respect for the quality of their devices.
From daybot: > Cons: > -It's DRM crippled to the extreme >...
This is the "showstopper" for me, and I'm really puzzled by the lack of mention of the DRM and "Trusted Computing" related disadvantages of Vista. That is the single reason why I've decided not to ever upgrade to Vista. I've played around with it a little, and I'll admit some of the changes (search on the start menu, nice graphics updates) bring it closer to good. But it still has an unfinished feel, like they're right in the middle of some migration to a different UI philosophy. After having used OSX for a while, I've come to appreciate how consistent and thought-out it is. It's not a panacea, but it's definitely more intentionally good than a lot of comparable windows examples.
But the bottom line for me is DRM. Completely integrated DRM down to the driver and HAL level, intentional breaking of functionality (hook a HD tv up to your HD-DVD drive using DVI, etc), and the requirements that hardware vendors conform to Microsoft's idea of secure hardware design... I cannot see how this will do anything but hurt everyone except Microsoft and the owners of protected content. And by owners, I don't mean the creators of content... I mean the publishers.
Vista-compatibility depends on hardware vendors redesigning their hardware to Microsoft's requirements, at greater cost and complexity. What happens to fair-use rights when we can't technologically step around it? The legal battle is still being played out, but what does it matter if Microsoft and the content owners decide what the technical limitations are and enforce it down to the hardware level?
I know most techies will ignore it, figuring that eventually everything is broken so it wont be a big deal. But the harm will have already been done in the manner of annoyances, instability, higher costs for hardware and software owners/developers, and incredible limitations and loss of rights for the end users. How does this outweigh essentially some UI changes and half-baked security updates?
Wow, that was an awesome read! It's like something out of a combination Tom Clancy + 1000 Joke book adventure, but worth the read. Sheds a little light on the zaniness that was the Cold War.
I've always wondered about this... 640x480 would be fine for video watching, etc. But will these ever make a good portable computing display, a direct replacement for the laptop screen? Say for a nice replacement, at least 1024x768. When will an affordable display come out with this resolution?
The follow up question, once the higher-res goggles become affordable, is How comfortable is it to work on these things for 8 hours straight, vs. a normal LCD? They always say "looks like a 60 inch tv at 10 ft". How about a 17" monitor at 2 feet? I'd love to sit on the plane with a keyboard and be able to work without worrying about the seat in front of me reclining and smashing my laptop screen into 2 pieces. Or on a bus, working in privacy. Or walking down the street with my wrist-mounted keyboard-halves, for the 15 minutes it takes for me to be distracted and find my way under the front fender of a passing car.
Jerf, thanks for the quick rundown. I think most people are having a problem (like I am) wrapping their head around what exactly this does. It seems everyone expects this to solve the problem of "how do I know if this is a spammer or not?". They think that if someone has a valid OpenId, that means the person is (somewhat) trustworthy. A spammer could sign up for unlimited accounts (esp if they host their own Openid server) so that means they can fake unlimited trustworthy accounts.
But this is incorrect, from what I understand. I have a blog, I want people to log in to post comments (to solve spam). I could require them to create Yet Another Account on my server, which is annoying. Or I could just let them authorize with their openid. If they did the latter, I'd still have to decide if they were trustworthy or not (exactly the same as the first), BUT the account handling would be handled by someone else (I'm just keeping track of their permissions/trust on my server). AND the user would be able to use his own account.
It doesn't solve the trust issue. But it does solve some issues for people like me; basically sites that require low-value accounts. My paypal ID is high-value, and I think I'm ok with that being separate and compartmentalized from my bank ID. But my auto-enthusiast message board ID, my spam-magnet google groups ID, my photo-sharing ID... those are all low-value and can be shared. Right now I use the same spam-magnet email and password on each. If my blog-comment posting ID gets compromised, then I'll just drop it and create another (similar to if someone hacked my spam-magnet email login with weak password).
If someone runs and open openid server (authorizes anyone for any account), then that server can get blacklisted. If a spammer signs up for multiple openid's, then I'll have to blacklist each one... just like I have to blacklist each spammer-created account now! But if a friend of mine logs in with their id, I can authorize them, and it's done. Easier for me (I don't have to create yet-another-registration page) and easier for them (they don't have to create yet-another-account).
This is exactly what I'm looking for. I think I'll do it.
Opera mini 2.x has been a whole lot better than Blazer on my Treo 650. Faster, easier, looks better. With the blazer I'd have to wait until it loads all the images and css load before the page makes sense (and load 100's of k's). With opera, it loads maybe 100k and it already has all the layout/images done.
But it (opera mini 2.x) crashes a lot. Any crash takes down the whole phone (reboot), which isn't that stable to begin with. I tried the 3.x beta and couldn't browse more than about half a page before it'd crash. The new 3.x works a little better. Average almost a whole page. If this would work without crashing all the time, it'd be such a great program for the treo. But as is, I don't even want to use the net cause each crash makes just gets more frustrating.
I have to say, this sounds a lot like my current situation. I've been out of college working for a few years now, and I always imagined I'd get a job that was challenging and that the learning would never end. But after working in my current job for 2 years, I start to feel that I'm wasting time. I hear about all the neat things other people are doing, and start to feel impatient since I know I'm still in the same rut (simple web applications).
One thing that helps is finding ways to get into different technologies and different types of problems within your current job. That way you're exposed to more things and makes it a little easier when you start looking for a job.
The best way to learn for me is the same way I did it through high school and college; figure out how to do something that interests you personally and spend your free time on this. This method worked great during school since I had lots of spare time. Since I've started my "real" job, however, I don't spend any time on personal projects. The real kicker is that I realize that the projects I've been putting off for a year or two are the exact ones that would give me the skills I need for the jobs I want to get into now. As it is, I have the skills neccessary to do something like my current job, which isn't satisfactory.
I need to set aside a certain amount of time to working on my own projects, so that I don't stagnate in that area. But the only real solution is to switch jobs and find something that does challenge you. My current job could become a career, is very stable, and could be very profitable and secure. But the big drawback is that I know I wouldn't get to do the work I want to. So I'm leaving. What good is all the secure stuff if you don't enjoy it and it basically shackles you away from doing all those other fun things you want to get around to?
We'll see how this pans out in the next few months. I'm hoping to find a new job that where I can learn some cool new stuff as part of my job (instead of "in spite of my job") and take a little-to-no pay cut. If it works out, then some of the things I've wanted to learn on my own will happen naturally as part of my job, and at the end I'll have more diverse/mature skills and not feel like a horrible joe-vs-the-volcano cog in the machine. Blech.
Ahh, that makes sense. I totally remember those 4 or so times I've been killed due to accidental winkey press (hated it everytime), and I do remember when the winkey first came out I hated it. A windows specific key on the keyboard, like a slap in the face. It's almost as ridiculous as, say, an IBM or Dell specific key.
Except that I learned to like it because I feel like it will never be used up like the others are. The windows key is never guaranteed to be there, so programs can't rely on it (in fact, I've never seen a program with a default binding on the windows key... can't think of any), so it's all mine!
I almost wish we had more. It'd be great to have less crazy keys (print screen, sys rq, scroll lock) and have more modifiers (shift, alt, control, win, blue, triangle). Just think what you could map with all those extras, I could control every program and have enough bindings for everything! Actually, I do wish I could have one more modifier.
I'm just curious, I've seen the anti-windows key sentiment a few times now in these comments. You really think it has no use? I'm just surprised because I've found it incredibly useful. I do use windows, and the extra commands (explorer, find, run, system properties) come in handy. But the biggest use I find for it is as a shortcut key. It's a blank key with relatively few bindings (since it's technically optional) that you can bind to your heart's content. Every program I use day-to-day is bound to a windows+[key] combo, and it's incredibly convenient. I could use the typical Control+Alt+[key], but there's a lot of conflicts with that and other programs. Then there's Control+Alt+Shift+[key], still some conflicts and now a lot less convenient. But the windows key is a wide open field.
For those that don't like the win key, is it because you don't use it this way? Or would you still hate it even if you used it as a bind key?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a really good point. I'm sure they've said something like that in a interview/PR type setting, and I'm sure they wont follow through. So from a technical/legal standpoint, there's probably not much you can do.
However, I'm sure this will lead to tons of activation cracking to keep things going. Heck, I still use XP for my main OS (I know, lazy). I'm fairly certain I don't want to upgrade to Win 7, but I've been very hesitant to switch to linux. When the "can't activate, servers offline" day comes for XP, I'll just crack activation and keep going. That is if I haven't migrated to linux by then.
I forget what the countdown date is. I would download the widget to check (out of morbid curiosity), but I can't run it since I use XP...
I was referring to what they're buying, not why. But yes, TDI's are great.
True, cost / complexity is an issue. But if the reliability is there, people are often willing to pay an extra for a very fuel-efficient vehicle. Like hybrids.
Yeah, good points. Although...
> Until the electronic system is at least no larger than a typical DOHC head it will receive the same reception as Rover's fully-variable heads.
I dont think the size is that important here. If an electronic system were twice as heavy, and required a much bigger alternator, but also increased fuel efficiency by 15-20%, someone would do it...
I've always wondered why more solenoids aren't used, as in @grishnakh's example.
I suppose it's like power steering - they're just finally starting to get fully-electric power steering in cars, and it's been how long? The capability has been there, but it's taken something special (the need for a very light/efficient car) to drive that kind of change.
I'm guessing when car manufacturer's are trying to optimize their fuel efficient cars, they look at the top X factors that reduce efficiency, and find the most cost-effective fixes. So at one point "Variable valve timing" will come up, and the cost of developing a highly reliable system will be justified, and they'll do it.
Then again, they have fully electronically controlled suspensions out there, yet I have never seen/driven a car with one. Unless valve timing is such an important issue *and* current variable valve timing methods fail miserably, they probably wont be able to justify such a new, complicated, and completely neat idea like computer-controlled solenoid-activated valve timing.
But oh man, how cool would *that* be??
Oh man, I remember reading about that engine. Really innovative idea, especially since gas efficiency was a concern and this was a neat way to get good efficiency out of a carbed card.
As I remember, one of the problems of igniting an air-fuel mixture is getting a complete burn. A large part of pollutants are due to incomplete burn (meaning you're sending gas/chemicals straight through the engine w/o burning or using them). The spark from a sparkplug is very small, and takes time to spread. The sparkplug is also mounted to the wall/ceiling of the cylinder, which is inconvenient.
So the idea here was to pre-ignite a small amount of air/fuel in a small pre-cylinder area, then let that flame spread out into the main cylinder. Created a more complete burn, which (pretty much by definition) creates more power ie. more efficiency.
It's almost sad that this happened at the end of the carburetor-era - it was quickly replaced by fuel injectors, which were more efficient. It was a really neat solution to the carb/fuel problem.
No!
This reminds me of when I was young. I used to listen to classical music in high school while doing homework. My dad would always tell me to "turn off that music" because I couldn't possibly be concentrating with it on. I would explain that it helped, but he would never believe me. It really wouldn't matter what I told him, he had his mind made up; he could not concentrate with music on, so no one could concentrate with music on.
The reasoning the boss has... "he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes". It seems likely that he sees something he doesn't agree with (headphones in the workplace... unprofessional), makes an assumption (this must be a source of distraction), and then makes up an arbitrary justification for changing it (it causes errors). It would make sense if he had followed it from the bottom up; the company is experiencing too many programmer errors, which can be traced back to distractions, which can be shown to be caused by too much personal music. Then there's a justification.
But that's a far cry from looking over a see of headphones and deciding in your head, "I think this is wrong. I'm going to 'fix' it by changing something." It's not clear what the boss' exact reasoning is, but it looks like a poor and shortsighted decision that can only harm things.
Personally, I know sometimes I need music to keep me going. Classical for when I'm cruising along, some high-energy for when I'm really plugging along and getting a ton done, and then complete silence when I have to figure out something complex. Then once I get through that complex segment, it's back on the music. Going without music would be like having an uncomfortable chair for the day, or going w/o my favorite mechanical keyboard, or not having enough light. Not a show stopper, but just a bit more miserable and less productive.
Thinking back on it, whenever I'm working with programmers, it's just about universal that they'll all have their own headphones and use them to tune each other out (concentrate) while working. The headphones come off to discuss programming problems, games, lunch (take out)... then back on to get back to work. I haven't seen another office position where headphones are so ubiquitous.
Just one thought; for dimdim, you have to install a browser plugin to share your screen. This is not a huge deal, but it's not the one-click program that some of us are looking for where dealing with tech support issues. I'd say this is a better solution than some others, esp. compared to installing a whole program. But you'd still have to get your (possibly technophobe) relative/client to do this over the phone:
-go to the dimdim website (pain starts here... what's a browser?)
-sign up for an account, entering all the right info & choosing a password.
-log into the website and start creating a "meeting" to host
-install the browser plugin & restart browser
-go back to that hosted meeting, find the link and send it to you
-now you can see their screen. I'm not sure what additional steps you have to take to control their screen, but I think there might be more.
I like dimdim. I love that they're open source, and I definitely want to try them for my next screen-sharing meeting, esp. with their cool browser-sync tech. But for tech support, I think this still is not an ideal solution. I'd rather try out something like teamviewer.com or ultravnc SC (reverse VNC) instead.
*NOTE: I could be wrong about the above steps. I've tried hosting a meeting a while ago, but I may have remembered things incorrectly.
Logmein is great, and I use it for all my own computers. However, it requires an install on client-side, and for some situations (over the phone support with an ignorant user), trying to get them to install is a long, painful process.
I also use reverse VNC, which is nice. You have to open up a port on our own router, have the VNC viewer listening on the right port, and then setup the reverse VNC binary to connect to your computer (ultravnc has easy programs for this), but it's reliable and pretty simple for end-users... one download, one click, done.
I haven't found a web-based, no-install remote desktop sharing program yet that's free. Would be nice to have.
I think the golden rule applies here; do unto your code what you wish your predecessor's had done to their code. If you write your own code, maintain it yourself, and never have anyone else work on it, then do whatever you want. Heck, use no punctuation, indentation*, or even carriage returns if you can help it.
However, there seem to be two camps; those who see the value in comments, and those who don't. Comments wont detract from those who don't like them (besides more trivial annoyances like wasted screen space), while the lack of comments may significantly hamper those who would appreciate it. It seems safer & more efficient to comment and make understandable code accessible to all, instead of saying that "good programmers" shouldn't need it, and raise the requirements unnecessarily for the maintainability of your code.
Used properly, comments can help. So just find a helpful way to do it. My mindset is that I write for the next guy, assuming that someone's going to hand him the code with an explanation of what he should be doing, and the comments will help guide him. They help the same way as chapter titles. Chapter titles are unnecessary and often can be completely removed without altering the story. But try to skim through a book and find what you're looking for w/o titles, and it's a pain.
I just jumped into an existing project that a genius (really) friend of mine started. He's very smart, but not as experienced a programmer. And the #1 pain point right now is lack of comments. Some of the code is plain spaghetti. That's fine, I'll just refactor it. But since there's no comments describing *why* it's doing what it's doing, I can't yet refactor.
Other things work just fine. But again, lack of comments prevents me from understanding what it's doing without understanding the entire context of the entire system. This is bad design, but that's the point - perfect code may not need comments, but none of us need worry about that (since we wont be working on perfect code anytime soon). It's not a crime to have rough code because the system is still organically growing. It is to have tons of uncommented stuff jumbled together.
Help me to help you. Help your successors maintain your crap. Comment your code. Make things easier on people (I'll put a 1 liner describing this section, since it's a little tricky), rather than harder (Really smart people will understand this, and I don't care about the others).
* Python users: find another way to obfuscate.
nahdude's system sounds great... automate all the day-to-day sys admin into a GUI that devs can use.
I use something simpler, a homegrown remote-scripting system like capistrano but in python. I think a web based complex system would be much better, but it's hard to justify for smaller projects (or budgets). However, it's very nice to setup remote scripting. You can do pretty much anything remotely that you can do locally (ie. on each server), but the benefit of having it all centralized makes things easier.
I have a script on my dev machine that updates my dev server with the latest code, migrates the DB, and restarts apache. I have similar scripts for the testing and production servers. I also have a script that exports the DB from the production server and imports it into my dev machine for me to play with. Having these tasks automated is very nice, since all these utilities can be kept in source control for each developer to be able to use. They speed up simple tasks and lower the barrier of entry. When updating the dev server or getting a copy of the live DB is a single-click deal, you're more likely to use it.
For more in-depth server admin, a more complex solution should be considered. But in the OP's post, it seems like the target is simplifying daily server-admin tasks for web dev's, and a remote scripting solution might be a low-effort improvement.
Or do the same thing but add a web gui and get a neat system like nahdude's. I wouldn't mind having that... but it wouldn't really gain me much over my current command-line system.
> For the last 30 years they've been "planning" a system of rail transport on Oahu, and it simply hasn't come to pass.
Tell me about it! I kept wondering what they were going to do about the horrendous traffic increases on H1, and it was so disheartening to see all the bickering about the development. I know a lot of locals want to preserve the island as much as they can, but I also hated getting stuck in traffic for 2+ hrs instead of a 30 minute drive home (when there's no traffic).
What is strange to me is that when I left (a year ago), they were having tons of trouble with electrical power generation; the demand was simply ramping up too much for their generators, and they didn't have any concrete workable plans for expansion because new generator development was locked in political limbo (surprise!). It's hard to think how they could go from there to all of the sudden increasing the demand a lot more for all the new electric cars.
Also, while geographically it would be easier to give HI the infrastructure to enable electric cars, for some reason it just doesn't make sense practically for me. First, culturally I wonder how many people would truly buy electric cars out there. There are a lot of old cars on the road, and a lot of people don't want to spend more for an electric. Second, it seems like the gains would be relatively small. What real world benefit would electric cars give? Would it be that much cheaper to operator over the long term? (with the high price of electricity out there, non-leased electric car batteries, disposal problems, etc). They don't have a smog problem (maybe vog though), and their electricity generation (as far as I can remember) was mostly diesel. It's more efficient to generate on a large scale vs. in each vehicle, sure. But I guess it seems like it wouldn't catch on as much there as it would somewhere like CA, even though it'd be harder geographically.
I've been using unfuddle for a couple months now, and I'm not really satisfied with it. The interface is nice, and it seems to have a lot of features that are nice, including the SVN integration, markup used everywhere, ticket views, etc.
However, there's a lot of things I don't like about it. The email format is horrible; groups multiple unrelated messages about different things in single emails, always with the same subject, and does that multiple times a day. Makes no sense to me, and it's really hard to filter through (our team constantly misses messages/tickets because of this).
No end-user documentation. This is really annoying, since there are some things that are not obvious (like certain parts of the markup). I can't edit *or reassign* tickets I didn't create, only the author can. I can't change the status of a ticket (say to make it "pending") unless I also mark it "resolved." That's completely counter-productive. That means everything just sits as "new" until I do something with it, instead of marking them "pending" or "active" as necessary. They do have good filtering, etc.
So overall, if they were to fix a lot of their flaws I think it'd be a great system. However, they're free for 1 project, then $9/mo. Completely infeasible for private/small-time use, so I'm looking for something open source. I'm going to look into redmine, looks like a lot of people here recommend it.
I tried trac, and after using unfuddle I just couldn't get used to the interface. It looks very bare, but also a bit annoying and obtuse. I think unfuddle wins here for having a more intuitive and helpful interface.
Yeah, I agree with Magic5Ball. I clicked through, hoping to see some internet bully being put in his place, instead I see a perfectly civil conversation between two people about technical details. I think the OP is reading into things too much, and being defensive. I'm guessing this, because I know I do quite often.
I constantly have to remind myself to read things in an impartial manner, and assume the other person likes me and is writing in the most congenial manner. Even then, I get really defensive over the stupidest stuff. "What do you *mean* we should use dashes instead of underscores? You jerk!" Any critique of my work seems like a personal attack, even when I know it's not, and I have to constantly remind myself that the other person most likely doesn't mean anything by it.
So "move along, nothing to see here." Could be a shameless plug, who knows.
I actually did the whole T61 vs. MacBook/Macbook Pro thing when I was looking for my laptop a couple months ago. I finally ended up going with the T61, since I couldn't justify the huge price difference (>$1000 difference for similar specs), and the fact that other than the style factor, they seemed equivalent.
However, I've had my T61 for a couples months now, and I can say that the two computers are not equal at all. The first thing I noticed was the screen; it's horrible. If you compare a matt Macbook Pro screen (or even a Powerbook G4 aluminum!), there's simply no comparison. The black level on the T61 is miserable, the horizontal viewing angle is pretty bad, but the vertical viewing angle is probably the worst. It's not a matter of "can I look at the screen from 3 feet above my desk". It's more of "the top of the screen looks blue and the bottom looks green". It bugs my eyes, especially when there's black text on a white screen and the top text looks gray and washed out while they bottom text looks black.
Then there's the fact that the sound on my T61 doesn't work after waking from suspend 25% of the time, the 15" T61 laptop is bigger than the 15" Macbook Pro in size (and possibly in weight too, haven't checked), and the speakers aren't as loud or as clear. And to top it off, the thinkpad came with about 10-15 unnecessary extra programs bundled from Lenovo that turned my "fast" laptop into a wreck. Took me a while to remove enough programs to drop the boot time under 4 minutes. Miserable.
I have been in the habit in the past few years of recommending all my friends get Apples or IBM's (now Lenovo). I've repaired enough laptops to see what happens with other manufacturers, and I've seen a lot of crappy products. However, after this experience I can't wholeheartedly recommend Lenovo anymore. I'd still prefer them over other manufacturer's like dell that simply do not want to support their broken products (too many personal experiences where people are told that Dell wont fix their broken hardware). However, after finally getting to spend a bit of time with a Lenovo, I'd have to say that the two machines are not at all in the same league in regards to overall quality. If I'd known all the little details about the newer thinkpads that are not on the spec sheet (bad lcd, speakers, bugs, etc), I probably would not have chosen a Lenovo. I still think regard them highly for durability. But I now have lost my respect for the quality of their devices.
From daybot: ...
c ost.html
> Cons:
> -It's DRM crippled to the extreme
>
This is the "showstopper" for me, and I'm really puzzled by the lack of mention of the DRM and "Trusted Computing" related disadvantages of Vista. That is the single reason why I've decided not to ever upgrade to Vista. I've played around with it a little, and I'll admit some of the changes (search on the start menu, nice graphics updates) bring it closer to good. But it still has an unfinished feel, like they're right in the middle of some migration to a different UI philosophy. After having used OSX for a while, I've come to appreciate how consistent and thought-out it is. It's not a panacea, but it's definitely more intentionally good than a lot of comparable windows examples.
But the bottom line for me is DRM. Completely integrated DRM down to the driver and HAL level, intentional breaking of functionality (hook a HD tv up to your HD-DVD drive using DVI, etc), and the requirements that hardware vendors conform to Microsoft's idea of secure hardware design... I cannot see how this will do anything but hurt everyone except Microsoft and the owners of protected content. And by owners, I don't mean the creators of content... I mean the publishers.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
Vista-compatibility depends on hardware vendors redesigning their hardware to Microsoft's requirements, at greater cost and complexity. What happens to fair-use rights when we can't technologically step around it? The legal battle is still being played out, but what does it matter if Microsoft and the content owners decide what the technical limitations are and enforce it down to the hardware level?
I know most techies will ignore it, figuring that eventually everything is broken so it wont be a big deal. But the harm will have already been done in the manner of annoyances, instability, higher costs for hardware and software owners/developers, and incredible limitations and loss of rights for the end users. How does this outweigh essentially some UI changes and half-baked security updates?
Wow, that was an awesome read! It's like something out of a combination Tom Clancy + 1000 Joke book adventure, but worth the read. Sheds a little light on the zaniness that was the Cold War.
I've always wondered about this... 640x480 would be fine for video watching, etc. But will these ever make a good portable computing display, a direct replacement for the laptop screen? Say for a nice replacement, at least 1024x768. When will an affordable display come out with this resolution?
The follow up question, once the higher-res goggles become affordable, is How comfortable is it to work on these things for 8 hours straight, vs. a normal LCD? They always say "looks like a 60 inch tv at 10 ft". How about a 17" monitor at 2 feet? I'd love to sit on the plane with a keyboard and be able to work without worrying about the seat in front of me reclining and smashing my laptop screen into 2 pieces. Or on a bus, working in privacy. Or walking down the street with my wrist-mounted keyboard-halves, for the 15 minutes it takes for me to be distracted and find my way under the front fender of a passing car.
I can't wait.
Thanks, couldn't even get to the site for a list of mirrors.
Jerf, thanks for the quick rundown. I think most people are having a problem (like I am) wrapping their head around what exactly this does. It seems everyone expects this to solve the problem of "how do I know if this is a spammer or not?". They think that if someone has a valid OpenId, that means the person is (somewhat) trustworthy. A spammer could sign up for unlimited accounts (esp if they host their own Openid server) so that means they can fake unlimited trustworthy accounts.
But this is incorrect, from what I understand. I have a blog, I want people to log in to post comments (to solve spam). I could require them to create Yet Another Account on my server, which is annoying. Or I could just let them authorize with their openid. If they did the latter, I'd still have to decide if they were trustworthy or not (exactly the same as the first), BUT the account handling would be handled by someone else (I'm just keeping track of their permissions/trust on my server). AND the user would be able to use his own account.
It doesn't solve the trust issue. But it does solve some issues for people like me; basically sites that require low-value accounts. My paypal ID is high-value, and I think I'm ok with that being separate and compartmentalized from my bank ID. But my auto-enthusiast message board ID, my spam-magnet google groups ID, my photo-sharing ID... those are all low-value and can be shared. Right now I use the same spam-magnet email and password on each. If my blog-comment posting ID gets compromised, then I'll just drop it and create another (similar to if someone hacked my spam-magnet email login with weak password).
If someone runs and open openid server (authorizes anyone for any account), then that server can get blacklisted. If a spammer signs up for multiple openid's, then I'll have to blacklist each one... just like I have to blacklist each spammer-created account now! But if a friend of mine logs in with their id, I can authorize them, and it's done. Easier for me (I don't have to create yet-another-registration page) and easier for them (they don't have to create yet-another-account).
This is exactly what I'm looking for. I think I'll do it.
Opera mini 2.x has been a whole lot better than Blazer on my Treo 650. Faster, easier, looks better. With the blazer I'd have to wait until it loads all the images and css load before the page makes sense (and load 100's of k's). With opera, it loads maybe 100k and it already has all the layout/images done.
But it (opera mini 2.x) crashes a lot. Any crash takes down the whole phone (reboot), which isn't that stable to begin with. I tried the 3.x beta and couldn't browse more than about half a page before it'd crash. The new 3.x works a little better. Average almost a whole page. If this would work without crashing all the time, it'd be such a great program for the treo. But as is, I don't even want to use the net cause each crash makes just gets more frustrating.
Can't wait for opera to fix this up.
I have to say, this sounds a lot like my current situation. I've been out of college working for a few years now, and I always imagined I'd get a job that was challenging and that the learning would never end. But after working in my current job for 2 years, I start to feel that I'm wasting time. I hear about all the neat things other people are doing, and start to feel impatient since I know I'm still in the same rut (simple web applications).
One thing that helps is finding ways to get into different technologies and different types of problems within your current job. That way you're exposed to more things and makes it a little easier when you start looking for a job.
The best way to learn for me is the same way I did it through high school and college; figure out how to do something that interests you personally and spend your free time on this. This method worked great during school since I had lots of spare time. Since I've started my "real" job, however, I don't spend any time on personal projects. The real kicker is that I realize that the projects I've been putting off for a year or two are the exact ones that would give me the skills I need for the jobs I want to get into now. As it is, I have the skills neccessary to do something like my current job, which isn't satisfactory.
I need to set aside a certain amount of time to working on my own projects, so that I don't stagnate in that area. But the only real solution is to switch jobs and find something that does challenge you. My current job could become a career, is very stable, and could be very profitable and secure. But the big drawback is that I know I wouldn't get to do the work I want to. So I'm leaving. What good is all the secure stuff if you don't enjoy it and it basically shackles you away from doing all those other fun things you want to get around to?
We'll see how this pans out in the next few months. I'm hoping to find a new job that where I can learn some cool new stuff as part of my job (instead of "in spite of my job") and take a little-to-no pay cut. If it works out, then some of the things I've wanted to learn on my own will happen naturally as part of my job, and at the end I'll have more diverse/mature skills and not feel like a horrible joe-vs-the-volcano cog in the machine. Blech.
Good luck.
Ahh, that makes sense. I totally remember those 4 or so times I've been killed due to accidental winkey press (hated it everytime), and I do remember when the winkey first came out I hated it. A windows specific key on the keyboard, like a slap in the face. It's almost as ridiculous as, say, an IBM or Dell specific key.
Except that I learned to like it because I feel like it will never be used up like the others are. The windows key is never guaranteed to be there, so programs can't rely on it (in fact, I've never seen a program with a default binding on the windows key... can't think of any), so it's all mine!
I almost wish we had more. It'd be great to have less crazy keys (print screen, sys rq, scroll lock) and have more modifiers (shift, alt, control, win, blue, triangle). Just think what you could map with all those extras, I could control every program and have enough bindings for everything! Actually, I do wish I could have one more modifier.
I'm just curious, I've seen the anti-windows key sentiment a few times now in these comments. You really think it has no use? I'm just surprised because I've found it incredibly useful. I do use windows, and the extra commands (explorer, find, run, system properties) come in handy. But the biggest use I find for it is as a shortcut key. It's a blank key with relatively few bindings (since it's technically optional) that you can bind to your heart's content. Every program I use day-to-day is bound to a windows+[key] combo, and it's incredibly convenient. I could use the typical Control+Alt+[key], but there's a lot of conflicts with that and other programs. Then there's Control+Alt+Shift+[key], still some conflicts and now a lot less convenient. But the windows key is a wide open field.
For those that don't like the win key, is it because you don't use it this way? Or would you still hate it even if you used it as a bind key?