Alas, US Cellular doesn't sell that 5 gig data plan for $30 anymore. See here. Also, US Cellular doesn't share data between phones in the same data plan. Hold on to that current contact!
I recommend Scrum (http://bugzilla/bugzilla-3.0.3/show_bug.cgi?id=251245). The work having already been separated into reasonable chunks, at the beginning of each three-week sprint, we again ask the decision makers, "What are the most important results that we can deliver during the next few weeks?" We effectively wipe out the project list once every three weeks! It allows us to turn very quickly to deal with new priorities.
We also have technical support issues to deal with. We attempt to manage them during sprint planning by planning time to resolve them, considering our past history. On occasion, the issues mean that some priorities can't be handled during the sprint, but we usually still get most of our important work done.
Rating each item in a long list of critical modifications is not what you really want, anyway. What you really want is a periodic answer to the question above. It is almost always easier to answer that one question than it is to prioritize a long modification list. The question naturally forces decision makers to think in well-defined, manageable chunks, and it forces teams to estimate well and to deliver results regularly. Scrum puts ceremony around the question.
Yes, many of these things are standard in large development environments. The smaller you go, the less "standard" they might become.
Nonetheless... I suspect that "drop everything and run away" might not be an opportunity for you, as if it were, you probably wouldn't be asking your question here. Every problem is an opportunity, right? Awesome! You have found a new opportunity to learn and grow. You have found yourself in a situation that rubs you the wrong way. How will you change it?
Run away? You don't like the situation, you don't like fighting windmills, and you're ready and willing to move on. Great, go for it!
Stick it out? You don't like the situation, you don't like fighting windmills, and you can't move on. Take this opportunity to learn about your new environment from within. Try to understand why they do what they do, and how it got that way. Someday, in a new role, you can bring that experience to bear on a new problem.
Fix the problems? You don't like the situation, and you have the courage and compassion to take on the windmill. Great! Tread gently, as you are new to this organization. Build trust within the organization. Take the time to understand why they do what they do, and how it got that way. Then, when the opportunity is right and you have a sympathetic ear, make your case for change to the right people. You will likely only have one shot, so make it good.
The original Write might have gone away...but there is still a proxy in its place.
If you look in Windows 7's \system32 directory, you will find good ol' write.exe. I believe the icon is the same one it had in the Win 95 days. If you look at the property dialog for the file, and click over to the Details tab, you'll see that the "File description" is "Windows Write". Even in Windows 7, one can invoke "write hello.txt" from the command line.
However, the executable is tiny, and it appears to simply invoke WordPad. The executable that shows up in Task Manager is "wordpad.exe".
I used to go bowling with fellow geeks, and I always liked to score the game in different bases. Base 5 works out well, with scores over 1000 (125 base 10) indicating a decent geek's game. Similarly, base 11 (100 base 11 = 121 base 10) or 12 (100 base 12 = 144 base 10) work well, with base 11 not being quite as much fun as base 12 because the frequency of "unusual" digits is reduced. Hexadecimal was fun, too, because there were lots of "unusual" digits.
Of course, you can only do this with a paper scoresheet. Given the proliferation of automatic scoring machines, you'll probably have to bring your own.
The article's headline is no surprise. But also note that the data quoted by the article shows that Linux's share of the market increased from 0.44% in July 2006 to 0.71% in June 2007. Go Linux!
Note that the only supported drivers for this mouse (and its predecessor) are for 32-bit XP and Vista. (See the driver download page at http://www.evoluent.com/download.htm.) The site links to a "freeware" driver provided by somebody else, but it had enough issues that I had to uninstall it.
I own an Evoluent VerticalMouse 2, which became an $80 paperweight after my work OS became WinXP x64. Evoluent's support told me that no 64-bit driver was forthcoming.
> you can't really blame Intuit/Turbotax on this one
I disagree. Saying this is like saying that engineers building a bridge "can't really be blamed" for a bridge failing during a traffic jam caused by heavy traffic. How long has Intuit been in the business of e-filing? You can't tell me they weren't aware that they might get a good deal of their filing at the last minute.
Any designer for TurboTax's e-filing mechanism simply must take the last-minute push into account. Any less is incompetence at best.
My general rule is that any ad that moves gets ad-blocked, but other ads are displayed.
Given that rule, I've found that this filter works very nicely for Yahoo! mail (remove any spaces the slashcode adds):
My understanding is that the ranking of a site according to Google's PageRank algorithm relies on how many quality sites link to the given site.
How many links are there in the wild to Microsoft's main Excel page? I'm guessing not many. Frankly, their front page is primarily a sales portal. (In fact, for me it only turns up fourth in a Google search for Excel!)
If I were Microsoft, and I were trying to increase the PageRank of my Excel page, I'd try making it more useful to users. Make it a destination worthy of quality links, and quality links will come.
So it seems that the new minister has a project to work on! The web site for his ministry serves up PHP, and according to Netcraft, their web server is running Apache on Linux.
<tongue-in-cheek>The ministry's site seems to be serving up content pretty well, though... Maybe it can limp along with open source.</tongue-in-cheek>
Is the prefetch feature enabled yet? It doesn't seem to be enabled for me. I just pulled up Firefox 1.0.2, searched Google for "Java", then viewed source and tried searching for "rel=", and it wasn't on the page.
Presumably someone at Google has seen this article by now. Before you change your default search engine over to Yahoo, stop using gmail, or remove Google Desktop Search from your boxen, give them a few days to respond to this. I'm guessing that Google will fix this issue.
Disclosure: I don't work for Google, any subsidiary, or any affiliated company. Being paranoid, I don't use Google Desktop Search. I have (and use) a gmail account, and I actually like Google as a company.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless it's a min or a max, it's right four times a year!
Alas, US Cellular doesn't sell that 5 gig data plan for $30 anymore. See here. Also, US Cellular doesn't share data between phones in the same data plan. Hold on to that current contact!
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says that the answer to this question is 'no'. Discuss amongst yourselves.
Mod parent up, please, +1 informative.
Another example of prior art may be Safari Books Online. Of course, IANAL.
Oops...bad link. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development).
I recommend Scrum (http://bugzilla/bugzilla-3.0.3/show_bug.cgi?id=251245). The work having already been separated into reasonable chunks, at the beginning of each three-week sprint, we again ask the decision makers, "What are the most important results that we can deliver during the next few weeks?" We effectively wipe out the project list once every three weeks! It allows us to turn very quickly to deal with new priorities.
We also have technical support issues to deal with. We attempt to manage them during sprint planning by planning time to resolve them, considering our past history. On occasion, the issues mean that some priorities can't be handled during the sprint, but we usually still get most of our important work done.
Rating each item in a long list of critical modifications is not what you really want, anyway. What you really want is a periodic answer to the question above. It is almost always easier to answer that one question than it is to prioritize a long modification list. The question naturally forces decision makers to think in well-defined, manageable chunks, and it forces teams to estimate well and to deliver results regularly. Scrum puts ceremony around the question.
Whichever route you take, good luck to you!
The original Write might have gone away...but there is still a proxy in its place.
If you look in Windows 7's \system32 directory, you will find good ol' write.exe. I believe the icon is the same one it had in the Win 95 days. If you look at the property dialog for the file, and click over to the Details tab, you'll see that the "File description" is "Windows Write". Even in Windows 7, one can invoke "write hello.txt" from the command line.
However, the executable is tiny, and it appears to simply invoke WordPad. The executable that shows up in Task Manager is "wordpad.exe".
Methinks they're running the website on a Commodore 64.
Here's the page for the program from the WE Energies site. Up to a $50 credit is available in Wisconsin.
Christ almighty, it is 1986 all over again....
1986? More like 1984! Except the heroine has now become Big Sister.
I used to go bowling with fellow geeks, and I always liked to score the game in different bases. Base 5 works out well, with scores over 1000 (125 base 10) indicating a decent geek's game. Similarly, base 11 (100 base 11 = 121 base 10) or 12 (100 base 12 = 144 base 10) work well, with base 11 not being quite as much fun as base 12 because the frequency of "unusual" digits is reduced. Hexadecimal was fun, too, because there were lots of "unusual" digits.
Of course, you can only do this with a paper scoresheet. Given the proliferation of automatic scoring machines, you'll probably have to bring your own.
The article's headline is no surprise. But also note that the data quoted by the article shows that Linux's share of the market increased from 0.44% in July 2006 to 0.71% in June 2007. Go Linux!
Note that the only supported drivers for this mouse (and its predecessor) are for 32-bit XP and Vista. (See the driver download page at http://www.evoluent.com/download.htm.) The site links to a "freeware" driver provided by somebody else, but it had enough issues that I had to uninstall it.
I own an Evoluent VerticalMouse 2, which became an $80 paperweight after my work OS became WinXP x64. Evoluent's support told me that no 64-bit driver was forthcoming.
> you can't really blame Intuit/Turbotax on this one
I disagree. Saying this is like saying that engineers building a bridge "can't really be blamed" for a bridge failing during a traffic jam caused by heavy traffic. How long has Intuit been in the business of e-filing? You can't tell me they weren't aware that they might get a good deal of their filing at the last minute.
Any designer for TurboTax's e-filing mechanism simply must take the last-minute push into account. Any less is incompetence at best.
IANAL; is this an example of negligence?
Nope, it doesn't seem odd to me.
My understanding is that the ranking of a site according to Google's PageRank algorithm relies on how many quality sites link to the given site.
How many links are there in the wild to Microsoft's main Excel page? I'm guessing not many. Frankly, their front page is primarily a sales portal. (In fact, for me it only turns up fourth in a Google search for Excel!)
If I were Microsoft, and I were trying to increase the PageRank of my Excel page, I'd try making it more useful to users. Make it a destination worthy of quality links, and quality links will come.
So it seems that the new minister has a project to work on! The web site for his ministry serves up PHP, and according to Netcraft, their web server is running Apache on Linux.
<tongue-in-cheek>The ministry's site seems to be serving up content pretty well, though... Maybe it can limp along with open source.</tongue-in-cheek>
Mod parent up as informative, please.
Here's a google cache of the link you couldn't get to: google cache
Aaah, where are the mod points when you need 'em? Mods, please mod this up.
Is the prefetch feature enabled yet? It doesn't seem to be enabled for me. I just pulled up Firefox 1.0.2, searched Google for "Java", then viewed source and tried searching for "rel=", and it wasn't on the page.
Presumably someone at Google has seen this article by now. Before you change your default search engine over to Yahoo, stop using gmail, or remove Google Desktop Search from your boxen, give them a few days to respond to this. I'm guessing that Google will fix this issue.
Disclosure: I don't work for Google, any subsidiary, or any affiliated company. Being paranoid, I don't use Google Desktop Search. I have (and use) a gmail account, and I actually like Google as a company.
This story is a dupe... The original was posted 5 1/2 years ago. (!) Here's the original story.