I have been working with a team of 3-6 developers for quite some time. Recently we moved offices and ended up sitting around a big round table; and our productivity went to hell as a result. It didn't take very long before the team scattered, with many people working from coffee shops or home, and the remaining devs claiming vacant desks.
The problem is that development is done in two phases: You work with others to develop a plan, and then run off and get into "the zone" and get stuff done. The problem with "the zone" is that it is very fragile, and so all it takes is hearing two devs laughing about something through your headphones and now you aren't working either.
In other words, putting all the devs tightly packed together all day means that every time one dev is distracted for any little reason, suddenly they all become distracted.
If your dev team is important to your company's product and/or revenue, do everyone a favor and give them each an office with a window, as well as a common room to "hang out" in when they need to collaborate.
A bunch of volunteers fixed a lot of the big bugs, but because there was no developer that could make the commitment to be the maintainer of the port, they decided to drop support. If you checkout the source and install two little C libraries into/usr/local, you can still compile and run it on OS X.
There are also a few people that are distributing their various OS X compilations. I seem to remember that near the end of the tt-forums thread on the dropping of Mac support, there is a link.
The one thing that stuck out to me about this post was your suggestion of using Excel to do scientific computations. As a physicist and a software developer, this idea sends (bad) chills up my spine. I have seen so many real-world engineers struggle to make Excel do what they need (rather for computation, data analysis, or data plotting), rather than spend a weekend learning how to use a much better tool.
Somehow, learning to use Excel to solve your problems ropes them in so that they just continue to use it to solve their problems, no matter how difficult it is for them to wrangle Excel into doing it. Excel is a *financial* program that MS had added some scientific functionality to in order to sell more units to naive individuals who were never taught that there was anything better.
You talk about calculation packages, so I'll start there: If you want a calculation package, you could look at finding a freeware alternative to one of the big computing programs like MatLab, Maple, or (for more symbolic kinds of math) Mathematica. There are a number of ones out there. Alternatively, you could just as easily teach them how to do calculations in a programming language like Ruby or Python, so that the knowledge they learn will set them up for using a real programming language later in life.
That all being said, I'm not sure that Chemistry class is the best place to be teaching a computer course. There is plenty to teach in Chemistry that can be made interesting via hands-on experiments. Additionally, it is important to build the paper and pencil skills for each empirical law, before one can write or understand any (even simple) program that will aid in their calculation.
However, there is one place where I do think a computer is helpful: processing experimental data and plotting. Again, Excel is a horrible choice for this! There are a number of ones that are useful for students, such as DataGraph for MacOSX. These need to be able to take a columns of data, create new columns that apply formulas using previous columns, and *scientifically* plot the data, complete with real regression curve fitting and even error bars. This may sound similar to Excel, but it is not! Excel's plotting engine is written for financial applications, and produces awful quality scientific output. (Indeed, I've had college professors that would not accept any chart formatted in Excel!)
Why was this posted on Slashdot anyway. They may call programmers rude, but this is clearly a case to RTFM before asking.
Probably because there are a *LOT* of people, many of them Slashdot readers, who don't understand what the GPL actually does, because they go off of all the weird touchy-feely "spirit of" misinterpretations rather than reading the text of it themselves.
This post serves as an excellent illustration of the surprises some naive developers can get when they make this mistake, and as a caution for other developers that have the same naÃve misunderstandings.
In other words, this is an education campaign for the readers of Slashdot.:)
Software is part creativity (e.g. design, architecture, misc problem solving) and part busy work (e.g. filling out methods and entering domain table data). Some people are better at one part or the other.
Personally, I find that the busy work part is straight forward and easy, requiring no brain thought, but is also boring and unmotivating. To do it, I just have to buckle down and start filling things out line by line, data point by data point, method by method, taking frequent 5 minute breaks of doing something fun to keep from getting burnt.
The creativity part can be tougher. When there are problems to be solved and the creativity stops, what do you do?
The first thing I do on *any* project is break it into a bunch of modules, and then break those modules into their components, and so on. I can then outline the behavior of each piece, and usually that is enough. Like I learned form "What About Bob?", baby steps often helps.
Sometimes, however, (or often, if you are me) a problem will need real thought. The problem is complex and the solution isn't a straight forward application of the design patterns you already know. It can take a lot of creativity to work through these. In cases where I feel stuck, there are a few things that often do the trick for me:
1. I find *someone* to talk it over with. The more they know how to code, the better. That being said, often just having to explain the problem to anyone that will listen will be enough to clarify what the problem really is, and the solution will dawn on you.
2. In the complete absence of a willing participant (and if you feel stupid describing it to a teddy bear), write out an outline of the *complete* problem, and a first stab of how you might be able to solve it. Then write what is wrong with it. Repeat.
3. Sometimes the issue is that you are in a stale environment. I've had times where I sit at my desk all day and can't get anywhere on a problem and cut out early from frustration, just to find that the solution comes to me while driving home listening to news radio. In other words, sometimes going for a drive or a walk--some place where you can change environment and relax and think about nothing--is enough to make you think.:)
I think the reason why you are having troubles with this is because most developers use an external version control system (SVN/CVS/git) to manage their history much better than a text editor could. So most text editors don't even bother wasting resources trying to recreate a sub-par versions of what is already done when very few people will use it anyway.):)
It sounds like your company could use one of these collaborative version control tools to solve its problems correctly. These would also allow you to make edits to the file while the overlords make their edits, and keep track of who made what changes where, why and when.
It really depends on what kinds of software the company is writing. If you had some groups writing web-based software, other groups working on low-level scientific code, some working on Win apps, and others working on general market x-platform apps, then this would be the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
However if everyone is writing generally the same kinds of software, picking a language for all projects isn't too bad of an idea, as long as there is discussion every 12 months about if it was the right choice and if it will *continue* to be the right choice. (Think about what would happen if you picked COBOL in the 70s and never left it because corporate policy says you can't!)
As for *environments*, I find that everyone thinks different, and to force everyone to use the same environment causes some issues. Indeed, everywhere I've ever worked, we take the opposite tact: *everyone* can choose the tools for themselves. What we quickly found is that the best tool would quickly win-out on its own and everyone would unify behind it (at least, until, something better came along).
The laws of thermodynamics prevent a car from ever running on JUST water. Nevertheless, a wide range of intelligent people seem to be falling for all the reports of this being done.
All the water powered tech I've seen has always required another expendable component (usually either electricity or a chemical reaction) to work. This part of the equation is NOT free.
"Dodd, Feingold To Try and Filibuster Immunity Bill" Shouldn't that be, Dodd Feingold to try to Filbuster Immunity Bill?
There is no try
My wife and I were having exactly the same conversation.
We've noticed that in colloquial English a lot of people use 'to try and' instead of 'to try to', but we weren't able to identify which groups/regions this was most common in.
I have to admit that I had to read it several times before I understood what it meant, because my brain parsed it as two separate pieces around the and. Namely "Dodd, Feingold To Try" and "Filibuster Immunity Bill", neither of which make sense.
It was only when I read it quickly out loud that the colloquial expression popped back into my brain and it made sense.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the topic; nothing to get worked up about.
Oh, The Ignorance...
on
TextMate
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not that I've had a chance to read every comment on this thread, but it is really funny to see how many highly opinionated comments are posted by people who are obviously completely ignorant in regards with TextMate. (Of course, this problem seems endemic to Slashdot these days, and I can take it no longer!)
1. TextMate is nothing like emacs. I actually dislike emacs. Nothing against emacs, it just doesn't fit me. (I used to use joe all the time, but recently decided I liked vim better).
2. TextMate is a text editor. It has three main features, two of which are pretty ordinary these days. The ordinary ones are tabs and a tree-file browser for managing a "project". The other one is its language definitions, which dictate the syntax hilighting, auto-completion, and commands that can be done on a file of that kind. The great thing is that the langauge definitions are fully editable down to the last detail, so you can manipulate them to be what you want them to be, all with a built-in editor, or even create your own!
3. I haven't heard this one here as much, but TextMate is MacOS X only not because they are elitist bastards, but because the Cocoa API is only supported in Mac OS X. Once you make your open source Cocoa API (GNUStep is a good place to start with that), then you can demand a port into Linux/Windows/etc.
4. Close-source != evil, despite what the OSS junkies say (or are they just freeloaders?!). I've done work on both open sourced and closed source projects. At the end of the day I have to eat. If no one pays me to code, then I don't have as much time to produce code. Most developers are in the same boat. Similarly, most companies don't want to pay developers for something that won't make them money. Otherwise they go out of business and noone can pay developers. In a utopian society that is all free and open source, who pays for software development? The point is thus two-fold: a) It is difficult to have a world where everything is open source, b) I don't mind paying for software if the company that makes it is actually devoted to making *good* software. Not all close-source companies are out to steal all your money and screw you. Stop being so bitter.
Being someone who owns (and enjoys) both We Love Katamari and Elebits, I recommend Elebits to anyone who is a fan of Katamari. While they do share some common overtones (common settings where everything in the environment can be interactive), they are sufficiently different as to not feel like Elebits is, in any way, a rehash of the Katamari concept. Instead Elebits is more like a complement to the the overall genre of games that can appeal just as much to a gamer as his wife and children.
My main complaint about Elebits is that the levels challenge you by limiting your ability to do what you want to do the most: trash the room in your search for Elebits to capture. It is much like how the most fun levels of Katamari (for most people) are the ones where you get to go around rolling up the town (making a mess out of things). However, as you go up in levels in Elebits, they tend to put things like sound limiters and black elebits that will destroy your gun (instantly failing you) if you make too much noise and wake them up. This tends to take away from my favorite aspect of Katamari: you could just have fun rolling things up until your time runs out.:)
That being said, I have the suspicion that Elebits, like Katamari, will be one of those cult classics that is overlooked by most gamers as seemingly stupid, but has a large number of devout followers that think it is one of the greatest games ever made.
In our company, everyone is on the same team. That is to say, we avoid the split between developer and IT staff, and instead consider us all as part of the team working on a particular software solution.
Just fixing this psychological schism helps quite a bit, as now we all work together to solve all those problems that always arise when you face a new deployment.
Of course, it also helps that we are a small enough company that you don't have to compete with anyone else in order to brown nose with management, which is something that seems to happen in bigger companies. Of course, once the competition starts, no one plays well together anymore, and then the company falls apart. That's why we fire the "children" who can't play nicely with all the other employees.
Anyway, the point is that there is no silver bullet, but communication and cooperation go a long way.
It doesn't solve your problem, and I saw other posts that said essentially this, but it is *very* important that you properly document your concerns and suggested remedies and propegate it out to all the company officers (CEO, CFO, COO, etc). It is the company officers' problem if the company gets in serious trouble because of their security problems and gets sued by their investors--but only if one can prove they knew about the problem.
In writing the document, I would go beyond digital means. By that, I mean write up the report (it is a report, not a memo) in your favorite word processor, print physical copies for all the people you want to deliver it to, and then *hand deliver* these copies directly into the hands of the officers, usually with words about how critical this problem is and that you are looking out for the company and its officers.
This may have the effect of action, but if you end up with inaction, at least your report will be written and filed to each of the officers. If inaction occurs, you may want to give a copy of your report to other managers and friends in the company, so that you have witnesses that you actually produced the report at a given time.
Lastly, I wanted to follow-up on the report vs memo statement. You really should write a report, complete with identifying the problems and why they exist--complete with references to documents that explain why these problems are so critical, identification of possible solutions (including the upsides and downsides to any competing solutions), and if you have the time, capital cost and time estimates to implement each solution.
It should take you a week or two of using little bits of time you have lying around here and there, but the report will make a very clear case for both your concerns so that upper management knows *exactly* what the concerns are and can make an informed decision with your butt in the clear.
Remember, the company officers are legally responsible for a corporation should a disaster happen due to negligence. Therefore, it is up to them to decide what risks to take regarding security. That being said, you have to make sure your butt is in the clear! Inform the heck out of them.
-2 points for violation of significant figures. (Yeah, I've been a physics TA before).:)
Seriously, though, this is a (petty and pedantic) pet peeve of mine. You have two sig figs on one number and three on the other. How the hell did you get precision to the nearest penny? You should have $26,000 per person, but if I were grading I'd also accept $26,300 per person since basic sig fig rules aren't precise anyway. (You need error analysis techniques to be better!):)
I prefer to write all my CSS and HTML by hand when I can. I always get clean, managable code that does exactly what I want. The only problem is that as a site grows bigger and more complex, some of the commercial offerings help you to manage the intricate connections and automate the link validation for you. It is also nice to have WYSIWYG editing on occasion, usually when I can't remember how to do something I haven't done in awhile.
For straight-up hand editing I use SubEthaEdit, which is a really clever Mac OS X editor. It has a realtime updating web window that uses WebKit, so that you can see the results of your edits.
For general site management, and as a result, for a lot of my editing, I end up using GoLive. This is mostly for historical reasons: I had been using GoLive since long before Adobe bought it. Actually, the first Adobe offering of it was super buggy (never trust the first version of an acquired product, the devs usually don't know what they are doing). The latest versions seem to be stable though.
However, that all being said, most people I know seem to use DreamWeaver. I haven't bothered locating a copy to futz with since way back when, when what was to become GoLive was better, so I can't really say anything on comparisons, but I'd certainly look into DreamWeaver if I were you, since it seems to be the favorite among web devs.
"I don't play first person shooters because the movement of the camera makes me feel nauseous - not because I'm a girl."
Okay, the inner sarcastic bastard (picture Dave Foley on News Radio) just has to say this: Maybe you just feel nauseous playing FPS games *because* you're a girl?
Okay, I'm done--mod me down please. I'm gonna go back to being a responsible adult now. I just couldn't pass a set-up like that.:)
If color is important, find a good professional art monitor, and buy one for everyone (or two if they need it). Then buy a color calibration device, stick it on your monitor, and calibrate. This should get all the monitors to output the same colors.
The real problem comes when you have different model monitors. At the (small) print company I work at, we have different model monitors on every computer. At some point I went around and color calibrated them all, but found that some monitors gave *horrid* color response, while others were pretty good. For example, our cheap ViewSonics (which fortunately are on a computer where color isn't terribly important) show 100% MY Red as being orange on the screen.
A good idea that would also be more cost effective than doing something like buying her a whole computer just to play CDs (to which a computer would create more problems for her than it would solve) would be a two step solution: 1. Find a CD player with the least amount of buttons on the front. It should also have the biggest buttons possible. 2. Colour code each of the buttons (and if possible, texture code them too).
Now you'll have to teach her how to use it in terms of things like: Press the red button to open the tray and press the green button to play the disc, but that isn't so bad.
I wish I did have some references, but Dr. Fox's website has been down for quite some time now. I think he may have retired, as it has been about 10 years since I went through his program.
I'd start with a good search for Dr. Melvin B. Fox, and see what comes up. There might be related pages that link to his.
Bad hand writing is often linked to a visual perception problem. (Indeed, many different learning disabilities (like dyslexia), coordination problems, reading speed problems, depth perception problems, and the like, are being regrouped as visual perception problems.)
There are good visual perception therapists out there who can help with these problems. My brother had *really* bad handwriting, and poor coordination. He went to vision therapy for a year and *really* improved. I had the same thing happen with my reading speed problems (I went from a 4th grade reading speed to better than a 12th grade speed in a year thanks to Dr. Melvin B. Fox).
Unfortunately, the therapy is around US$5000. There are some software programs (that if you see the informercials for look like a hoax) that do some of the stuff that you do in vision therapy. Much of the rest of it could be done by acquiring some relatively cheap equipment, however, you need someone who knows what "exercises" to do in order to do it.
Anyway, it probably isn't a viable option for you (the original poster), but it is worth noting on/. as I'm sure there are a lot of geeks out there who have dyslexia or coordination issues. The therapy *really* does work, and is worth your time, especially if you are young (teen).
The fact that aircraft have captains, was invented in the early days by the airlines, in order to make their crew seem more formally trained and better dignified (as opposed to dare-devil pilots like people thought of them). The airlines also came up with the idea of slapping the crew in a naval style uniform.
If you're on a Mac, you can use LaunchBar. This nifty program lets you open up any application or file in an indexed folder, from any place at any time. What you can do is type Command+Space, and a little menu drops from the menubar. You then can type the name, beginning of hte name, or initials for the program you want. Then all you need to do is type "Enter". Any application is thus just a few kekystrokes away, and that is from any other application.
So for example, I merely need to type: Cmd+Sp, wc3, enter, and Warcraft III starts up. Or I can type fire for firebird (or moz or mf).
I should mention that LaunchBar handles ambiguities well too. It shows not just one match, but the top ten matches (and a scrollbar if there is more), and so if you typed something and hte top match wasn't the one you intended, it is usually somewhere else in there. It then remembers what you chose so that it is the top item. So if photo should resolve to iPhoto instead of Photoshop, you can train it to do that.
Anyway, I feel crippled on a computer when I don't have it, because it is so cumbersome to get to any application.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been working with a team of 3-6 developers for quite some time. Recently we moved offices and ended up sitting around a big round table; and our productivity went to hell as a result. It didn't take very long before the team scattered, with many people working from coffee shops or home, and the remaining devs claiming vacant desks.
The problem is that development is done in two phases: You work with others to develop a plan, and then run off and get into "the zone" and get stuff done. The problem with "the zone" is that it is very fragile, and so all it takes is hearing two devs laughing about something through your headphones and now you aren't working either.
In other words, putting all the devs tightly packed together all day means that every time one dev is distracted for any little reason, suddenly they all become distracted.
If your dev team is important to your company's product and/or revenue, do everyone a favor and give them each an office with a window, as well as a common room to "hang out" in when they need to collaborate.
A bunch of volunteers fixed a lot of the big bugs, but because there was no developer that could make the commitment to be the maintainer of the port, they decided to drop support. If you checkout the source and install two little C libraries into /usr/local, you can still compile and run it on OS X.
There are also a few people that are distributing their various OS X compilations. I seem to remember that near the end of the tt-forums thread on the dropping of Mac support, there is a link.
The one thing that stuck out to me about this post was your suggestion of using Excel to do scientific computations. As a physicist and a software developer, this idea sends (bad) chills up my spine. I have seen so many real-world engineers struggle to make Excel do what they need (rather for computation, data analysis, or data plotting), rather than spend a weekend learning how to use a much better tool.
Somehow, learning to use Excel to solve your problems ropes them in so that they just continue to use it to solve their problems, no matter how difficult it is for them to wrangle Excel into doing it. Excel is a *financial* program that MS had added some scientific functionality to in order to sell more units to naive individuals who were never taught that there was anything better.
You talk about calculation packages, so I'll start there: If you want a calculation package, you could look at finding a freeware alternative to one of the big computing programs like MatLab, Maple, or (for more symbolic kinds of math) Mathematica. There are a number of ones out there. Alternatively, you could just as easily teach them how to do calculations in a programming language like Ruby or Python, so that the knowledge they learn will set them up for using a real programming language later in life.
That all being said, I'm not sure that Chemistry class is the best place to be teaching a computer course. There is plenty to teach in Chemistry that can be made interesting via hands-on experiments. Additionally, it is important to build the paper and pencil skills for each empirical law, before one can write or understand any (even simple) program that will aid in their calculation.
However, there is one place where I do think a computer is helpful: processing experimental data and plotting. Again, Excel is a horrible choice for this! There are a number of ones that are useful for students, such as DataGraph for MacOSX. These need to be able to take a columns of data, create new columns that apply formulas using previous columns, and *scientifically* plot the data, complete with real regression curve fitting and even error bars. This may sound similar to Excel, but it is not! Excel's plotting engine is written for financial applications, and produces awful quality scientific output. (Indeed, I've had college professors that would not accept any chart formatted in Excel!)
Why was this posted on Slashdot anyway. They may call programmers rude, but this is clearly a case to RTFM before asking.
Probably because there are a *LOT* of people, many of them Slashdot readers, who don't understand what the GPL actually does, because they go off of all the weird touchy-feely "spirit of" misinterpretations rather than reading the text of it themselves.
This post serves as an excellent illustration of the surprises some naive developers can get when they make this mistake, and as a caution for other developers that have the same naÃve misunderstandings.
In other words, this is an education campaign for the readers of Slashdot. :)
Software is part creativity (e.g. design, architecture, misc problem solving) and part busy work (e.g. filling out methods and entering domain table data). Some people are better at one part or the other.
Personally, I find that the busy work part is straight forward and easy, requiring no brain thought, but is also boring and unmotivating. To do it, I just have to buckle down and start filling things out line by line, data point by data point, method by method, taking frequent 5 minute breaks of doing something fun to keep from getting burnt.
The creativity part can be tougher. When there are problems to be solved and the creativity stops, what do you do?
The first thing I do on *any* project is break it into a bunch of modules, and then break those modules into their components, and so on. I can then outline the behavior of each piece, and usually that is enough. Like I learned form "What About Bob?", baby steps often helps.
Sometimes, however, (or often, if you are me) a problem will need real thought. The problem is complex and the solution isn't a straight forward application of the design patterns you already know. It can take a lot of creativity to work through these. In cases where I feel stuck, there are a few things that often do the trick for me:
1. I find *someone* to talk it over with. The more they know how to code, the better. That being said, often just having to explain the problem to anyone that will listen will be enough to clarify what the problem really is, and the solution will dawn on you.
2. In the complete absence of a willing participant (and if you feel stupid describing it to a teddy bear), write out an outline of the *complete* problem, and a first stab of how you might be able to solve it. Then write what is wrong with it. Repeat.
3. Sometimes the issue is that you are in a stale environment. I've had times where I sit at my desk all day and can't get anywhere on a problem and cut out early from frustration, just to find that the solution comes to me while driving home listening to news radio. In other words, sometimes going for a drive or a walk--some place where you can change environment and relax and think about nothing--is enough to make you think. :)
I think the reason why you are having troubles with this is because most developers use an external version control system (SVN/CVS/git) to manage their history much better than a text editor could. So most text editors don't even bother wasting resources trying to recreate a sub-par versions of what is already done when very few people will use it anyway.) :)
It sounds like your company could use one of these collaborative version control tools to solve its problems correctly. These would also allow you to make edits to the file while the overlords make their edits, and keep track of who made what changes where, why and when.
It really depends on what kinds of software the company is writing. If you had some groups writing web-based software, other groups working on low-level scientific code, some working on Win apps, and others working on general market x-platform apps, then this would be the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
However if everyone is writing generally the same kinds of software, picking a language for all projects isn't too bad of an idea, as long as there is discussion every 12 months about if it was the right choice and if it will *continue* to be the right choice. (Think about what would happen if you picked COBOL in the 70s and never left it because corporate policy says you can't!)
As for *environments*, I find that everyone thinks different, and to force everyone to use the same environment causes some issues. Indeed, everywhere I've ever worked, we take the opposite tact: *everyone* can choose the tools for themselves. What we quickly found is that the best tool would quickly win-out on its own and everyone would unify behind it (at least, until, something better came along).
The laws of thermodynamics prevent a car from ever running on JUST water. Nevertheless, a wide range of intelligent people seem to be falling for all the reports of this being done.
All the water powered tech I've seen has always required another expendable component (usually either electricity or a chemical reaction) to work. This part of the equation is NOT free.
"Dodd, Feingold To Try and Filibuster Immunity Bill"
Shouldn't that be, Dodd Feingold to try to Filbuster Immunity Bill?
There is no try
My wife and I were having exactly the same conversation.We've noticed that in colloquial English a lot of people use 'to try and' instead of 'to try to', but we weren't able to identify which groups/regions this was most common in.
I have to admit that I had to read it several times before I understood what it meant, because my brain parsed it as two separate pieces around the and. Namely "Dodd, Feingold To Try" and "Filibuster Immunity Bill", neither of which make sense.
It was only when I read it quickly out loud that the colloquial expression popped back into my brain and it made sense.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the topic; nothing to get worked up about.
Not that I've had a chance to read every comment on this thread, but it is really funny to see how many highly opinionated comments are posted by people who are obviously completely ignorant in regards with TextMate. (Of course, this problem seems endemic to Slashdot these days, and I can take it no longer!)
:)
1. TextMate is nothing like emacs. I actually dislike emacs. Nothing against emacs, it just doesn't fit me. (I used to use joe all the time, but recently decided I liked vim better).
2. TextMate is a text editor. It has three main features, two of which are pretty ordinary these days. The ordinary ones are tabs and a tree-file browser for managing a "project". The other one is its language definitions, which dictate the syntax hilighting, auto-completion, and commands that can be done on a file of that kind. The great thing is that the langauge definitions are fully editable down to the last detail, so you can manipulate them to be what you want them to be, all with a built-in editor, or even create your own!
3. I haven't heard this one here as much, but TextMate is MacOS X only not because they are elitist bastards, but because the Cocoa API is only supported in Mac OS X. Once you make your open source Cocoa API (GNUStep is a good place to start with that), then you can demand a port into Linux/Windows/etc.
4. Close-source != evil, despite what the OSS junkies say (or are they just freeloaders?!). I've done work on both open sourced and closed source projects. At the end of the day I have to eat. If no one pays me to code, then I don't have as much time to produce code. Most developers are in the same boat. Similarly, most companies don't want to pay developers for something that won't make them money. Otherwise they go out of business and noone can pay developers. In a utopian society that is all free and open source, who pays for software development? The point is thus two-fold:
a) It is difficult to have a world where everything is open source,
b) I don't mind paying for software if the company that makes it is actually devoted to making *good* software.
Not all close-source companies are out to steal all your money and screw you. Stop being so bitter.
I feel better. Carry on!
Being someone who owns (and enjoys) both We Love Katamari and Elebits, I recommend Elebits to anyone who is a fan of Katamari. While they do share some common overtones (common settings where everything in the environment can be interactive), they are sufficiently different as to not feel like Elebits is, in any way, a rehash of the Katamari concept. Instead Elebits is more like a complement to the the overall genre of games that can appeal just as much to a gamer as his wife and children.
:)
My main complaint about Elebits is that the levels challenge you by limiting your ability to do what you want to do the most: trash the room in your search for Elebits to capture. It is much like how the most fun levels of Katamari (for most people) are the ones where you get to go around rolling up the town (making a mess out of things). However, as you go up in levels in Elebits, they tend to put things like sound limiters and black elebits that will destroy your gun (instantly failing you) if you make too much noise and wake them up. This tends to take away from my favorite aspect of Katamari: you could just have fun rolling things up until your time runs out.
That being said, I have the suspicion that Elebits, like Katamari, will be one of those cult classics that is overlooked by most gamers as seemingly stupid, but has a large number of devout followers that think it is one of the greatest games ever made.
I give We Love Katamari 10/10 and Elebits 8/10.
In our company, everyone is on the same team. That is to say, we avoid the split between developer and IT staff, and instead consider us all as part of the team working on a particular software solution.
Just fixing this psychological schism helps quite a bit, as now we all work together to solve all those problems that always arise when you face a new deployment.
Of course, it also helps that we are a small enough company that you don't have to compete with anyone else in order to brown nose with management, which is something that seems to happen in bigger companies. Of course, once the competition starts, no one plays well together anymore, and then the company falls apart. That's why we fire the "children" who can't play nicely with all the other employees.
Anyway, the point is that there is no silver bullet, but communication and cooperation go a long way.
It doesn't solve your problem, and I saw other posts that said essentially this, but it is *very* important that you properly document your concerns and suggested remedies and propegate it out to all the company officers (CEO, CFO, COO, etc). It is the company officers' problem if the company gets in serious trouble because of their security problems and gets sued by their investors--but only if one can prove they knew about the problem.
In writing the document, I would go beyond digital means. By that, I mean write up the report (it is a report, not a memo) in your favorite word processor, print physical copies for all the people you want to deliver it to, and then *hand deliver* these copies directly into the hands of the officers, usually with words about how critical this problem is and that you are looking out for the company and its officers.
This may have the effect of action, but if you end up with inaction, at least your report will be written and filed to each of the officers. If inaction occurs, you may want to give a copy of your report to other managers and friends in the company, so that you have witnesses that you actually produced the report at a given time.
Lastly, I wanted to follow-up on the report vs memo statement. You really should write a report, complete with identifying the problems and why they exist--complete with references to documents that explain why these problems are so critical, identification of possible solutions (including the upsides and downsides to any competing solutions), and if you have the time, capital cost and time estimates to implement each solution.
It should take you a week or two of using little bits of time you have lying around here and there, but the report will make a very clear case for both your concerns so that upper management knows *exactly* what the concerns are and can make an informed decision with your butt in the clear.
Remember, the company officers are legally responsible for a corporation should a disaster happen due to negligence. Therefore, it is up to them to decide what risks to take regarding security. That being said, you have to make sure your butt is in the clear! Inform the heck out of them.
Hey. I like Curling. :)
"Quality, not quantity." --Unknown
"People like tangible things. Quantity is tangible; that's why people get lured into its false promises." --Jeff Reinecke
$7.8e12 / 2.96e8 = $26,351.35 per person.
:)
:)
-2 points for violation of significant figures. (Yeah, I've been a physics TA before).
Seriously, though, this is a (petty and pedantic) pet peeve of mine. You have two sig figs on one number and three on the other. How the hell did you get precision to the nearest penny? You should have $26,000 per person, but if I were grading I'd also accept $26,300 per person since basic sig fig rules aren't precise anyway. (You need error analysis techniques to be better!)
I prefer to write all my CSS and HTML by hand when I can. I always get clean, managable code that does exactly what I want. The only problem is that as a site grows bigger and more complex, some of the commercial offerings help you to manage the intricate connections and automate the link validation for you. It is also nice to have WYSIWYG editing on occasion, usually when I can't remember how to do something I haven't done in awhile.
For straight-up hand editing I use SubEthaEdit, which is a really clever Mac OS X editor. It has a realtime updating web window that uses WebKit, so that you can see the results of your edits.
For general site management, and as a result, for a lot of my editing, I end up using GoLive. This is mostly for historical reasons: I had been using GoLive since long before Adobe bought it. Actually, the first Adobe offering of it was super buggy (never trust the first version of an acquired product, the devs usually don't know what they are doing). The latest versions seem to be stable though.
However, that all being said, most people I know seem to use DreamWeaver. I haven't bothered locating a copy to futz with since way back when, when what was to become GoLive was better, so I can't really say anything on comparisons, but I'd certainly look into DreamWeaver if I were you, since it seems to be the favorite among web devs.
"I don't play first person shooters because the movement of the camera makes me feel nauseous - not because I'm a girl."
:)
Okay, the inner sarcastic bastard (picture Dave Foley on News Radio) just has to say this: Maybe you just feel nauseous playing FPS games *because* you're a girl?
Okay, I'm done--mod me down please. I'm gonna go back to being a responsible adult now. I just couldn't pass a set-up like that.
If color is important, find a good professional art monitor, and buy one for everyone (or two if they need it). Then buy a color calibration device, stick it on your monitor, and calibrate. This should get all the monitors to output the same colors.
The real problem comes when you have different model monitors. At the (small) print company I work at, we have different model monitors on every computer. At some point I went around and color calibrated them all, but found that some monitors gave *horrid* color response, while others were pretty good. For example, our cheap ViewSonics (which fortunately are on a computer where color isn't terribly important) show 100% MY Red as being orange on the screen.
A good idea that would also be more cost effective than doing something like buying her a whole computer just to play CDs (to which a computer would create more problems for her than it would solve) would be a two step solution:
1. Find a CD player with the least amount of buttons on the front. It should also have the biggest buttons possible.
2. Colour code each of the buttons (and if possible, texture code them too).
Now you'll have to teach her how to use it in terms of things like: Press the red button to open the tray and press the green button to play the disc, but that isn't so bad.
I wish I did have some references, but Dr. Fox's website has been down for quite some time now. I think he may have retired, as it has been about 10 years since I went through his program.
I'd start with a good search for Dr. Melvin B. Fox, and see what comes up. There might be related pages that link to his.
Sorry. Wish I could be of more help.
Bad hand writing is often linked to a visual perception problem. (Indeed, many different learning disabilities (like dyslexia), coordination problems, reading speed problems, depth perception problems, and the like, are being regrouped as visual perception problems.)
/. as I'm sure there are a lot of geeks out there who have dyslexia or coordination issues. The therapy *really* does work, and is worth your time, especially if you are young (teen).
There are good visual perception therapists out there who can help with these problems. My brother had *really* bad handwriting, and poor coordination. He went to vision therapy for a year and *really* improved. I had the same thing happen with my reading speed problems (I went from a 4th grade reading speed to better than a 12th grade speed in a year thanks to Dr. Melvin B. Fox).
Unfortunately, the therapy is around US$5000. There are some software programs (that if you see the informercials for look like a hoax) that do some of the stuff that you do in vision therapy. Much of the rest of it could be done by acquiring some relatively cheap equipment, however, you need someone who knows what "exercises" to do in order to do it.
Anyway, it probably isn't a viable option for you (the original poster), but it is worth noting on
The fact that aircraft have captains, was invented in the early days by the airlines, in order to make their crew seem more formally trained and better dignified (as opposed to dare-devil pilots like people thought of them). The airlines also came up with the idea of slapping the crew in a naval style uniform.
And you could outrun an F-117 in an F-18, hands down. F-117s fly slow, despite what people might want to think.
If you're on a Mac, you can use LaunchBar. This nifty program lets you open up any application or file in an indexed folder, from any place at any time. What you can do is type Command+Space, and a little menu drops from the menubar. You then can type the name, beginning of hte name, or initials for the program you want. Then all you need to do is type "Enter". Any application is thus just a few kekystrokes away, and that is from any other application.
So for example, I merely need to type: Cmd+Sp, wc3, enter, and Warcraft III starts up. Or I can type fire for firebird (or moz or mf).
I should mention that LaunchBar handles ambiguities well too. It shows not just one match, but the top ten matches (and a scrollbar if there is more), and so if you typed something and hte top match wasn't the one you intended, it is usually somewhere else in there. It then remembers what you chose so that it is the top item. So if photo should resolve to iPhoto instead of Photoshop, you can train it to do that.
Anyway, I feel crippled on a computer when I don't have it, because it is so cumbersome to get to any application.