Opinion and interpretation are factors in every case of communication. That's why EULAs and company policies have official rewrites every year, quarter, or incident. That's also why there is always an HR department whose significant responsibility (50% of time?) is to respond to questions from employee, customers, etc.
Granted some of that time is because people don't bother reading documentation or the search doesn't work, but one thing many, many documents don't include is a FAQ which (if worded clearly and properly annotated and linked) could clear up a lot of problems and frustration with communications.
It depends partly on where you're coming from. There are many kinds of business settings, really each of the types of relationships someone can have with a company:
Each of these relationships has a different point of view and knowledge about any situation, whether it is business rules, labor laws, or when you can get in and out of the building.
It also depends a lot on definitions and what is assumed - the more you can assume, the more concise communication can be. But that also assumes we're all on the same page...
One thing not mentioned for this question is 'who is in control?' Typically wikis are open for everyone to read and modify, and if people modify the wiki instead of using a discussion page to ask questions... well it just confuses the matter. So yes, even the purpose of the communication needs some definition - hopefully explicitly.
I can understand why you'd be confused - trying to measure the quality and worth of information is a big problem (just look at Google and AI), let alone how it is organized.
There are a lot of problems with Wikis - even the benefits, that you can grow your base of information, result in problems: who is going to reorganize it so it is usable again? What are good lists and bullet points to divide gobs of text into into usable chunks of information?
Someone has already mentioned accurateness, but what that really means is correctness + point of view + timestamp of information, and these things are rarely if ever tracked normally, let alone in a wiki. Sure wiki's usually track all changes, but that doesn't mean the information is correct at the time of entry, nor that you necessarily know who's point of view is being described. And that's only if you take the time to go through all the logs! These details should be immediately apparent when viewing a page of valuable information: do you realize how many websites have articles and reviews without ever showing a timestamp of when they were written, submitted, or published?
In the ideal environment wikis would self-organize, ie. someone sees a page that's gotten too big and they take the time to divide and conquer. But that hasn't been my experience so far, and about half of the few times someone has rearranged them they end up using page titles that are awkward, and wiki's don't usually have a tools to rename a page or to list all links pointing to a page and selectively updating them (half to the new page, half to the old one with a new name...). Wiki management can be a real nightmare. Just like any large company's file repository.
Wiki SEO (especially within the wiki program itself) doesn't usually seem to be dealt with either - or if it is... I haven't seen it. I rarely have a wiki's search function turn up what I'm looking for even if I created the pages I need. So there's some other relationship to information here too that's missing some key features or concepts in our lives so far.
I've been looking for a replacement home phone + messaging hardware recently and... well they all suck for one reason or another. The V-Tech stuff has the best sound quality but no headphone jack, so I ended up with a Uniden Dect 6.0 (how secure is that?) with imperfect sound quality (encode/decode lag?)...
But none of the products has more than 15 minutes of record time, and usually have a lot fewer options than my machine from 10 years ago...
So... Windows solutions? Or something open? Is there an RJ-11 jack with an SD card slot, 10 buttons and an LCD screen - or do I have to program my own?
To start, I don't pirate games. I suppose I did back in high school (but still bought some)... People have already answered with excellent text about the main points:
1. Lack of demo/accurate demo/upgrade path 2. Almost all demos either suck or I find out by the end that I've already seen all the gameplay = boring 3. Buggy shit released as commercial product 4. DRM/invasive spying/rootkits or CD requirements 5. Ungodly costs for completely unknowable electronic data 6. Lacking any kind of manual or documentation (even online!) except the 1-page quick-start guide 7. Doesn't work on my system (graphics, memory, CPU, 64-bit, wrong OS, needs patches...) 8. It requires an online service (f-u Steam), activations, or monthly payments
What else?
The whole industry has it's problems, but I'm not talking about the typical 'big industry' or 'cookie cutter games', but rather that there are no standards for... well anything. Except possibly the age-ratings committee (phooey).
Particularly marketing, product descriptions, and system requirements.
When the only thing people are shown on the boxes and in advertisements are completely fake photos, artwork, and cut-scenes...
When the only text is flowery or rude descriptions of the fictional world instead of what the user interacts with, their goals, user paradigms, or even a list of the UIs in the game...
When the system requirements give vague ideas of either the computer or OS which is needed (saying "Windows" or "MS Winsows XP" is not the same as having a big sticker saying "Does not support Windows Vista nor 64-bit CPUs"...
It means customers have absolutely no information about the electronic product they're about to spend money on and have no chance of returning.
Not just PC games, but console and portable games. I can't even buy a console game unless I've already rented it because there's no guarantee it is a $5 or $500 game for me. Good or bad, I own hundreds of Windows games - many I can no longer use (I need a WINE guru...), and fortunately they go cheap pretty quickly. One of the quirkiest and fun is Startopia (even Metal Fatigue), but no new ones can displace the happy memories of the MechCommander or original Magic the Gathering serieses. Dawn of War made it's own happiness, until Soulstorm showed up. Hundreds of games almost made it but make it more frustrating to play or use parts than the fun parts (Space Rangers 2's economy and difficulty levels, X-COM:* and other's excessive difficulty curves, any RPG's inventory management, any * Tactics' character class/level/XP management...)
[rant]The only new game that has excited me in the last 2 years and lived up to the promises and the demo is Puzzle Quest and even that was a close call because the Windows demo came with the notice that it would only be released on NDS! OTHOH, Zelda:Crossbow was the best surprise I've had... just because it lived up to and surpassed the on-box marketing. Sins of a Solar Empire is a much better piece of crap than their earlier SotS and others, but still largely crap[/rant]
What it comes down to is that for a few years now the strategy guides are almost always more informing, dependable, and even more entertaining and certainly cheaper than the games they're supposed to be helping you with.
Interesting... I don't think I'm bound by NDAs but when they asked me to interview for them they had Testing Hint sheets placed over the urinals. Like ads are in a sports bar. Apparently developed by a testing group. I never got statistics on their effectiveness.
Along with this, why don't browsers give users the ability to do things like: never connect to site X, never accept certificate from site X, never accept cookies from site X, or even: never send requests to site X? Sure I can remove the certificate registrars, but I still get a thousand pop-ups repeatedly asking me the same question for a single page!
I'd really like to have a set of preferences for: always accept, never accept, ask me to accept; certificates/send requests to/Flash/images/audio files/anything not XHTML/CSS. How about a network traffic monitor which has "OK?" on the questionable requests...
I'd rather keep my data private - keep Google out of my life!
You're right, I completely forgot about those other major divisions of Dell. I would think all the past points people made on Slashdot would have churned up again about lines-of-business, and identical machines with multiple pricings at dell.com... And the Vista chassis updates too, which I didn't even look into. Wow.
So every company markets and sells their laptops in different ways, yet Microsoft has influenced what, all of them?
FYI: I ended up ordering an Acer TravelMate 6292 since it had a 12.1" screen and some great features.. Going out on a limb though as I can't find a review to save my life, and Acer's website is rather obtuse when looking for techincal information: I had to download the user manual to get a clear picture of what the machine actually looks like, and still couldn't find any mention of the VGA or S-Video output resolutions.
Yes, Microsoft definitely wants people buying Vista instead and I'm not sure the manufacturers have (or can) do much to make XP available to the masses.
I've been shopping for portable hardware over the last week and there are some pretty astounding price differences. Companies are allowing XP on some machines, but holy heck is it tough to make the call between expensive XP machines and cheap Vista machines!
NewEgg has only a dozen or so XP laptops in stock, all of them with at most 1GB RAM, while for the same price you get Vista with up to 3GB RAM, 2-4x hard drive size,... It's kind of sad. Sure you *can* buy with XP, but why would you want to?
Well, because if you don't buy a machine with XP already on it there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find device drivers for XP for any Vista machine out there. And some of us still aren't willing to take the plunge even from XP to Vista to go a step deeper into product registration hell.
Dell is a joke on their machine configurations too - even though they've got discounts on most everything right now, an XP laptop (well, the 1520 vs Vista's 1525) is limited in CPU speed so the comparison is:
$1076: Inspiron 1525 w Vista 1680x1050(15.4") 2.4GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD 85Whr battery or $1091: Inspiron 1520 w XP Pro 1680x1050(15.4") 2.0GHz 2GB RAM 120GB HD (+Intel Wireless N card)
Upgrade the RAM and replace the battery and hard drive to have almost equivalent specs (plus an extra lower-capacity battery) +50 + 169 + 100 = +319 = $1,410! So Vista is getting a $300 discount!
It may be unrelated, but confusing that if you shop around for the Asus EEE 900 - granted the tradeoff is obvious with a 20GB SSD + Linux to match a 12GB SSD + WinXP at the same (list?) price, but some shops are still willing to charge more for the Linux distro version?!
Yuck. Makes me want to find some independant shop just to make this headache go away.
I've been wanting to archive several shoeboxes of floppies - mainly FAT/FAT32, but several Apple II and other Unix - but I haven't had a great success rate with those I've tried and at least some of the time I suspect it is because of poor quality modern floppy drives. Yes, they generally work but I doubt anyone can make a robut floppy drive that retails for $20 or less (which I all do).
A long time ago I had seen someone talking about a 3.5" + 5.25" combo drive (USB?) which could read multiple formats including DOS and Amiga disks, but was never able to locate it. Poor Google-fu.
Ideas on that or someone who rents out a high quality drive would be appreciated since at $5 a disk it would cost me a new computer to read my data...
Thanks!
The Iron Man movie is Great: Review + Feedback
on
Iron Man Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Review
I personally loved the flick. It starts out with some action, gives a backstory, struggles with who he is/was when he finds he is vulnerable and cares, struggles with his business and technology, and they include a touch of romance, several bits of comedy, a nice soundtrack, and a few fights to round out a great movie.
Favre did good.
But hey, I like movies, I used to subscribe to comic books (Iron Man was my first), and I've been enough of an Iron Man fan that even though I stopped subscribing many years ago, I got the PDF product of Iron Man through 2006. I don't generally like Robert Downey Jr, and his characters have varied significantly in his career, but I enjoyed having him as Stark. But I also like the portrayal of inventors and technology and the flow of this movie with it's pacing.
There are of course several "movie inconsistencies", only a couple hints at how much time has passed, some logic problems (in my mind), and people who need the movie to be just like the comics will be ornery about the juxtapositions. I personally disliked Stark's disregard for secrecy - it seems out of comic-book character, even though it is in line for the movie's Stark's character. But it is a very cool movie and I also was surprised when I found it was about 2 hours long.
And yes, there is a scene if you stay past the credits, though not really a surprise. Except for the actor.
Feedback
Anti-war movie? Wow, Stark's ability to care about what his company's weapons are used for seems out of reach for some slashdotters. It comes straight from the books 10 and 20 years ago. This is nothing new, though you may be upset that someone takes a political stance when you wanted to see more things blowed up.
Mediocre movie? Many people consider it to be better than any previously made superhero movie, though other comic book movies may be better (I still like Hellboy). Too broad a generalization to refute directly, I'll say that this movie has actual pacing in the story arc, the comedy is appropriate to the situations (though I can see how some would consider parts manufactured, it is so much more natural than most anything from Batman or other Marvel movies), there is more to the movie than characters moving between action sequences (do people dislike the inventing/refining process?)
McGuffins: It is an imperfect movie, but I think it has half the times of poor logic within the writing that the nearest comic adaptation has, but about the same number of mcguffins (unexplained tech, mis-matched time sequences, etc.)
Gweneth Paltrow: She works well as Pepper Potts (she is a good actress!), actually really well as an assistant with a heart. Though "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" flashed before my eyes in one of the later sequences. And from the ads I'd originally guessed she would be Bethany Cabe, though maybe they're saving Angelina Jolie for that.
Mish-mash: The movie is quite a mish-mash of the Iron Man lore, some things better, some worse in my opinion. But it stayed true to who Iron Man is and made a great movie to boot!
Rails is also terrible in my experience at consistence and installation reproducibility. After my initial installation of Ruby, RoR, and all required gems... well, we can't reproduce it on another Windows machine and MacOSX has no better luck. Our Lead Architect upgraded RoR by one point version...and Rails could no longer start with our website. We only used the RoR standards for development, taking most everything from Dave Thomas' book. Even so I had to bugfix some of RoR for it to behave as expected (problems with RAILS_ENV and the second copy).
Similarly I'll bitch about Ruby install problems because I was developing GUIs in Ruby but once the 1.8.4 release came out, the Windows all-in-one installer no longer included Tk/Tcl. Well so much for that's that.
As with everything, I don't care if *you* want to take a day or a month to get a development environment or OS to install. Just don't call me stupid when I don't want to waste my time on that crap. If there isn't a simple, reproducible way to install the environment, what chance does distribution have?
And I'm really sorry to see it go: RoR has been great to work with! I can do so much for my customers with it, but if we have to devote 40 workhours to getting a new development environment running there's no gain except for large projects with few developers.
I've created several email addreses for myself through my ISPs and keep them tightly focused on who gets them. Each company gets it's own email address.
On my personal account after 2+ weeks of sending and receiving email only with friends with GMail accounts, I started to receive my first spam. This is after several month of spamlessness. Earlier emails were to the same people plus some with other accounts. I've never registered that email address with any company nor used it in correspondences with any company.
I know correlation doesn't equal causality, but still... it is mighty suspicious. I'm personally staying away from GMail, though I hate to now have to requests non-gmail addresses from friends.
Holy crap - no retraining required for MS Office 2007??? But almost nothing is where you expect it to be if you only used the previous MS Office! And upgrading Outlook means no more useful tools like Lookout which is essential with enterprise amounts of email. Perhaps you've got new machines but it also bogs down one 2,000+ person company's desktops so you can't use anything while you've got it running!
Where is the magical "Don't run like crap" checkbox we have to use? Or perhaps just like Vista, Office requires exacting hardware drivers and truly only supports 10% of existing machines?
Wait, you said you know 50% of the material, not 75%.
50% of questions known 100% 50% of questions known 50% = 100% known 75%
If you know 50% either you know part of the test exactly (50% known 100%), or you know all of it sort-of (100% known 50%). So at the one extreme you statistically get: (50 * 2) + (12.5 * 2) - (37.5 * 1) = 100 + 25 - 37.5 = 87.5 of 200 = 43.75% At the other extreme (ie. eliminate half of the answers on every question): 50 * 2 - 50 * 1 = 100 - 50 = 50 of 200 = 25%
So you are correct, knowing 75% of the material (giving your 63% grade) is much better than knowing 50% of it. Being able to eliminate half the answers does help, but answering questions you know exactly can almost double your grade.
In order of the original post (you should number them next time 8)
1. Parameter typing is in fact a precondition, it just happens to be built into several languages, though none of them do it correctly (though I've limited experience). Java has a partial solution by allowing Interfaces to be defined, but doesn't allow the extensive polymorphism required. Ruby is advertised as duck-typing but has no explicit typing and no compile time to express type warnings so falls even shorter in usability. If we were smarter the typing preconditions would be generated from code by listing all messages that a parameter must be able to respond to. I'm still upset that Dave Thomas promoted Ruby's lack of typing (except that it does, and not that gracefully), but no one has filled the gap with my suggestion of automatically generated tests of this type of typing.
2. Are you teaching a methodology to help them do so? Effectively they should be listing out all possible parameter input conditions and then either eliminate them from the list when they exclude them with a precondition, or later generate all combinations and list those (eg. "if X && Y && (Z || !Z) then A") as the postconditions. Or if you define postconditions differently, maybe the postconditions need to be the union or intersection of all A's, whereas the set of full statements become the tests.
3. Precise conditions require knowledge not only of the problem space (including all factors), but also of the solution space and expectations. Typically these are both too implicit in problems, and trying to engender introspection and insights can take much pendantitry and is hard for an instructor because it is too easy to lose sight of what your own assumptions are.
4. Generate them from #2
5. Again, give them a framework for considering the whole problem by dividing up the problem space as described in #2. Use whatever tools or visualizations help: 2-column chart for before(pre) and after(post), use a tool (any exist?) to facilitate these definitions and warn of overlaps, consequences, and where responsibilities should be, even anthropomorphize the concept and have a person be a function refusing to deal with anything that doesn't meet the preconditions and if someone wants to know what they can do they list their postconditions and say "I can't do anything else!"
I agree with other posts that a better tool - both a language and interactive IDE - are required to find the sweet spot for DBC. But as with any method it can also require practicing. I disagree with other posts which says the DBC concept requires all requirements up front (ie. Waterfall Method). Personally with current tools I would include the useful ones when writing the functions and pedantic ones only between the application working and the final code review... if any clients were ever willing to pay for it. Which they aren't.
I'm a little tickled by this thread, actually, as back before 2000 I was writing Java code and explicitly stating @precondition and @postcondition in my javadocs as I knew they were needed for my own edification even if the limited Visual Age IDE couldn't enforce them.
Unfortunately the story poster was a bit vague. They could mean that they or the person assigned don't read code, yet they need to know how a program works, or what it does. There are many times when you don't want to or cannot run/debug a program to analyze it.
There have been many links posted which I'm going to have to explore - not the editor links (jEdit and Emacs rulz!) but the conceptualization links. Unfortunately most if not all IDEs are still code-file based. The most prominent other tool for project conceptualization is UML which has been gaining IDE integration. Yet there are still a couple problems with that:
1. The UML usually generates accurate structures for classes, but doesn't or cannot generate execution diagrams (what, 4 types in UML?) or state diagrams.
2. These static diagrams represent only the level of the code instead of being an interactive object with drill-downs or abstract-up commands!
To understand a new set of code or codebase, I need something that analyzes the code and reports back to me on its tactics and strategies - what patterns are used, what weaknesses are in the code,... Current tools give you unuseful amounts like cyclomatic complexity, or other ratings like test coverage or Fowler's class interdepence/brittleness/(whatever) measure. However those things are useful to me only: if you know nothing about code, have any resources to plug testing holes, or are actively managing a codebase, respectively. None of them say what the code *does* or how it does it. So we need something that covers concerns orthogonal to what already exists.
Which makes me more curious about the comment asking if anyone uses the tools researchers are working on for visualizing a project. I haven't kept up on academics - where do I start looking? And is there anything there with demos, products available, or in post-beta releases?
Movies start with a story, generate content, and are edited back down to a story. Then on the DVD release we even get the 2-disc set with outtakes, special features, director's cut(s), TV and theatre ads for the movie,...
Instead they give us a "game" built on one of 4 common rulesets, incomplete, buggy, and leaving out features in order to sell us a new expansion pack in 4 to 8 months. Oh, wait, is that just the movies' Gold Edition?
It could also be that it costs $50+ just to *try* a new game, and find out it plays just like game X you already played, or could buy used for $20 now... Or it's just complete rubbish but you opened the box so you can't return it.
I've become a fan of the JAMPACK discs (PS2), but I still don't bother with them at full price either, and they have gotten me interested enough to buy one or two games each AND kept me the hell away from some real shit - but after they're down in the $20-$25 range used.
PC demoes also seem to make painfully obvious what is wrong with the games, possibly all games they're trying to sell - maybe moreso for myself since I play more PC games. Typically it ends up that the only thing missing from the demos are the data files for the further weapons/villans/skins/maps. I did fall for both Star War EAW and The Movies: SWEAW's demo kind of sucked IMO, but playing the Rebel campaign kept me (mostly) interested. The Movies' demo left me at the point where I definitely wanted more, but both of them not only have the same damning design flaw (can't do important moves while the game is paused), but end up too repetitive with too little (new?) rewards, or just lack of creative situations... I stuck out SW:EAW to see the ending and credits, then the music ends about halfway through the half-hour credits! While for The Movies I bought it late and cheap(er) and haven't passed the 1950s yet because the innane micromanagement and taunting hints (only gives hints when loading a game, like Civ4) never give you, the player, the full story. On the other hand the Age of Empires III demo made sure I'd never touch that turd, and while there seems to be a lot of positive hype about it, it isn't convincing me yet.
One problem I see is that there is no "Games Industry" there are just a ton of infantile companies running around trying to program and sell stuff, whether it be their games or their magazines about games.
Required Fixes
Categories of gameplay must be listed clearly on the boxes, along with percentages
Standardize the language used to talk about, describe, categorize, advertise, and review games. (lots of industries need this, typically ending with on a few experts knowing what the hell anyone is talking about)
Require clear marketing for games, just like disclaimers must be printed in TV commercials for food and health products. Hopefully no "May cause anal leakage," but, well, I think those games are out there too... At the very least "Prerendered Image" and "In game image using theoretical hardware, 2006" need to be plastered all over the place.
This is a bit of brainstorming, or going for a walk through some thoughts:
You're talking about actions which would create a new medium (well, copy an existing one) yet have it exist outside the purvue of political, religious, puritanical, military... really outside all social forces. You also want it to exist outside of monetary concerns (otherwise the social forces kick in).
Really you don't want anyone to have power over it. Well, I mean, you do want someone to have power over it - someone to decide the best technologies for the network, or technology interfaces, and someone to deal with the problems that will crop up. So perhaps the better phrase is: to be responsible for it on all levels, rather than to have no power, or to manage it, or somesuch.
And it isn't just an action, but actions over time: After getting the system setup there will be maintenance, adding new services or extending the system to support others, beside the user support itself... Really it is an on-going commitment. Or at least an on-going set of actions, if not a commitment by anyone in particular.
So is there a way to organize people in an effort yet keep it a-political, a-moral, supported/funded by the people who care, and still cross all governement and prejudicial boundaries?
A True Freedom of Speech environment, yet that has no worries about outside interference because with everyone caring about it and for it, there are no single/multiple points of failure which would eliminate the whole system?
Sounds a bit more like an organized, hierarchyless, peer anarchy populated by responsible (=able to/will respond), accepting people rather than an uninformed, bigoted democracy (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Governm entconstitutional republic) populated by followers and controlled by scared, privileged children.
I'm in full agreement with you, and highly interested in the MMOG - or a true MMORPG and have similar ideas of my own, though perhaps more socially-minded.
And for some reason I want to say that your link above may be a copy of the original Evil Overlord list, though I don't know how often they update even though they say they're still taking submissions. I think the other lists aggregated on the sff page have homes elsewhere too, but I'm too lazy to substantiate that claim right now.
First, "not forcing anyone to upgrade?" What about End-Of-Lifing their products, where they no longer support them (regardless of how 2nd/3rd party vendors give up on the platforms far before that time). And I don't know how valid they are, but the whole XP registration process - doesn't that give MS a DMCA key to not allow us to use their OS after any time they determine? Corporate entities with their private versions of XP mean the big hitters could use it for years after the public is allowed...
OT: In my experience, Windows 98 is still the most stable Windows platform. Until DirectX 9 it was rock steady for me. I've seen more blue screens under 2000 or XP in a month than in 5 years of 98.
The problem with talking like this is that we each have our own experiences. My anecdotes are just as valid and true as yours. Too bad we can't bring this discussion to a more productive level. Or has someone?
My experience shows that *nix is impossible to get working correctly on the hardware I own. It take gobs of time to attempt to get services and networking to start, let alone work, and usually doesn't after that. The documentation is either non-existant, only outlined, or proliferated to the extent that there is no definitive document for a piece of software for my machine - if I could even determine the version I want or need for each software package.
A Windows license saves me both buying new hardware and scouring the web for the possibly existant software to fill my needs.
Having said that, I use OpenOffice at every opportunity - even though it is imperfect and is missing Access so it isn't a total solution. And I've always been more than a little paranoid about the direction Microsoft is going, both for DMCA parts and licensing.
But Windows just lets me get things done. It doesn't require a full weekend for me to try installing something new and possibly kill my machine in the process while not necessarily being able to succeed in getting the software or hardware to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this is where we start crossing the fold.
Opinion and interpretation are factors in every case of communication. That's why EULAs and company policies have official rewrites every year, quarter, or incident. That's also why there is always an HR department whose significant responsibility (50% of time?) is to respond to questions from employee, customers, etc.
Granted some of that time is because people don't bother reading documentation or the search doesn't work, but one thing many, many documents don't include is a FAQ which (if worded clearly and properly annotated and linked) could clear up a lot of problems and frustration with communications.
It depends partly on where you're coming from. There are many kinds of business settings, really each of the types of relationships someone can have with a company:
1. Employee (many different types)
2. Owner
3. Management (many levels)
4. Policy communicator (HR, typically)
5. Policy manager
6. Customer
7. Provider (sells to company)
Each of these relationships has a different point of view and knowledge about any situation, whether it is business rules, labor laws, or when you can get in and out of the building.
It also depends a lot on definitions and what is assumed - the more you can assume, the more concise communication can be. But that also assumes we're all on the same page...
One thing not mentioned for this question is 'who is in control?' Typically wikis are open for everyone to read and modify, and if people modify the wiki instead of using a discussion page to ask questions... well it just confuses the matter. So yes, even the purpose of the communication needs some definition - hopefully explicitly.
I can understand why you'd be confused - trying to measure the quality and worth of information is a big problem (just look at Google and AI), let alone how it is organized.
There are a lot of problems with Wikis - even the benefits, that you can grow your base of information, result in problems: who is going to reorganize it so it is usable again? What are good lists and bullet points to divide gobs of text into into usable chunks of information?
Someone has already mentioned accurateness, but what that really means is correctness + point of view + timestamp of information, and these things are rarely if ever tracked normally, let alone in a wiki. Sure wiki's usually track all changes, but that doesn't mean the information is correct at the time of entry, nor that you necessarily know who's point of view is being described. And that's only if you take the time to go through all the logs! These details should be immediately apparent when viewing a page of valuable information: do you realize how many websites have articles and reviews without ever showing a timestamp of when they were written, submitted, or published?
In the ideal environment wikis would self-organize, ie. someone sees a page that's gotten too big and they take the time to divide and conquer. But that hasn't been my experience so far, and about half of the few times someone has rearranged them they end up using page titles that are awkward, and wiki's don't usually have a tools to rename a page or to list all links pointing to a page and selectively updating them (half to the new page, half to the old one with a new name...). Wiki management can be a real nightmare. Just like any large company's file repository.
Wiki SEO (especially within the wiki program itself) doesn't usually seem to be dealt with either - or if it is... I haven't seen it. I rarely have a wiki's search function turn up what I'm looking for even if I created the pages I need. So there's some other relationship to information here too that's missing some key features or concepts in our lives so far.
Anyone want to help?
I've been looking for a replacement home phone + messaging hardware recently and... well they all suck for one reason or another. The V-Tech stuff has the best sound quality but no headphone jack, so I ended up with a Uniden Dect 6.0 (how secure is that?) with imperfect sound quality (encode/decode lag?)...
But none of the products has more than 15 minutes of record time, and usually have a lot fewer options than my machine from 10 years ago...
So... Windows solutions? Or something open? Is there an RJ-11 jack with an SD card slot, 10 buttons and an LCD screen - or do I have to program my own?
To start, I don't pirate games. I suppose I did back in high school (but still bought some)... People have already answered with excellent text about the main points:
1. Lack of demo/accurate demo/upgrade path
2. Almost all demos either suck or I find out by the end that I've already seen all the gameplay = boring
3. Buggy shit released as commercial product
4. DRM/invasive spying/rootkits or CD requirements
5. Ungodly costs for completely unknowable electronic data
6. Lacking any kind of manual or documentation (even online!) except the 1-page quick-start guide
7. Doesn't work on my system (graphics, memory, CPU, 64-bit, wrong OS, needs patches...)
8. It requires an online service (f-u Steam), activations, or monthly payments
What else?
The whole industry has it's problems, but I'm not talking about the typical 'big industry' or 'cookie cutter games', but rather that there are no standards for... well anything. Except possibly the age-ratings committee (phooey).
Particularly marketing, product descriptions, and system requirements.
When the only thing people are shown on the boxes and in advertisements are completely fake photos, artwork, and cut-scenes...
When the only text is flowery or rude descriptions of the fictional world instead of what the user interacts with, their goals, user paradigms, or even a list of the UIs in the game...
When the system requirements give vague ideas of either the computer or OS which is needed (saying "Windows" or "MS Winsows XP" is not the same as having a big sticker saying "Does not support Windows Vista nor 64-bit CPUs"...
It means customers have absolutely no information about the electronic product they're about to spend money on and have no chance of returning.
Not just PC games, but console and portable games. I can't even buy a console game unless I've already rented it because there's no guarantee it is a $5 or $500 game for me. Good or bad, I own hundreds of Windows games - many I can no longer use (I need a WINE guru...), and fortunately they go cheap pretty quickly. One of the quirkiest and fun is Startopia (even Metal Fatigue), but no new ones can displace the happy memories of the MechCommander or original Magic the Gathering serieses. Dawn of War made it's own happiness, until Soulstorm showed up. Hundreds of games almost made it but make it more frustrating to play or use parts than the fun parts (Space Rangers 2's economy and difficulty levels, X-COM:* and other's excessive difficulty curves, any RPG's inventory management, any * Tactics' character class/level/XP management...)
[rant]The only new game that has excited me in the last 2 years and lived up to the promises and the demo is Puzzle Quest and even that was a close call because the Windows demo came with the notice that it would only be released on NDS! OTHOH, Zelda:Crossbow was the best surprise I've had... just because it lived up to and surpassed the on-box marketing. Sins of a Solar Empire is a much better piece of crap than their earlier SotS and others, but still largely crap[/rant]
What it comes down to is that for a few years now the strategy guides are almost always more informing, dependable, and even more entertaining and certainly cheaper than the games they're supposed to be helping you with.
Interesting... I don't think I'm bound by NDAs but when they asked me to interview for them they had Testing Hint sheets placed over the urinals. Like ads are in a sports bar. Apparently developed by a testing group. I never got statistics on their effectiveness.
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Along with this, why don't browsers give users the ability to do things like: never connect to site X, never accept certificate from site X, never accept cookies from site X, or even: never send requests to site X? Sure I can remove the certificate registrars, but I still get a thousand pop-ups repeatedly asking me the same question for a single page!
I'd really like to have a set of preferences for: always accept, never accept, ask me to accept; certificates/send requests to/Flash/images/audio files/anything not XHTML/CSS. How about a network traffic monitor which has "OK?" on the questionable requests...
I'd rather keep my data private - keep Google out of my life!
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You're right, I completely forgot about those other major divisions of Dell. I would think all the past points people made on Slashdot would have churned up again about lines-of-business, and identical machines with multiple pricings at dell.com... And the Vista chassis updates too, which I didn't even look into. Wow.
So every company markets and sells their laptops in different ways, yet Microsoft has influenced what, all of them?
FYI: I ended up ordering an Acer TravelMate 6292 since it had a 12.1" screen and some great features.. Going out on a limb though as I can't find a review to save my life, and Acer's website is rather obtuse when looking for techincal information: I had to download the user manual to get a clear picture of what the machine actually looks like, and still couldn't find any mention of the VGA or S-Video output resolutions.
Thanks for the feedback!
Yes, Microsoft definitely wants people buying Vista instead and I'm not sure the manufacturers have (or can) do much to make XP available to the masses.
... It's kind of sad. Sure you *can* buy with XP, but why would you want to?
I've been shopping for portable hardware over the last week and there are some pretty astounding price differences. Companies are allowing XP on some machines, but holy heck is it tough to make the call between expensive XP machines and cheap Vista machines!
NewEgg has only a dozen or so XP laptops in stock, all of them with at most 1GB RAM, while for the same price you get Vista with up to 3GB RAM, 2-4x hard drive size,
Well, because if you don't buy a machine with XP already on it there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find device drivers for XP for any Vista machine out there. And some of us still aren't willing to take the plunge even from XP to Vista to go a step deeper into product registration hell.
Dell is a joke on their machine configurations too - even though they've got discounts on most everything right now, an XP laptop (well, the 1520 vs Vista's 1525) is limited in CPU speed so the comparison is:
$1076: Inspiron 1525 w Vista 1680x1050(15.4") 2.4GHz 3GB RAM 250GB HD 85Whr battery
or
$1091: Inspiron 1520 w XP Pro 1680x1050(15.4") 2.0GHz 2GB RAM 120GB HD (+Intel Wireless N card)
Upgrade the RAM and replace the battery and hard drive to have almost equivalent specs (plus an extra lower-capacity battery) +50 + 169 + 100 = +319 = $1,410!
So Vista is getting a $300 discount!
It may be unrelated, but confusing that if you shop around for the Asus EEE 900 - granted the tradeoff is obvious with a 20GB SSD + Linux to match a 12GB SSD + WinXP at the same (list?) price, but some shops are still willing to charge more for the Linux distro version?!
Yuck. Makes me want to find some independant shop just to make this headache go away.
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I've been wanting to archive several shoeboxes of floppies - mainly FAT/FAT32, but several Apple II and other Unix - but I haven't had a great success rate with those I've tried and at least some of the time I suspect it is because of poor quality modern floppy drives. Yes, they generally work but I doubt anyone can make a robut floppy drive that retails for $20 or less (which I all do).
A long time ago I had seen someone talking about a 3.5" + 5.25" combo drive (USB?) which could read multiple formats including DOS and Amiga disks, but was never able to locate it. Poor Google-fu.
Ideas on that or someone who rents out a high quality drive would be appreciated since at $5 a disk it would cost me a new computer to read my data...
Thanks!
Review
I personally loved the flick. It starts out with some action, gives a backstory, struggles with who he is/was when he finds he is vulnerable and cares, struggles with his business and technology, and they include a touch of romance, several bits of comedy, a nice soundtrack, and a few fights to round out a great movie.
Favre did good.
But hey, I like movies, I used to subscribe to comic books (Iron Man was my first), and I've been enough of an Iron Man fan that even though I stopped subscribing many years ago, I got the PDF product of Iron Man through 2006. I don't generally like Robert Downey Jr, and his characters have varied significantly in his career, but I enjoyed having him as Stark. But I also like the portrayal of inventors and technology and the flow of this movie with it's pacing.
There are of course several "movie inconsistencies", only a couple hints at how much time has passed, some logic problems (in my mind), and people who need the movie to be just like the comics will be ornery about the juxtapositions. I personally disliked Stark's disregard for secrecy - it seems out of comic-book character, even though it is in line for the movie's Stark's character. But it is a very cool movie and I also was surprised when I found it was about 2 hours long.
And yes, there is a scene if you stay past the credits, though not really a surprise. Except for the actor.
Feedback
Anti-war movie? Wow, Stark's ability to care about what his company's weapons are used for seems out of reach for some slashdotters. It comes straight from the books 10 and 20 years ago. This is nothing new, though you may be upset that someone takes a political stance when you wanted to see more things blowed up.
Mediocre movie? Many people consider it to be better than any previously made superhero movie, though other comic book movies may be better (I still like Hellboy). Too broad a generalization to refute directly, I'll say that this movie has actual pacing in the story arc, the comedy is appropriate to the situations (though I can see how some would consider parts manufactured, it is so much more natural than most anything from Batman or other Marvel movies), there is more to the movie than characters moving between action sequences (do people dislike the inventing/refining process?)
McGuffins: It is an imperfect movie, but I think it has half the times of poor logic within the writing that the nearest comic adaptation has, but about the same number of mcguffins (unexplained tech, mis-matched time sequences, etc.)
Gweneth Paltrow: She works well as Pepper Potts (she is a good actress!), actually really well as an assistant with a heart. Though "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" flashed before my eyes in one of the later sequences. And from the ads I'd originally guessed she would be Bethany Cabe, though maybe they're saving Angelina Jolie for that.
Mish-mash: The movie is quite a mish-mash of the Iron Man lore, some things better, some worse in my opinion. But it stayed true to who Iron Man is and made a great movie to boot!
Grr: Where's Ultra-PeePee?
Zim: He's at work.
Rails is also terrible in my experience at consistence and installation reproducibility. After my initial installation of Ruby, RoR, and all required gems... well, we can't reproduce it on another Windows machine and MacOSX has no better luck. Our Lead Architect upgraded RoR by one point version...and Rails could no longer start with our website. We only used the RoR standards for development, taking most everything from Dave Thomas' book. Even so I had to bugfix some of RoR for it to behave as expected (problems with RAILS_ENV and the second copy).
Similarly I'll bitch about Ruby install problems because I was developing GUIs in Ruby but once the 1.8.4 release came out, the Windows all-in-one installer no longer included Tk/Tcl. Well so much for that's that.
As with everything, I don't care if *you* want to take a day or a month to get a development environment or OS to install. Just don't call me stupid when I don't want to waste my time on that crap. If there isn't a simple, reproducible way to install the environment, what chance does distribution have?
And I'm really sorry to see it go: RoR has been great to work with! I can do so much for my customers with it, but if we have to devote 40 workhours to getting a new development environment running there's no gain except for large projects with few developers.
Please fix it, guys!
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I think this is where I chime in and say:
I've created several email addreses for myself through my ISPs and keep them tightly focused on who gets them. Each company gets it's own email address.
On my personal account after 2+ weeks of sending and receiving email only with friends with GMail accounts, I started to receive my first spam. This is after several month of spamlessness. Earlier emails were to the same people plus some with other accounts. I've never registered that email address with any company nor used it in correspondences with any company.
I know correlation doesn't equal causality, but still... it is mighty suspicious. I'm personally staying away from GMail, though I hate to now have to requests non-gmail addresses from friends.
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Holy crap - no retraining required for MS Office 2007??? But almost nothing is where you expect it to be if you only used the previous MS Office! And upgrading Outlook means no more useful tools like Lookout which is essential with enterprise amounts of email. Perhaps you've got new machines but it also bogs down one 2,000+ person company's desktops so you can't use anything while you've got it running!
Where is the magical "Don't run like crap" checkbox we have to use? Or perhaps just like Vista, Office requires exacting hardware drivers and truly only supports 10% of existing machines?
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Wait, you said you know 50% of the material, not 75%.
50% of questions known 100%
50% of questions known 50%
= 100% known 75%
If you know 50% either you know part of the test exactly (50% known 100%), or you know all of it sort-of (100% known 50%).
So at the one extreme you statistically get: (50 * 2) + (12.5 * 2) - (37.5 * 1) = 100 + 25 - 37.5 = 87.5 of 200 = 43.75%
At the other extreme (ie. eliminate half of the answers on every question): 50 * 2 - 50 * 1 = 100 - 50 = 50 of 200 = 25%
So you are correct, knowing 75% of the material (giving your 63% grade) is much better than knowing 50% of it. Being able to eliminate half the answers does help, but answering questions you know exactly can almost double your grade.
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In order of the original post (you should number them next time 8)
1. Parameter typing is in fact a precondition, it just happens to be built into several languages, though none of them do it correctly (though I've limited experience). Java has a partial solution by allowing Interfaces to be defined, but doesn't allow the extensive polymorphism required. Ruby is advertised as duck-typing but has no explicit typing and no compile time to express type warnings so falls even shorter in usability. If we were smarter the typing preconditions would be generated from code by listing all messages that a parameter must be able to respond to. I'm still upset that Dave Thomas promoted Ruby's lack of typing (except that it does, and not that gracefully), but no one has filled the gap with my suggestion of automatically generated tests of this type of typing.
2. Are you teaching a methodology to help them do so? Effectively they should be listing out all possible parameter input conditions and then either eliminate them from the list when they exclude them with a precondition, or later generate all combinations and list those (eg. "if X && Y && (Z || !Z) then A") as the postconditions. Or if you define postconditions differently, maybe the postconditions need to be the union or intersection of all A's, whereas the set of full statements become the tests.
3. Precise conditions require knowledge not only of the problem space (including all factors), but also of the solution space and expectations. Typically these are both too implicit in problems, and trying to engender introspection and insights can take much pendantitry and is hard for an instructor because it is too easy to lose sight of what your own assumptions are.
4. Generate them from #2
5. Again, give them a framework for considering the whole problem by dividing up the problem space as described in #2. Use whatever tools or visualizations help: 2-column chart for before(pre) and after(post), use a tool (any exist?) to facilitate these definitions and warn of overlaps, consequences, and where responsibilities should be, even anthropomorphize the concept and have a person be a function refusing to deal with anything that doesn't meet the preconditions and if someone wants to know what they can do they list their postconditions and say "I can't do anything else!"
I agree with other posts that a better tool - both a language and interactive IDE - are required to find the sweet spot for DBC. But as with any method it can also require practicing. I disagree with other posts which says the DBC concept requires all requirements up front (ie. Waterfall Method). Personally with current tools I would include the useful ones when writing the functions and pedantic ones only between the application working and the final code review... if any clients were ever willing to pay for it. Which they aren't.
I'm a little tickled by this thread, actually, as back before 2000 I was writing Java code and explicitly stating @precondition and @postcondition in my javadocs as I knew they were needed for my own edification even if the limited Visual Age IDE couldn't enforce them.
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Unfortunately the story poster was a bit vague. They could mean that they or the person assigned don't read code, yet they need to know how a program works, or what it does. There are many times when you don't want to or cannot run/debug a program to analyze it.
... Current tools give you unuseful amounts like cyclomatic complexity, or other ratings like test coverage or Fowler's class interdepence/brittleness/(whatever) measure. However those things are useful to me only: if you know nothing about code, have any resources to plug testing holes, or are actively managing a codebase, respectively. None of them say what the code *does* or how it does it. So we need something that covers concerns orthogonal to what already exists.
There have been many links posted which I'm going to have to explore - not the editor links (jEdit and Emacs rulz!) but the conceptualization links. Unfortunately most if not all IDEs are still code-file based. The most prominent other tool for project conceptualization is UML which has been gaining IDE integration. Yet there are still a couple problems with that:
1. The UML usually generates accurate structures for classes, but doesn't or cannot generate execution diagrams (what, 4 types in UML?) or state diagrams.
2. These static diagrams represent only the level of the code instead of being an interactive object with drill-downs or abstract-up commands!
To understand a new set of code or codebase, I need something that analyzes the code and reports back to me on its tactics and strategies - what patterns are used, what weaknesses are in the code,
Which makes me more curious about the comment asking if anyone uses the tools researchers are working on for visualizing a project. I haven't kept up on academics - where do I start looking? And is there anything there with demos, products available, or in post-beta releases?
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Am I truly the only one to mention this so far?
...
Movies start with a story, generate content, and are edited back down to a story. Then on the DVD release we even get the 2-disc set with outtakes, special features, director's cut(s), TV and theatre ads for the movie,
Instead they give us a "game" built on one of 4 common rulesets, incomplete, buggy, and leaving out features in order to sell us a new expansion pack in 4 to 8 months. Oh, wait, is that just the movies' Gold Edition?
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I've become a fan of the JAMPACK discs (PS2), but I still don't bother with them at full price either, and they have gotten me interested enough to buy one or two games each AND kept me the hell away from some real shit - but after they're down in the $20-$25 range used.
PC demoes also seem to make painfully obvious what is wrong with the games, possibly all games they're trying to sell - maybe moreso for myself since I play more PC games. Typically it ends up that the only thing missing from the demos are the data files for the further weapons/villans/skins/maps. I did fall for both Star War EAW and The Movies: SWEAW's demo kind of sucked IMO, but playing the Rebel campaign kept me (mostly) interested. The Movies' demo left me at the point where I definitely wanted more, but both of them not only have the same damning design flaw (can't do important moves while the game is paused), but end up too repetitive with too little (new?) rewards, or just lack of creative situations... I stuck out SW:EAW to see the ending and credits, then the music ends about halfway through the half-hour credits! While for The Movies I bought it late and cheap(er) and haven't passed the 1950s yet because the innane micromanagement and taunting hints (only gives hints when loading a game, like Civ4) never give you, the player, the full story. On the other hand the Age of Empires III demo made sure I'd never touch that turd, and while there seems to be a lot of positive hype about it, it isn't convincing me yet.
One problem I see is that there is no "Games Industry" there are just a ton of infantile companies running around trying to program and sell stuff, whether it be their games or their magazines about games.
Required Fixes
</rant>
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This is a bit of brainstorming, or going for a walk through some thoughts:
m entconstitutional republic) populated by followers and controlled by scared, privileged children.
You're talking about actions which would create a new medium (well, copy an existing one) yet have it exist outside the purvue of political, religious, puritanical, military... really outside all social forces. You also want it to exist outside of monetary concerns (otherwise the social forces kick in).
Really you don't want anyone to have power over it. Well, I mean, you do want someone to have power over it - someone to decide the best technologies for the network, or technology interfaces, and someone to deal with the problems that will crop up. So perhaps the better phrase is: to be responsible for it on all levels, rather than to have no power, or to manage it, or somesuch.
And it isn't just an action, but actions over time: After getting the system setup there will be maintenance, adding new services or extending the system to support others, beside the user support itself... Really it is an on-going commitment. Or at least an on-going set of actions, if not a commitment by anyone in particular.
So is there a way to organize people in an effort yet keep it a-political, a-moral, supported/funded by the people who care, and still cross all governement and prejudicial boundaries?
A True Freedom of Speech environment, yet that has no worries about outside interference because with everyone caring about it and for it, there are no single/multiple points of failure which would eliminate the whole system?
Sounds a bit more like an organized, hierarchyless, peer anarchy populated by responsible (=able to/will respond), accepting people rather than an uninformed, bigoted democracy (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Govern
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I'm in full agreement with you, and highly interested in the MMOG - or a true MMORPG and have similar ideas of my own, though perhaps more socially-minded.
And for some reason I want to say that your link above may be a copy of the original Evil Overlord list, though I don't know how often they update even though they say they're still taking submissions. I think the other lists aggregated on the sff page have homes elsewhere too, but I'm too lazy to substantiate that claim right now.
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First, "not forcing anyone to upgrade?" What about End-Of-Lifing their products, where they no longer support them (regardless of how 2nd/3rd party vendors give up on the platforms far before that time). And I don't know how valid they are, but the whole XP registration process - doesn't that give MS a DMCA key to not allow us to use their OS after any time they determine? Corporate entities with their private versions of XP mean the big hitters could use it for years after the public is allowed...
OT: In my experience, Windows 98 is still the most stable Windows platform. Until DirectX 9 it was rock steady for me. I've seen more blue screens under 2000 or XP in a month than in 5 years of 98.
The problem with talking like this is that we each have our own experiences. My anecdotes are just as valid and true as yours. Too bad we can't bring this discussion to a more productive level. Or has someone?
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I'm glad that your Linux lets you work.
My experience shows that *nix is impossible to get working correctly on the hardware I own. It take gobs of time to attempt to get services and networking to start, let alone work, and usually doesn't after that. The documentation is
either non-existant, only outlined, or proliferated to the extent that there is no definitive document for a piece of software for my machine - if I could even determine the version I want or need for each software package.
A Windows license saves me both buying new hardware and scouring the web for the possibly existant software to fill my needs.
Having said that, I use OpenOffice at every opportunity - even though it is imperfect and is missing Access so it isn't a total solution. And I've always been more than a little paranoid about the direction Microsoft is going, both for DMCA parts and licensing.
But Windows just lets me get things done. It doesn't require a full weekend for me to try installing something new and possibly kill my machine in the process while not necessarily being able to succeed in getting the software or hardware to work.
You run Linux. I'm getting things done.
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I just addressed a couple of your points in a longer post in a parallel thread, and would like to hear your reactions:
c id=14549263
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174800&
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