Ummm....beacuse they are two separate things to a computer? Asking a computer to treat 'T' the same as 't' is not a natural assumption like it is in a human - you have to put in extra code to make it do that. Therefore, you have slower compilers. While it might feel like the more natural path when trying to read your code aloud, it is definitely not the natural way of things.
I also note that you realize English is case sensitive. You didn't have your all caps key on. Why are you not complaining about that?
Like many posters have already said, taking case out of the equation takes out a bit of information that can be put to very good use in the language semantics (e.g. "All class names start with a capital letter", "static final constants are all caps", etc...)
I think part of the problem with the question is that when people say "case insensitive" they're probably thinking to themselves, "all caps". Which would certainly cut down on some of the readability and consistency issues mentioned. The problem is that the two are not the same, and if you really do mean case insensitive you have to put up with things like pUblIc STatiC final INT FOo=0; That pains me just to write it.
My first job out of college was with this startup that rented space in an old warehouse of some sort where the landlord would turn off the heat on the weekends. So Monday morning it was a good 40-50 degrees in the place. We would microwave glasses of hot water and carry them around in between bouts of typing to keep the fingers from going numb.
By "opt in", does your company mean "If you want to do business with us, you must give use you email address and agree to recieve our junk mail?"
Nope. Our weekly newsletter is an optional feature you can choose to subscribe to that is entirely independent from whether you visit the site or do business with us. We get a couple million hits a day to the web site, but I've got about a million newsletter subscribers total.
Is that statistic compiled from everyone that hits the "Report as Spam" button? My company sends out an opt-in newsletter (I promise!) to about a million people a week, and AOL is probably about 200k of those. And whenever somebody hits the "report as spam" button, our email comes back to a special account we have from which I automatically unsubscribe them. I get a couple of hundred of those a day. Yet I know for a fact that these people opted in, and are simply too lazy to unsubscribe using the instructions we provide in every email.
The working definition of spam should *not* be defined by whatever the user is in the mood for.
I've been questing for a digital picture frame for ages. Had an Audrey, got it working, but never found a place for it due to the extra space ethat the wireless adapter took up.
My latest project was to hide the old laptop behind the tv and connect it up to one of the video in ports. Not the same thing as an always-on picture frame, but at least we could just push the tv input button and get the slide show for when guests come over, etc. Plus, biggest frmae you're gonna get:). The advantage to this approach would be the full computing power of the laptop, which a regular frame would not have, plus the easy ability to do things like take a peek at mail, or hook up mame, and so on. kinda just like this book:).
But then I couldn't find the combination of software I wanted -- something to smartly search a directory of images so that I could constantly refresh it, resize them while keeping aspect ratios, and display a slide show. sounds like this book has exactly that software!
Why didn't I write my own? Welll, I started getting greedy and looked more toward stuff I do know (web/xml) and said "Hey, this would make a cool traffic/news monitoring station, too..." and got all distracted with RSS feeds and other silly things, and basically just ran out of time for it to be a christmas present for the missus.
Isn't that the movie where your incredible actor required that a double be used for a scene when he was supposed to kiss another guy? Way to throw yourself into the character, there, actor boy.
I have been with Omnipoint->Voicestream->T-Mobile for years. But I think the coverage is actually getting worse. Recently they told me that my hometown was not covered, despite my phone having worked there for years. So yes, I will switch, and there's nothing T-Mobile can do to fix it, short of improving coverage.
I will not yet, however, for two reasons. First I want to make sure the bugs are out of the system. So far everybody's story is painless, which is good, but I want to make sure there are no horror stories of "My phone didn't work and I got charged by both companies for months..." sort of thing.
Second, I want the price war to take effect so I can get a really good deal.:)
Re:Look! The rating is a 3!
on
Online! The Book
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Look closer, it's really the 8 that they've just used so much some of the pixels are starting to fall off.
And even then, you're not going to get any good locations,...
You're far more cynical than I would have expected from somebody that's already done 2 startups. Just soured on the whole experience? Did you not have this "everything will get in your way" attitude before you started the first one? I'm honestly curious. Do you feel as bad about the second one as the first? If you had to do it over again would you have stuck with the first?
The thing is, that's basically the case. Starting a business is very risky. Most people can't afford to take that risk. And big business just makes things even worse. The barriers to entry of the vast majority of already established businesses are insurmountable to most. If you have a unique idea or perfect timing you can eliminate a lot of these barriers, but for the most part, it takes money to make money.
The interesting thing to me is that although we're talking "startup", how many people in the conversation are only thinking "dot com"? Startup can mean so much more. I encourage people to read something like "The Inventor's Notebook" which has much the same entrepreneurial spirit, but definitely does NOT take the stance that it takes money to make money, or that all the big companies have already become entrenched in all the big markets. On the contrary, it's usually the silly stupid inventions that catch on as a fad and become million sellers because somebody does NOT think "Oh well, a big company probably already did this."
I just think that business cards are symbolic (ironically so) that people somehow get it into their heads that the company is not real until they have a business card / letter head / sign on the front door, and therefore they spend wayyy too much attention on it. The ironic part comes when they discover the hard way that there was no company hiding behind the pretty business card.
You're right, if done basic and cheap, they're fine. But like I said in another post, you dont have to go hire a designer to do them, either.
Fair enough. How about "Do not feel that you have to go out and hire a marketing and design firm to consult on your logo before purchasing 5000 copies of your business cards?"
Starting up means going inexpensive. There will come a time when people will judge the quality of your product by how snazzy your business card is. But those are not the people that will help get your business off the ground. Those folks are better off getting the basic business card. Odds are that they're more likely to appreciate the fact that you're obviously not blowing your money.
Possibly true, but not useful thinking, because that causes everybody to assume that their idea will take a million dollars.
I've long held the theory that although everybody (well, every geek) wants to run a startup, most of us are either too scared or lazy to do it and just in incredible denial. So while planning our startup we are on the lookout for the first insurmountable obstacle that we can point to and say "Woop, oh well, guess this can't happen." The easiest has always been "I need more money than I have", followed rapidly by things like "I need more time" and "I'll probably get crushed by the big players if I even attempt it."
Geeks are incredible realists, which often means incredible cynics. If we can predict a gray area in the future of our plans, a spot where things might not work out, it is very difficult to ignore it. That is why it is often a good idea to team with a real business-minded entrepreneur who just plain does not think that way. They make a great pair. Engineer says why something will break, entrepreneur says why it does not matter.
I have a good friend who is definitely more salesman than geek. I told him an idea. His response was, "I know right now who I could sell that to, if you can make it." But to me, the idea of "Will this sell?" was one of those gray areas that could easily be insurmountable -- assume it will not, therefore halt. But other personalities do not see it that way.
Sketch out a business plan that gives you some clue of how much money you really need. Hint, you do not need a million dollars.
Pretend you're optimizing code and shrink the hell out of it. You don't need to pay for a hosting service above and beyond your cable modem in the basement. You don't need brand new machines when you can buy from ebay. You don't need an office, or business cards, or a travel budget. You don't need to hire person X if you can convince them to do it for free for version 1. Repeat ad nauseam.
Go out and get the stupid money. Ask relatives. Rack up credit card debt. Tell them you're making an independent film or something. Move back in with your parents if you have to.
Get customers. You may even find yourself a sugar daddy that likes your idea so much that they will pay up front, enabling you to do more sooner. This is how many startups get started, when a big company says "I am willing to be your only customer for awhile, even though I know you have no product, and I will pay you to build it, on the promise that I will get lots of profit once you really do have product."
It's been done plenty of times before. It's not inconceivable once you have a better handle on how much you need. Everybody thinks they need a million dollars to start, but in reality you can probably get started for a few hundred or a few thousand. And if your idea has any legs, then raising a few thousand bucks should not be out of the realm of possibility.
Just this weekend my team met the boss's son, who is about 11. We were discussing the purchase of a new game console for the office. When the question came up of PS/2 versus X-Box, this 11yr old said "The PS/2 has mostly E for Everyone games. The X-Box is better, it has lots of M titles."
"current recommendation is to extend it - if we get the shuttle back...that discussion happened on the hill a couple of months ago... basically it will get less useful over time. There is some talk that even when the shuttle goes back up, they may limit it to Space Station only flights. That would mean no upgrades or rocket boosts for us. the next telescope doesn't get launched until at least 2012, so if nothing happens with Hubble, we will have a 2 year gap of no major observatory. And that will hurt here a lot. Hopefully we can get the Shuttles back up and running soon. That would be best. As long as they are safe."
My slowest time was maybe like 3-5 minute range, but damnit I never read any of the solution books and I'm proud of that. Well, I was proud of that when I was a 10yr old kid:).
But to date if I'm wandering in a store and see scrambled cubes out for display I will usually sit and [try to] solve them:). Kinda like seeing juggling balls on display. It's a moral imperative.
I like it when people say "I don't know how I got on that list, because I never give out my email address." 73% of people. That's an amazing number of people wasting an awful lot of energy and paranoia.
Your friends did. "Send this joke to a friend! Know a friend that would like this information? Give us their email!" My wife is having a tupperware party and told me last night "You have to help me make a list of all my friends email addresses to give the organizer lady." Yikes.
Yes you did, when you purchased a product online. Just because you didn't deliberately sign up for anything doesn't mean you didnt get signed up for anything.
Yes you did, you belong to a mailing list that is archived on the web.
Your ISP did. After all, they have it.:)
They guessed it. If JohnSmith@aol.com wonders how somebody guessed his email, someone needs to sit down with him and explain how easy random name generators are to write.
There might be something to the idea that limiting the amount of circulation your email gets will limit the amount of spam you get. But it'll never completely obliterate it. I personally say get a spam filter and then stop wasting time trying to protect a piece of information that is very easy to get. It's like people who get paranoid about their SSN. If somebody wants your SSN, they will get it.
For the younguns -- Professor Goodwin, U of I, in 1981 made the observation that Usenet discussions gravitate downhill. He postulated that as the length of a discussion thread grows, the probability approaches one (1) that one participant will introduce the terms "Hitler" or "Nazi". The custom has evolved that the first party to utter "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion, and the thread terminates.
Our generation has a new bottom of the flamebait barrel. When somebody compares something to September 11 in an attempt to bolster their own argument, move on.
Haven't secretaries been using this for years? I remember seeing one device that had a pedal on the floor attached to the audio playback. The transcriptionist could control the speed of playback to match the rate at which she was typing. Not only does this work in both directions easily (try THAT with fastforward / rewind) but is more interactive because she can use her foot and thus not even stop what she's doing to control her speed.
My team was being whittled for months -- first our guys in San Fran and New York (we were in Boston) were gone. Then, all consultants. One day in November the majority of the developers came in to find an email waiting for them saying that there was a meeting up in HR. One day notice.
Early on in this process my boss had told me that I was one of the key people of the team and when I was gone, there would be no more team.
From November on, we knew the rest of us were dead and the question was just when. Couple days before Christmas I was called (on vacation) by boss and HR lady to tell me that I had 3 months of transition work to do, and then March 31 I'd be gone along with a few other people. The rest of the team (hardware and ops) would be gone in June.
The funny part was how my boss and HR lady were so apologetic because they preferred to give such news in person. Meanwhile I was laughing telling them "So I'm getting 3 months notice that the rest of the team didnt get? And you feel guilty about that? I should be thanking you."
True story, made it to rec.humor.funny a few years back. I watched our tester Jane trying to crash our product. She got to an any key screen, and pushed "J." I screamed "Jane! Why did you press J!?"
"It said any key."
"When programmers say any key they mean the space bar!"
At this point the other programmer on the team piped in with, "We do? I thought we meant Enter."
Duane
"Build a classroom of computers for which all keyboards have one key, and tell your class to press that key. To a person, each will look at you, look at the keyboard, poise their finger over the keyboard, look at you and say, 'This one?'"
According to a research at an English university, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only importent(sp!) thing is that first and last letter is at the right place.
Slashdot Mirror
I also note that you realize English is case sensitive. You didn't have your all caps key on. Why are you not complaining about that?
Like many posters have already said, taking case out of the equation takes out a bit of information that can be put to very good use in the language semantics (e.g. "All class names start with a capital letter", "static final constants are all caps", etc...)
I think part of the problem with the question is that when people say "case insensitive" they're probably thinking to themselves, "all caps". Which would certainly cut down on some of the readability and consistency issues mentioned. The problem is that the two are not the same, and if you really do mean case insensitive you have to put up with things like pUblIc STatiC final INT FOo=0; That pains me just to write it.
My first job out of college was with this startup that rented space in an old warehouse of some sort where the landlord would turn off the heat on the weekends. So Monday morning it was a good 40-50 degrees in the place. We would microwave glasses of hot water and carry them around in between bouts of typing to keep the fingers from going numb.
Nope. Our weekly newsletter is an optional feature you can choose to subscribe to that is entirely independent from whether you visit the site or do business with us. We get a couple million hits a day to the web site, but I've got about a million newsletter subscribers total.
The working definition of spam should *not* be defined by whatever the user is in the mood for.
My latest project was to hide the old laptop behind the tv and connect it up to one of the video in ports. Not the same thing as an always-on picture frame, but at least we could just push the tv input button and get the slide show for when guests come over, etc. Plus, biggest frmae you're gonna get :). The advantage to this approach would be the full computing power of the laptop, which a regular frame would not have, plus the easy ability to do things like take a peek at mail, or hook up mame, and so on. kinda just like this book :).
But then I couldn't find the combination of software I wanted -- something to smartly search a directory of images so that I could constantly refresh it, resize them while keeping aspect ratios, and display a slide show. sounds like this book has exactly that software!
Why didn't I write my own? Welll, I started getting greedy and looked more toward stuff I do know (web/xml) and said "Hey, this would make a cool traffic/news monitoring station, too..." and got all distracted with RSS feeds and other silly things, and basically just ran out of time for it to be a christmas present for the missus.
I'll still check this out, though. Cool.
Isn't that the movie where your incredible actor required that a double be used for a scene when he was supposed to kiss another guy? Way to throw yourself into the character, there, actor boy.
I will not yet, however, for two reasons. First I want to make sure the bugs are out of the system. So far everybody's story is painless, which is good, but I want to make sure there are no horror stories of "My phone didn't work and I got charged by both companies for months..." sort of thing.
Second, I want the price war to take effect so I can get a really good deal. :)
Look closer, it's really the 8 that they've just used so much some of the pixels are starting to fall off.
You're far more cynical than I would have expected from somebody that's already done 2 startups. Just soured on the whole experience? Did you not have this "everything will get in your way" attitude before you started the first one? I'm honestly curious. Do you feel as bad about the second one as the first? If you had to do it over again would you have stuck with the first?
The interesting thing to me is that although we're talking "startup", how many people in the conversation are only thinking "dot com"? Startup can mean so much more. I encourage people to read something like "The Inventor's Notebook" which has much the same entrepreneurial spirit, but definitely does NOT take the stance that it takes money to make money, or that all the big companies have already become entrenched in all the big markets. On the contrary, it's usually the silly stupid inventions that catch on as a fad and become million sellers because somebody does NOT think "Oh well, a big company probably already did this."
You're right, if done basic and cheap, they're fine. But like I said in another post, you dont have to go hire a designer to do them, either.
Starting up means going inexpensive. There will come a time when people will judge the quality of your product by how snazzy your business card is. But those are not the people that will help get your business off the ground. Those folks are better off getting the basic business card. Odds are that they're more likely to appreciate the fact that you're obviously not blowing your money.
Isnt that the magic formula though? See Jobs/Wozniak, Gates/Allen -- one guy builds it, the other guy has the charisma (or balls) to sell it.
I've long held the theory that although everybody (well, every geek) wants to run a startup, most of us are either too scared or lazy to do it and just in incredible denial. So while planning our startup we are on the lookout for the first insurmountable obstacle that we can point to and say "Woop, oh well, guess this can't happen." The easiest has always been "I need more money than I have", followed rapidly by things like "I need more time" and "I'll probably get crushed by the big players if I even attempt it."
Geeks are incredible realists, which often means incredible cynics. If we can predict a gray area in the future of our plans, a spot where things might not work out, it is very difficult to ignore it. That is why it is often a good idea to team with a real business-minded entrepreneur who just plain does not think that way. They make a great pair. Engineer says why something will break, entrepreneur says why it does not matter.
I have a good friend who is definitely more salesman than geek. I told him an idea. His response was, "I know right now who I could sell that to, if you can make it." But to me, the idea of "Will this sell?" was one of those gray areas that could easily be insurmountable -- assume it will not, therefore halt. But other personalities do not see it that way.
- Sketch out a business plan that gives you some clue of how much money you really need. Hint, you do not need a million dollars.
- Pretend you're optimizing code and shrink the hell out of it. You don't need to pay for a hosting service above and beyond your cable modem in the basement. You don't need brand new machines when you can buy from ebay. You don't need an office, or business cards, or a travel budget. You don't need to hire person X if you can convince them to do it for free for version 1. Repeat ad nauseam.
- Go out and get the stupid money. Ask relatives. Rack up credit card debt. Tell them you're making an independent film or something. Move back in with your parents if you have to.
- Get customers. You may even find yourself a sugar daddy that likes your idea so much that they will pay up front, enabling you to do more sooner. This is how many startups get started, when a big company says "I am willing to be your only customer for awhile, even though I know you have no product, and I will pay you to build it, on the promise that I will get lots of profit once you really do have product."
It's been done plenty of times before. It's not inconceivable once you have a better handle on how much you need. Everybody thinks they need a million dollars to start, but in reality you can probably get started for a few hundred or a few thousand. And if your idea has any legs, then raising a few thousand bucks should not be out of the realm of possibility.Just this weekend my team met the boss's son, who is about 11. We were discussing the purchase of a new game console for the office. When the question came up of PS/2 versus X-Box, this 11yr old said "The PS/2 has mostly E for Everyone games. The X-Box is better, it has lots of M titles."
"current recommendation is to extend it - if we get the shuttle back...that discussion happened on the hill a couple of months ago... basically it will get less useful over time. There is some talk that even when the shuttle goes back up, they may limit it to Space Station only flights. That would mean no upgrades or rocket boosts for us. the next telescope doesn't get launched until at least 2012, so if nothing happens with Hubble, we will have a 2 year gap of no major observatory. And that will hurt here a lot. Hopefully we can get the Shuttles back up and running soon. That would be best. As long as they are safe."
But to date if I'm wandering in a store and see scrambled cubes out for display I will usually sit and [try to] solve them :). Kinda like seeing juggling balls on display. It's a moral imperative.
There might be something to the idea that limiting the amount of circulation your email gets will limit the amount of spam you get. But it'll never completely obliterate it. I personally say get a spam filter and then stop wasting time trying to protect a piece of information that is very easy to get. It's like people who get paranoid about their SSN. If somebody wants your SSN, they will get it.
You forgot the apostrophe.
Grammar flame not, lest ye be grammar flamed.
Our generation has a new bottom of the flamebait barrel. When somebody compares something to September 11 in an attempt to bolster their own argument, move on.
Haven't secretaries been using this for years? I remember seeing one device that had a pedal on the floor attached to the audio playback. The transcriptionist could control the speed of playback to match the rate at which she was typing. Not only does this work in both directions easily (try THAT with fastforward / rewind) but is more interactive because she can use her foot and thus not even stop what she's doing to control her speed.
Early on in this process my boss had told me that I was one of the key people of the team and when I was gone, there would be no more team.
From November on, we knew the rest of us were dead and the question was just when. Couple days before Christmas I was called (on vacation) by boss and HR lady to tell me that I had 3 months of transition work to do, and then March 31 I'd be gone along with a few other people. The rest of the team (hardware and ops) would be gone in June.
The funny part was how my boss and HR lady were so apologetic because they preferred to give such news in person. Meanwhile I was laughing telling them "So I'm getting 3 months notice that the rest of the team didnt get? And you feel guilty about that? I should be thanking you."
"It said any key."
"When programmers say any key they mean the space bar!"
At this point the other programmer on the team piped in with, "We do? I thought we meant Enter."
Duane
"Build a classroom of computers for which all keyboards have one key, and tell your class to press that key. To a person, each will look at you, look at the keyboard, poise their finger over the keyboard, look at you and say, 'This one?'"
Good lord I can still barely understand it.