We - by the standards of the last 15 years - are witnessing a miracle just now: The area in which Windows is just one choice of various is growing for a change. I don't care if Linux takes over - that alone is a good thing. It's all matter of when exactyl OSS will gain critical mass and become a serious competitor. It is not unlikely that we will then see Windows using a Linux kernel someday. With DX and.Net as closed-source kernel modules or something like that.
The only measure I know of by which Rails sucks...
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... is the "Hype vs. Mature Usable Open Source Projects Built With It (TM)" Ratio.
By that Rails sucks, Ruby sucks even more, Django and Zope suck a little, TurboGears, etc. suck, Python itself fares quite well and PHP kicks everybody elses ass, Java included.
That aside it's pretty much a matter of taste and how well the core community is willing to push their product. Rails practically lifted open source project marketing to a whole new level - they deserve the attention they get. It's up to the ones using these webkits to seperate hype from reality.
Sure there is PHP bashing, as is bashing of many other PLs. Just watch a Lisp or C guy go after Java to see what I mean.
The truth is, the people that really are programming and solving problems rarely rant about a PL without having tried it. PHP is an extremely n00by-friendly programming language - also because of it's wide availability - and thus lots of code in PHP is quite wacky actually. This falls back on to the PL itself. Flash/ActionScript has simular problems (aside from having a strong prorpietary touch to it).
In the end PHP, with its neighbourhood to markup, is the web-eras basic. With way more succesfull and impacting open-source web applications than any other solution - Python included.
I *am* a Python fan, but it just didn't have that critical mass of an install base back then when mod_php gained traction. And that the true King and ruler of all webkits, Zope, has had a backend that looks like shit for 7 years now didn't help it either. Nowadays nobody gives a hoot if Zope is lightyears ahead of Rails and a few years older - it's just a niche webkit for people who've bumped into it
There are a lot of factors that make a language successfull, and PHP meets very many of those. Just because people rant about it doesn't mean it really is bad. Nobody I know would say that programming in C is really fun and modern and hip. And many people rant about it. Yet look how many mission critical work still is done with it - because the untested alternatives aren't any better.
On the server-side I've been mostly doing PHP for last 3 years now and am now going totally OOP with the CakePHP Framework and a large international project. It works, is extremely neat and quick to develop with. So be it that PHP has a few bizarly named core functions and arrow->syntax. So *fucking* what? My friend who has a business aswell and is a Sun partner and Java fanboy just moved his webproject from Java to PHP so they could finish it faster. "Java Fanboy speeds up project by switching to PHP" - enough said.
Slashdotters rant a lot, but reality is allways a tad different.
That obscure link you posted claims "bondage and discipline" languages to be lacking compared to opposing (and superiour) Languages of Choice. The latter to which the author of this strange theory counts Python. Duh.
I'd say your plan to get all smart-assy on Python backfired big time.
Sorry, folks, but I have yet to find something about pointers that can not be explained to my mother in 5 minutes. (Ok, my mother is a technical translator with a military background, but you get the picture) More or less the same goes for the supposedly difficult matter of object orientation. It may, however, be a tad tedious because n00bs usually need a few nudges and some pratice inbetween before they can wrap their head around these concepts permanently.
The ledgend that basic (or whatever) spoils programming n00bs beyond repair is total rubbish. Mind you Basic and Pascal are IMHO way to old to get people started effectively, but so is this bizar thing called Lisp (take that from an Emacs user). Professors need to get into teaching again. I just dropped out of CS (for reasons unrelated) and the programming Prof. we had explained pointers in such a way that even the guys and girls that appeared like burger flipping quake players 'I like computers' type CS people were up to speed in no time.
SAS has been gaining traction potential lately and with web-centric solutions to classic LAN based problems and solutions poping up left, right and center it's hard to believe this won't have a long-term effect on some businesses. But with an even further increasing userbase IT problems are actually getting more and not less. Just an hour ago I was at a T-Shirt stitching shop. You should imagine that the people in charge there - even if in their mid to late 40ies - would know the most basic common user access standards and procedures for working with PCs. The lack of basic knowledge, not to mention basic knowledge needed when dealing with digital media (which you should have if you are in charge of such a business) was bizar. When talking to customers it suprises me time and time again how much I know in comparsion to these people. Now I just need to learn to ask for the appropriate amount of money.
Bottom Line: As long as IT is that complicated to most people as illustrated above and as long as therefore dealing with IT is also very much a matter of whom a business trusts and whom not, the internal IT dept. won't die out.
Sorry, but this is silly rubbish
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· Score: 4, Informative
Someone here linked to this which has so many good points I have no problem with reposting it.
But anyway: These people are being silly. The text editor problem has exaustivly been solved about 10 to 15 years ago. Since then we've gotten a few more, nearly all for free and one better than the next. And to all those who after 20 years of GUI computing still haven't gotten it:
YOU DON'T WRITE TEXT IN A WORD PROCESSOR!
If you're thinking "I know what I'm gonna do now - I'm gonna write a text." then DON'T use a word processor. Use an Editor of which there are countless around and available. Word processors are for formating and making documents print-ready. Repeat after me:"Word processors are *not* primary writing tools. " And don't even dare think of using a word processor for programming. There's a special place in hell for people who do that. Really.
I've been programming and writing for more than two decades now and the last time I abused a word processor as an editor for writing down my initial draft was with AmiPro on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 running on MS-DOS4. And only because I was a n00b at writing on computers, it was a print document from the get-go and AmiPro was good enough not to suck at writing and Win 3.11 lacked a good editor. I've been using jEdit for allmost a decade now and have recently picked up Emacs (not recommended for people who don't know what awaits them) because it runs on the CLI which I often have to use.
Bottom line: It's called Text Editor, or 'Editor' for short, folks. This type of programm has existed for over 30 years. Pick your favorite. And they've all got a fullscreen mode too.
NASA wanted a pen that would work in zero G; spent millions on RnD
Coming up with a pressurized ball-point mine and optimizing it to make it feasable and 'certified for flight' costed only about 100.000$. Paying the team, building the prototypes, testing them NASA-style, building the tools and rigging a new assembly line for something like that costs that much. Fairly cheap considering they ditched the ball-point pens biggest downside: Unable to write overhead, under water or - as the case may be - in zero gravity. I only use pressurized ball-points and must say, comparing them to regular ones: The effort was worth it.
Can't they just pass the NS brand to the Mozilla Foundation? Let them think of a nice use for it. Maybe rename themselves to Netscape Foundation? It would be fitting.
Grab a book on Feng Shui. This is not a joke. While I don't actually mean Feng Shui exactly, what I mean is get a grasp of the concept of 'organically' arranging your workplace. For the lack of a better term and concept, Feng Shui is a good place to look to get an idea of what good interior architecture is all about.
I'll continue the list with some random stuff that comes to mind, some of which others here have mentioned allready:
1.) Wallcolors, Plaster-Textureing. There are countless possibilities here - check them out. Be sure to check out the options for organic interior building materials aswell. Consider coloring or plastering different sections of the walls with different styles.
2.) I like Zen-Style. Blends well with a high-tech enviroment too. A sleek simple real-wood desk and side-table may be all it needs to pimp your enviroment just enough. Don't save in the wrong place, plan your setup and you might find that two neat pieces blend well with that glass-enclosure rack-shelf and leave you room to breathe and think.
3.) Make the rack nice to look at and quiet. Read: Multi-Layer glass all around. Tell your boss it needs a custom enclosure if you must. Consider giving the glass-enclosure-rack a prominent position in the room where you can reach the backdoor super easy without having to move it. A well-positioned fixed installation can be a neat interior feature. (check feng-shui on this if you're out of ideas - try out the looks in a 3D programm if the need be
4.) Plan your decoration. Crappy, tacky generic office-type decoration sucks. You'll know that once you've hand-picked one or two posters of pictures for your office and leave it at that. Plan the position of them and plan your lighting accordingly. Do all your pinwall type stuff on your computer. You're a geek, take advantage of that. You can completely void reality of all ugly work-related stuff and still get work done. (Just thinking of the shitty cube decorations posted at regular intervals here on/. makes me sick)
5.) Visit a few offices of the creative guys and girls. Better-running web agencies have a fable for stylish and hip work enviroments. They have the ideas aswell. Ripp off whereever you can and don't be ashamed of it. After all, they use OSS on their webservers, don't they? Sumo beanbags, Stokke Balans (arm)chairs, hand-rafted realwood shelves on oversized industrial-style rollers (built one myself - super-easy to move around), selected wallsections with crazy-ass grafity besides intentionally blank walls. You get the picture. There are countless websites with picture of cool offices around the globe. Do some research.
6.) You a Developer? Software Team Lead? Blackboard! And I mean an old-school (literally!) real-wood big ass black (literally!) board. If you can't find one, plan it's size and position, bolt a board to the wall and paint it with black-board paint. This little german software shop did it right - surf around their site a little and check out their pictures --> http://freiheit.com/ . I'd actually like to work there just judging by the fotos.
7.) Ikke-Bana. (Ancient Japanese Art of Flower Arrangement) Check it out. Again: This is no joke.
8.) Parquet. *Real* parquet. And nothing else. Industrial parquet actually can easyly be cheaper than industrial wall-to-wall carpeting. Bug your Boss about it if it's not company policy. Maybe encourage your boss to join in on a little office-pimping spree. With the right tone of voice and mood you can get your entire departement to consider office interiors a little more.
9.) High Desk/Standing Desk. Somebody mentioned this allready. Really neat idea. We sit *all* day and that is *bad*. Space to run a few circles and a place to stand and work at is a very neat thing if you have the space to spare. Spec your PC casing to fit a standing desk if the need be - or add a second screen to your setup. You can get desks that have motors in them to lift them to standing height. N
Would you have one of these in your cellar? I wouldn't. I'd rather tune down my power consumption by a magnitude and switch to solar energy or something. I don't think this will fly.
Streamline micropayments for the entire humanity and you've won. You've won against Amazon. Wikipedia. PayPal. Pearson Education. And Citygroup.
Honestly, all we need is a "Google Bank" sort of thing, managing microtransactions for everyone on the planet with zero-fuss international transactions. Google actually has the power to handle this.
If they pull through with this add-powered thing it is likely they can move up against Wikipedia in terms of content amount. Add in comments, ratings and suggestions to knol and you have a semi-wikipedia sort of thing that even pays of for the effort of the authors. Not the worst idea if you think of it. It could very well work.
I'm a seasoned Linux user with nearly 10 years of experience. I still use it regularly and it's the OS on all my custom PCs. That said, I use OS X (Panther and now Tiger) on both my iBook G4 and my new Mac Mini. Setting up a mint system as a work enviroment takes half the time it does with Kubuntu 7. Hardware/Software integration being one of the reasons. There are some other details. To be honest, I think one of the biggest problems I see is X. Not that X isn't cool with networking and 'runs on an old Irix box' and all that, but the weedyness of the X enviroment is starting to annoy me. Not only is modern style font management still a crampy thing to get running - the mere though of opening XF86Config to set modelines, gfx drivers and whatnot appears to me so bizare and strange, even though I'm still quite proficient in it. Kubuntu7.04 still has serious trouble handling resolution switching and X allways intervenes with strange scrolling and zooming behaviour. Running a VNC server puts me right back to 2001, configuration wise. It's not only that, but X is symptomatic for some of the old stuff that Linux still carries around.
That said I do believe a well configured KDE + GTK2 combined with a well-designed theme and a well-balanced setup of stable OSS desktop gadgets can kick OS Xses ass up and down the street. It's just that you have to spend a week setting it up. Even for an expert like me that becomes tireing after all those years. Nevertheless, a regular PC laptop with a neat Kubuntu setup as my next piece of hardware isn't entirely rules out. Especially with a 17" MacBook Pro costing north of 2500 Euros.
Once KDE removes the last glitches, gets it's integrated koffice into fastlane and starts diving a bit deeper than kwin and fixing some of the X anachronisims closed source vendors are going to have a hard time selling their stuff. Slowly but shurely they're getting there. Until then - if Apple doesn't screw up - cheap macs like the iMac or the MacMini will still be the best bargain for solid enviroments built to get work done.
"If you have a scaling problem, you don't have a problem."
Which basically means if you've got 200 000 hits a day and your existing setup is folding under the load, you've found a glory hole on the webbernet. And you're likely to find the funding required to scale the site - even if that means moving to an entirely new technology alltogether.
Rubyonrails.org is written in PHP. If anything, this "proves" that PHP doesn't scale.
It was running on PHP until about 6 months ago. Now it's driven by Rails. So, if anything. RoR Org folding proves that Rails doesn't scale. But it actually doesn't prove that much. Maybe the Rails folks run it on an old 286?
To be honest: I think PHP has a better chance of scaling well than Ruby, because it's more mature, has more options for acceleration of server-side code and usually runs as Apache mod which gives it yet more options for runtime performance optimization. Yahoo Bookmarks (built with Symfony(PHP)) handles the load quite well. I don't know of a Rails site of that size.
Then again, if you're really interested you can get any FW to handle large loads, once you've optimized it's bottlenecks. But there PHP has another advantage: An existing bunch of mature tools for profiling and debugging, at least half of them Open Source. Which is why I prefer it over Ruby or even a more interesting Python, which has the most sane syntax of all. Imho.
To all the confused Shadowrunners out there: They don't actually mean Shadowrun, but some sad and sorry (repreated?) attempt to make a computer game of it.
I still got Shadowrun btw. (2nd Edition I think). Gosh, were those rules crappy and incoherent. And gosh did we have fun with that RPG.... I'm actually gonna go over to my RPG folder now and flipp through some old characters... Ahhh, the memories:-) .
To all you out there who've never played an RPG (I mean the real ones, Pen & Paper): If you come across Shadowrun in an RPG store or somewhere else: Buy it. The rules are mostly totally braindead, but the entire setting, it's lighthearted, frictionless approach to RPGing and the RPG sessions it leads to are pure fun. And a RPG newbie can pick them up in ten minutes. Roleplaying is an ideal way to have fun with your friends and get away from the screen once in a while. And Shadowrun's a far better alternative than D&D imho.
DW2K: Utterly pointless. Built for times when static pages were the norm. You'll get way further with jEdit, Firebug and a working central CMS for all to load pages into.
Flash 5: Almost pointless, except for the most basic vector stuff. There is no OSS replacement for Flash, so you should upgrade to Flash MX 2k Pro at least. Buy used licences or something.
PS7: Perfect. If you need PS (the filters and the 3D stuff) stick with it. If you don't need the PS filters switch to the newest Gimp. It mostly plays in the same league for image editing and tuning.
Movie Maker? Never heard of that one.... Use some current cheap Video NLE tool if that one you've got sucks.
If it was my GPLd code you were using and you'd be some little guy I'd ask for compliance. If you were a big guy I'd sue you into next wednesday for as much I could press out of it. I'd see no point in being as polite as Richard Stallman and just asking for compliance if you'd be caught proactively breaking the GPL.
You do not want to work for a company that ask such stupid questions.
If a HR manager even considers taking into account the search results from googling somebodies name - apart from maybe that news report of his conviction of mass-murder ten years ago - he isn't the kind of guy you want to work for. A value of someones IT work is *not* measured by what results a search of his name on google yields. I'd stear clear of any employer to dumb to realise that. A question like that would have me give a polite but firm counterquestion of wether the HR manager really needs google search results for confirmation of your competence (which you hopefully can prove otherwise).
That goes the other way around aswell: Whatever Google yields as a result for somebody I'd never take as a proof of competence. Somebody putting his nick on a resumee for me to google it would have me move him from stack #1 to stack #2 of potentials in an instant if I were doing the hire.
Make a well-built and well-designed website with well formated web-copies of all your work and add the link to your resumee. That will leave an impession.
Bottom line: A question like that proves that your potential employer has little true knowledge in the field of IT and that you're going to have a hard time explaining the basics of IT and the type of work your expected to do to your would-be superiors. It should allways set of an alarm bell.
Honestly, this is ridiculous. First of all, if you time allways is shorter and we're constantly adding seconds, why not introduce a new measurement of time entirely and use that for precision needs while we're at it? Something like 'beats' comes to mind, or a centi-minute linked to max. sun height, which would give a more granular measurement of time at the same time. Take that new technical measurement and sync that to whatever you want.
As far as I understand, nature is so "irregular" that the need for leap-seconds can't really be predicted that precisely. What we need then is some signal to announce leap seconds that is stored in every TAI linked clock. That way we can system-internally look up if some timing problem occurs what may have caused it. On second though, everybody can just have his system do some double checks whenever his clock jumps from 24:00 to 00:00 (that's the way leap seconds are allways filled in).
And coming to think of it, given that PCs to date have timing systems that aren't worth squat I think this really isn't that much of an issue for most admins. Hail to Apple for integrating a quartz clock into their systems - others appear to dumb to do that. Finally I can read the time on my Computer and trust it too.
Bottom line: The Sun will allways be "out of sync" with whatever measurements of time we come up with. Honestly folks, she really doesn't give a f*ck. If you need precise timing, pick one. Unix Era, UTC, TAI,... it isn't that there aren't enough. Otherwise get over the fact that nature isn't a model, it's reality. And your clocks should represent thatas closely as possible. My 2 cents.
>>The scientific study of dowsing in Munich, Germany was performed in 1987 to 1988 and involved more than 500 dowsers in more than 10,000 double-blind tests.
Five hundred dowsers were initially tested for their dowsing abilities, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them. These 43 were then tested in the following way: On the ground floor of a two-story barn, water was pumped through a pipe; before each test, this pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the 43 dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 of them showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that "a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."
If a guy like Shamir says this, I'd say it's full-red-alert for all those manufacturing this sort of chip. We are just doing asymetric crypto in Math 1 (Bachelor CompSci) and my brain goes into overload-error every 5 minutes or so as soon as the professor starts talking about it. Someone like Shamir (the "S" in "RSA" btw.) who can come up with this sort of thing should be considered 'God' in the field of cryptography and his call upon action should be noted duely.
Considereing they spent 100 Million $ building it I don't think there's much of a reason being suprised. Blizzards is the only software company that I recall forcefully resisting the urge of releasing to early. Starcraft is to date the most popular RTS and they playtested it for *two years* before releasing it. It has a resolution that was considers low even back then. WoW runs fine with my Geforce 4.
Resist pushy releasing, playtest, build for mid-range machines, playtest, see that the game is fun after 30 seconds the latest, playtest, build it so that a total newbie can understand the game in 5 minutes flat, build top-notch art for the low end tech-specs, playtest, playtest and don't forget to playtest. If all publisheres followed these simple rules we'd have much more games that would be as much fun as WoW or other Blizzard stuff.
I do Aikido training about once a week. We've got this basic excercise that's called 'Irimi-Tenkan' which actually means 'Going in (into/close to the opponent) and turning around (spinning)'. I'd say I'm about down to half a second. You half to bend your knees a little and see to it that the front half of your feet are the first to touch and the last to leave the ground. Watch out that your upper body stays vertically upright even if you're downing your first uke with a technique while doing so. That way you'll be spun 180 in an instant and ready for #2 coming from behind. Just don't be to hectic or you'll lose balance.
Bottom line: It's all about pratice man. And take my word for it: 4 weeks and even 48 hrs is *way* to long, even for a beginner. I know snails that go faster. Really now.
Many people consider it a normal thing, that whenever the persistance layer is accessed one must use a special language, a strangely arcane and historically grown thing called SQL. Since you are proficient in Perl, a language notably more powerfull than SQL (or most other PLs) in the handling, retrieval and filtering of data, I wonder if you've ever felt annoyed by this circumstance. Do you think it would make sense to attempt to remove SQL from the stack or at least make it an optional layer? How feasible is it to attempt to connect a storage eninge directly to a high-level programming level like, f.i., perl and start ridding humanity for this plague called SQL? Since you know both ends very well, a high level PL and details about storage I'd like to hear your opinion on this.
Slashdot Mirror
We - by the standards of the last 15 years - are witnessing a miracle just now: The area in which Windows is just one choice of various is growing for a change. I don't care if Linux takes over - that alone is a good thing. It's all matter of when exactyl OSS will gain critical mass and become a serious competitor. .Net as closed-source kernel modules or something like that.
It is not unlikely that we will then see Windows using a Linux kernel someday. With DX and
... is the "Hype vs. Mature Usable Open Source Projects Built With It (TM)" Ratio.
By that Rails sucks, Ruby sucks even more, Django and Zope suck a little, TurboGears, etc. suck, Python itself fares quite well and PHP kicks everybody elses ass, Java included.
That aside it's pretty much a matter of taste and how well the core community is willing to push their product. Rails practically lifted open source project marketing to a whole new level - they deserve the attention they get. It's up to the ones using these webkits to seperate hype from reality.
Sure there is PHP bashing, as is bashing of many other PLs. Just watch a Lisp or C guy go after Java to see what I mean.
The truth is, the people that really are programming and solving problems rarely rant about a PL without having tried it. PHP is an extremely n00by-friendly programming language - also because of it's wide availability - and thus lots of code in PHP is quite wacky actually. This falls back on to the PL itself. Flash/ActionScript has simular problems (aside from having a strong prorpietary touch to it).
In the end PHP, with its neighbourhood to markup, is the web-eras basic. With way more succesfull and impacting open-source web applications than any other solution - Python included.
I *am* a Python fan, but it just didn't have that critical mass of an install base back then when mod_php gained traction. And that the true King and ruler of all webkits, Zope, has had a backend that looks like shit for 7 years now didn't help it either. Nowadays nobody gives a hoot if Zope is lightyears ahead of Rails and a few years older - it's just a niche webkit for people who've bumped into it
There are a lot of factors that make a language successfull, and PHP meets very many of those. Just because people rant about it doesn't mean it really is bad. Nobody I know would say that programming in C is really fun and modern and hip. And many people rant about it. Yet look how many mission critical work still is done with it - because the untested alternatives aren't any better.
On the server-side I've been mostly doing PHP for last 3 years now and am now going totally OOP with the CakePHP Framework and a large international project. It works, is extremely neat and quick to develop with. So be it that PHP has a few bizarly named core functions and arrow->syntax. So *fucking* what? My friend who has a business aswell and is a Sun partner and Java fanboy just moved his webproject from Java to PHP so they could finish it faster.
"Java Fanboy speeds up project by switching to PHP" - enough said.
Slashdotters rant a lot, but reality is allways a tad different.
That obscure link you posted claims "bondage and discipline" languages to be lacking compared to opposing (and superiour) Languages of Choice. The latter to which the author of this strange theory counts Python. Duh.
I'd say your plan to get all smart-assy on Python backfired big time.
Sorry, folks, but I have yet to find something about pointers that can not be explained to my mother in 5 minutes. (Ok, my mother is a technical translator with a military background, but you get the picture) More or less the same goes for the supposedly difficult matter of object orientation. It may, however, be a tad tedious because n00bs usually need a few nudges and some pratice inbetween before they can wrap their head around these concepts permanently.
The ledgend that basic (or whatever) spoils programming n00bs beyond repair is total rubbish. Mind you Basic and Pascal are IMHO way to old to get people started effectively, but so is this bizar thing called Lisp (take that from an Emacs user). Professors need to get into teaching again. I just dropped out of CS (for reasons unrelated) and the programming Prof. we had explained pointers in such a way that even the guys and girls that appeared like burger flipping quake players 'I like computers' type CS people were up to speed in no time.
Maybe the problem is with adademia?
SAS has been gaining traction potential lately and with web-centric solutions to classic LAN based problems and solutions poping up left, right and center it's hard to believe this won't have a long-term effect on some businesses.
But with an even further increasing userbase IT problems are actually getting more and not less. Just an hour ago I was at a T-Shirt stitching shop. You should imagine that the people in charge there - even if in their mid to late 40ies - would know the most basic common user access standards and procedures for working with PCs. The lack of basic knowledge, not to mention basic knowledge needed when dealing with digital media (which you should have if you are in charge of such a business) was bizar.
When talking to customers it suprises me time and time again how much I know in comparsion to these people. Now I just need to learn to ask for the appropriate amount of money.
Bottom Line: As long as IT is that complicated to most people as illustrated above and as long as therefore dealing with IT is also very much a matter of whom a business trusts and whom not, the internal IT dept. won't die out.
Someone here linked to this which has so many good points I have no problem with reposting it.
But anyway: These people are being silly. The text editor problem has exaustivly been solved about 10 to 15 years ago. Since then we've gotten a few more, nearly all for free and one better than the next. And to all those who after 20 years of GUI computing still haven't gotten it:
YOU DON'T WRITE TEXT IN A WORD PROCESSOR!
If you're thinking "I know what I'm gonna do now - I'm gonna write a text." then DON'T use a word processor. Use an Editor of which there are countless around and available. Word processors are for formating and making documents print-ready. Repeat after me:" Word processors are *not* primary writing tools. " And don't even dare think of using a word processor for programming. There's a special place in hell for people who do that. Really.
I've been programming and writing for more than two decades now and the last time I abused a word processor as an editor for writing down my initial draft was with AmiPro on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 running on MS-DOS4. And only because I was a n00b at writing on computers, it was a print document from the get-go and AmiPro was good enough not to suck at writing and Win 3.11 lacked a good editor. I've been using jEdit for allmost a decade now and have recently picked up Emacs (not recommended for people who don't know what awaits them) because it runs on the CLI which I often have to use.
Bottom line: It's called Text Editor, or 'Editor' for short, folks. This type of programm has existed for over 30 years. Pick your favorite. And they've all got a fullscreen mode too.
NASA wanted a pen that would work in zero G; spent millions on RnD
Coming up with a pressurized ball-point mine and optimizing it to make it feasable and 'certified for flight' costed only about 100.000$. Paying the team, building the prototypes, testing them NASA-style, building the tools and rigging a new assembly line for something like that costs that much. Fairly cheap considering they ditched the ball-point pens biggest downside: Unable to write overhead, under water or - as the case may be - in zero gravity. I only use pressurized ball-points and must say, comparing them to regular ones: The effort was worth it.
Can't they just pass the NS brand to the Mozilla Foundation? Let them think of a nice use for it. Maybe rename themselves to Netscape Foundation? It would be fitting.
My 2 cents.
Grab a book on Feng Shui. This is not a joke. While I don't actually mean Feng Shui exactly, what I mean is get a grasp of the concept of 'organically' arranging your workplace. For the lack of a better term and concept, Feng Shui is a good place to look to get an idea of what good interior architecture is all about.
/. makes me sick)
I'll continue the list with some random stuff that comes to mind, some of which others here have mentioned allready:
1.) Wallcolors, Plaster-Textureing. There are countless possibilities here - check them out. Be sure to check out the options for organic interior building materials aswell. Consider coloring or plastering different sections of the walls with different styles.
2.) I like Zen-Style. Blends well with a high-tech enviroment too. A sleek simple real-wood desk and side-table may be all it needs to pimp your enviroment just enough. Don't save in the wrong place, plan your setup and you might find that two neat pieces blend well with that glass-enclosure rack-shelf and leave you room to breathe and think.
3.) Make the rack nice to look at and quiet. Read: Multi-Layer glass all around. Tell your boss it needs a custom enclosure if you must. Consider giving the glass-enclosure-rack a prominent position in the room where you can reach the backdoor super easy without having to move it. A well-positioned fixed installation can be a neat interior feature. (check feng-shui on this if you're out of ideas - try out the looks in a 3D programm if the need be
4.) Plan your decoration. Crappy, tacky generic office-type decoration sucks. You'll know that once you've hand-picked one or two posters of pictures for your office and leave it at that. Plan the position of them and plan your lighting accordingly. Do all your pinwall type stuff on your computer. You're a geek, take advantage of that. You can completely void reality of all ugly work-related stuff and still get work done. (Just thinking of the shitty cube decorations posted at regular intervals here on
5.) Visit a few offices of the creative guys and girls. Better-running web agencies have a fable for stylish and hip work enviroments. They have the ideas aswell. Ripp off whereever you can and don't be ashamed of it. After all, they use OSS on their webservers, don't they? Sumo beanbags, Stokke Balans (arm)chairs, hand-rafted realwood shelves on oversized industrial-style rollers (built one myself - super-easy to move around), selected wallsections with crazy-ass grafity besides intentionally blank walls. You get the picture. There are countless websites with picture of cool offices around the globe. Do some research.
6.) You a Developer? Software Team Lead? Blackboard! And I mean an old-school (literally!) real-wood big ass black (literally!) board. If you can't find one, plan it's size and position, bolt a board to the wall and paint it with black-board paint. This little german software shop did it right - surf around their site a little and check out their pictures --> http://freiheit.com/ . I'd actually like to work there just judging by the fotos.
7.) Ikke-Bana. (Ancient Japanese Art of Flower Arrangement) Check it out. Again: This is no joke.
8.) Parquet. *Real* parquet. And nothing else. Industrial parquet actually can easyly be cheaper than industrial wall-to-wall carpeting. Bug your Boss about it if it's not company policy. Maybe encourage your boss to join in on a little office-pimping spree. With the right tone of voice and mood you can get your entire departement to consider office interiors a little more.
9.) High Desk/Standing Desk. Somebody mentioned this allready. Really neat idea. We sit *all* day and that is *bad*. Space to run a few circles and a place to stand and work at is a very neat thing if you have the space to spare. Spec your PC casing to fit a standing desk if the need be - or add a second screen to your setup. You can get desks that have motors in them to lift them to standing height. N
Would you have one of these in your cellar? I wouldn't. I'd rather tune down my power consumption by a magnitude and switch to solar energy or something. I don't think this will fly.
Streamline micropayments for the entire humanity and you've won. You've won against Amazon. Wikipedia. PayPal. Pearson Education. And Citygroup.
Honestly, all we need is a "Google Bank" sort of thing, managing microtransactions for everyone on the planet with zero-fuss international transactions. Google actually has the power to handle this.
If they pull through with this add-powered thing it is likely they can move up against Wikipedia in terms of content amount. Add in comments, ratings and suggestions to knol and you have a semi-wikipedia sort of thing that even pays of for the effort of the authors. Not the worst idea if you think of it. It could very well work.
My 2 cents.
I'm a seasoned Linux user with nearly 10 years of experience. I still use it regularly and it's the OS on all my custom PCs. That said, I use OS X (Panther and now Tiger) on both my iBook G4 and my new Mac Mini. Setting up a mint system as a work enviroment takes half the time it does with Kubuntu 7. Hardware/Software integration being one of the reasons.
There are some other details. To be honest, I think one of the biggest problems I see is X. Not that X isn't cool with networking and 'runs on an old Irix box' and all that, but the weedyness of the X enviroment is starting to annoy me. Not only is modern style font management still a crampy thing to get running - the mere though of opening XF86Config to set modelines, gfx drivers and whatnot appears to me so bizare and strange, even though I'm still quite proficient in it.
Kubuntu7.04 still has serious trouble handling resolution switching and X allways intervenes with strange scrolling and zooming behaviour. Running a VNC server puts me right back to 2001, configuration wise. It's not only that, but X is symptomatic for some of the old stuff that Linux still carries around.
That said I do believe a well configured KDE + GTK2 combined with a well-designed theme and a well-balanced setup of stable OSS desktop gadgets can kick OS Xses ass up and down the street. It's just that you have to spend a week setting it up. Even for an expert like me that becomes tireing after all those years. Nevertheless, a regular PC laptop with a neat Kubuntu setup as my next piece of hardware isn't entirely rules out. Especially with a 17" MacBook Pro costing north of 2500 Euros.
Once KDE removes the last glitches, gets it's integrated koffice into fastlane and starts diving a bit deeper than kwin and fixing some of the X anachronisims closed source vendors are going to have a hard time selling their stuff. Slowly but shurely they're getting there. Until then - if Apple doesn't screw up - cheap macs like the iMac or the MacMini will still be the best bargain for solid enviroments built to get work done.
My 2 cents.
"If you have a scaling problem, you don't have a problem."
Which basically means if you've got 200 000 hits a day and your existing setup is folding under the load, you've found a glory hole on the webbernet. And you're likely to find the funding required to scale the site - even if that means moving to an entirely new technology alltogether.
Rubyonrails.org is written in PHP. If anything, this "proves" that PHP doesn't scale.
It was running on PHP until about 6 months ago. Now it's driven by Rails. So, if anything. RoR Org folding proves that Rails doesn't scale. But it actually doesn't prove that much. Maybe the Rails folks run it on an old 286?
To be honest: I think PHP has a better chance of scaling well than Ruby, because it's more mature, has more options for acceleration of server-side code and usually runs as Apache mod which gives it yet more options for runtime performance optimization. Yahoo Bookmarks (built with Symfony(PHP)) handles the load quite well. I don't know of a Rails site of that size.
Then again, if you're really interested you can get any FW to handle large loads, once you've optimized it's bottlenecks. But there PHP has another advantage: An existing bunch of mature tools for profiling and debugging, at least half of them Open Source. Which is why I prefer it over Ruby or even a more interesting Python, which has the most sane syntax of all. Imho.
To all the confused Shadowrunners out there: They don't actually mean Shadowrun, but some sad and sorry (repreated?) attempt to make a computer game of it.
... I'm actually gonna go over to my RPG folder now and flipp through some old characters ... Ahhh, the memories :-) .
I still got Shadowrun btw. (2nd Edition I think). Gosh, were those rules crappy and incoherent. And gosh did we have fun with that RPG.
To all you out there who've never played an RPG (I mean the real ones, Pen & Paper): If you come across Shadowrun in an RPG store or somewhere else: Buy it. The rules are mostly totally braindead, but the entire setting, it's lighthearted, frictionless approach to RPGing and the RPG sessions it leads to are pure fun. And a RPG newbie can pick them up in ten minutes. Roleplaying is an ideal way to have fun with your friends and get away from the screen once in a while. And Shadowrun's a far better alternative than D&D imho.
Look at each programm by itself:
... Use some current cheap Video NLE tool if that one you've got sucks.
DW2K: Utterly pointless. Built for times when static pages were the norm. You'll get way further with jEdit, Firebug and a working central CMS for all to load pages into.
Flash 5: Almost pointless, except for the most basic vector stuff. There is no OSS replacement for Flash, so you should upgrade to Flash MX 2k Pro at least. Buy used licences or something.
PS7: Perfect. If you need PS (the filters and the 3D stuff) stick with it. If you don't need the PS filters switch to the newest Gimp. It mostly plays in the same league for image editing and tuning.
Movie Maker? Never heard of that one.
My 2 cents.
If it was my GPLd code you were using and you'd be some little guy I'd ask for compliance. If you were a big guy I'd sue you into next wednesday for as much I could press out of it. I'd see no point in being as polite as Richard Stallman and just asking for compliance if you'd be caught proactively breaking the GPL.
You do not want to work for a company that ask such stupid questions.
If a HR manager even considers taking into account the search results from googling somebodies name - apart from maybe that news report of his conviction of mass-murder ten years ago - he isn't the kind of guy you want to work for.
A value of someones IT work is *not* measured by what results a search of his name on google yields. I'd stear clear of any employer to dumb to realise that. A question like that would have me give a polite but firm counterquestion of wether the HR manager really needs google search results for confirmation of your competence (which you hopefully can prove otherwise).
That goes the other way around aswell: Whatever Google yields as a result for somebody I'd never take as a proof of competence. Somebody putting his nick on a resumee for me to google it would have me move him from stack #1 to stack #2 of potentials in an instant if I were doing the hire.
Make a well-built and well-designed website with well formated web-copies of all your work and add the link to your resumee. That will leave an impession.
Bottom line: A question like that proves that your potential employer has little true knowledge in the field of IT and that you're going to have a hard time explaining the basics of IT and the type of work your expected to do to your would-be superiors. It should allways set of an alarm bell.
Honestly, this is ridiculous. First of all, if you time allways is shorter and we're constantly adding seconds, why not introduce a new measurement of time entirely and use that for precision needs while we're at it? Something like 'beats' comes to mind, or a centi-minute linked to max. sun height, which would give a more granular measurement of time at the same time. Take that new technical measurement and sync that to whatever you want.
... it isn't that there aren't enough. Otherwise get over the fact that nature isn't a model, it's reality. And your clocks should represent thatas closely as possible. My 2 cents.
As far as I understand, nature is so "irregular" that the need for leap-seconds can't really be predicted that precisely. What we need then is some signal to announce leap seconds that is stored in every TAI linked clock. That way we can system-internally look up if some timing problem occurs what may have caused it. On second though, everybody can just have his system do some double checks whenever his clock jumps from 24:00 to 00:00 (that's the way leap seconds are allways filled in).
And coming to think of it, given that PCs to date have timing systems that aren't worth squat I think this really isn't that much of an issue for most admins. Hail to Apple for integrating a quartz clock into their systems - others appear to dumb to do that. Finally I can read the time on my Computer and trust it too.
Bottom line:
The Sun will allways be "out of sync" with whatever measurements of time we come up with. Honestly folks, she really doesn't give a f*ck. If you need precise timing, pick one. Unix Era, UTC, TAI,
>>The scientific study of dowsing in Munich, Germany was performed in 1987 to 1988 and involved more than 500 dowsers in more than 10,000 double-blind tests.
Five hundred dowsers were initially tested for their dowsing abilities, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them. These 43 were then tested in the following way: On the ground floor of a two-story barn, water was pumped through a pipe; before each test, this pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the 43 dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 of them showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that "a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."
If a guy like Shamir says this, I'd say it's full-red-alert for all those manufacturing this sort of chip. We are just doing asymetric crypto in Math 1 (Bachelor CompSci) and my brain goes into overload-error every 5 minutes or so as soon as the professor starts talking about it. Someone like Shamir (the "S" in "RSA" btw.) who can come up with this sort of thing should be considered 'God' in the field of cryptography and his call upon action should be noted duely.
Considereing they spent 100 Million $ building it I don't think there's much of a reason being suprised. Blizzards is the only software company that I recall forcefully resisting the urge of releasing to early. Starcraft is to date the most popular RTS and they playtested it for *two years* before releasing it. It has a resolution that was considers low even back then. WoW runs fine with my Geforce 4.
Resist pushy releasing, playtest, build for mid-range machines, playtest, see that the game is fun after 30 seconds the latest, playtest, build it so that a total newbie can understand the game in 5 minutes flat, build top-notch art for the low end tech-specs, playtest, playtest and don't forget to playtest. If all publisheres followed these simple rules we'd have much more games that would be as much fun as WoW or other Blizzard stuff.
I do Aikido training about once a week. We've got this basic excercise that's called 'Irimi-Tenkan' which actually means 'Going in (into/close to the opponent) and turning around (spinning)'. I'd say I'm about down to half a second. You half to bend your knees a little and see to it that the front half of your feet are the first to touch and the last to leave the ground. Watch out that your upper body stays vertically upright even if you're downing your first uke with a technique while doing so. That way you'll be spun 180 in an instant and ready for #2 coming from behind. Just don't be to hectic or you'll lose balance.
Bottom line:
It's all about pratice man. And take my word for it: 4 weeks and even 48 hrs is *way* to long, even for a beginner. I know snails that go faster. Really now.
Many people consider it a normal thing, that whenever the persistance layer is accessed one must use a special language, a strangely arcane and historically grown thing called SQL. Since you are proficient in Perl, a language notably more powerfull than SQL (or most other PLs) in the handling, retrieval and filtering of data, I wonder if you've ever felt annoyed by this circumstance. Do you think it would make sense to attempt to remove SQL from the stack or at least make it an optional layer? How feasible is it to attempt to connect a storage eninge directly to a high-level programming level like, f.i., perl and start ridding humanity for this plague called SQL?
Since you know both ends very well, a high level PL and details about storage I'd like to hear your opinion on this.