The incident is pretty recent - 22 days ago. Sorry, it wasnt her dad - it was a bunch of way-too-young kids who persuaded some local bloke (bit of a slow character by the sounds of it), to let everyone jump in the hilux and go for a yippe ride round the dirt roads.
We are talking about a 14yo driver and other kids aged as young as 13.
Very similar to what happens in the advert - except without the slow bloke, and the kids in the story have 10 years on the kids in the advert.
This story was graphically posted all over the news for several days running, so it was probably really bad timing on Hyundai's part to play this advert at this time.
Other than that, our advertising standards in Australia are delightfully liberal, and I dont think this story really reflects that reality. Just take the headline in some context and you'll be right mate.
There was an incident quite recently in Oz where a young girl (like - WAAAY young) was driving a car in the bush chock-a-block full of friends, and with her dad in the back seat. Topping speeds of 140km/h on dirt roads, she lost control and slammed into a tree - a number of people in that car were killed, it just took awhile to sort out which head belonged to which body, etc.
Only happened in the last couple of weeks if I recall, and was all over the news. It was in a small country town, so that one accident wiped out about 10% of the population or something. True story. There was a bit of outrage about why such a young girl was allowed to drive under such circumstances.
Might be sort of relevant to this.. bizarre.. decision, and why the same advert didnt have the same impact in NZ, or elsewhere. I remember that the news story kept popping into my head every time I saw the advert.
I sat down with a Vista machine for the first time the other day. Nice slick interface - looks promising.
I then went to check out some of the more critical functions of this new operating system, and was shocked by what I found (or what I DIDNT find actually)...
Firstly, I check how up to date the compiler is, and check out the distributed compilation features. gcc - Not there. Someone at Microsoft mucked up bigtime - they FORGOT to include the compiler. OOPS ! Looks like distcc will have to wait.
Maybe they misplaced it, and forgot to include it in the PATH ? So I fire up a command window to search for the compiler.
C:\ find / -name gcc FIND: Invalid switch
Huh ? After some investigation, it looks like FIND is some sort of messed up version of grep. And talking about grep - WHERE IS IT ? Its not to be found anywhere.
Undetterred, I push forward to install some missing components. I want to ssh to my master repository to see whats up. You guessed it - NO SSH. Completely overlooked by the Microsoft QA department!! Looks like Ill have to telnet in and do it that way.
By the way - whilst looking at the network configuration, I found another QA error - they mucked up the spelling of 'ifconfig' - they accidentally let it slip out as 'ipconfig'. No big deal, but you cant expect to just make up new names for commonly used standard utilities like that.
Anyway, cant find anything useful in the repositories. An 'emerge --sync' doesnt get me any closer either - In fact the emerge command itself, and the entire portage tree are also missing in this Beta release of an operating system.
I might just email something off to tech support.. and discover that there is NO sendmail. Have to use outlook, but thats a PITA to setup, so I just telnet to port 25 on the development server and do it manually. Primitive !!
Lacking a compiler, I try out some scripting instead. bash, python, php, perl, tcl - ALL MISSING, zip, zada, zilch, not there ! Vista (in this early version) is going to be a pain to administer in any sort of automated way. Basic filters such as cut, sed, awk etc - not yet implemented. Sort appears to be implemented, but the parameters are all fucked up - again, you cant just redefine standard utilities to suit yourself - naughty naughty Microsoft !
I need not mention that vi and emacs are not implemented, nor are lightweight editors such as nano/pico/jed. Looks like you are stuck with notepad, or even 'edit' - which is all well and good, but how on earth are you going to do remote maintenance on one of these boxes without huge bandwidth usage ? vncserver is not installed by default, and there does not appear to be anything on port 6000 to allow for such remote connections.
ps and kill - not there either.
cvs and svn clients - MISSING. Without a portage tree (and without any sort of implementation of apt or rpm).. its no easy task finding the missing parts and installing them. Looks like manual searches of the net + manual installation via setup.exe is required all the way. Oh - tar and gzip/bzip2 have been forgotten as well, so that will be an interesting exersize. No wget either, so its manual operation of IE all the way. Point point click click.
Another surprise - cron is completely missing in this release. No job scheduling for Vista ! There does not appear to be any concept of runlevels implemented in this 'operating system' either, no scriptable init engine, no simple mgetty style implementation, and no configurable boot loader.. WTF ?
Having said all that - the GUI does look OK, you can move the mouse around and drag windows and things. Cool. The Windows in Vista are resizable, and there is some indication of which window has the current focus. There is a start button type thing in the corner, and you can make a menu popup. Cool. WOW even.
Conclusion: Virtually all of the critically important functions of the operating system seem t
Re:Defence contracting
on
PMD Applied
·
· Score: 1
No, not.. yet. Getting close sometimes though.
Why ? Do you something I dont ?
Defence contracting
on
PMD Applied
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Used to do this all the time when writing software for defence / weapons systems. (in Oz at least)
Its easy - the source is printed out and circulated.. peers have 1 week to circulate the code and make markups in coloured pen of their choice, after which a formal code review meeting is held.
It is the responsibility of each peer to be familiar with the requirements spec (even if its not part of their project), and the design that has been signed off. If they dont agree with the design - too bad - the process allows for plenty of time to look at design options, document those options, and document reasons for choosing one approach above another. Dont waste people's time by trying to flog a dead horse at a code review.
The meetings are known in advance, so its never a problem getting people in the same room at the same time.
Code review meeting is informally divided into 4 sections :
1) Intro - if this is NOT the first code review, quickly list the TODO items that came up from the last code review. Good developers will refer to these recurrent issues quickly, and stick to making use of the time by covering new ground. 10 minutes to discuss any code formatting / spelling / naming convention issues. These ARE important for maintainability and consistency, so egos need to be put on hold for the duration of this 10 minute period. Its not hard to do.
2) Critical issues section - no time limit. During this phase of the meeting, we look at:Coding errors, buffer overflows, and other WTFs in general. Requires serious, devious rat-like cunning on the part of the reviewers to think up diabolical scenarios in which the reviewed software might fail. Again, egos are put to one side, since everone eventually ends up on the receiving end of this treatment. OK, its hard to watch 'your baby' being ripped apart like this, but its all for a good cause. A lot of really good things come out of this exersize.
Strangely, when your peers rip the shit out of your code, yes it hurts, but it gives you more respect for those peers. There is nothing better than feeling that you are surrounded by really top-notch people that you CAN bounce ideas off, and get better insights into what you are working on. That is one side-benefit of tight code reviews.
Good, disciplined peers will stick to the agenda, and not wander off into talking about design options or formatting issues during this period.
Document everything - even if the conversation winds around and ends up coming to the conclusion that the code is not at fault after all - document it, so you dont end up going back down the same path later on down the track.
3) Requirements review : quick session to discuss whether the code matches the requirements. Dont bother turning up to a meeting without a thorough understanding of those requirements - you will look like a dick, and nobody will invite you to a pissup on friday arvo. Document any areas where the code falls short of requirements AND ALSO document any areas where the developer has gone over the top and added a pile of 'features' that are outside of the requirements. Keep the code lean and mean.
4) 5 minute wrap up : write up a TODO list of things that need to be done, estimate a timeframe, make sure it gets plugged into the gannt chart, and set a fixed time for the next review.
Time and schedule should be on everyone's mind, but thats a management and sales problem - not a technical one. Good developers will ignore schedule constraints and stick to doing things right. Having this attitude MAY turn some people's hair grey, but thats not our problem... fact is, its the quickest way to finish off a good product.
And we do build good shit.
Most importantly, everyone should come out of a code review with that smug feeling that they really are part of an elite team of coders, who look at things from every possible angle. It builds morale and raises standards all round.
Never quite understood how these levies/tariffs are distributed back to the artists.
So say if I download a few songs from groups such as Blood-Axe, mix it up with a bit of psy-trance from Finland, and then round it out with some Pendulum... and then burn it all on a CD for my car driving pleasure... how does the RIAA know how to distribute the funds to the starving artists in this case ?
What, they dont ?
So you mean despite the efforts of the original muso's involved, plus my time to mix and burn the CD - they just end up writing out yet another cheque to Celine Dion for all of our collective efforts ?
Fuck No !
Ive never wanted to even to listen to Celine Dion. Not ever !
But when I step into an elevator, or pass through a shoe shop - there she is, singing in the background and generally ruining my day.
I dont want to listen to her, but yet she still gets royalties out of me when I make my own CD, or backup my harddisk ?
That is so totally around the wrong fucking way. Man - I should be PAID by Celine Dion instead as compensation for HAVING to listen to any of her music, which is clearly against my wishes. She infringes upon my personal aural liberty, and yet... money from my pocket ends up in hers anyway ?
That is just WRONG on so many levels.
Seriously - does ANYONE go the effort of actually downloading Celine Dion music and burning it on CD's Why ? So they can hold hands with their so-called 'friends' and dance around and be silly between glasses of cheap wine ?
What they should do is just stick to selling normal CD's and iPods and things without the tarriffs, but give people the right, if they so choose, to pay $100 and get a licence key that will put their CD Burner or iPod into some sort of crappy 'Celine Dion Mode'. In the same way that you can take a perfectly good PC, and pay $400 or whatever it is to stick Vista on there - enabling 'Celine Dion' mode on the iPod will virtually trash the machine, in exchange for getting the 'Wow' of having it play Celine Dion songs.. for a fee of course.
The iPod should just operate normally, unless you 'opt-in', and pay the fee, after which the iPod degrades itself to the point where it will play Celine Dion music. 'Look Herbert, my iPod it now plays Celine Dion !!'. 'Yayy !'. 'Hey Clarence, your iPod - its turning a pale shade of Green !!'. 'Its all about the Yayy !!'.
[Just hire uglys]. After all - thats what the alien's seem to be doing, and it works for them. If they happen to abduct hot martians and stick probes up them, thats the martian's problem, not ours.
Now, its so easy to get on the internet, do your hotmails and digital photos, and connect with others in new and unexpected ways.
Its all about the WOW, and thankfully everything is now so much easier - including software development programming.
And its the existence of people that swallow this sort of shit that contributes to making software hard. These sorts of people, when they involve themselves at whatever unwanted level in the process of developing software, turn out making the whole game look so much more difficult than it really is.
And then one fateful day when the mangled bastard children of their best creative efforts needs to be interfaced with - then yes, at that point in time, software development truly is a difficult thing.
This is really really interesting though. I can sort of get my head around the idea of the single photon grabbing that much quantum info on the way through the stencil - but how the hell is that info retrieved ? Any ideas ?
That is actually fantastic news, and should prove to be a huge benefit to the production of otherwise expensive proteins for use in medicine. Well done !!
I particularly like this quote from the article :
'The only real problem is collecting the eggs. Unlike standard chickens, these muthers have 8 legs, and shoot laser beams out of their eyes - which makes collecting the eggs a real bastard of a job'.
So... 'Nobody ever gets fired for using Windows !'.
Well, it looks like that still holds true. So you now run a risk of a 40 year jail sentence from using Windows, but for job security - its still the best bet ?
I will happily wager a bet that even if this poor teacher gets handed the DEATH sentence by the courts - there will still be NO REPERCUSSIONS WHATSOEVER on the school IT policy.
For anyone working in IT over the past decades, the mere existence of Microsoft has been a serious drain on one's quality of life. And all the while, the unwashed masses have turned a blind eye to our suffering. It never affected them in any meaningful ways, Bill Gates is an American hero, Microsoft is a proud icon, and all these IT nerds are just whingers who are jealous of Microsoft's success.. (and can you spare me some free time to pop around after Ive had my dinner and 'fixup' the family computer.. its broken again)
In fact, Microsoft is SUCH a good example of how to do things right, that its a real good idea to put computers in classrooms and teach kids from a young age that 'Computers == Windows'. yeah - lets fill our schools up with Windows machines and raise a whole generation of people that can dedicate all their spare time to fixing up MY family's computer.
Now, years down the tack, the poison that issues forth from Redmond has spread to the extent that those same unwashed masses are now in the firing line as well, even facing extensive jail terms. The proliferation of windows now reaches out to wreck 'ordinary' lives as well.
Do I sound sympathetic ? No ? Its probably too late now to turn back the clock and address the real underlying problem. The poison has now spread to the bloodstream, and there is little that can be done to save them. Better start building jails now - build em by the thousands, and get ready to lock em up by the millions.
Its time to round up ALL the windows users, lock em away for looooong periods of time.. and start again with a fresh slate.
How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?'... Well, its different because in the google case, its just an advert. If I see an advert, it doesnt ruin my day in any way. I can choose to read it if I want, or I can choose to ignore it if I want.
If I want to run firefox on a machine, Google adverts DO NOT intefere with my choice by constantly trying to setup some other product to take over as the default browser.
If I want to buy a laptop, the existence of Google adverts in the top rank DO NOT force me to waste hard earned money on google products that I have no intention of ever using.
If I am contracted to build a website that interacts with some existing legacy database, the existence of google adverts in the top rank DO NOT make my life hell on earth by locking up the data in deliberatly obfuscated formats and turning a 1 month profitable job into a 6 month exersize in frustration.
The high rank of Google's own adverts does not contribute to the problem of having untrained idiots creating 'database systems' (sometimes aka 'spreadsheets') on a whim to handle mission critical aspects of businesses.
I dont see Google adverts trying to subvert beneficial projects at the 11th hour, such as the OLPC initiative, by increasing the hardware requirements and costs of the machine just so they can step in at the last moment and take the credit for the project.
If I invest a good portion of my life in my chosen calling.. I dont turn around years down the track and find that CEO of google making vacuous claims that they 'own' my IP.
It wont be long now until the next installment of microsoft's 'Get the facts' campaing includes the following headline :
City of Tuttle saves $ billions by migrating from Linux to Microsoft Windows.
After an extensive evaluation in which the City of Tuttle compared Windows® and Linux, the city selected Microsoft® Windows Server System(TM). Besides the obvious cost savings of moving to Windows, the city manager of Tuttle observed that security was of prime importance in the decision. "Ive worked with computers for 22 years, and Ive seen first hand how an interweb running on linux can easily be hijacked by hackers without MY permission."
I would like to propose that the next major Linux Conference be held at Tuttle, Oklahoma.
It would be even better if we could get the dates and times sorted so that the 'Burning Man' festival can also be held in Tuttle along with the Linux Conf, and why not chuck in a full on psy-trance concert at the same time ?
Frederic Bastiat already summed this up perfectly in 1850 :
'Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a square of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation--"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"'
Perfect10 is whinging and whining - and mostly complaining about the commercial and advertising aspects of this. Their biggest complaint is 'who is deriving advertising revenue off of images of women'
In order to reach this state in your head where you can agree that Perfect10 have a valid case, you have to make a number of steps of faith, and believe strongly in ALL of them :
- That making money from advertising is a good and positive way to make a living, and benefits society as a whole.
- That access to online content can somehow be owned by one party or another.
- That images of people somehow constitute 'Intellectual Property'
- That anything reproducable at no cost has an intrinsic value and can be owned.
There are so many aspects to this case which are just WRONG, and thats coming from a completely non-moralistic viewpoint.
Layer on top of this the simple fact that its all based on exploiting images of attractive young women.... and NOwHERE in the complaint is there a scrap of concern for these women who's images are now plastered all over the net and easy to find - Im sure thats not what those women expected when they signed their contracts and accepted their cheques.
But Perfect10 isnt worried about that at all - its all about who gets to charge money for advertising and licence revenue ??
If I was the judge in the this case, I would dismiss the whole case, and then sentence all of those involved (including the women in the photos) to 1 year of community service, mostly because they are all a bunch of dumbass tossers, motivated by greed alone, and with no concern for social realities.
If we just look at SUN for example, their newish server offerings are relatively cheap, and solaris is pretty much free of charge. The general trend in UNIX servers is that the up front price is decreasing.. and the revenue model is moving away from SALES of boxes to service and other revenue.
With an increasing emphasis on service revenues - just looking at the value of SALES of boxes up front has a lot less meaning these days, and fails to describe whats happening in the market.
Microsoft has been trying for years to make this adjustment as well (from up front package sales to a service revenue), but they havent been very successful at all. They only get by from one year to the next by pumping sticker prices for all they are worth (and then some). The profits from this operation are spent desperately on loss-making attempts to move into a service and subscription revenue mode. (games console market, mobile phones, email services, etc)
Times are changing, and Microsoft is struggling to change with them. This article shows one statistic that still makes them look good though.
Another point to consider - when SUN, HP, IBM, etc sell a unix box - all the profits from the sale go to them. When DELL, HP, IBM etc sell a Windows server - only part of the profits of the sale go to Microsoft, the rest stays with the hardware vendors.
- Human likes to hang out on his own (assumption) - Lion eats solitary human, easy prey. - Human invents cooperation, and evolves to become social, making it harder for Lion to pick off human
Just wonderful.
I thought everyone already knew that ants, termites, bees and wasps 'invented' cooperative societies and specialisation of roles millions of years before we ever came along.
AFAIK, there is no evidence to suggest that ants were ever anything but a social colony from the beginning of their existence. But then, its all speculation really - did ants start off as a social colony, or did they evolve to form them ? Coming up with a test case to positively falsify either claim is impossible.
So the published ramblings of a group of anthropologists isnt exactly what you would call 'good science'.
Its equally possible (and equally un-provable), that a couple of solitary pre-humans sat down in the bush one day and observed a column of ants together.. looked at each other and said....
'Hey dude, you know if we got together like that, maybe one day WE could form a city-state, farm crops, knock up some pyramids, write a bunch of laws, build ships to cross the oceans, and run out cable broadband to every home, what do you reckon ?'
To which the other replied :
'yeah cool, I reckon its worth a shot. Besides, this whole tear-assing around the scrub like a bad muthafucker is getting a bit old. I wanna find me a good reliable pre-human woman, settle down and you know - just enjoy some quality time together, raise some kids, and maybe even build a white picket fence out of these dry twigs. Its not much I know, but hell, Ill do my best for her.'
A tear welling in his pre-human eye. And so the other extended his hand to shake it
'You know dude, your a good man.. whats your name bro ?'
And so it was that pre-humans evolved an opposing thumb so that they could shake hands, form lasting friendships, and go on to build cooperative civilisations that rival those of the ants.
Maybe we did 'evolve' socialisation out a fear of being eaten by Lions.. but I much prefer my theory instead.
Actually, Clauswitz defined WAR as being a continuation of Policy.. which was a pretty radical concept at the time, since the Europe before the Napoleonic period may have defined war as merely an instrument to set the stage for yet another royal wedding.
Zhou Enlai comes along about 100 years later and makes a quote that Diplomacy is a continuation of War.
subtle difference, but you are half right at least - Clauswitz certainly deserves credit for the foundation of Zhou Enlai's quote.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21170425-421, 00.html?from=public_rss
The incident is pretty recent - 22 days ago. Sorry, it wasnt her dad - it was a bunch of way-too-young kids who persuaded some local bloke (bit of a slow character by the sounds of it), to let everyone jump in the hilux and go for a yippe ride round the dirt roads.
We are talking about a 14yo driver and other kids aged as young as 13.
Very similar to what happens in the advert - except without the slow bloke, and the kids in the story have 10 years on the kids in the advert.
This story was graphically posted all over the news for several days running, so it was probably really bad timing on Hyundai's part to play this advert at this time.
Other than that, our advertising standards in Australia are delightfully liberal, and I dont think this story really reflects that reality. Just take the headline in some context and you'll be right mate.
There was an incident quite recently in Oz where a young girl (like - WAAAY young) was driving a car in the bush chock-a-block full of friends, and with her dad in the back seat. Topping speeds of 140km/h on dirt roads, she lost control and slammed into a tree - a number of people in that car were killed, it just took awhile to sort out which head belonged to which body, etc.
.. bizarre .. decision, and why the same advert didnt have the same impact in NZ, or elsewhere. I remember that the news story kept popping into my head every time I saw the advert.
Only happened in the last couple of weeks if I recall, and was all over the news. It was in a small country town, so that one accident wiped out about 10% of the population or something. True story. There was a bit of outrage about why such a young girl was allowed to drive under such circumstances.
Might be sort of relevant to this
That is an awesome idea, so good in fact, that its bound to be deleted soon.
n stall_MORE_Advertising_Wares
I have come to the conclusion that Dell cannot stop lying about the whole thing, so put up this idea an an alternative :
http://www.dellideastorm.com/article/show/63774/I
Im waiting for the RIAA to sue the MPAA for having a name that sounds similar.
(or is that the other way around)
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
lol - yes it is a bit like that.
.. http://vigor.sourceforge.net/screenshots/
.. even if its not in portage at the moment.
Hang on - I seem to recall something about clippy for Vi
Aha ! At least its available to install
Vigor Vigor Vigor
I sat down with a Vista machine for the first time the other day. Nice slick interface - looks promising.
...
.. and discover that there is NO sendmail. Have to use outlook, but thats a PITA to setup, so I just telnet to port 25 on the development server and do it manually. Primitive !!
.. its no easy task finding the missing parts and installing them. Looks like manual searches of the net + manual installation via setup.exe is required all the way. Oh - tar and gzip/bzip2 have been forgotten as well, so that will be an interesting exersize. No wget either, so its manual operation of IE all the way. Point point click click.
.. WTF ?
I then went to check out some of the more critical functions of this new operating system, and was shocked by what I found (or what I DIDNT find actually)
Firstly, I check how up to date the compiler is, and check out the distributed compilation features. gcc - Not there. Someone at Microsoft mucked up bigtime - they FORGOT to include the compiler. OOPS ! Looks like distcc will have to wait.
Maybe they misplaced it, and forgot to include it in the PATH ? So I fire up a command window to search for the compiler.
C:\ find / -name gcc
FIND: Invalid switch
Huh ? After some investigation, it looks like FIND is some sort of messed up version of grep. And talking about grep - WHERE IS IT ? Its not to be found anywhere.
Undetterred, I push forward to install some missing components. I want to ssh to my master repository to see whats up. You guessed it - NO SSH. Completely overlooked by the Microsoft QA department!! Looks like Ill have to telnet in and do it that way.
By the way - whilst looking at the network configuration, I found another QA error - they mucked up the spelling of 'ifconfig' - they accidentally let it slip out as 'ipconfig'. No big deal, but you cant expect to just make up new names for commonly used standard utilities like that.
Anyway, cant find anything useful in the repositories. An 'emerge --sync' doesnt get me any closer either - In fact the emerge command itself, and the entire portage tree are also missing in this Beta release of an operating system.
I might just email something off to tech support
Lacking a compiler, I try out some scripting instead. bash, python, php, perl, tcl - ALL MISSING, zip, zada, zilch, not there ! Vista (in this early version) is going to be a pain to administer in any sort of automated way. Basic filters such as cut, sed, awk etc - not yet implemented. Sort appears to be implemented, but the parameters are all fucked up - again, you cant just redefine standard utilities to suit yourself - naughty naughty Microsoft !
I need not mention that vi and emacs are not implemented, nor are lightweight editors such as nano/pico/jed. Looks like you are stuck with notepad, or even 'edit' - which is all well and good, but how on earth are you going to do remote maintenance on one of these boxes without huge bandwidth usage ? vncserver is not installed by default, and there does not appear to be anything on port 6000 to allow for such remote connections.
ps and kill - not there either.
cvs and svn clients - MISSING. Without a portage tree (and without any sort of implementation of apt or rpm)
Another surprise - cron is completely missing in this release. No job scheduling for Vista ! There does not appear to be any concept of runlevels implemented in this 'operating system' either, no scriptable init engine, no simple mgetty style implementation, and no configurable boot loader
Having said all that - the GUI does look OK, you can move the mouse around and drag windows and things. Cool. The Windows in Vista are resizable, and there is some indication of which window has the current focus. There is a start button type thing in the corner, and you can make a menu popup. Cool. WOW even.
Conclusion: Virtually all of the critically important functions of the operating system seem t
No, not .. yet. Getting close sometimes though.
Why ? Do you something I dont ?
Used to do this all the time when writing software for defence / weapons systems. (in Oz at least)
.. peers have 1 week to circulate the code and make markups in coloured pen of their choice, after which a formal code review meeting is held.
:Coding errors, buffer overflows, and other WTFs in general. Requires serious, devious rat-like cunning on the part of the reviewers to think up diabolical scenarios in which the reviewed software might fail. Again, egos are put to one side, since everone eventually ends up on the receiving end of this treatment. OK, its hard to watch 'your baby' being ripped apart like this, but its all for a good cause. A lot of really good things come out of this exersize.
... fact is, its the quickest way to finish off a good product.
Its easy - the source is printed out and circulated
It is the responsibility of each peer to be familiar with the requirements spec (even if its not part of their project), and the design that has been signed off. If they dont agree with the design - too bad - the process allows for plenty of time to look at design options, document those options, and document reasons for choosing one approach above another. Dont waste people's time by trying to flog a dead horse at a code review.
The meetings are known in advance, so its never a problem getting people in the same room at the same time.
Code review meeting is informally divided into 4 sections :
1) Intro - if this is NOT the first code review, quickly list the TODO items that came up from the last code review. Good developers will refer to these recurrent issues quickly, and stick to making use of the time by covering new ground. 10 minutes to discuss any code formatting / spelling / naming convention issues. These ARE important for maintainability and consistency, so egos need to be put on hold for the duration of this 10 minute period. Its not hard to do.
2) Critical issues section - no time limit. During this phase of the meeting, we look at
Strangely, when your peers rip the shit out of your code, yes it hurts, but it gives you more respect for those peers. There is nothing better than feeling that you are surrounded by really top-notch people that you CAN bounce ideas off, and get better insights into what you are working on. That is one side-benefit of tight code reviews.
Good, disciplined peers will stick to the agenda, and not wander off into talking about design options or formatting issues during this period.
Document everything - even if the conversation winds around and ends up coming to the conclusion that the code is not at fault after all - document it, so you dont end up going back down the same path later on down the track.
3) Requirements review : quick session to discuss whether the code matches the requirements. Dont bother turning up to a meeting without a thorough understanding of those requirements - you will look like a dick, and nobody will invite you to a pissup on friday arvo. Document any areas where the code falls short of requirements AND ALSO document any areas where the developer has gone over the top and added a pile of 'features' that are outside of the requirements. Keep the code lean and mean.
4) 5 minute wrap up : write up a TODO list of things that need to be done, estimate a timeframe, make sure it gets plugged into the gannt chart, and set a fixed time for the next review.
Time and schedule should be on everyone's mind, but thats a management and sales problem - not a technical one. Good developers will ignore schedule constraints and stick to doing things right. Having this attitude MAY turn some people's hair grey, but thats not our problem
And we do build good shit.
Most importantly, everyone should come out of a code review with that smug feeling that they really are part of an elite team of coders, who look at things from every possible angle. It builds morale and raises standards all round.
Never quite understood how these levies/tariffs are distributed back to the artists.
... and then burn it all on a CD for my car driving pleasure ... how does the RIAA know how to distribute the funds to the starving artists in this case ?
... money from my pocket ends up in hers anyway ?
.. for a fee of course.
So say if I download a few songs from groups such as Blood-Axe, mix it up with a bit of psy-trance from Finland, and then round it out with some Pendulum
What, they dont ?
So you mean despite the efforts of the original muso's involved, plus my time to mix and burn the CD - they just end up writing out yet another cheque to Celine Dion for all of our collective efforts ?
Fuck No !
Ive never wanted to even to listen to Celine Dion. Not ever !
But when I step into an elevator, or pass through a shoe shop - there she is, singing in the background and generally ruining my day.
I dont want to listen to her, but yet she still gets royalties out of me when I make my own CD, or backup my harddisk ?
That is so totally around the wrong fucking way. Man - I should be PAID by Celine Dion instead as compensation for HAVING to listen to any of her music, which is clearly against my wishes. She infringes upon my personal aural liberty, and yet
That is just WRONG on so many levels.
Seriously - does ANYONE go the effort of actually downloading Celine Dion music and burning it on CD's Why ? So they can hold hands with their so-called 'friends' and dance around and be silly between glasses of cheap wine ?
What they should do is just stick to selling normal CD's and iPods and things without the tarriffs, but give people the right, if they so choose, to pay $100 and get a licence key that will put their CD Burner or iPod into some sort of crappy 'Celine Dion Mode'. In the same way that you can take a perfectly good PC, and pay $400 or whatever it is to stick Vista on there - enabling 'Celine Dion' mode on the iPod will virtually trash the machine, in exchange for getting the 'Wow' of having it play Celine Dion songs
The iPod should just operate normally, unless you 'opt-in', and pay the fee, after which the iPod degrades itself to the point where it will play Celine Dion music. 'Look Herbert, my iPod it now plays Celine Dion !!'. 'Yayy !'. 'Hey Clarence, your iPod - its turning a pale shade of Green !!'. 'Its all about the Yayy !!'.
Its just WRONG
and I meant to add :
[Just hire uglys]. After all - thats what the alien's seem to be doing, and it works for them. If they happen to abduct hot martians and stick probes up them, thats the martian's problem, not ours.
Just hire really ugly guys, and really ugly chicks.
Problem solved.
.. until the release of Vista that is.
Now, its so easy to get on the internet, do your hotmails and digital photos, and connect with others in new and unexpected ways.
Its all about the WOW, and thankfully everything is now so much easier - including software development programming.
And its the existence of people that swallow this sort of shit that contributes to making software hard. These sorts of people, when they involve themselves at whatever unwanted level in the process of developing software, turn out making the whole game look so much more difficult than it really is.
And then one fateful day when the mangled bastard children of their best creative efforts needs to be interfaced with - then yes, at that point in time, software development truly is a difficult thing.
Surely, 640kb ought to be enough ?
This is really really interesting though. I can sort of get my head around the idea of the single photon grabbing that much quantum info on the way through the stencil - but how the hell is that info retrieved ? Any ideas ?
That is actually fantastic news, and should prove to be a huge benefit to the production of otherwise expensive proteins for use in medicine. Well done !!
I particularly like this quote from the article :
'The only real problem is collecting the eggs. Unlike standard chickens, these muthers have 8 legs, and shoot laser beams out of their eyes - which makes collecting the eggs a real bastard of a job'.
So ... 'Nobody ever gets fired for using Windows !'.
.. (and can you spare me some free time to pop around after Ive had my dinner and 'fixup' the family computer .. its broken again)
.. and start again with a fresh slate.
Well, it looks like that still holds true. So you now run a risk of a 40 year jail sentence from using Windows, but for job security - its still the best bet ?
I will happily wager a bet that even if this poor teacher gets handed the DEATH sentence by the courts - there will still be NO REPERCUSSIONS WHATSOEVER on the school IT policy.
For anyone working in IT over the past decades, the mere existence of Microsoft has been a serious drain on one's quality of life. And all the while, the unwashed masses have turned a blind eye to our suffering. It never affected them in any meaningful ways, Bill Gates is an American hero, Microsoft is a proud icon, and all these IT nerds are just whingers who are jealous of Microsoft's success
In fact, Microsoft is SUCH a good example of how to do things right, that its a real good idea to put computers in classrooms and teach kids from a young age that 'Computers == Windows'. yeah - lets fill our schools up with Windows machines and raise a whole generation of people that can dedicate all their spare time to fixing up MY family's computer.
Now, years down the tack, the poison that issues forth from Redmond has spread to the extent that those same unwashed masses are now in the firing line as well, even facing extensive jail terms. The proliferation of windows now reaches out to wreck 'ordinary' lives as well.
Do I sound sympathetic ? No ? Its probably too late now to turn back the clock and address the real underlying problem. The poison has now spread to the bloodstream, and there is little that can be done to save them. Better start building jails now - build em by the thousands, and get ready to lock em up by the millions.
Its time to round up ALL the windows users, lock em away for looooong periods of time
You no understand simple plan of deception attack.
Wii is Akagi, gliding through the waves.
PS3 is Yamato, with invincible gun.
Wiimote is Zero-sen, master of skies.
Together, they form victorious triad of divine power, blow away Xbox and stinking corruption of microsoft.
Banzai !!!
You must be ....
.. forget it.
awww
How different is it than MSFT placing its products (Internet Explorer) in a premium marketing position (embedded in the OS)?' ... Well, its different because in the google case, its just an advert. If I see an advert, it doesnt ruin my day in any way. I can choose to read it if I want, or I can choose to ignore it if I want.
.. I dont turn around years down the track and find that CEO of google making vacuous claims that they 'own' my IP.
If I want to run firefox on a machine, Google adverts DO NOT intefere with my choice by constantly trying to setup some other product to take over as the default browser.
If I want to buy a laptop, the existence of Google adverts in the top rank DO NOT force me to waste hard earned money on google products that I have no intention of ever using.
If I am contracted to build a website that interacts with some existing legacy database, the existence of google adverts in the top rank DO NOT make my life hell on earth by locking up the data in deliberatly obfuscated formats and turning a 1 month profitable job into a 6 month exersize in frustration.
The high rank of Google's own adverts does not contribute to the problem of having untrained idiots creating 'database systems' (sometimes aka 'spreadsheets') on a whim to handle mission critical aspects of businesses.
I dont see Google adverts trying to subvert beneficial projects at the 11th hour, such as the OLPC initiative, by increasing the hardware requirements and costs of the machine just so they can step in at the last moment and take the credit for the project.
If I invest a good portion of my life in my chosen calling
Need I go on ?
It wont be long now until the next installment of microsoft's 'Get the facts' campaing includes the following headline :
City of Tuttle saves $ billions by migrating from Linux to Microsoft Windows.
After an extensive evaluation in which the City of Tuttle compared Windows® and Linux, the city selected Microsoft® Windows Server System(TM). Besides the obvious cost savings of moving to Windows, the city manager of Tuttle observed that security was of prime importance in the decision. "Ive worked with computers for 22 years, and Ive seen first hand how an interweb running on linux can easily be hijacked by hackers without MY permission."
I would like to propose that the next major Linux Conference be held at Tuttle, Oklahoma.
....
It would be even better if we could get the dates and times sorted so that the 'Burning Man' festival can also be held in Tuttle along with the Linux Conf, and why not chuck in a full on psy-trance concert at the same time ?
Just an idea anyway
Frederic Bastiat already summed this up perfectly in 1850 :
n _window
'Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a square of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation--"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broke
This whole IP thing is completely out of hand.
.... and NOwHERE in the complaint is there a scrap of concern for these women who's images are now plastered all over the net and easy to find - Im sure thats not what those women expected when they signed their contracts and accepted their cheques.
Perfect10 is whinging and whining - and mostly complaining about the commercial and advertising aspects of this. Their biggest complaint is 'who is deriving advertising revenue off of images of women'
In order to reach this state in your head where you can agree that Perfect10 have a valid case, you have to make a number of steps of faith, and believe strongly in ALL of them :
- That making money from advertising is a good and positive way to make a living, and benefits society as a whole.
- That access to online content can somehow be owned by one party or another.
- That images of people somehow constitute 'Intellectual Property'
- That anything reproducable at no cost has an intrinsic value and can be owned.
There are so many aspects to this case which are just WRONG, and thats coming from a completely non-moralistic viewpoint.
Layer on top of this the simple fact that its all based on exploiting images of attractive young women
But Perfect10 isnt worried about that at all - its all about who gets to charge money for advertising and licence revenue ??
If I was the judge in the this case, I would dismiss the whole case, and then sentence all of those involved (including the women in the photos) to 1 year of community service, mostly because they are all a bunch of dumbass tossers, motivated by greed alone, and with no concern for social realities.
Interesting point :
.. and the revenue model is moving away from SALES of boxes to service and other revenue.
If we just look at SUN for example, their newish server offerings are relatively cheap, and solaris is pretty much free of charge. The general trend in UNIX servers is that the up front price is decreasing
With an increasing emphasis on service revenues - just looking at the value of SALES of boxes up front has a lot less meaning these days, and fails to describe whats happening in the market.
Microsoft has been trying for years to make this adjustment as well (from up front package sales to a service revenue), but they havent been very successful at all. They only get by from one year to the next by pumping sticker prices for all they are worth (and then some). The profits from this operation are spent desperately on loss-making attempts to move into a service and subscription revenue mode. (games console market, mobile phones, email services, etc)
Times are changing, and Microsoft is struggling to change with them. This article shows one statistic that still makes them look good though.
Another point to consider - when SUN, HP, IBM, etc sell a unix box - all the profits from the sale go to them. When DELL, HP, IBM etc sell a Windows server - only part of the profits of the sale go to Microsoft, the rest stays with the hardware vendors.
Its not looking that good for Microsoft really.
So let me get this logic straight ...
.. looked at each other and said ....
.. whats your name bro ?'
.. but I much prefer my theory instead.
- Human likes to hang out on his own (assumption)
- Lion eats solitary human, easy prey.
- Human invents cooperation, and evolves to become social, making it harder for Lion to pick off human
Just wonderful.
I thought everyone already knew that ants, termites, bees and wasps 'invented' cooperative societies and specialisation of roles millions of years before we ever came along.
AFAIK, there is no evidence to suggest that ants were ever anything but a social colony from the beginning of their existence. But then, its all speculation really - did ants start off as a social colony, or did they evolve to form them ? Coming up with a test case to positively falsify either claim is impossible.
So the published ramblings of a group of anthropologists isnt exactly what you would call 'good science'.
Its equally possible (and equally un-provable), that a couple of solitary pre-humans sat down in the bush one day and observed a column of ants together
'Hey dude, you know if we got together like that, maybe one day WE could form a city-state, farm crops, knock up some pyramids, write a bunch of laws, build ships to cross the oceans, and run out cable broadband to every home, what do you reckon ?'
To which the other replied :
'yeah cool, I reckon its worth a shot. Besides, this whole tear-assing around the scrub like a bad muthafucker is getting a bit old. I wanna find me a good reliable pre-human woman, settle down and you know - just enjoy some quality time together, raise some kids, and maybe even build a white picket fence out of these dry twigs. Its not much I know, but hell, Ill do my best for her.'
A tear welling in his pre-human eye. And so the other extended his hand to shake it
'You know dude, your a good man
And so it was that pre-humans evolved an opposing thumb so that they could shake hands, form lasting friendships, and go on to build cooperative civilisations that rival those of the ants.
Maybe we did 'evolve' socialisation out a fear of being eaten by Lions
Actually, Clauswitz defined WAR as being a continuation of Policy .. which was a pretty radical concept at the time, since the Europe before the Napoleonic period may have defined war as merely an instrument to set the stage for yet another royal wedding.
Zhou Enlai comes along about 100 years later and makes a quote that Diplomacy is a continuation of War.
subtle difference, but you are half right at least - Clauswitz certainly deserves credit for the foundation of Zhou Enlai's quote.