yeah it's kinda fun to watch the 2yo & 5yo run around the house shouting *EXTERMINATE* and asking questions about the Tardis travelling through worm holes.
blast the ABC for voicing over the end credits though - bloody ads:(
if the article clearly states that *c* is a prerequisite and is about gcc compiler internals on a very specific hardware platform the article is clearly catering for the technical specialist knowlegeable/or interested about such topics. why shouldnt it be on the front page. Since when has the front page been *slashdot for idiots* ?
if you cannot understand *c* or take the time to read and understand the suggested references then do not be surprised the article is unaccessable. Typical young/. whipper snapper wanting everything NOW...:)
Dare you *not to do your homework* and post statements like this on the openbsd or gcc usenet forums... hung drawn and quartered before you could even spell slashdot.
RTFM, RTFTB, man gcc(1), read the manual, already faq...
Maybe a better suggestion maybe to post a question in the discussion asking for help or for someone to summarize the interesting points. Must use slashdot powers for good, not evil:)
thanks for the information. It'll come in I didn't appreciate vi till I had to use Ed for a openBsd install.
In order of editors I've gone from emacs to vim to vi, now Ed.
some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview panel
was it patched? It's getting so that you cannot have your valuables on an online machine these days..regardless of the OS. Anyone remember Crack.com being hacked for the Quake src code on a linux box?
dare you to try and outrun the solar cars. I had a mate working on the Melbourne Uni EE team saying at the completion of the race they would try to see how fast they could wind them up. So they organised a race with some hotted up late model Holdens. Gave the solar cars 20m head start and could never catch up.
That's right, the Commodores had to refuel at regular intervals while the solar cars just kept going. Different story at night though.
found some hard figures for those interested...... Well roughly at the moment the wholesale price of a litre of diesel is around 90 cents per litre of which you'd pay 39.5 cents in tax, in excise, and then there's the GST on top of that," he said....
[Fuel costs bring high political price] Reporter: Peter Lewis, ABC LandLine - First Published: 25/02/01 - read down to the Pricing diesel subtopic.
...Are you self-taught? Motivated by doing things you want to do (instead of what society/teachers/parents/friends tell you to do)? This model is also needed by society in conquering new things and treading outside the predictable, safe areas where gatherers like to reside. Understand that society needs both of these....
Consider the plot for Profession. This story outlines a similiar observation mentioned above. Where,
...In a world where education is managed by two imprintings by a machine--the first at eight to learn how to read and the second a decade later, to imprint additional knowledge one needs for one's ideal career--George Platen finds himself in the unenviable category of one of the few whom the machine cannot educate....
[Isimov.I., Profession, 1957 (republished - Nine Tomorrows) - information compiled by John Jenkins]
We certainly don't get cheap oil, or if we do, the consumers never see any benefits (maybe the foreign owned oil companies get those benefits, flowing the profits back to England and the US).
Try a whopping 50% tax on petrol imposed by the au government. That is why I laugh when users grump about high pertol prices at the pump and cry unfair trading by oil companies. Rid the government tax and halve the cost of pertol.
This is pretty much my stance. But does langauge explain the full picture? India also has two other factors that really allow them to great realise their ambitions - education and business nous. There is a great spirit of commercial endevour in the sub-continent. To get anywhere you have to compete within a competitive internal market. Also do not underestimate the recognition of education.
But similiar charactersitics (education, hard work and business ability) can be found within Eastern Europe, China, Japan. All except the linga franca of the global economy, English.
Thats why the above post is spot-on. The question I ask is will this Indian dominance change as more cultures adopt he English language and adapt their cultures?
Re:Funny you should mention blurry screens...
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 1
all non-color Handspring PDAs and all more recent Palm PDAs, has higher contrast and better response times.
you learn something new every day. I didn't know this. Yeah the screen probably was scratched but it was a lot newer than my palm. Thanks for the comment.
Re:Program base doesn't equal success
on
YOPY Arrives
·
· Score: 1
I disagree on *better screens*. At my local linux group I remember looking at another blokes *handspring* and the screen just looked crappy compared to my old PIII. Placing them side by side I could not adjust to the Handspring screen refresh. The text looked real blurry.
2. Testing, testing, and testing -- by the developers.
probably not a good idea. while I would get them to test their archictecture, algorythms and performance I would leave any real testting to a QA team (hey thats if you really have one).
3. QA, QA and QA -- by someone other than the developers!
very true. *monkey-testing* for input screens, navigation and design. Load and stress-testing may reduce any performance bugs. But the one that may bite is the RDBMS for database intensive sites where developers have made changes to stored procecures on the db. Is the SQL code in CVS? Can we roll back the db on the live site if needed? Opps we make changes to the live DB:( This is one are where having *restrictive* per-seat db licences bite.
4. Managers must know the test/ QA process should never by bypassed -- this unfortunately is probably the hardest point.:-(
the phb problem. no amount of testing, development rigour will avoid the *monday morning* crash with 100's hasty ill-defined of cvs commits in the weeks previous *mandatated* with/without poorly defined specifications. Of course you have to balance this with a business being able to adapt quickly. But I remember one marketing clown thinking *development was easy* and could be learnt in 15 minutes.
There are no *silver bullets*.
Working with fragile web based systems almost warrants XP unit type testing approach. Other agile development approachs might be useful.
150 KLOC+18 programmers+gnu license=few$$$ i remember reading this in an interview with miguel about Evolution. Sounds like it was such a financial drain their next plugin to connect to exchange was closed source for $$$.
try to involve EVERYTHING like moz (nav, mail, irc, composer, address book, calander), evolution et., al. I hope you can use the calander by itself w/o firing up the whole app. alpha alpha... does not give any functionality new users read this to get a high level view.
thanks for posting this. It answers what I really wanted to know about nature of the xml format. If you can get into the guts of a document like this, you can do a lot of nify coding including something along the lines of (round-tripping): Word2003 => doc <=> foo-tool<=> (html form|email|database)
The other unique feature of many of the HP calculators was the bomb proff design
strong but not that strong. especially the LCD screens on the HP11's. I used mine for surveying and it lasted 1/2 the semester before I smashed the display in the bottom of my pack.
Have you ever wondered how Oreilly is able to publish the same book online and in print?.... think DocBook. There is a section in the online book (free), 1.5.1. A Short DocBook History that describes how Oreilly developed the necessary tools and systems to allow separation of content and presentation.
DocBook is almost 10yo (1991) and shows how a company can successfully publish (what ever the medium) using sgml/xml. Remember this the next time you see some "...xml is next thing...", hype.
...There's a common misperception that, because there are no printing and shipping charges, ebooks should be less expensive than print books. Yet, these functions account for only about 15 percent of a book's cost...
I do however have a gripe about the costs of online v's printed book. It urked me to read this. Whatever way you look at it (even if they update the contents), a book beats the web hands down. It's my book I can carry it around, I can lend it out, photocopy it and not have to pay repeat subcriptions.
O'reilly does however have the Open-books section that allows you to read some titles online for free.
[links:] DocBook - DocBook reference online (free) Interview with Jon Udell about Safari - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/news/udell_0301.ht ml Open books - http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ free and out of print books online.
"...If you build software or buy it, and toss it out the window because you change hardware platforms or upgrade because your vendor says you have to..."
develop for platform independence, use platform independent languages/sw, I guess that's what your getting at here
"...Many IT professionals never EVER ask these sorts of questions, Historically. Why? Primarily because until quite recently, the technology wasn't available in any practical sense, to make such decisions very very obvious, and very very easy to do..."
having seen this in quite a few companies with these symptoms I can give a few reasons why nothing happens. (I'm pretty sure you will already be aware of them)
*A lot of company software systems are grown and not designed and become ad-hoc. If company A chooses (or a vendor suggests) using Windows any can only change by increments. A lot of resistance is applied (skills + knowledge is threatened, costs). It's easier to loose money. So radical change is avoided , just stay with the chosen path. (avoid tech fads, pioneer application of *selected tech* AFTER careful evaluation Good to Great et.,al PP163)
*hardware + os = determines software choice, hence developers/engineers are chosen for this skillset, AND NOT, choose developers/engineers first that can think platform neutral/independent systems. (choose people then task. Good to Great et.,al PP41)
*developers and s/w engineers dont have the final say, the PHB has final say. (this is okay but how does the PHB know if the tech fits with the company? How do they know how to use tech to accelerate their business? Good to Great et.,al PP163)
I could go on. I guess the point to make is that in business, the culture is more important than just the technology. The same technology in the hands of a mediocre company will not make it any better than a company with a fine tuned focus and culture.
A lot of the scenarios above are discussed in a book called
'Good to Great, Collins Jim, PP144-163, CH 7 Technology Accelerators, Random House, 2001. [ http://www.jimcollins.com ] Specifically the technology chapter which talks about the Internet boom
and different approaches taken by different companies.
Slashdot Mirror
yeah it's kinda fun to watch the 2yo & 5yo run around the house shouting *EXTERMINATE* and asking questions about the Tardis travelling through worm holes.
:(
blast the ABC for voicing over the end credits though - bloody ads
after seeing a bbc horizon television report on shuttle design flaws ... spam in a can.
if the article clearly states that *c* is a prerequisite and is about gcc compiler internals on a very specific hardware platform the article is clearly catering for the technical specialist knowlegeable/or interested about such topics. why shouldnt it be on the front page. Since when has the front page been *slashdot for idiots* ?
/. whipper snapper wanting everything NOW ... :)
... hung drawn and quartered before you could even spell slashdot.
...
:)
if you cannot understand *c* or take the time to read and understand the suggested references then do not be surprised the article is unaccessable. Typical young
Dare you *not to do your homework* and post statements like this on the openbsd or gcc usenet forums
RTFM, RTFTB, man gcc(1), read the manual, already faq
Maybe a better suggestion maybe to post a question in the discussion asking for help or for someone to summarize the interesting points. Must use slashdot powers for good, not evil
thanks for the information. It'll come in I didn't appreciate vi till I had to use Ed for a openBsd install.
In order of editors I've gone from emacs to vim to vi, now Ed.
some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview panel
..regardless of the OS. Anyone remember Crack.com being hacked for the Quake src code on a linux box?
was it patched? It's getting so that you cannot have your valuables on an online machine these days
I've been waiting for a vi v's emacs thread for this one. Stuff both of them OpenBsd uses Ed.
For those more interested in technology (than flames) read this article with Bill Joy about Ed.
dare you to try and outrun the solar cars. I had a mate working on the Melbourne Uni EE team saying at the completion of the race they would try to see how fast they could wind them up. So they organised a race with some hotted up late model Holdens. Gave the solar cars 20m head start and could never catch up.
That's right, the Commodores had to refuel at regular intervals while the solar cars just kept going. Different story at night though.
my favourite was IDPISPOD which turned off clipping allowing you to run through walls.
found some hard figures for those interested ... ... Well roughly at the moment the wholesale price of a litre of diesel is around 90 cents per litre of which you'd pay 39.5 cents in tax, in excise, and then there's the GST on top of that," he said. ...
[Fuel costs bring high political price]
Reporter: Peter Lewis, ABC LandLine - First Published: 25/02/01 - read down to the Pricing diesel subtopic.
A qaint remark made on the BS7 post about Shakespeare being the definitive resource for characterisation. Could Asimov also be considered a resource for ideas on science, thinking and learning?
Consider the plot for Profession . This story outlines a similiar observation mentioned above. Where,
[Isimov.I., Profession, 1957 (republished - Nine Tomorrows) - information compiled by John Jenkins]
We certainly don't get cheap oil, or if we do, the consumers never see any benefits (maybe the foreign owned oil companies get those benefits, flowing the profits back to England and the US).
Try a whopping 50% tax on petrol imposed by the au government. That is why I laugh when users grump about high pertol prices at the pump and cry unfair trading by oil companies. Rid the government tax and halve the cost of pertol.
This is pretty much my stance. But does langauge explain the full picture? India also has two other factors that really allow them to great realise their ambitions - education and business nous. There is a great spirit of commercial endevour in the sub-continent. To get anywhere you have to compete within a competitive internal market. Also do not underestimate the recognition of education.
But similiar charactersitics (education, hard work and business ability) can be found within Eastern Europe, China, Japan. All except the linga franca of the global economy, English.
Thats why the above post is spot-on. The question I ask is will this Indian dominance change as more cultures adopt he English language and adapt their cultures?
all non-color Handspring PDAs and all more recent Palm PDAs, has higher contrast and better response times.
you learn something new every day. I didn't know this. Yeah the screen probably was scratched but it was a lot newer than my palm. Thanks for the comment.
I disagree on *better screens*. At my local linux group I remember looking at another blokes *handspring* and the screen just looked crappy compared to my old PIII. Placing them side by side I could not adjust to the Handspring screen refresh. The text looked real blurry.
2. Testing, testing, and testing -- by the developers.
:( This is one are where having *restrictive* per-seat db licences bite.
:-(
probably not a good idea. while I would get them to test their archictecture, algorythms and performance I would leave any real testting to a QA team (hey thats if you really have one).
3. QA, QA and QA -- by someone other than the developers!
very true. *monkey-testing* for input screens, navigation and design. Load and stress-testing may reduce any performance bugs. But the one that may bite is the RDBMS for database intensive sites where developers have made changes to stored procecures on the db. Is the SQL code in CVS? Can we roll back the db on the live site if needed? Opps we make changes to the live DB
4. Managers must know the test/ QA process should never by bypassed -- this unfortunately is probably the hardest point.
the phb problem. no amount of testing, development rigour will avoid the *monday morning* crash with 100's hasty ill-defined of cvs commits in the weeks previous *mandatated* with/without poorly defined specifications. Of course you have to balance this with a business being able to adapt quickly. But I remember one marketing clown thinking *development was easy* and could be learnt in 15 minutes.
There are no *silver bullets*.
Working with fragile web based systems almost warrants XP unit type testing approach. Other agile development approachs might be useful.
150 KLOC+18 programmers+gnu license=few$$$
i remember reading this in an interview with miguel about Evolution. Sounds like it was such a financial drain their next plugin to connect to exchange was closed source for $$$.
try to involve EVERYTHING ... does not give any functionality
like moz (nav, mail, irc, composer, address book, calander), evolution et., al. I hope you can use the calander by itself w/o firing up the whole app.
alpha alpha
new users read this to get a high level view.
however I did see that you can at least get to the app via python. maybe possible to export data -> pilot etc.
beaut. I'll be checking this further.
:)
word XML Content Development Kit. I have no idea what sort of license a CDK would have
Hate it when you have to ask permission
thanks for posting this. It answers what I really wanted to know about nature of the xml format. If you can get into the guts of a document like this, you can do a lot of nify coding including something along the lines of (round-tripping):
Word2003 => doc <=> foo-tool<=> (html form|email|database)
This is good news from MS.
does anyone know for certain if the xml output is going to be published?
Is the file output in a readable format?
I would be interesting to see if they allow for reading the file like openoffice and allow text processing.
The other unique feature of many of the HP calculators was the bomb proff design
strong but not that strong. especially the LCD screens on the HP11's. I used mine for surveying and it lasted 1/2 the semester before I smashed the display in the bottom of my pack.
DocBook is almost 10yo (1991) and shows how a company can successfully publish (what ever the medium) using sgml/xml. Remember this the next time you see some "...xml is next thing...", hype.
I do however have a gripe about the costs of online v's printed book. It urked me to read this. Whatever way you look at it (even if they update the contents), a book beats the web hands down. It's my book I can carry it around, I can lend it out, photocopy it and not have to pay repeat subcriptions.
O'reilly does however have the Open-books section that allows you to read some titles online for free.
[links:]
DocBook - DocBook reference online (free)
Interview with Jon Udell about Safari - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/news/udell_0301.h
Open books - http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ free and out of print books online.
"...If you build software or buy it,
and toss it out the window because you
change hardware platforms or upgrade
because your vendor says you have to..."
develop for platform independence,
use platform independent languages/sw, I guess that's
what your getting at here
"...Many IT professionals never EVER ask these sorts of questions,
Historically. Why? Primarily because until quite recently, the
technology wasn't available in any practical sense,
to make such decisions very very obvious, and very very easy to do..."
having seen this in quite a few companies with these symptoms I can give a few reasons
why nothing happens. (I'm pretty sure you will already be aware of them)
*A lot of company software systems are grown and not designed and become
ad-hoc. If company A chooses (or a vendor suggests) using Windows any can
only change by increments. A lot of resistance is applied (skills + knowledge
is threatened, costs). It's easier to loose money. So radical change is avoided
, just stay with the chosen path.
(avoid tech fads, pioneer application of *selected tech* AFTER careful evaluation
Good to Great et.,al PP163)
*hardware + os = determines software choice, hence developers/engineers
are chosen for this skillset, AND NOT, choose developers/engineers first that can think
platform neutral/independent systems.
(choose people then task. Good to Great et.,al PP41)
*developers and s/w engineers dont have the final say, the PHB has final say.
(this is okay but how does the PHB know if the tech fits with the company?
How do they know how to use tech to accelerate their business? Good to Great et.,al PP163)
I could go on. I guess the point to make is that in business, the culture
is more important than just the technology. The same technology in the hands of a
mediocre company will not make it any better than a
company with a fine tuned focus and culture.
A lot of the scenarios above are discussed in a book called
'Good to Great, Collins Jim, PP144-163, CH 7 Technology Accelerators, Random House, 2001.
[ http://www.jimcollins.com ]
Specifically the technology chapter which talks about the Internet boom
and different approaches taken by different companies.