...It will be necessary to interface BGL low-level primitives to existing video and 2D APIs, high-level widget libraries and GUI builders. A feature reference that provides an example of the kinds of requirements for vector graphics is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), currently under specification at the W3C (see http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-SVGReq )...
I was just reading about some opengl and coding and spotted this article. Looks like this idea is being looked at.
That tanker was carrying oil for Australian consumption.
the following
link suggest this may not be the case...check your sources first.
...It is believed the oil came from the pumping out of a ship's bilge, rather than a tanker spill, though neither the Environment Protection Authority nor the Maritime Board was able to confirm this yesterday. An EPA analysis of the oil is expected today...
if you want to ask questions go to the source...here - (http://www.penguins.org.au/chat/index.html)
Anybody that develops any kind of software that does anything useful _and_ does not comment it so that should the original developer drop dead
gee there would be a lot of dead coders out there...most of the
best coders follow the maxim, '...I dont write the code to be read...', but seriously, I suggest you read the following slashdot article on 'extreme programming'.
Software in the Open Source movement must be BETTER than the commercial stuff in the "coding style and comments"
very true... but sometimes to code you have to break the rules. traditional software engineering doctrine (and sanity) demands this, but the slashcode is a case of
extreme programming. for his first attempts at software john carmack once noted (in some quote I read out of his.plan)... " create something really cool first, then clean it up if it's any good". Slashdot is an example of this.
extreme programming can be seen as a response to tight deadlines and also evolving software. I guess the question I would ask , is this a result of developing for the web?.
In school I was taught that australia (sic)was founded by criminals.
Australia was used initially as a dumping ground for the less than desirables by the British. Discovered by Cpt James Cook (b27 October 1728 in Marton, England - d14-Nov-1799, Hawaii), Australia was also settled by free settlers concurrently.... the link goes on to explain...(my emphasis)
Captain Cook's account of his discovery aroused much interest in England but Britain did not try to colonise Australia until its American colonies achieved independence. On 13 May 1787, the first fleet of 11 ships sailed from England under the command of Capt. Arthur Phillip. They reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 with 1530 people, 736 of them convicts.
So it was not until the Boston Tea Party that the Brit's deceided to look for another dumping ground for their criminals. Another site, Convicts of Australia goes on to say....
1718-1783 About 50,000 British criminals were transported to colonies in America. 1775-1783 AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE - hostilities with Britain brought transportation to a halt. 1783-1787 British prisons and hulks began to over-flow.
Australian convicts just happened to put to good use as a good source of cheap labour, building infrastructure, harvesting crops and rum. Though branded criminals, a lot of poor old souls got a life ticket to Van Deimans Land (Tasmania) for crimes such as stealing bread, forging, etc... and anything else convenient the British could think of. That and the fact that the prison ships moored off the British coast had filled to capacity.
For those with a history bent that above urls above are a great read. For the writer above, surely you where aware of these facts, so dont bother.
au is becoming the equivalent of internet hillbillies. the contrast between foward looking american/international companies and governments put's ours to shame.
here's some of the impediments to doing e-commerce/web companies and even just plain surfing in au.
technical bandwidth - because of the lack of competition, Telstra has effectivly hindered any growth in high bandwidth access to the backbone. What access exists is too expensive, is inflexible. Telstra goes out of it's way to extract $ (and hugh profits) but any implementations of broadband is laughable.
IT skills - it skills levels are good to very good, but there is a severe shortage coupled with a brain drain of top technical staff.
human rights privacy laws - lack of, hence allowing business, government and external bodies to push the limits of basic privacy and rights, that other countries take for granted.
government censorship - federal government trying to force internet censorship that is technically very difficult even of it forces local ISP's for a lot of extra expenses.
business - weak privacy laws allowing business (PBL) to attempt to capture, store and profile the entire country.
business business conservatism - banks, big business, the engines of change for the country are reluctant to go boots and all>.
e-business's - toe-dipping, lack of funds, lack of business exploitation skills (not techincal skills) is holding back the growth of e-commerce.
venture capital - venture capital is looking up. More vc's are looking at funding start-ups.
education - funding - funding to education is being cut (Monash University), privatisation and business driven courses is the word.
course access - hard core science (and other non essential academic cources) are being replaced with vocational courses.
While I may be portraying a gloomy picture (there are may success stories), the emerging theme here is that the problems are being created and perpetuated from the top. The real innovation and positive work is coming from the bottom up, much like the Internet itself. Moveover Beverly HillBillys, the Internet HillBillys are moving in.....
...in my mind that the new article is both more accurate and more relevent to it's subject than the original...
yes agreed, but I bawked a bit at the following couple of lines....(the bold emphasis is mine)
although anyone with enough intelligence and time can pick it up without formal schooling. In fact, the skills are not at all rare or unusual, being the same as those required for an average, small or medium-sized company network system administrator: a position which commands among the lowest pay in the computer industry. The chances are that there is a university drop-out in your town with all of these prerequisites. That said, a list of qualifications does not fully explain their make-up, as the skillset is more to do with lifestyle than specific capabilities. Some people collect baseball cards; others analyse [computer network] protocols.
what urks me is that it appears to reinforce stereo-typical profile of the lone social misfit with low self esteem, male who deviates from the norm. In fact the this form of electronic warfare is more likely to be done with assorted teams of white collar specialists for the regular work and the lone character stereotype portrayed in the article for those *irregular* assignments.
This is the only flaw I can find (sans errors, but this is an old article.) in an otherwise excellent article. It's the kind of quality you would expect from Janes/JIR.
you are using netscape, a now inferior browser the worst thing I'm finding with netscape is the older versions that a lot of our clients are using (.gov, madated to use only netscape) is that sites using certificates to authenticate are failing.
while MS has a stranglehold on the windows desktop, corporate users will continue use IE.
from a development point of view this is good, but from a technological standpoint I'd like to see a real competitor. It's worth noting there's a lot of wintel/ie users out there and it's difficult for competitors (free or otherwise) to break into this market.
It seems to me that the writers/posters at slashdot are posting more purely technical and slanting towards the net culture/we world. This is fine because you can want a bit of diversity. But not at the expense of accuracy of facts, ability to quote sources, accountability...etc. These (and other qualities) are what you find in any good reporting organisation.
One solution (there are surely others) is for users to moderate stories for *quality* much like our posts are moderated. This will force the writers to lift their game as users can quantitativly access a story. Read the post to see what i recommended. Slashdot can only improve.
these are all good points, and I do like the self modifying corrections. I guess the news for nerds tag throws off the other news organisations and casual lurkers, as well as seasoned posters. Titles, story slant and outright incorrect stories can attract unnecessary attention. Take iD as an example, timing is of the essence here. They have a product coming out and a negative story is blown out at a time pre release of their product. Snap judgements can be made by the title alone. The time for correction and retraction may take to long. Had the story been slanted differently, some checking done, it may not have rated as heavily. These are the tactics of shlock-tabloids in the newspaper world, the 10 second news image with voice over in the TV world. The web is unique in this respect as it's a multicast medium. This means unverified stories can be moderated as such through the feedback of posters, much as posters comments are moderated themselves.
Inaccurate stories may be corrected but I would like to see a self correcting mechanism to the *quality* of the stories from the readers themselves. This story moderation rating is effected as more people read the story thus a judgement is reached as to the quality of the story. Note I say quality, this does not necessarliy effect the speed or direction of stories. A story moderation rating on,
accuracy
confirmability balence other measures of story quality etc..
quantification is applied to posts why not stories? This mechanism could aid readers making snap comments summarizing the quality of the story, posts and writer BEFORE they post. It's a modification to the current peer process that already occurs. Slashdot can only improve.
Apropriate quote: "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence".
I wouldn't be to hard on your company. I think it's been pretty well established iD has more than generous to the gaming community in more ways than one. If anything I think your guilty of underestimating consumer paranoia (understandable paranoia) by not making things clear at download and explaining why and what you are using the details for (to improve the software) as you are here.
I remain unconvinced that we have done something morally offensive.
and this I think is the root of the problem. I've noticed an increase of 'fast-loose' stories in slashdot in a medium that relies on immediacy. With the 'Corel/Perens' story, the Wine story and now this incidence, Slashdot is giving a new meaning to the word slashdot effect, ie: effect a companies bottom line, organisations credability and persons reputations. I propose a number of changes to the way slashdot reports, posts and validates stories to stop the stuffups (yes stuffups, the above 3 examples highlight the inability of the writers to apply some simple rules to maintain the standards, accuracy of stories and articles without sacrificing variety and range of submissions.
points to consider
submission: when a great story is submitted it should go through a number of types of verification before they are publically submited to slashdot. The emphasis should be on a stories accuracy rather than being first. The correctness of the story is paramount. Nobody remembers (or values) the first person to submit Bill Gates uses Linux at home if it's not correct. What is the current submission procedure at slashdot?
verification: you would expect that CNN verifies it's stories before it puts them to air. Why is it that people who are directly involved in these reports are the last to be contacted. yeah it might take a while to get a response. Sometimes you might not get a response. This is the time where judgement is required. But most of the time I would like to see that the author has at least tried to verify the story and not shoot, then through the gunsmoke *cough*, try to verify the issue.
editorial policy: When is a story un-publishable, does slashdot have a publicly available document that states their guidelines? Newspapers are answerable to professional ethics bodies. I would like to see slashdot have a mechanism so that individuals are responsible for the 'quality' and accuracy of stories that enforces a formal/informal policy to encourage quality rather than quantity and up to the minute news. I would rather 4 stories a day than 20 if they reeked quality.
right to reply: if a person is wronged or perceived to be wronged, the right to reply is required. Slashdot allows this as we have seen through the course of the story. But what about a followup? I've seen a number of retractions but is this enough? Does slashdot allow for the wronged the right of reply where they set the context of the reply, instead of just having to wade through and try to reply to negative posts
slashdot story moderation: In order to get a feel for the quality of the story, I would like to see moderation marks applied (to registered members) to stories in much the same way individual comments are moderated. This means readers rate the quality of the story and it's relevence.
slashdot writer kama: the good get better, the bad get thrown out. If we introduce a 'karma' rating to individual writers at slashdot related to the story moderation, you can then get a good hard number to the effectiveness of a writer at slashdot. We all know cmdrTaco's stories are mostly on the ball, but now you could measure how he rates with respect to others.
story balence: far to many times the stories are preached instead of reported. Now I dont understimate the intelligence level of the readers, but a negative slant does set the tome of the article. A lot of times readers just read the headlines, read a few negative posts and the site is slashdotted. I would like to see a more balenced approach to the titles... eg: iD software confirmed today it's recording.... to improve development...i thinkin this is wrong for x, y z reasons... rather than the very outraged bylines we read.
Maybe you disagree with some or all of what I have suggested above? But the intention is to improve the quality of stories at slashdot and minimise the needless harm done to commercial individuals and organisations.
It's time slashdot became answerable. editorial guidelines, verification of facts, the right to reply, slashdot writer moderation and karma points are some ways I can think to help slashdot improve and level out some of the dips in story quality.
It was mentioned in the article above... the cc hack... I was just reading through it now...
The actual bug I planted in the compiler would match code in the UNIX "login" command. The replacement code would miscompile the login command so that it would accept either the intended encrypted password or a particular known password. Thus if this code were installed in binary and the binary were used to compile the login command, I could log into that system as any user.
for any questions '/.' readers may have on (Lego) Mindstorms and programming the definitive site to go to is LUGNET. Here's the pointers to the site. It's a true master piece of web engineering and excellent source of information.
lugnet - Lego Users Group, main page. Links to all the user groups. palm - palm development for Lego mindstorms robotics - talk/problem solving about programming, building and designing robots in lego
a unique feature of LUGNET is the three way interaction between newsgroups using news (nntp), email (using smtp) and the web (using http). You can interact/subscribe through LUGNET by any of the above protocols and the discussions are simultaneously readable via news, web or email.
on the subject of virtual worlds when is a major FPS game going to model natural environments instead of re-hashing interiors. Now i realise that most are leveraging on their current expertise in modelling architecture/code etc., but you can only go so far with interiors. When is the bar going to be lifted? Exteriors was one of the first things I looked for in Doom. Fighting imps in the open. Nicely done by the way. But that was '93. When I checked out Q3 screen shots..., hmmm not much improvement from what I could see.
I dont think I'm being overly critical here. The interiors have been done to death (and done extremly well at that). Time for the radical leap from order, precision of geometric lines to fractal geometry. Now is a good time to experiment with exteriors, L-Systems, fractals and parametric equations... all that messy math...but I will bow to coding god who transforms virtual reality from the currently manufactured look to a natural one.
nerdV'Sgeek(A and not-A)NOT (either A or not-A)
on
Geeks vs. Nerds
·
· Score: 1
. "[Geek and nerd] was pretty much the same thing three or four years ago, but a lot of people in marketing have embraced 'nerd,'" Clark says. "A 'nerd' is cool, a 'geek' is uncool." had a chuckle when i read the marketing types are embracing and extending...nerd
Quan says he used to wind-surf with hard-core geeks -- a Porsche-driving, Palm-Piloting crowd that ranged from the technical to the marketing I even hard a harder chuckle over this one. I didn't like the way this article was slanting - label accumulation, hip happening and all consuming wankers....
while the distinctions of nerds and geeks is in my view fuzzy ('A and not-A' AND NOT 'either A or not-A' - Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko, 078688021X ) where did nerd, geek get the added baggage of consumerism and social air's? Is this someone elses label? To me a nerd/geek or nerd/geek hybrid is just as happy working out how to get unix on a 386 thrown out by the former 'cause it wont show those flashy graphics. One of my loves with coding is, compilers are free, operating systems are free, knowledge can be gained for free, machines are cheap. Nerds/geeks are about understanding and creating not mere image, consumerism and money. This same concept could just as easily be applied to any other kind of nerd/geek discipline.
i guess a nerd's v's geek fest wouldn't be complete without a list of geek/nerd sites to go have a look at. Of them all I like the geek code site... but damn couldn't they have just given out a template so we can have multiple geek codes?
nerd v's geeks: -http://www.thefunnybone.com/topsubmissions/submit 891059295.shtml geek code: - http://www.geekcode.com/ nerd test:- http://www.frontiernet.net/~jbennett/nerd/n500test .html geek is a verb, most intelligent '/.' comment so far proving the value of ac's!: - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/11/22/19142 58&pid=0#230
Now let me get back to listening to my new CD and writing my code for moola....
I was reading an obituary ealier this month in the Australian (australian national newpaper) about an academic (the name escapes me, but it's not important) who compiled literary encyclopedia's for a living. She would get three independent sources before should would even consider an addition. What I would like to see before you start submitting more stories...
email address of person(s) submitting story: - so we can confirm it if we have to
html links to other sites: - that also may carry to a story gut reaction factor: - comment, given your experience and checking within the industry about the likelyhood of a stories truth (bs detection).
Slashdot allows me to get the latest tech news, raw - facts and then analysis of those raw facts. If I want humour, I'll go to segfault (segfault.org), gonzo journalism - zdnet. If i want the latest breaking (inaccurate timely news) I'll watch the news on local television (go channel nine!)... But I come to slashdot for the FACTS, FACT BASED OPINIONS and CAREFUL ANALYSIS... not baseless rumours.... Nerd and geeks can smell bs a mile away:)
fine print: (with exception of transmeta, bill gates throwing away visual basic and taking on gcc and make and building a bewoulf cluster using windows ce hardware and microLinux software ports and various references to freeBSD)
a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms.
This should read 'Melbourne'. I would have put it up sooner, but I typed in http://segfault.org by mistake:) Here's a better link fairfax IT section.
Because the tunes were first played between 1951 and 1953, Doornbusch is confident it was probably the first computer music anywhere.
An interesting fact that would be nice to confirm is that the played the worlds first computer generated music. I've heard the tape on the ABC's Science show (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/ss.htm) last year.
In 1948 he, with Maston Beard, commenced the design of a stored program electronic computer. This machine, the CSIR Mark I, was developed largely independently of work then underway in Britain and the US.
There's also a link to the machines co-creator, Trevor Pearcey
free - because IE is an no real number of users will support it - read business standards complient - cause the browser is the OS of web, all web sites/apps work to the limitations and implementations of W3C protocols and standards fast - cause it wont be adopted if IE beats it. extensible code- because the standards are evolving - check the development of apache portable - be able to port to different platforms available soon - because IE is reaching monopoly on Windows (90% market) without competition.
these are some great comments. I'll respond to a few. Rememeber there is no right or wrong here. What I comment on works in our instance and has it's advantages given our circumstances. Yours maybe different.
"Become your own ISP"
what I mean by becoming your own ISP is having a direct high bandwidth link to a telco. This doesn't mean a T1, but it does mean at least a dedicated ISDN line. Then you can set up your own DNS, email, ftp, web and database servers in whatever configuration you like. You gain control and but maintain the speed.
for development making changes to dns or web servers through a third party gets in the way. We dont have any large database/isp hosters in australia, while you have many fine companies in the states (Datareturn for instance) to use a US host is another step in the chain we can side step. We have found that in building a service (grabbing the data, storing it, then repackaging it back to customers requires we use, develop and modify many services (http, ftp, smtp dns) all of which hinders rapid development.
If your planing to create the next mega uber site (Amazon) then handing back the site to a large host makes more sense as you suggest. For us at the moment it does not.
...develop a minimal rock solid product...And how will that help you differentiate your product
because, while your competitors have created this great first version product, it's a bitch to maintain. There are lots of bugs tying up key developers, customers are getting annoyed and your phone runs hot (see tom demarcos latest book, 'peopleware' to see how the phone is a major hassle in development. While your competitors are struggling with dev resources plugging bugs you have moved to the second generation product, levereging old code in some places. You've made your first leap from the pack. This is exactly how you differnciate your product. It works better, you move faster in development.
"leveredege existing binary products"... Example: It's better to just send word or pdf files than to concoct some online format
actually I hate PDF, word, but your dead right. Work with data from your db and generate info in these formats, email clients to download the data via FTP.
"Fund initial expansion without going into debt"...Easy to say, hard to do
funding development is always a problem. At sausage, the founder got his funding by developing, programming a html editor called Hotdog. All the PC purchases, payroll, rent where from cash generated by this one product. Sure it was good timing, a bit of luck but the company was built on this product. Look at Crack.com, funded golgotha with the proceedes of sales from Abuse. There's not may good ideas, talent and business plans that land VC within a week of looking for cash say like Sun Microsystems. To move from the garage, old pc's and bags of rice is going to take money (a' la excite - who now own try to use a higher level dev languge"...Agreed. Optimize for speed as per forecasted need. Embed c in perl or create ISAPI or apache c modules.
no, this is not what I had in mind. Use python, perl, PHP, JSP, ASP but stay away from the design, compile, install unless there is a really good reason for it like security (shipping intranet product and you dont want to expose source) , speed (develop an inprocess dll optimised to to stay in memory while an application is running thus saving on load and unload). Use scripts for readability (server side here folks), changability and speed of fixing a bit of code. This is what I experience. A|Got a bug, find the code, change, comment test, done. (no compile, install).
Be sure to optimize
but only where the brute force method of more and faster RAM, better, faster hard disks UW2-SCSI for IO intensive work, more PC's to offload the database, web server, email server, dns and ftp server. Use brute force for all but the code that you PROFILE. There was a great article by Larry O'Brien on JavaPro about this a while ago (Apache, JSP etc). pick a platform, development tools that will be around
I'll leave this choice to you. There's a free OS I keep hearing about with all these free tools, stable as hell and fast...:)
Here's some laws I've formulated after working in 3 startups from '96 to now (sausage.com, www.ringtail.com.au and the company I work for now). They relate a lot to ASP (application service providers) but could be applied to binary apps companies.
hire less, hire smarter - company iq==(total employee iq/employee#) own the data - owning/possesing the data allows you to do lots of things with it. Data hosting is a core activity of ASP's. Own/posses the data, you can do lot's of neat things with it. complete the data loop - from customer/user input into a database, useful information is filtered back to the client using the Internet and it's protocols. use the internet protocols 2 your advantage
smtp: - email back results of non-immediate jobs ftp: - allow large files/data that can't be email to be accessed. http: - presentation layer of services xml: - new one but such organisation could revolutionise your text file storage. extend and leverage your logistics.- by using the internet and your database, development tools to automate functionality: ie: web backups of databases the transfer DDL, BCP data, codebase, log files from different areas on the site to a centrally located removable hard disk or Jaz disk: I've don this myself.
develop a minimal rock solid product. - one that does not crash or crashes minimally. Customers wont praise you but will let you know if it does not work. give your customers a cheap basic product to start with. - dont give a cost hurdles for customers to adopt your product. leveredege existing binary products to use Internet facilities with objective of upgrading customers to the web.- migrate those binary products to use internet protocols with the idea of upgrading all/most of your services to the web. Become your own ISP with control of web servers, DNS, databases ISDN internet link etc.- you have full control of your domain, you can do everything you possibly can. Maximum bandwidth decides you maximum audience. - bandwidth dictates the speed, reliability and user experience: Use slashdot growth as an example. Fund initial expansion without going into debt. - dont waste money and go into debt. Finance growth on profit until venture capital is possible. Have bloody lots of fun - if you cant code what you want, play the games or build robots, code some great code you wanted to do you will not enjoy the work. Play hard, work hard. Dont give up - startups fail, dont let this stop you. Check out what happened to Crack.com. Do you think these guys are giving up. Wonder how long ddt and jt are back building FPS or RPG post Transmeta and JiJit? failure makes you smarter!, comebacks make you legends:) try to use a higher level dev languge , use the source!: scripting not binary- binaries are hard work. The develop, compile, build, create install, release cycle is way to long. Scripts are the way to go. Error, just go to the script (text file) and make a change.
6.) hire another guy to do grunt work like backups etc. thay you've been doing till now. or think of a great way to automate the process, write some cool software to offload the grunt work to your silicon workers:)
In a start up logistics is also a problem. Any code or tools you create to leverage your logistics will help. An automated database back tool is one. I know, 'cause this is exactly what I did.
Sweat, blood and credit card advances only go so far. the founders of cisco founded their company with their credit cards...but they also lost the company and missed out on the bumper share price rise:(
is this the one with anaconda (python)? Damn I've been reading very little about this at http://linux.com I've yet to get around this problem. Went back to the 6.0 binary install instead. Anyone know the minimum sized HD RH6.1 will install on? Not to be found at redhat (minimum install for 5.2 is listed but nothing about 6.0 or 5.2).
Slashdot Mirror
...It will be necessary to interface BGL low-level primitives to existing video and 2D APIs, high-level widget libraries and GUI builders. A feature reference that provides an example of the kinds of requirements for vector graphics is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), currently under specification at the W3C (see http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-SVGReq )...
http://www.opengl.org/News/Special/BGL.html
I was just reading about some opengl and coding and spotted this article. Looks like this idea is being looked at.
links:
http://www.opengl.org/News/Special/Features.html
- the following
- link suggest this may not be the case...check your sources first.
...It is believed the oil came from the pumping out of a ship's bilge, rather than a tanker spill, though neither the Environment Protection Authority nor the Maritime Board was able to confirm this yesterday. An EPA analysis of the oil is expected today...
links:if you want to ask questions go to the source...here - (http://www.penguins.org.au/chat/index.html)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000104/A5181-2000
http://www.penguins.org.au/chat/index.html
- gee there would be a lot of dead coders out there...most of the
- best coders follow the maxim,
Software in the Open Source movement must be BETTER than the commercial stuff in the "coding style and comments"'...I dont write the code to be read...', but seriously, I suggest you read the following slashdot article on 'extreme programming'.
extreme programming can be seen as a response to tight deadlines and also evolving software. I guess the question I would ask , is this a result of developing for the web?.
links:
http://slashdot.org/books/99/12/21/097256.shtml
http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=joh
agreed, go here instead,
http://www.interbase.com/cgi/contact.cgi
it was a joke... not to be taken seriously
:P
damn, that's all I need a yank with a sense of humour
Australia was used initially as a dumping ground for the less than desirables by the British. Discovered by Cpt James Cook (b27 October 1728 in Marton, England - d14-Nov-1799, Hawaii), Australia was also settled by free settlers concurrently.... the link goes on to explain...(my emphasis)
- Captain Cook's account of his discovery aroused much interest in England but Britain did not try to colonise Australia until its American colonies achieved independence. On 13 May 1787, the first fleet of 11 ships sailed from England under the command of Capt. Arthur Phillip. They reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 with 1530 people, 736 of them convicts.
So it was not until the Boston Tea Party that the Brit's deceided to look for another dumping ground for their criminals. Another site, Convicts of Australia goes on to say....- 1718-1783 About 50,000 British criminals were transported to colonies in America.
Australian convicts just happened to put to good use as a good source of cheap labour, building infrastructure, harvesting crops and rum. Though branded criminals, a lot of poor old souls got a life ticket to Van Deimans Land (Tasmania) for crimes such as stealing bread, forging, etc... and anything else convenient the British could think of. That and the fact that the prison ships moored off the British coast had filled to capacity.1775-1783 AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE - hostilities with Britain brought transportation to a halt.
1783-1787 British prisons and hulks began to over-flow.
For those with a history bent that above urls above are a great read. For the writer above, surely you where aware of these facts, so dont bother.
here's some of the impediments to doing e-commerce/web companies and even just plain surfing in au.
- technical
- human rights
- business
- education -
While I may be portraying a gloomy picture (there are may success stories), the emerging theme here is that the problems are being created and perpetuated from the top. The real innovation and positive work is coming from the bottom up, much like the Internet itself. Moveover Beverly HillBillys, the Internet HillBillys are moving in.....bandwidth - because of the lack of competition, Telstra has effectivly hindered any growth in high bandwidth access to the backbone. What access exists is too expensive, is inflexible. Telstra goes out of it's way to extract $ (and hugh profits) but any implementations of broadband is laughable.
IT skills - it skills levels are good to very good, but there is a severe shortage coupled with a brain drain of top technical staff.
privacy laws - lack of, hence allowing business, government and external bodies to push the limits of basic privacy and rights, that other countries take for granted.
government censorship - federal government trying to force internet censorship that is technically very difficult even of it forces local ISP's for a lot of extra expenses.
governent cracking - ASIO given rights to crack domestic computer systems with permission from the crown, no legal process can be involved.
business - weak privacy laws allowing business (PBL) to attempt to capture, store and profile the entire country.
business conservatism - banks, big business, the engines of change for the country are reluctant to go boots and all>.
e-business's - toe-dipping, lack of funds, lack of business exploitation skills (not techincal skills) is holding back the growth of e-commerce.
venture capital - venture capital is looking up. More vc's are looking at funding start-ups.
funding - funding to education is being cut (Monash University), privatisation and business driven courses is the word.
course access - hard core science (and other non essential academic cources) are being replaced with vocational courses.
yes agreed, but I bawked a bit at the following couple of lines....(the bold emphasis is mine)
what urks me is that it appears to reinforce stereo-typical profile of the lone social misfit with low self esteem, male who deviates from the norm. In fact the this form of electronic warfare is more likely to be done with assorted teams of white collar specialists for the regular work and the lone character stereotype portrayed in the article for those *irregular* assignments.
This is the only flaw I can find (sans errors, but this is an old article.) in an otherwise excellent article. It's the kind of quality you would expect from Janes/JIR.
you are using netscape, a now inferior browser
the worst thing I'm finding with netscape is the older versions that a lot of our clients are using (.gov, madated to use only netscape) is that sites using certificates to authenticate are failing.
while MS has a stranglehold on the windows desktop, corporate users will continue use IE.
from a development point of view this is good, but from a technological standpoint I'd like to see a real competitor. It's worth noting there's a lot of wintel/ie users out there and it's difficult for competitors (free or otherwise) to break into this market.
it's not going unnoticed. A couple of days ago I posted on a similiar theme about the bs iD story - another software spy .
...etc. These (and other qualities) are what you find in any good reporting organisation.
It seems to me that the writers/posters at slashdot are posting more purely technical and slanting towards the net culture/we world. This is fine because you can want a bit of diversity. But not at the expense of accuracy of facts, ability to quote sources, accountability
One solution (there are surely others) is for users to moderate stories for *quality* much like our posts are moderated. This will force the writers to lift their game as users can quantitativly access a story. Read the post to see what i recommended. Slashdot can only improve.
Inaccurate stories may be corrected but I would like to see a self correcting mechanism to the *quality* of the stories from the readers themselves. This story moderation rating is effected as more people read the story thus a judgement is reached as to the quality of the story. Note I say quality, this does not necessarliy effect the speed or direction of stories. A story moderation rating on,
confirmability
balence
other measures of story quality etc..
quantification is applied to posts why not stories? This mechanism could aid readers making snap comments summarizing the quality of the story, posts and writer BEFORE they post. It's a modification to the current peer process that already occurs. Slashdot can only improve.
I wouldn't be to hard on your company. I think it's been pretty well established iD has more than generous to the gaming community in more ways than one. If anything I think your guilty of underestimating consumer paranoia (understandable paranoia) by not making things clear at download and explaining why and what you are using the details for (to improve the software) as you are here.
I remain unconvinced that we have done something morally offensive.
and this I think is the root of the problem. I've noticed an increase of 'fast-loose' stories in slashdot in a medium that relies on immediacy. With the 'Corel/Perens' story, the Wine story and now this incidence, Slashdot is giving a new meaning to the word slashdot effect, ie: effect a companies bottom line, organisations credability and persons reputations. I propose a number of changes to the way slashdot reports, posts and validates stories to stop the stuffups (yes stuffups, the above 3 examples highlight the inability of the writers to apply some simple rules to maintain the standards, accuracy of stories and articles without sacrificing variety and range of submissions.
points to consider
submission: when a great story is submitted it should go through a number of types of verification before they are publically submited to slashdot. The emphasis should be on a stories accuracy rather than being first. The correctness of the story is paramount. Nobody remembers (or values) the first person to submit Bill Gates uses Linux at home if it's not correct. What is the current submission procedure at slashdot?
verification: you would expect that CNN verifies it's stories before it puts them to air. Why is it that people who are directly involved in these reports are the last to be contacted. yeah it might take a while to get a response. Sometimes you might not get a response. This is the time where judgement is required. But most of the time I would like to see that the author has at least tried to verify the story and not shoot, then through the gunsmoke *cough*, try to verify the issue.
editorial policy: When is a story un-publishable, does slashdot have a publicly available document that states their guidelines? Newspapers are answerable to professional ethics bodies. I would like to see slashdot have a mechanism so that individuals are responsible for the 'quality' and accuracy of stories that enforces a formal/informal policy to encourage quality rather than quantity and up to the minute news. I would rather 4 stories a day than 20 if they reeked quality.
right to reply: if a person is wronged or perceived to be wronged, the right to reply is required. Slashdot allows this as we have seen through the course of the story. But what about a followup? I've seen a number of retractions but is this enough? Does slashdot allow for the wronged the right of reply where they set the context of the reply, instead of just having to wade through and try to reply to negative posts
slashdot story moderation: In order to get a feel for the quality of the story, I would like to see moderation marks applied (to registered members) to stories in much the same way individual comments are moderated. This means readers rate the quality of the story and it's relevence.
slashdot writer kama: the good get better, the bad get thrown out. If we introduce a 'karma' rating to individual writers at slashdot related to the story moderation, you can then get a good hard number to the effectiveness of a writer at slashdot. We all know cmdrTaco's stories are mostly on the ball, but now you could measure how he rates with respect to others.
story balence: far to many times the stories are preached instead of reported. Now I dont understimate the intelligence level of the readers, but a negative slant does set the tome of the article. A lot of times readers just read the headlines, read a few negative posts and the site is slashdotted. I would like to see a more balenced approach to the titles... eg: iD software confirmed today it's recording
Maybe you disagree with some or all of what I have suggested above? But the intention is to improve the quality of stories at slashdot and minimise the needless harm done to commercial individuals and organisations.
It's time slashdot became answerable. editorial guidelines, verification of facts, the right to reply, slashdot writer moderation and karma points are some ways I can think to help slashdot improve and level out some of the dips in story quality.
It was mentioned in the article above... the cc hack... I was just reading through it now...
The actual bug I planted in the compiler would match code in the UNIX "login" command. The replacement code would miscompile the login command so that it would accept either the intended encrypted password or a particular known password. Thus if this code were installed in binary and the binary were used to compile the login command, I could log into that system as any user.
Communication of the ACM, Vol. 27, No. 8, August 1984, pp. 761-763. Copyright © 1984, Association for Computing Machinery
Reflections on Trusting Trust
Ken Thompson
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
palm - palm development for Lego mindstorms
robotics - talk/problem solving about programming, building and designing robots in lego
a unique feature of LUGNET is the three way interaction between newsgroups using news (nntp), email (using smtp) and the web (using http). You can interact/subscribe through LUGNET by any of the above protocols and the discussions are simultaneously readable via news, web or email.
on the subject of virtual worlds when is a major FPS game going to model natural environments instead of re-hashing interiors. Now i realise that most are leveraging on their current expertise in modelling architecture/code etc., but you can only go so far with interiors. When is the bar going to be lifted? Exteriors was one of the first things I looked for in Doom. Fighting imps in the open. Nicely done by the way. But that was '93. When I checked out Q3 screen shots..., hmmm not much improvement from what I could see.
I dont think I'm being overly critical here. The interiors have been done to death (and done extremly well at that). Time for the radical leap from order, precision of geometric lines to fractal geometry. Now is a good time to experiment with exteriors, L-Systems, fractals and parametric equations... all that messy math...but I will bow to coding god who transforms virtual reality from the currently manufactured look to a natural one.
had a chuckle when i read the marketing types are embracing and extending...nerd
Quan says he used to wind-surf with hard-core geeks -- a Porsche-driving, Palm-Piloting crowd that ranged from the technical to the marketing
I even hard a harder chuckle over this one. I didn't like the way this article was slanting - label accumulation, hip happening and all consuming wankers....
while the distinctions of nerds and geeks is in my view fuzzy ('A and not-A' AND NOT 'either A or not-A' - Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko, 078688021X ) where did nerd, geek get the added baggage of consumerism and social air's? Is this someone elses label? To me a nerd/geek or nerd/geek hybrid is just as happy working out how to get unix on a 386 thrown out by the former 'cause it wont show those flashy graphics. One of my loves with coding is, compilers are free, operating systems are free, knowledge can be gained for free, machines are cheap. Nerds/geeks are about understanding and creating not mere image, consumerism and money. This same concept could just as easily be applied to any other kind of nerd/geek discipline.
i guess a nerd's v's geek fest wouldn't be complete without a list of geek/nerd sites to go have a look at. Of them all I like the geek code site... but damn couldn't they have just given out a template so we can have multiple geek codes?
geek code: - http://www.geekcode.com/
nerd test:- http://www.frontiernet.net/~jbennett/nerd/n500tes
geek is a verb, most intelligent '/.' comment so far proving the value of ac's!: - http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/11/22/1914
Now let me get back to listening to my new CD and writing my code for moola....
html links to other sites: - that also may carry to a story
gut reaction factor: - comment, given your experience and checking within the industry about the likelyhood of a stories truth (bs detection).
Slashdot allows me to get the latest tech news, raw - facts and then analysis of those raw facts. If I want humour, I'll go to segfault (segfault.org), gonzo journalism - zdnet. If i want the latest breaking (inaccurate timely news) I'll watch the news on local television (go channel nine!)... But I come to slashdot for the FACTS, FACT BASED OPINIONS and CAREFUL ANALYSIS... not baseless rumours.... Nerd and geeks can smell bs a mile away
fine print:
(with exception of transmeta, bill gates throwing away visual basic and taking on gcc and make and building a bewoulf cluster using windows ce hardware and microLinux software ports and various references to freeBSD)
- a Sunday Age (Melborne) article which describes the discovery of a 52 year old computer found in a dusty warehouse weighing in at 2,000 kilograms.
This should read 'Melbourne'. I would have put it up sooner, but I typed in http://segfault.org by mistake- Because the tunes were first played between 1951 and 1953, Doornbusch is confident it was probably the first computer music anywhere.
An interesting fact that would be nice to confirm is that the played the worlds first computer generated music. I've heard the tape on the ABC's Science show (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/ss.htm) last year.- In 1948 he, with Maston Beard, commenced the design of a stored program electronic computer. This machine, the CSIR Mark I, was developed largely independently of work then underway in Britain and the US.
There's also a link to the machines co-creator, Trevor Pearcey- http://www.pearcey.org.au/
It will be good to go and have a peek and listen.http://www.pearcey.org.au/obituary.html
projectgutenburg.org
standards complient - cause the browser is the OS of web, all web sites/apps work to the limitations and implementations of W3C protocols and standards
fast - cause it wont be adopted if IE beats it.
extensible code- because the standards are evolving - check the development of apache
portable - be able to port to different platforms
available soon - because IE is reaching monopoly on Windows (90% market) without competition.
it's a tall order... has it been left to late?
these are some great comments. I'll respond to a few. Rememeber there is no right or wrong here. What I comment on works in our instance and has it's advantages given our circumstances. Yours maybe different.
...develop a minimal rock solid product...And how will that help you differentiate your product
... Example: It's better to just send word or pdf files than to concoct some online format
...Easy to say, hard to do
...Agreed. Optimize for speed as per forecasted need. Embed c in perl or create ISAPI or apache c modules.
:)
"Become your own ISP"
what I mean by becoming your own ISP is having a direct high bandwidth link to a telco. This doesn't mean a T1, but it does mean at least a dedicated ISDN line. Then you can set up your own DNS, email, ftp, web and database servers in whatever configuration you like. You gain control and but maintain the speed.
for development making changes to dns or web servers through a third party gets in the way. We dont have any large database/isp hosters in australia, while you have many fine companies in the states (Datareturn for instance) to use a US host is another step in the chain we can side step. We have found that in building a service (grabbing the data, storing it, then repackaging it back to customers requires we use, develop and modify many services (http, ftp, smtp dns) all of which hinders rapid development.
If your planing to create the next mega uber site (Amazon) then handing back the site to a large host makes more sense as you suggest. For us at the moment it does not.
because, while your competitors have created this great first version product, it's a bitch to maintain. There are lots of bugs tying up key developers, customers are getting annoyed and your phone runs hot (see tom demarcos latest book, 'peopleware' to see how the phone is a major hassle in development. While your competitors are struggling with dev resources plugging bugs you have moved to the second generation product, levereging old code in some places. You've made your first leap from the pack. This is exactly how you differnciate your product. It works better, you move faster in development.
"leveredege existing binary products"
actually I hate PDF, word, but your dead right. Work with data from your db and generate info in these formats, email clients to download the data via FTP.
"Fund initial expansion without going into debt"
funding development is always a problem. At sausage, the founder got his funding by developing, programming a html editor called Hotdog. All the PC purchases, payroll, rent where from cash generated by this one product. Sure it was good timing, a bit of luck but the company was built on this product. Look at Crack.com, funded golgotha with the proceedes of sales from Abuse. There's not may good ideas, talent and business plans that land VC within a week of looking for cash say like Sun Microsystems. To move from the garage, old pc's and bags of rice is going to take money (a' la excite - who now own
try to use a higher level dev languge"
no, this is not what I had in mind. Use python, perl, PHP, JSP, ASP but stay away from the design, compile, install unless there is a really good reason for it like security (shipping intranet product and you dont want to expose source) , speed (develop an inprocess dll optimised to to stay in memory while an application is running thus saving on load and unload). Use scripts for readability (server side here folks), changability and speed of fixing a bit of code. This is what I experience. A|Got a bug, find the code, change, comment test, done. (no compile, install).
Be sure to optimize
but only where the brute force method of more and faster RAM, better, faster hard disks UW2-SCSI for IO intensive work, more PC's to offload the database, web server, email server, dns and ftp server. Use brute force for all but the code that you PROFILE. There was a great article by Larry O'Brien on JavaPro about this a while ago (Apache, JSP etc). pick a platform, development tools that will be around
I'll leave this choice to you. There's a free OS I keep hearing about with all these free tools, stable as hell and fast...
- company iq==(total employee iq/employee#)
own the data
- owning/possesing the data allows you to do lots of things with it. Data hosting is a core activity of ASP's. Own/posses the data, you can do lot's of neat things with it.
complete the data loop
- from customer/user input into a database, useful information is filtered back to the client using the Internet and it's protocols.
use the internet protocols 2 your advantage
- smtp:
develop a minimal rock solid product.- email back results of non-immediate jobs
ftp:
- allow large files/data that can't be email to be accessed.
http:
- presentation layer of services
xml:
- new one but such organisation could revolutionise your text file storage.
extend and leverage your logistics.- by using the internet and your database, development tools to automate functionality: ie: web backups of databases the transfer DDL, BCP data, codebase, log files from different areas on the site to a centrally located removable hard disk or Jaz disk: I've don this myself.
- one that does not crash or crashes minimally. Customers wont praise you but will let you know if it does not work.
give your customers a cheap basic product to start with.
- dont give a cost hurdles for customers to adopt your product.
leveredege existing binary products
to use Internet facilities with objective of upgrading customers to the web.- migrate those binary products to use internet protocols with the idea of upgrading all/most of your services to the web.
Become your own ISP
with control of web servers, DNS, databases ISDN internet link etc.- you have full control of your domain, you can do everything you possibly can.
Maximum bandwidth decides you maximum audience.
- bandwidth dictates the speed, reliability and user experience: Use slashdot growth as an example.
Fund initial expansion without going into debt.
- dont waste money and go into debt. Finance growth on profit until venture capital is possible.
Have bloody lots of fun
- if you cant code what you want, play the games or build robots, code some great code you wanted to do you will not enjoy the work. Play hard, work hard.
Dont give up
- startups fail, dont let this stop you. Check out what happened to Crack.com. Do you think these guys are giving up. Wonder how long ddt and jt are back building FPS or RPG post Transmeta and JiJit? failure makes you smarter!, comebacks make you legends
try to use a higher level dev languge
, use the source!: scripting not binary- binaries are hard work. The develop, compile, build, create install, release cycle is way to long. Scripts are the way to go. Error, just go to the script (text file) and make a change.
6.) hire another guy to do grunt work like backups etc. thay you've been doing till now. :)
or think of a great way to automate the process, write some cool software to offload the grunt work to your silicon workers
In a start up logistics is also a problem. Any code or tools you create to leverage your logistics will help. An automated database back tool is one. I know, 'cause this is exactly what I did.
Sweat, blood and credit card advances only go so far. :(
the founders of cisco founded their company with their credit cards...but they also lost the company and missed out on the bumper share price rise
is this the one with anaconda (python)? Damn I've been reading very little about this at http://linux.com I've yet to get around this problem. Went back to the 6.0 binary install instead. Anyone know the minimum sized HD RH6.1 will install on? Not to be found at redhat (minimum install for 5.2 is listed but nothing about 6.0 or 5.2).