Yeah I've had similar complaints about Use Cases. My biggest complaint is the typical round-pegs-in-square-holes of "describing what the user's experience should be does not come close to describing what the system should do"
In our practice we bridge that gap through requirements and logical design. It's inelegant and I don't like it, but when you're a consulting firm sometimes it's more important to be able to say that you use industry standard practices than it is to have the absolutely ideal solution.
I mean your homebrew project documentation standard might be really good. It might be the best ever invented. In fact, it might be so great that any programmer that looks at it can intuitively tell that it is superior.
The problem is that my clients are not programmers. My client's are almost universally unqualified to make any decisions about the fitness of development standards. If they were qualified to do that, they would either be developing internally or hiring contractors, not consultants. So using a standard that a third party has said is a good standard carries a lot of value over and above that of the standard itself sometimes...
In my practice the chief architect both designs the system and implements it. In many cases the design and requirements are done by the whole project team working together.
While this is an interesting idea I just don't see it flying. Now if they could unite it with UML... I'd love for my requirements to move me from use cases to logical design automagically...
The problem with that is even that behaviour is pretty complex. I'm thinking operative conditioning (ala skinner boxes) might be a good idea; figure out some way to reward behaviour that approximates what might one day be a good behaviour. For that you need a centralized controller. Or have the rest of the bots "judge" each action based on future surviveability impact by the action...
I get so many zipzap clones going to trade shows and the like. When they first came out they were a popular giveaway. I probably have five or six and only bought the first one (a radio shack Zip Zap from the second day after they were introduced)
I've been trying to figure out what to do with them. Other than generic cat toy. If my PIC programming was up to snuff I'd probably go for it.
Why oh why hasn't anyone invented an 802.11 general purpose IP device yet?
There should be a chip I can plug into my design which will simply read a series of values and output a series of values. Then I could do all the programming on my PC...
If I were to list the design criteria it would be:
cheap programmable controller (like one of those $3 PICs or something) commodity IR gear two-motor steering bump sensors changeable actuator simple charging
The actuator would be things like a pincer on the front (to pick things up), or a crane, or a pronged fork. Doesn't matter. Point is to differentiate the population to give natural selection a chance to do its thing.
The charger, I would probably make the wheels metal and make charging areas such that any orientation the bot goes over the area will result in a charge. Use mini supercaps for energy storage.
I even have a perfect platform in mind;
zipzaps.
Give me a zipzap chassis with a few modifications (like ripping out the radio gear and replacing it with a PIC)
Ideally I'd like to get the build cost under $10. Then you could afford to run a real population. Anything that doesn't get back to the sensor pad gets killed from the genome and recharged. If two bots are in the charge area and agree to reproduce, they both send their genomes to the wiped bot who does his combinatorial magic on it.
I'd be interested to see what sort of emergent behaviours might occur...
Actually I was speaking of exactly the device that this post's gp mentioned... it's mostly standard rack equipment these days.
Ever see the simpsons where they make a boy band and he uses a box in the back to make them sound like people that know how to sing? That episode was not far removed from actuality.
Now I gotta ask are you a juggalo or do you just know one?
Slashdotting Juggalos represent!!!!
Vanilla Ice plays the Gathering of the Juggalos every year. There's even a video of his performance from last year. I'm the guy in the wheelchair and face paint to the left of the stage:)
3) Vanilla Ice has been on MTV in the last decade?
4) Writing and performing your own material is a "minor change"?
1) Yes, he's doing a mix of hard rock / rap these days. His new album is pretty good. And he's a juggalo (re: Insane Clown Posse) which is a guaranteed million or so fans. Most juggalos (and I am one) know of him and like his new stuff. It didn't hurt that he was on surreal life sporting juggalo gear every week.
2) Yeah, I think the charge was domestic violence. I'm pretty sure it involved a girlfriend and an ax or a knife during a "heated discussion"
3) In the last decade and a half maybe. Not counting documentaries, of course. But I don't imagine that much has changed since then.
4) That was hyperbole... maybe I should've wrapped it in a [sarcasm/] block...
Great so now entertainment consists of a 'performer' being told what to say by a machine and that same machine telling the audience how to respond.
Have you watched MTV lately?
I spoke with Vanilla Ice last year about what's different about his career post prison. Basically he said that the changes were minor, he just writes and performs his own material now that he got rid of his MTV-tied-in Agent...
I've heard that most big artists have a similar career; their job is to hold the mic and look pretty. Singing ability, while a plus, is not required. Most stage musicians use an electronic device called the auto-tuner these days. Look it up; I could be an american idol with on of those babies on my mic jack.
Oh and IAAUAT (I Am An Underground Audio Technician)
My girlfriend is in a wheelchair, and many of the places that have the 'swipe your own card' machines are placed too high for her to reach. She gets me to sign her name and while I felt it rather ridiculous that no other method existed for her to sign her own card, I still complied.
I don't really have anything to add to this except "me too"
I could walk until last year. As a matter of fact *checks calendar* one year and one day exactly is when the pain started. This is relevant because it's important to me to find ways to be as productive as I used to be. When I reach a credit machine that's too high and/or doesn't tilt; I ask them to print a paper receipt to sign.
I have yet to be in a place that won't do that if you request...
Actually, if you look around another slashdotter posted a link to Visa's policy on signatures and fraud prevention elsewhere in this discussion.
If they see "See ID" they want merchants to treat it as if the card is unsigned. That is, you ask the customer to sign it and provide photo ID with a signature on it to compare to.
The reason for this, as others have pointed out, is the signature on your card indicates your agreement to accept the contract requiring you to pay off purchases made with the card.
and I should point out that events *can* happen at units smaller than that. But two events happening at the same space within the plank time of each other are simultaneous for all intents and purposes.
Or even better put a mirror at a 45 degree angle under the table and project from the DM position. Longer throw means larger image, as well as allowing me to easily remove the projector. I just bought a projector; I'm seeing a weekend project coming up hahaha
I'm not sure I totally agree with you that it isn't an optical illusion, though I understand your reasoning.
I look at it this way; our vision system is built to identify objects based on parallax for items close enough for stereo to work, and based on silhouettes for items farther away. We perceive an object moving towards the sun because the object is a persistant motive silhouette, while what is actually occuring is a fountain of material moving in the OTHER direction with a negative energy wave traversing it.
From that point of view, I would say that this is an artifact of the design of our visual system, in other words, an optical illusion.
Thanks for the advice! I was unaware of these products!
And yeah I hate fancy ergonomic keyboards. Give me a standard keyboard with good travel and moderately stiff springs any day of the week.
Only downside is since I stopped biting my nails (first time EVER in my twenty seven years! now if only I can quit smoking...) I've found that I tend to really bang the pinky nails straight down into the shift keys. Gets painful after about twenty minutes striaght. Maybe less stiff springs would help. Maybe MORE stiff springs (lessening kinetic impact at the bottom of spring travel) would help. I don't know.
That looked into what kind of degrees potential technology employers look for. I forget their methodology but it was basically a statistical analysis of the sort "of all the people with a single degree of x who applied for a position equivalent to y, how many got the job?"
In order they were: 1. MBA 2. Psychology 3. Comp Sci
The report author drew an interesting conclusion which I will paraphrase here and probably butcher horribly:
Most people looking for a job in technology know their profession. In addition, most employers (read: HR departments) are horribly unprepared to judge an employee's fitfullness for a technology position. Given that, potential employers tend to believe that a candidate can do what he says he can do, technically.
An MBA shows that the candidate also understands the business needs driving technology decisions. As this is an area where most businesses get burned when hiring technology professionals, it greatly increases your chances of success.
A psychology degree shows that the candidate has a basic knowledge of how to interact with other people. Again this is an area that technologists are stereotyped as being bad at, and is therefore valuable to a potential employer.
I was playing sacrifice this weekend. Old game, basically a third person shooter with spells and armies instead of weapons. Good stuff.
My little brother was over so I d/led it off the underdogs, fired it up, him on my comp, me on my thinkpad.
When he left I switched over to the computer (logitech wireless mouse) to try it out. When playing the game you end up clicking a lot on little spell icons to cast stuff. It was MUCH easier and more comfortable to use the mouse; we're talking an order of magnitude more effective here.
Of course i think it goes without saying that mice are more effective than nubbins or touchpads for gaming. Just thought I'd through my own two cents into that.
Personally I miss the days of true trackballs. I own two old school logitech trackballs, two buttons and big red ball in the middle for use by the fingers.
Why has logitech apparently dropped this design for thumb-rolled trackballs? I find the thumb-rolled trackballs to be so imprecise as to be worthless, might as well grab a mouse.
The key is to pick any time for the stamp somewhere in the packet window; it takes an amount of time to send the bits of a packet out, and this time can be estimated reliabily from the packet size and uplink bandwidth.
Pick any time within that window for your timestamp and you've fundamentally defeated their fingerprinting technique.
Either that or just clip the timestamp to the largest window possible to still give each packet a unique and serial timestamp value.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I've had similar complaints about Use Cases. My biggest complaint is the typical round-pegs-in-square-holes of "describing what the user's experience should be does not come close to describing what the system should do"
In our practice we bridge that gap through requirements and logical design. It's inelegant and I don't like it, but when you're a consulting firm sometimes it's more important to be able to say that you use industry standard practices than it is to have the absolutely ideal solution.
I mean your homebrew project documentation standard might be really good. It might be the best ever invented. In fact, it might be so great that any programmer that looks at it can intuitively tell that it is superior.
The problem is that my clients are not programmers. My client's are almost universally unqualified to make any decisions about the fitness of development standards. If they were qualified to do that, they would either be developing internally or hiring contractors, not consultants. So using a standard that a third party has said is a good standard carries a lot of value over and above that of the standard itself sometimes...
Zhao, a former government official in China's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, has been in his current job since 1999
As a side note I've recently gotten a lot of 419's purporting to be from this guy. Wonder if that sparked his interest in adding government oversight?
I would imagine he'd really like to be able to charge the senders of those e-mails as criminals in some jurisdiction...
So if China is a UN member and governments get more involved in regulating the internet, does that mean the Great Firewall could possibly come down?
In my practice the chief architect both designs the system and implements it. In many cases the design and requirements are done by the whole project team working together.
While this is an interesting idea I just don't see it flying. Now if they could unite it with UML... I'd love for my requirements to move me from use cases to logical design automagically...
The problem with that is even that behaviour is pretty complex. I'm thinking operative conditioning (ala skinner boxes) might be a good idea; figure out some way to reward behaviour that approximates what might one day be a good behaviour. For that you need a centralized controller. Or have the rest of the bots "judge" each action based on future surviveability impact by the action...
I get so many zipzap clones going to trade shows and the like. When they first came out they were a popular giveaway. I probably have five or six and only bought the first one (a radio shack Zip Zap from the second day after they were introduced)
I've been trying to figure out what to do with them. Other than generic cat toy. If my PIC programming was up to snuff I'd probably go for it.
Why oh why hasn't anyone invented an 802.11 general purpose IP device yet?
There should be a chip I can plug into my design which will simply read a series of values and output a series of values. Then I could do all the programming on my PC...
I was SOOOO hoping the lego bots would rebuild themselves each generation.
Actually, I really like this guy's idea. I wonder if there's a way to build a commodity bot to implement the idea...
Something like this
If I were to list the design criteria it would be:
cheap programmable controller (like one of those $3 PICs or something)
commodity IR gear
two-motor steering
bump sensors
changeable actuator
simple charging
The actuator would be things like a pincer on the front (to pick things up), or a crane, or a pronged fork. Doesn't matter. Point is to differentiate the population to give natural selection a chance to do its thing.
The charger, I would probably make the wheels metal and make charging areas such that any orientation the bot goes over the area will result in a charge. Use mini supercaps for energy storage.
I even have a perfect platform in mind;
zipzaps.
Give me a zipzap chassis with a few modifications (like ripping out the radio gear and replacing it with a PIC)
Ideally I'd like to get the build cost under $10. Then you could afford to run a real population. Anything that doesn't get back to the sensor pad gets killed from the genome and recharged. If two bots are in the charge area and agree to reproduce, they both send their genomes to the wiped bot who does his combinatorial magic on it.
I'd be interested to see what sort of emergent behaviours might occur...
Mods, click the links.
Each link is a different picture of a squirrel on water skis.
This isn't informative. This is a troll.
Actually I was speaking of exactly the device that this post's gp mentioned... it's mostly standard rack equipment these days.
Ever see the simpsons where they make a boy band and he uses a box in the back to make them sound like people that know how to sing? That episode was not far removed from actuality.
Now I gotta ask are you a juggalo or do you just know one?
:)
Slashdotting Juggalos represent!!!!
Vanilla Ice plays the Gathering of the Juggalos every year. There's even a video of his performance from last year. I'm the guy in the wheelchair and face paint to the left of the stage
1) Vanilla Ice has a career?
/] block...
2) Vanilla Ice was in prison?
3) Vanilla Ice has been on MTV in the last decade?
4) Writing and performing your own material is a "minor change"?
1) Yes, he's doing a mix of hard rock / rap these days. His new album is pretty good. And he's a juggalo (re: Insane Clown Posse) which is a guaranteed million or so fans. Most juggalos (and I am one) know of him and like his new stuff. It didn't hurt that he was on surreal life sporting juggalo gear every week.
2) Yeah, I think the charge was domestic violence. I'm pretty sure it involved a girlfriend and an ax or a knife during a "heated discussion"
3) In the last decade and a half maybe. Not counting documentaries, of course. But I don't imagine that much has changed since then.
4) That was hyperbole... maybe I should've wrapped it in a [sarcasm
Great so now entertainment consists of a 'performer' being told what to say by a machine and that same machine telling the audience how to respond.
Have you watched MTV lately?
I spoke with Vanilla Ice last year about what's different about his career post prison. Basically he said that the changes were minor, he just writes and performs his own material now that he got rid of his MTV-tied-in Agent...
I've heard that most big artists have a similar career; their job is to hold the mic and look pretty. Singing ability, while a plus, is not required. Most stage musicians use an electronic device called the auto-tuner these days. Look it up; I could be an american idol with on of those babies on my mic jack.
Oh and IAAUAT (I Am An Underground Audio Technician)
My girlfriend is in a wheelchair, and many of the places that have the 'swipe your own card' machines are placed too high for her to reach. She gets me to sign her name and while I felt it rather ridiculous that no other method existed for her to sign her own card, I still complied.
I don't really have anything to add to this except "me too"
I could walk until last year. As a matter of fact *checks calendar* one year and one day exactly is when the pain started. This is relevant because it's important to me to find ways to be as productive as I used to be. When I reach a credit machine that's too high and/or doesn't tilt; I ask them to print a paper receipt to sign.
I have yet to be in a place that won't do that if you request...
Actually, if you look around another slashdotter posted a link to Visa's policy on signatures and fraud prevention elsewhere in this discussion.
If they see "See ID" they want merchants to treat it as if the card is unsigned. That is, you ask the customer to sign it and provide photo ID with a signature on it to compare to.
The reason for this, as others have pointed out, is the signature on your card indicates your agreement to accept the contract requiring you to pay off purchases made with the card.
in soviet russia, first shoots Hans!
that should be 10^-44
Ohhh I'm such a nitpicker.
and I should point out that events *can* happen at units smaller than that. But two events happening at the same space within the plank time of each other are simultaneous for all intents and purposes.
And more importantly, what are either of us doing not in Denmark?
Meet you at the third chocolate factory from the border?
Or even better put a mirror at a 45 degree angle under the table and project from the DM position. Longer throw means larger image, as well as allowing me to easily remove the projector. I just bought a projector; I'm seeing a weekend project coming up hahaha
As far as Bilbo goes, I would wrap in as much of the Simarillion as is possible.
Or if they cast Ice T as the king of the wood elves he could rap in as much of the silmarillion as possible.
I'm not sure I totally agree with you that it isn't an optical illusion, though I understand your reasoning.
I look at it this way; our vision system is built to identify objects based on parallax for items close enough for stereo to work, and based on silhouettes for items farther away. We perceive an object moving towards the sun because the object is a persistant motive silhouette, while what is actually occuring is a fountain of material moving in the OTHER direction with a negative energy wave traversing it.
From that point of view, I would say that this is an artifact of the design of our visual system, in other words, an optical illusion.
Thanks for the advice! I was unaware of these products!
And yeah I hate fancy ergonomic keyboards. Give me a standard keyboard with good travel and moderately stiff springs any day of the week.
Only downside is since I stopped biting my nails (first time EVER in my twenty seven years! now if only I can quit smoking...) I've found that I tend to really bang the pinky nails straight down into the shift keys. Gets painful after about twenty minutes striaght. Maybe less stiff springs would help. Maybe MORE stiff springs (lessening kinetic impact at the bottom of spring travel) would help. I don't know.
All I know is I miss my old IBM battleship...
That looked into what kind of degrees potential technology employers look for. I forget their methodology but it was basically a statistical analysis of the sort "of all the people with a single degree of x who applied for a position equivalent to y, how many got the job?"
In order they were:
1. MBA
2. Psychology
3. Comp Sci
The report author drew an interesting conclusion which I will paraphrase here and probably butcher horribly:
Most people looking for a job in technology know their profession. In addition, most employers (read: HR departments) are horribly unprepared to judge an employee's fitfullness for a technology position. Given that, potential employers tend to believe that a candidate can do what he says he can do, technically.
An MBA shows that the candidate also understands the business needs driving technology decisions. As this is an area where most businesses get burned when hiring technology professionals, it greatly increases your chances of success.
A psychology degree shows that the candidate has a basic knowledge of how to interact with other people. Again this is an area that technologists are stereotyped as being bad at, and is therefore valuable to a potential employer.
I was playing sacrifice this weekend. Old game, basically a third person shooter with spells and armies instead of weapons. Good stuff.
My little brother was over so I d/led it off the underdogs, fired it up, him on my comp, me on my thinkpad.
When he left I switched over to the computer (logitech wireless mouse) to try it out. When playing the game you end up clicking a lot on little spell icons to cast stuff. It was MUCH easier and more comfortable to use the mouse; we're talking an order of magnitude more effective here.
Of course i think it goes without saying that mice are more effective than nubbins or touchpads for gaming. Just thought I'd through my own two cents into that.
Personally I miss the days of true trackballs. I own two old school logitech trackballs, two buttons and big red ball in the middle for use by the fingers.
Why has logitech apparently dropped this design for thumb-rolled trackballs? I find the thumb-rolled trackballs to be so imprecise as to be worthless, might as well grab a mouse.
The key is to pick any time for the stamp somewhere in the packet window; it takes an amount of time to send the bits of a packet out, and this time can be estimated reliabily from the packet size and uplink bandwidth.
Pick any time within that window for your timestamp and you've fundamentally defeated their fingerprinting technique.
Either that or just clip the timestamp to the largest window possible to still give each packet a unique and serial timestamp value.
Yes but in Soviet Russia, earth circles you!!!