The BBC Micro was on the design boards before the BBC approached Acorn. Its design was modified by the BBCs requests (IO support and the like). It was originally going to be called The Proton.
I bought my phone to be part of a package. I agree that it has minimal organiser facilities but I intend getting a PDA for mobile browsing, storing data and the like. As for laggyness, it's better than the older Ericssons I have and generally find with T9 I can type ahead fairly successfully.
My only moan is that you can e-mail attachments from the phone but can't view received attachments on the phone. This removes e-mail as one of the ways to get pictures on to the phone.
* Great screen * GPRS so permanent net connection (pay by the Mb) * With the MP3 clip on I can listen to Sabbath on the bus and it's excellent quality. (It takes MMC). * Clip on camera allows me to send pictures by SMS, MMS or E-mail * Chat facility * Has bluetooth (no upgrade needed) * Sony/Ericsson so excellent build quality
Small and compact with 13 days of standby on a single charge.
A compromise is the worst of all worlds. I've been interested in the Ericsson P800 but decided that it didn't do enough for what I wanted and once I bought a PDA it would have functionality I wouldn't use.
I bought myself a T68i and I am very happy with it. I've tried the two box solution before (Psion 5 and Ericsson SH888) and it worked well. The T68i does everything I want and is stable. It cost me 30 GBP (~45 USD) for a neat little handsfree/MP3 player clip on for the phone that takes MMC.
Now all I have to decide is whether I'll be happy with a Palm or pay the extra for an iPAQ.
In the end I'm shouldn't need to care what software is running on my phone. The worry I have is that if MS get control of the software it will put them in a position to control the data formats, protocols etc just as they have, to some extent, in the PC world.
I owned an Ericsson T68i. I selected that phone because I wanted all the connectivity that it offered. I also picked it because I previously owned an Ericsson SH888 and it was well built and easy to use. The other factor that kept me with Ericsson was the availability of information regarding their products. The SH888 came with the reference manual (which included the AT command set) on the CD with the phone together with a data lead and synchronisation software. Similar data for the T68i is available on their web site.
As a Linux fan I want access to the data formats and protocols that my hardware uses. All these are available for my 'phone. It runs Symbian's OS but I don't really care about that. I just care that its usable. If Microsoft come along and corner the market what will happen. Will they come up with their own munged non standard protocols and data formats. Will they force me to use only Windows when transfering data to and from my phone. I really don't want that to happen.
"you just need to toss every resume that has the letters MCSE on them"
That explains a lot: corporate Microsoft shop. There *are* areas of 'IT' where suitably experienced/qualified personel are thin on the ground. Despite the downturn I still get cold called by people who want to try and recruit me.
There's a story (whether this is urban legend or similar I don't know but it's nice anyway) regarding dress code, Microsoft and IBM and it goes like this:
In the early days when the two companies were colaboration on DOS for the original PC there was a meeting between IBM and MS. The IBM boys turned up at MS' headquarters all suited up to find their oposite numbers sitting in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. Both were embarrassed. The next meeting was held at IBM and yes, MS turned up dressed smartly to find the IBM boys had dressed down and were now the ones wearing jeans and t-shirts.
It seems to me that if you're meeting others then dressing similarly and smartly is a courtesy to your guests/hosts, but if you're just sitting at a desk, hidden away from outsiders, banging out the code (as I often am) then it really doesn't matter what you wear. In fact I'm often NIFOC when coding at home.
That's similar to here (except I don't wear a shirt and tie for meetings. I'd look stupid if I did.)
Normally I wear jeans/combats, t-shirts and trainers/boots. I just make sure there's nothing too crude on the t-shirts. For meetings it's either slacks or smart black jeans, a nice top and decent footwear. The body jewelery stays regardless of whether I have a meeting or not.
If we take some of the countries in the EU (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) and look at their area and GDP it comes to 2m sq km and $7 trillion in total. If we look at the US it comes to 9m sq km and GDP of $10 trillion. We are ignoring Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Austria etc etc...
Yes the US is both larger and wealthier than any one European country the EU is comparable in economic might as a whole. What I'm saying here is you can say anything with statistics.
Actually I don't if you look at my post. I have many american friends and I know that they are nice people. I was just pointing out, obviously badly, that the only view we get of the US is of the nation which does come across as arogant and one that doesn't mind being percieved as arogant which is arogant in itself.
You're perfectly right. Many Europeans don't leave the country they were born in or at least only travel when they want to sit on a beach which is warmer than their own country. Also, if I remember correctly, you don't need a passport for Canada nor Mexico which gives you the whole of a continent to roam.
Having said that, in the last decade we travel further for our vacations. Destinations include the US, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies, India, Hong Kong, Thailand and parts of Africa.
But you can have portable power generators which allow you to be separate from the national power networks. So, although the TV itself is connected via a power cord, the installation can be independent.
The use of bandwidth is the driving force behind governments encouraging the adoption of digital terrestrial television. And, as I develop digital television set top boxes, it keeps me in a job.
I'm afraid it's the inherent subconscious arogance that many americans display and the nation as a whole.
For example the encryption export rules. They assume that no one outside of the states is actually capable of developing the technology independently. The British Inteligence community developed RSA encryption and computers before the US but kept quiet because it was top secret. The US has nuclear weapons but tries to stop other nations developing them on grounds of security. I'm just as worried about the shrub having his finger on the trigger as sadam.
... at the University of Leeds in the UK demonstrating his video recorder and his stereoscopic television (3D TV to you and me).
Baird's recorder used an alumin(i)um disc rather like an LP running at ~80rpm to record the images. The machine, like his television, was an electro-mechanical affair build from bits including old hat boxes and bicycle parts. His machinery is exhibited at The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television a short way away from Leeds, in Bradford.
Whilst researching the links I found the NMPFT's TV heaven page and top ten list of requested television programs from the archives. The August list is below:
1. Goodness Gracious Me
2. World Cup Final 1966
3. Dangermouse
4. The Wrong Trousers
5. Mr Bean
6. The Clangers (The Iron Chicken)
7. The Sooty Show
8. Bob the Builder
9. Bottom
10. Rainbow
This says something about the visitors although you have to account for it being the school vacation.
Basically if you aren't team/project leader then it's not your responsibility. You might, like I have done, look out as to how your fellow coders are doing and tell the leader if you have concerns but you shouldn't be doing his/her job. If you miss deadlines then it's her problem. If it is your responsibility then that's a different matter and the previous post was very relevant.
It sounds like some infrastructure is needed. Assuming the project is planned (it damn well should be) make sure the project plan shows each individuals responsibilities, deadlines, milestones etc. Put it where all can see so they know their responsibilities are and what they will be. People like know what they will be doing.
Hold regular team meetings. Once a week at first. Talk about the project's relevance to the bigger picture. Get each member to talk about what they've been doing, any issues and concerns, what they would like to be doing. Be a facilitator ie. find out if there's anything your coders needs and help them get it where relevant. Update the project plan in light of any new information which has come from the team meeting.
Build a team. Organise a night out in the very early stages of the project to get everyone together.
Coding should take up a relatively small part of the project time. Ensure your coders know the projects specifications. Get them to design API, software layers, modules, state machines etc etc. Document the designs and peer review them. Get the structure of the software organised before any code is written.
Coding in some respects should be mechanical. You shouldn't be doing all the thinking on the fly. The generalities of an algorithm should have already been designed before coding. Make sure code is written to a coding guideline. Peer review code. Lint it or the equivalent!
If you have designed software then you know what each component should be doing. Have test software written to exercise it thoroughly. Formalise bug reporting and checkpointing.
If you are a coder/project leader you will find a lot of your time is taken with leading the project. You may have produced X number of lines a day before. You wont any more. As you move further in to management you'll write less and less code! Make sure you allocate enough time for leading.
A team is like a super tanker, a lot of momentum and difficult to steer. It is far easier to give it occasional prods to make sure it keeps on track than to try and drag it in the right direction.
Firstly, I actually don't have a problem with the comment except that I find it a little strong. I quite often call myself a twat when I do something wrong. Having said that profanities seem to have different strengths either side of the pond.
As for women in software and engineering. The problems discussed are true for all women who want careers. There tends to be more men in the workplace than women. Women quite often have to make a decision, family or career, or atleast put the career on hold for a while. I used to work in finance and I saw exactly the same situations as being described.
I don't find it difficult being a female software engineer. I am respected by my peers and customers and happy at work.
Slashdot Mirror
The BBC Micro was on the design boards before the BBC approached Acorn. Its design was modified by the BBCs requests (IO support and the like). It was originally going to be called The Proton.
I bought my phone to be part of a package. I agree that it has minimal organiser facilities but I intend getting a PDA for mobile browsing, storing data and the like. As for laggyness, it's better than the older Ericssons I have and generally find with T9 I can type ahead fairly successfully.
My only moan is that you can e-mail attachments from the phone but can't view received attachments on the phone. This removes e-mail as one of the ways to get pictures on to the phone.
So does my Ericsson T68i:
* Great screen
* GPRS so permanent net connection (pay by the Mb)
* With the MP3 clip on I can listen to Sabbath on the bus and it's excellent quality. (It takes MMC).
* Clip on camera allows me to send pictures by SMS, MMS or E-mail
* Chat facility
* Has bluetooth (no upgrade needed)
* Sony/Ericsson so excellent build quality
Small and compact with 13 days of standby on a single charge.
A compromise is the worst of all worlds. I've been interested in the Ericsson P800 but decided that it didn't do enough for what I wanted and once I bought a PDA it would have functionality I wouldn't use.
I bought myself a T68i and I am very happy with it. I've tried the two box solution before (Psion 5 and Ericsson SH888) and it worked well. The T68i does everything I want and is stable. It cost me 30 GBP (~45 USD) for a neat little handsfree/MP3 player clip on for the phone that takes MMC.
Now all I have to decide is whether I'll be happy with a Palm or pay the extra for an iPAQ.
In the end I'm shouldn't need to care what software is running on my phone. The worry I have is that if MS get control of the software it will put them in a position to control the data formats, protocols etc just as they have, to some extent, in the PC world.
I owned an Ericsson T68i. I selected that phone because I wanted all the connectivity that it offered. I also picked it because I previously owned an Ericsson SH888 and it was well built and easy to use. The other factor that kept me with Ericsson was the availability of information regarding their products. The SH888 came with the reference manual (which included the AT command set) on the CD with the phone together with a data lead and synchronisation software. Similar data for the T68i is available on their web site.
As a Linux fan I want access to the data formats and protocols that my hardware uses. All these are available for my 'phone. It runs Symbian's OS but I don't really care about that. I just care that its usable. If Microsoft come along and corner the market what will happen. Will they come up with their own munged non standard protocols and data formats. Will they force me to use only Windows when transfering data to and from my phone. I really don't want that to happen.
"you just need to toss every resume that has the letters MCSE on them"
That explains a lot: corporate Microsoft shop. There *are* areas of 'IT' where suitably experienced/qualified personel are thin on the ground. Despite the downturn I still get cold called by people who want to try and recruit me.
There's a story (whether this is urban legend or similar I don't know but it's nice anyway) regarding dress code, Microsoft and IBM and it goes like this:
In the early days when the two companies were colaboration on DOS for the original PC there was a meeting between IBM and MS. The IBM boys turned up at MS' headquarters all suited up to find their oposite numbers sitting in jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. Both were embarrassed. The next meeting was held at IBM and yes, MS turned up dressed smartly to find the IBM boys had dressed down and were now the ones wearing jeans and t-shirts.
It seems to me that if you're meeting others then dressing similarly and smartly is a courtesy to your guests/hosts, but if you're just sitting at a desk, hidden away from outsiders, banging out the code (as I often am) then it really doesn't matter what you wear. In fact I'm often NIFOC when coding at home.
That's similar to here (except I don't wear a shirt and tie for meetings. I'd look stupid if I did.)
Normally I wear jeans/combats, t-shirts and trainers/boots. I just make sure there's nothing too crude on the t-shirts. For meetings it's either slacks or smart black jeans, a nice top and decent footwear. The body jewelery stays regardless of whether I have a meeting or not.
> If you think the fish and chips was an experience - try a doner kebab next time you're over :)
Which is actually Greek / Turkish.
Per the CIA world fact book
If we take some of the countries in the EU (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) and look at their area and GDP it comes to 2m sq km and $7 trillion in total. If we look at the US it comes to 9m sq km and GDP of $10 trillion. We are ignoring Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Austria etc etc...
Yes the US is both larger and wealthier than any one European country the EU is comparable in economic might as a whole. What I'm saying here is you can say anything with statistics.
Actually I don't if you look at my post. I have many american friends and I know that they are nice people. I was just pointing out, obviously badly, that the only view we get of the US is of the nation which does come across as arogant and one that doesn't mind being percieved as arogant which is arogant in itself.
You're perfectly right. Many Europeans don't leave the country they were born in or at least only travel when they want to sit on a beach which is warmer than their own country. Also, if I remember correctly, you don't need a passport for Canada nor Mexico which gives you the whole of a continent to roam.
Having said that, in the last decade we travel further for our vacations. Destinations include the US, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies, India, Hong Kong, Thailand and parts of Africa.
But you can have portable power generators which allow you to be separate from the national power networks. So, although the TV itself is connected via a power cord, the installation can be independent.
The use of bandwidth is the driving force behind governments encouraging the adoption of digital terrestrial television. And, as I develop digital television set top boxes, it keeps me in a job.
I'm afraid it's the inherent subconscious arogance that many americans display and the nation as a whole.
For example the encryption export rules. They assume that no one outside of the states is actually capable of developing the technology independently. The British Inteligence community developed RSA encryption and computers before the US but kept quiet because it was top secret. The US has nuclear weapons but tries to stop other nations developing them on grounds of security. I'm just as worried about the shrub having his finger on the trigger as sadam.
Yes, Farnsworth's technology was superior but Baird's genius was in utilising radio to transmit the images without wires.
... at the University of Leeds in the UK demonstrating his video recorder and his stereoscopic television (3D TV to you and me).
Baird's recorder used an alumin(i)um disc rather like an LP running at ~80rpm to record the images. The machine, like his television, was an electro-mechanical affair build from bits including old hat boxes and bicycle parts. His machinery is exhibited at The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television a short way away from Leeds, in Bradford.
Whilst researching the links I found the NMPFT's TV heaven page and top ten list of requested television programs from the archives. The August list is below:
This says something about the visitors although you have to account for it being the school vacation.
Very good post!
Basically if you aren't team/project leader then it's not your responsibility. You might, like I have done, look out as to how your fellow coders are doing and tell the leader if you have concerns but you shouldn't be doing his/her job. If you miss deadlines then it's her problem. If it is your responsibility then that's a different matter and the previous post was very relevant.
It sounds like some infrastructure is needed. Assuming the project is planned (it damn well should be) make sure the project plan shows each individuals responsibilities, deadlines, milestones etc. Put it where all can see so they know their responsibilities are and what they will be. People like know what they will be doing.
Hold regular team meetings. Once a week at first. Talk about the project's relevance to the bigger picture. Get each member to talk about what they've been doing, any issues and concerns, what they would like to be doing. Be a facilitator ie. find out if there's anything your coders needs and help them get it where relevant.
Update the project plan in light of any new information which has come from the team meeting.
Build a team. Organise a night out in the very early stages of the project to get everyone together.
Coding should take up a relatively small part of the project time. Ensure your coders know the projects specifications. Get them to design API, software layers, modules, state machines etc etc. Document the designs and peer review them. Get the structure of the software organised before any code is written.
Coding in some respects should be mechanical. You shouldn't be doing all the thinking on the fly. The generalities of an algorithm should have already been designed before coding. Make sure code is written to a coding guideline. Peer review code. Lint it or the equivalent!
If you have designed software then you know what each component should be doing. Have test software written to exercise it thoroughly. Formalise bug reporting and checkpointing.
If you are a coder/project leader you will find a lot of your time is taken with leading the project. You may have produced X number of lines a day before. You wont any more. As you move further in to management you'll write less and less code! Make sure you allocate enough time for leading.
A team is like a super tanker, a lot of momentum and difficult to steer. It is far easier to give it occasional prods to make sure it keeps on track than to try and drag it in the right direction.
Firstly, I actually don't have a problem with the comment except that I find it a little strong. I quite often call myself a twat when I do something wrong. Having said that profanities seem to have different strengths either side of the pond.
As for women in software and engineering. The problems discussed are true for all women who want careers. There tends to be more men in the workplace than women. Women quite often have to make a decision, family or career, or atleast put the career on hold for a while. I used to work in finance and I saw exactly the same situations as being described.
I don't find it difficult being a female software engineer. I am respected by my peers and customers and happy at work.
>> Is this a 5 minute argument or the full half hour? LOL - 306b