I see some good suggestions on how to code well but it's important to know how to produce human interfaces that are understandable, effective and even fun.
For that, my favorite book is "The Design of Everyday Things." It's not about software design, it let's you see effective (and bad!) design all around you and will make you think about your own designs. The affordances, or clues, you provide on how things work without having to spell it out in documentation.
Good programming is just the start. Good problem solving is the goal.
"'You name the satellites after gods?' he asked. Shah shuffled uncomfortably but Sirsikar beamed at Baedecker. 'Of course!' Recruited while Mercury flew, trained during Gemini, blooded in Apollo, Baedecker turned his eyes back to the steel symmetry of the huge antenna. 'So did we,' he said."
I'm not sure what you're trying to say but, gosh, you're saying it so badly it must be important!
I'm not saying we're always responsible and that governments and companies should be given a free pass. Exactly _not_ my attitudes. What I'm saying is that, if you're paying attention, the internet was not built with security in mind. If you think that google "not being evil" would make you safe, you don't understand how things work.
Piss and moan all you want about evil empires but take fucking responsibility for using the tools other have made for you if you really need security. Whining isn't going to do it, dude.
The NSA doesn't need google to watch all of your internet traffic. They are already on the backbones. Google can certainly add value to the spooks with their search-related technologies but do you really think any US corporation isn't going to role over when the guys-in-black come calling? We allowed the Patriot Act, among other forfeitures of our civil rights, what did you expect?
So, google got big because they did it best. Isn't that what the market is supposed to do? They did it before there were high barriers to entry and when there actually was a little bit of free in that particular marketplace. Even now, when the barriers to entry to search are much higher, they are mostly technical barriers, not ones put up by lobbyists and lawyers. I can live with that. The next search engine should be one that comes up with something fundamentally new, not the one with the best patent portfolio.
What irritates me most is people who are complaining about privacy who won't take any responsibility for protecting it. You can't expect privacy on the internet even if you don't use google. If you want privacy, start using encryption. There are free and open tools for every platform. Worried about traffic analysis? Wow, you must be doing something really interesting with your pron collection but, stil, there are tools for you to use to mask you traffic. Use them.
Use the time spent complaining about your loss of privacy and take it back. Make a personal threat model and respond to it.
When WiFi was just starting to get rolled out in most businesses, I had set up a multi access-point wireless network that had worked really well for about five months. Then, with no known changes, it started dying across the entire building almost every afternoon about the same time.
I worked with the building maintenance staff to try to find any electrical gear that might be starting up about that time with no luck. Finally, because the executives loved their wireless, I had to buy a spectrum analyser to try to track down the problem. I kept it on my desk until the next time we had an outage and started following the high amplitude broadband noise that had suddenly appeared.
The directional antenna led me straight to the kid that worked in the mailroom who had his feed up on the desk talking into a wireless phone. I pulled the plug on it and the noise stopped, the network reappeared. He'd brought in a consumer wireless phone so he could talk to his girlfriend while he moved around the mailroom sorting mail. I'm surprised his hair wasn't smoking with the signal the thing was emitting.
I took it away from him and everyone, except maybe his girlfriend, was happy.:)
You might be interested in Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch." It deals in the technology cycle from Wild West to Corporate Control using historical examples starting with Bell
I just started reading it so I have no review but it does look promising.
I use the Evernote web site, Mac application and iPhone app to capture information from the web, from images, from PDFs and assorted notes. The apps sync to the Evernote site and any image or PDF is OCRed so I can search on any text in them. I use multiple tags on each record so, combined with the ability to search any text contained in the item, I can easily locate anything in my data store. A day-to-day example is, I take a picture of any prescription label I get with my phone and send it to Evernote. Then, I can easily find it wherever I am when I need a refill. I also scan in receipts and then destroy the originals to cut down on the pile of paper that used to obscure my desk.
I keep track of to-do lists with Remember the Milk. I've never liked the name but it's the best task manager I've used. I can set up multiple folders for GTD-type use and it also has an iPhone app. I can create, maintain and complete apps on the phone and it pushes a notification each morning with the tasks that are due that day.
Not affiliated with either company, just a satisfied user.
I think separating "designers" and "technical people" is a false dichotomy.
The people I admire most are technically capable but also able to bring good design into their work instead of just layering a GUI on top of the machine functional view. People who consider how things should work instead of the mechanics that are under the covers. People that can even bring a bit of art, if I'm allowed to use that word, to their design. Not the flashy inovation-for-the-hell-of-it style of art but an interface that pleases us somewhere lower down the brainstem when we use it for its visceral feeling of rightness. People who have probably read at least the first section of "Design of Everyday Things" and might have a copy on the shelf beside their Knuth.
After a career of using Unix and Windows machines in corporate-land, I have my own company and I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro because I want a few good tools to simplify my life and allow me to be more productive.
Small reverse osmosis systems have been available for personal cruising boats for years. From units powered from the 12 volt battery system down to hand-pumped emergency units.
To go to Mars, we need to know the effects of long term duration of humans in a low (NOT ZERO) gravity environment. We have 1G on earth, and zero G at the ISS. What happens with Mars gravity? We have no idea. Where is the nearest place to test that? The moon.
We need to see the effects of long term radiation exposure does to humans in space. The ISS is protected by the earth's magnetic field. Where can we test this, and get back fast if there is a severe problem? The moon.
We should test robots that can build a shelter remotely in a hostile environment. The earth will do at first, but to test in a low gravity and low atmosphere environment, you need the moon.
I keep seeing arguments that the moon is the stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and I just don't buy it. Why spend all the energy to get out of one gravity well just to fall down another one? If you're looking for raw materials, you can get them from asteroids for less delta-v than landing and taking off from the moon. I don't think we know if they have any significant amount of water but we'll find that out as we develop our deep space capabilities instead of a new generation of moon landers. Once you have deep space transport and mining capability, you really are most of the way to anywhere.
As to your specific uses for the moon, a deep space craft heading out beyond the moon would rotate for artificial gravity. No need for 1G so you'll get plenty of data on fractional gravity environments. Long term radiation exposure? Sure. Same deal with a true deep space craft and there are unlikely to be sudden-onset effects that would necessitate quick return. And I'd like to test my robots in a truly low gravity environment where the resources I mine and structures I build will not have to be lifted back up the well.
I knew the day the return to the moon was announced it would never be sufficiently funded to succeed. For all the reasons mentioned by others, I'm glad it was canceled. I'd prefer NASA be working on truly innovative propulsion and materials technologies including seriously funded work on a space elevator. Materials science is bringing us close to the strength we need but there are some, er, other details to be worked out.
Don't get me wrong. I'm on the side of the angels but, skimming the article (sorry, no time for more right now), I don't see anything about time for training and conversion and how people are fed during that time.
My planned future would move everyone to organic and renewable technologies along the lines of Joel Salatin's farm in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." But I'd like to get from there to there without starving millions.
I'm not worried about the process of genetically modifying food anymore than I am using nuclear energy for power. In both cases, I'm worried about how these tools are used by the corporations that are centered on short-term profit.
GM is an accelerated version of what happens in nature. We need it to feed our billions. Unfortunately, lack of corporate imagination and long-term thinking might produce a backlash that makes it untenable for years.
There's a couple of reasons why technology has sort of fizzled out, as I see it.
First of all, DIY is dead or dying. Electronic components are harder to get hold of, and information about electronics is harder to get hold of (Internet is all good, but it really doesn't compare to the old electronics magazines).
DIY dying? Seriously? I am incredibly encouraged by the Maker movement _enabled_ by new electronic components and Internet information sharing that is happening today. Check out Make magazine if you want to see some of what's going on. Look at sparkfun.com or adafruit or any number of blogs. Then go out and make something.
"We seriously, urgently need an economy that is not based on growth."
Yes, I agree completely. But can anyone cite studies of how such an economy might work? What form it would take? Do we even have a clue how to think about it, much less transition to it?
Re:One word - ads (and Lower Thirds)
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 1
As an early TiVo adopter, I stopped making appointments to watch TV and watching ads long ago. With a two tuner TiVo, I don't care what network programs what content against some other network. I couldn't tell you when or where the few shows I still watch come on. I just check "Now Playing" when I feel like watching TV.
But...what is killing this last vestige of broadcast programming for me is the ever more obnoxious crap they're putting in the lower third of the screen. It's taking more and more space, covering up more of the actual program and swooshing in and out or dribbling across the bottom of the screen.
Let's see, I'm losing market share so let's see if I can make my already crappy programming even harder to tolerate. Great business model.
While everyone is right to be skeptical, especially of a device like this, could you please _read_ TFA before your spewing your kneejerk derision?
For instance, the graph on time to return to original viscosity (Figure 2) in the article nicely answers your objection to to the device being installed before the injector. Including that wonderful LA riot imagery.
Do I believe this will work? Jury's still out. But it's been published with details on the theory, the experiments and the results obtained. Published in sufficient detail for the results to be reproduced (or not) by other teams. _You_ could go out to your garage and run tests yourself. That's not normally the hallmark of snake oil.
...is that I can't get one with a TrackPoint pointing device.
You know, the little "clit mouse" that sits in the center of the keyboard. I've loved this type of pointer since I got my first Thinkpad. Your hands never leave the home position on the keyboard.
I hate trackpads but, sadly, that seems to be the way the world is going. When my last options for Windows laptops with TrackPoints die away, I'll be first in line for a Mac laptop.
The fact is, now that many business systems are outward-facing, time to market can be critical.
I can lose more in sales or share by delaying deployment than any amount of increased maintenance costs. Also, we're not trying to develop software for the ages anymore. Keeping software current with changing business requirements with maintenance changes has never worked. Build it fast, deploy and learn, improve business plan, create the next tool. Stay a moving target and create temporary monopolies. Ready, Fire, Aim.
Selling chunks of spectrum as limited resources to the highest bidder is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. This would make an even more hostile environment to software & cognitive radios. Frequency bands are _not_ a limited resource. Just stop using dumb radios!
I use the Dlink USB radio and drive it with a piece of freeware called Radiator. Allows multiple programs on multiple FM stations to be recorded with flexible date-driven file nameing conventions.
Fortunately, the program I wanted to record from AM was also broadcast on FM.
Slashdot Mirror
Seconded.
An excellent book.
If only I had Mod points.
Excellent rebuttal!
I see some good suggestions on how to code well but it's important to know how to produce human interfaces that are understandable, effective and even fun.
For that, my favorite book is "The Design of Everyday Things." It's not about software design, it let's you see effective (and bad!) design all around you and will make you think about your own designs. The affordances, or clues, you provide on how things work without having to spell it out in documentation.
Good programming is just the start. Good problem solving is the goal.
"You die twice, once when you stop breathing, and once when the last person mentions your name."
Great callout to Eagleman's "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives."
That was one of my favorite stories that they read on the RadioLab episode.
"'You name the satellites after gods?' he asked.
Shah shuffled uncomfortably but Sirsikar beamed at Baedecker. 'Of course!' Recruited while Mercury flew, trained during Gemini, blooded in Apollo, Baedecker turned his eyes back to the steel symmetry of the huge antenna.
'So did we,' he said."
--Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
I'm not sure what you're trying to say but, gosh, you're saying it so badly it must be important!
I'm not saying we're always responsible and that governments and companies should be given a free pass. Exactly _not_ my attitudes. What I'm saying is that, if you're paying attention, the internet was not built with security in mind. If you think that google "not being evil" would make you safe, you don't understand how things work.
Piss and moan all you want about evil empires but take fucking responsibility for using the tools other have made for you if you really need security. Whining isn't going to do it, dude.
The NSA doesn't need google to watch all of your internet traffic. They are already on the backbones. Google can certainly add value to the spooks with their search-related technologies but do you really think any US corporation isn't going to role over when the guys-in-black come calling? We allowed the Patriot Act, among other forfeitures of our civil rights, what did you expect?
So, google got big because they did it best. Isn't that what the market is supposed to do? They did it before there were high barriers to entry and when there actually was a little bit of free in that particular marketplace. Even now, when the barriers to entry to search are much higher, they are mostly technical barriers, not ones put up by lobbyists and lawyers. I can live with that. The next search engine should be one that comes up with something fundamentally new, not the one with the best patent portfolio.
What irritates me most is people who are complaining about privacy who won't take any responsibility for protecting it. You can't expect privacy on the internet even if you don't use google. If you want privacy, start using encryption. There are free and open tools for every platform. Worried about traffic analysis? Wow, you must be doing something really interesting with your pron collection but, stil, there are tools for you to use to mask you traffic. Use them.
Use the time spent complaining about your loss of privacy and take it back. Make a personal threat model and respond to it.
Back in the day...
When WiFi was just starting to get rolled out in most businesses, I had set up a multi access-point wireless network that had worked really well for about five months. Then, with no known changes, it started dying across the entire building almost every afternoon about the same time.
I worked with the building maintenance staff to try to find any electrical gear that might be starting up about that time with no luck. Finally, because the executives loved their wireless, I had to buy a spectrum analyser to try to track down the problem. I kept it on my desk until the next time we had an outage and started following the high amplitude broadband noise that had suddenly appeared.
The directional antenna led me straight to the kid that worked in the mailroom who had his feed up on the desk talking into a wireless phone. I pulled the plug on it and the noise stopped, the network reappeared. He'd brought in a consumer wireless phone so he could talk to his girlfriend while he moved around the mailroom sorting mail. I'm surprised his hair wasn't smoking with the signal the thing was emitting.
I took it away from him and everyone, except maybe his girlfriend, was happy. :)
You might be interested in Tim Wu's book "The Master Switch." It deals in the technology cycle from Wild West to Corporate Control using historical examples starting with Bell
I just started reading it so I have no review but it does look promising.
I use the Evernote web site, Mac application and iPhone app to capture information from the web, from images, from PDFs and assorted notes. The apps sync to the Evernote site and any image or PDF is OCRed so I can search on any text in them. I use multiple tags on each record so, combined with the ability to search any text contained in the item, I can easily locate anything in my data store. A day-to-day example is, I take a picture of any prescription label I get with my phone and send it to Evernote. Then, I can easily find it wherever I am when I need a refill. I also scan in receipts and then destroy the originals to cut down on the pile of paper that used to obscure my desk.
I keep track of to-do lists with Remember the Milk. I've never liked the name but it's the best task manager I've used. I can set up multiple folders for GTD-type use and it also has an iPhone app. I can create, maintain and complete apps on the phone and it pushes a notification each morning with the tasks that are due that day.
Not affiliated with either company, just a satisfied user.
I think separating "designers" and "technical people" is a false dichotomy.
The people I admire most are technically capable but also able to bring good design into their work instead of just layering a GUI on top of the machine functional view. People who consider how things should work instead of the mechanics that are under the covers. People that can even bring a bit of art, if I'm allowed to use that word, to their design. Not the flashy inovation-for-the-hell-of-it style of art but an interface that pleases us somewhere lower down the brainstem when we use it for its visceral feeling of rightness. People who have probably read at least the first section of "Design of Everyday Things" and might have a copy on the shelf beside their Knuth.
After a career of using Unix and Windows machines in corporate-land, I have my own company and I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro because I want a few good tools to simplify my life and allow me to be more productive.
Small reverse osmosis systems have been available for personal cruising boats for years. From units powered from the 12 volt battery system down to hand-pumped emergency units.
To go to Mars, we need to know the effects of long term duration of humans in a low (NOT ZERO) gravity environment.
We have 1G on earth, and zero G at the ISS.
What happens with Mars gravity? We have no idea.
Where is the nearest place to test that? The moon.
We need to see the effects of long term radiation exposure does to humans in space. The ISS is protected by the earth's magnetic field.
Where can we test this, and get back fast if there is a severe problem? The moon.
We should test robots that can build a shelter remotely in a hostile environment.
The earth will do at first, but to test in a low gravity and low atmosphere environment, you need the moon.
I keep seeing arguments that the moon is the stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and I just don't buy it. Why spend all the energy to get out of one gravity well just to fall down another one? If you're looking for raw materials, you can get them from asteroids for less delta-v than landing and taking off from the moon. I don't think we know if they have any significant amount of water but we'll find that out as we develop our deep space capabilities instead of a new generation of moon landers. Once you have deep space transport and mining capability, you really are most of the way to anywhere.
As to your specific uses for the moon, a deep space craft heading out beyond the moon would rotate for artificial gravity. No need for 1G so you'll get plenty of data on fractional gravity environments. Long term radiation exposure? Sure. Same deal with a true deep space craft and there are unlikely to be sudden-onset effects that would necessitate quick return. And I'd like to test my robots in a truly low gravity environment where the resources I mine and structures I build will not have to be lifted back up the well.
I knew the day the return to the moon was announced it would never be sufficiently funded to succeed. For all the reasons mentioned by others, I'm glad it was canceled. I'd prefer NASA be working on truly innovative propulsion and materials technologies including seriously funded work on a space elevator. Materials science is bringing us close to the strength we need but there are some, er, other details to be worked out.
Don't get me wrong. I'm on the side of the angels but, skimming the article (sorry, no time for more right now), I don't see anything about time for training and conversion and how people are fed during that time.
My planned future would move everyone to organic and renewable technologies along the lines of Joel Salatin's farm in "The Omnivore's Dilemma." But I'd like to get from there to there without starving millions.
I'll give you that I shouldn't speak in absolutes.
However, you should read Stewart Brand's latest for some additional information.
Your point about the profit is exactly my concern.
Exactly.
I'm not worried about the process of genetically modifying food anymore than I am using nuclear energy for power. In both cases, I'm worried about how these tools are used by the corporations that are centered on short-term profit.
GM is an accelerated version of what happens in nature. We need it to feed our billions. Unfortunately, lack of corporate imagination and long-term thinking might produce a backlash that makes it untenable for years.
The Loudness War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war has done far more to erode appreciation of music than MP3 compression.
There's a couple of reasons why technology has sort of fizzled out, as I see it.
First of all, DIY is dead or dying. Electronic components are harder to get hold of, and information about electronics is harder to get hold of (Internet is all good, but it really doesn't compare to the old electronics magazines).
DIY dying? Seriously? I am incredibly encouraged by the Maker movement _enabled_ by new electronic components and Internet information sharing that is happening today. Check out Make magazine if you want to see some of what's going on. Look at sparkfun.com or adafruit or any number of blogs. Then go out and make something.
"We seriously, urgently need an economy that is not based on growth."
Yes, I agree completely. But can anyone cite studies of how such an economy might work? What form it would take? Do we even have a clue how to think about it, much less transition to it?
As an early TiVo adopter, I stopped making appointments to watch TV and watching ads long ago. With a two tuner TiVo, I don't care what network programs what content against some other network. I couldn't tell you when or where the few shows I still watch come on. I just check "Now Playing" when I feel like watching TV.
But...what is killing this last vestige of broadcast programming for me is the ever more obnoxious crap they're putting in the lower third of the screen. It's taking more and more space, covering up more of the actual program and swooshing in and out or dribbling across the bottom of the screen.
Let's see, I'm losing market share so let's see if I can make my already crappy programming even harder to tolerate. Great business model.
While everyone is right to be skeptical, especially of a device like this, could you please _read_ TFA before your spewing your kneejerk derision?
For instance, the graph on time to return to original viscosity (Figure 2) in the article nicely answers your objection to to the device being installed before the injector. Including that wonderful LA riot imagery.
Do I believe this will work? Jury's still out. But it's been published with details on the theory, the experiments and the results obtained. Published in sufficient detail for the results to be reproduced (or not) by other teams. _You_ could go out to your garage and run tests yourself. That's not normally the hallmark of snake oil.
...is that I can't get one with a TrackPoint pointing device.
You know, the little "clit mouse" that sits in the center of the keyboard. I've loved this type of pointer since I got my first Thinkpad. Your hands never leave the home position on the keyboard.
I hate trackpads but, sadly, that seems to be the way the world is going. When my last options for Windows laptops with TrackPoints die away, I'll be first in line for a Mac laptop.
True, if you only consider software development.
The fact is, now that many business systems are outward-facing, time to market can be critical.
I can lose more in sales or share by delaying deployment than any amount of increased maintenance costs. Also, we're not trying to develop software for the ages anymore. Keeping software current with changing business requirements with maintenance changes has never worked. Build it fast, deploy and learn, improve business plan, create the next tool. Stay a moving target and create temporary monopolies. Ready, Fire, Aim.
Selling chunks of spectrum as limited resources to the highest bidder is one of the worst ideas I've heard in a while. This would make an even more hostile environment to software & cognitive radios. Frequency bands are _not_ a limited resource. Just stop using dumb radios!
I couldn't find a solution that included AM.
I use the Dlink USB radio and drive it with a piece of freeware called Radiator. Allows multiple programs on multiple FM stations to be recorded with flexible date-driven file nameing conventions.
Fortunately, the program I wanted to record from AM was also broadcast on FM.