This was a fun one. I had one of the first MINI Coopers, and ordered it with the CD player ('Wave' option? Seem to remember that name). I forget exactly when I took possession of the car, but I think it was around September or October. Something like that.
Anyway, at roughly 2:00am every morning the car alarm would go off, much to the 'delight' of myself, my neighbours and everyone in the vicinity. I'd go out, stop the alarm and then try to sleep. After which it would go off again, every hour or so.As if we weren't losing enough sleep with our then new-born daughter.
The cause was eventually traced, and it's one of the more obscure bugs I've ever come across. Turns out that the car had a low-power rather than completely off mode, and the CD player retained a tiny amount of power going through it. When it was cold, say at 2:00am on an autumn morning for example, the CD player would detect that condensation was forming and would wake up the car's electrics to create some warmth to clear the condensation. This is deliberate, and quite clever I think.
However, the problem came in that it did this too often and started causing a big drop in battery reserves. The security system interpreted this as an attempt to start the car by hotwiring it, and so the alarm would be set off. I'd come out to switch it off, then go back to bed on the cold autumn night at which point condensation would form again, the CD player would switch itself on again, the security system would sound the alarm again and a bleary-eyed version of me would stagger out to turn the alarm off again. At which point condensation would start to form again and...
Windows wasn't a foregone conclusion - in the early days there was GEM, and during Windows' development there was also OS/2. Office didn't just materialise either, there was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect/WordStar/DBase III. Then there's Netscape - they killed Netscape-the-company completely by, despite the many myths, simply being better than Netscape v4.
Tried to eat into an existing market with Hotmail? Hotmail was the market - it's all the others that are the followers here. Some did it better of course, but MS were not trying to take away market share from others. They were trying to prevent losing users to web-based interfaces which they did not own.
Zune and MSN...yep, agreed. Doubleclick - different class. It's not an end-user product, and due to this I rather suspect they'll do well with it. MS do cater to developers and API users pretty well, and that's what you're talking about when it comes to an advert site. In the end it can only be good to have two vast firms competing for your site's space and offering you cash accordingly.
Well, good for the site creator of course. For me, I mutter a few words of gratitude for AdBlock and Pithhelmet and then carry on regardless.
From the article:Here at De Montfort I run an ICT degree, which does not assume that programming is an essential skill. The degree focuses on delivering IT services in organisations, on taking a holistic view of computing in organisations, and on holistic thinking.
ie. not Computer Science. For those not familiar with the UK education set up I should also explain that De Montfort University is the old Leicester Polytechnic. The Polys were set up to provide much more practical education than the theoretical stances of the Universities, and a damned good job many did of it too - I'm certainly not playing the one-upmanship card that some do about the old polys, Leicester Poly was a good place and its successor De Montford has reached even further.
But the point stands - this point of view is coming from an academic teaching at a more practically-oriented institution and already running a non-science based course. His viewpoint should be considered against that background.
Cheers,
Ian
Owners of the game: can a left-hander play it?
on
The Reinvention of Zelda
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm left-handed, and I already notice that I have to play Rayman Raving Rabids differently to the way they show you on the screen. I was wondering about Zelda, which I understand has Link being right-handed in this instalment.
Now, this isn't a fanboy "Link should be left-handed!" rant, it's a question about whether a left-handed person can play it at all. Are there any settings for left-handers?
From the summary: "According to the article, the cloak was missing for nearly 30 years, during which it was rented out to a number of other films, including the Mummy."
For rent: one cloak. Location: unknown. Cost: If sir needs to ask, sir cannot afford it. Renter collects.
If you're even slightly more than a casual Beatles fan, wouldn't you already have all the Beatles music you need. Are there going to be people actually seeking out Beatles songs on iTunes?
There will be, yes. Me for one. I'm not even slightly more than a casual Beatles fan, I'm no form of Beatles fan at all. I like a few tracks that I've heard and that's that. I am, however, pretty curious and might well sample the off track of various albums. I'm not suddenly going to start buying the full collection, and I'd rather get individual tracks than full albums. I'm 35 - the Beatles never happened for me. I always new of them and there'll be many on here younger than me who know their music better, but that's because you actively sort it out. You didn't casually sample it, like I probably would if it appeared online.
Want to be fair? Let's take another look at the Dell business model, shall we?...This is the Dell model. Hollow out your suppliers and when one dies, move to another. Scorched earth 21st century style. Nice for Dell, right? Not in the long run, because the day will come when there are either no more suppliers to kill, or no supplier will do business with them. Both of those have happened, and that is where we are today.
For further information, see Jack Tramiel and style and fate of Commodore. Sounds identical.
It's true that these won't produce fully fledged ready to move into homes, but it's still a start isn't it? Providing the quality is good then I'm all in favour of moves like this.
I have a couple of domestic robots, the Roomba and Scooba. I still need a vacuum cleaner and a mop, but only to handle the fiddly bits (stairs, furniture, round the back of the fridge etc.). The vast bulk of the work is handled by the two robots. I view these projects in the same way - they're a good starting point and will do a large amount of the work, but you'll still need some skill and manual work at the end to finish things off.
I used to live in the Barbican in London... I'm working there and posting from there now. You have my deepest sympathies, horrible place. I'm from Sheffield - up there we dynamite places like the Barbican, not slap preservation orders on them.
Geez, the iPhone must have scared the crap out of everyone in the industry, seems it's Anti-Apple FUD since the iPhone was announced.
Allow me to present my Apple credentials. An original LC owner from around 1993 (I think), then skipped out but back in for a 12" Powerbook when Jaguar was released. Our household has a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a dual G5 tower, an (Intel) Mac Mini and an SE/30 for nostalgia. Pro-Apple enough perhaps? Well then, I think that as announced so far, the iPhone is a poor product.
No 3G. A killer in Europe for something at that level. I'm assuming this won't be a problem by the time of launch though, because I simply cannot imagine anyone trying to launch a 2.5G smart phone here these days.
No video calling. Minor league problem for me and directly related to no 3G.
"First proper browser on a phone" says Jobs in the keynote. Err...no, no at all. My phone is happily running Opera, as are plenty of others.
No user-replaceable battery. No spare batteries? Are they serious? Not a problem with an iPod, you just lose your music for a while. Annoying but liveable. For a phone however, that's a much bigger hassle.
No third-party software. Err...no. Won't fly for me.
Can't use your "iTunes music" as a ring tone. Now admittedly the source I read for this didn't make it clear if they really meant iTMS-purchased music or just any old MP3 but either way that's pretty poor.
No GPS (that I'm aware of). I'm spending that amount of money, I'd like a GPS-enabled phone please.
No radio. For the love of god, what is it that Apple have against radios? Even the built-in Radio function of iTunes is utterly useless. I don't want to carry around an add-on for that, it should be built into the phone like damned near every other phone.
Fixed capacity - I can't move my own flash cards in and out of the phone.
No video at all - not just lack of video calling but also it's unclear if that camera will actually shoot video for storing on the internal memory and transferring off later.
I love the look of the interface, though in practice I do wonder how well it's going to stand up to daily use (smears on the screen etc.). Right now though, the hardware itself just looks too weak to me. Not enough features for the cash - my N70 already does functionally more than the iPhone, and that came as a freebie with my contract. I'll admit the Nokia interface is terrible in comparison, but for me at least the OS X interface isn't enough to compensate for the lack of capability in the phone. Not asking for the moon on a stick here - everything I've mentioned can currently be done by other phones, all but GPS in already done by my freebie N70.
Who says the iPhone has a resolution-independent UI? The 160dpi screen says that - they won't have developed this software twice for both Macs and the phone, and even for phone-only software a 160dpi screen wouldn't have been available at the start of this device's development.
Who says that running Widgets requires Dashboard?
Dashboard itself isn't required of course, it's the WebKit development required to support Dashboard that I'm really referring to.
Who says that having the capabilities means that it's OS X? That's easy - I do. Why on earth would you write this stuff twice?
The UK only ever got Series 1 hardware - is this likely to work with a series 1 device?
Incidentally, for some more of those infamous hacks might I recommend TivoTool for the Mac and my own cross-platform TivoPodcast for handling podcasts of digital radio.
Not a resolution as such, but a general aim I've had for a while now. Time to rationalise and purge a lot of kit.
In our household there's currently a bit of an Apple-fest: MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a Mac Mini, a Power Mac G5 tower, a G3 Blueberry iMac and ye olde SE/30. There's also an Atari STe with SM124 monitor, a C64 with 1541, two SNES consoles (one PAL, one NTSC), a Wii, a Gamecube, a Playstation 1, a Playstation 2, two Gameboy Advance SPs, and an ancient P100 laptop that does duty as a disk drive for the C64. Oh, and currently I have three RAQ 4 servers of varying spec as well. A Series 1 Tivo (I'm in the UK) too, and a work-issued laptop rounds off the collection.
It doesn't take a genius to see that this is a bit much...
However, it's easy to say it's a bit much but actually paring it down is much harder. The MacBook Pro is my main machine, the MacBook is my wife's. The G3 has been handed to my 5 year-old daughter and does good service as a learning machine. The Power Mac...well, that can probably go although I do have one last PPC-only app (QuadraSID, a music plugin so Rosette is out). The Mac Mini? Nope - that's getting an expanded role next year as a DNS/svn/postgres/iPhoto/iTunes server. The SNES? No Streetfighter II Turbo on the Wii's virtual console yet so one at least will probably stay. The RaQs can all go now. The SE/30? Undecided - never used but there for nostalgic reasons rather than use. The STe? Llamatron. The C64? Over my dead body will that go - SID music plus all the great games. Emulators can only do so much - sitting in front of a real C64 is still a different experience to using the excellent Power64 emulator. The Playstation 1? Worms - the PS2 doesn't get the resolution quite right and the game looks better on a PS1. The PS2? Revz, Tekken 5, Grand Tourismo...can't emulate that yet. The GBAs? Maybe one - my three year-old son is getting into that a bit at the moment (mainly Spiro). The ancient P100 laptop - probably yes as I've sorted out a Flash-based interface for the C64 now. The Tivo? EyeTV on the Mac isn't good enough yet, so nope - the Tivo stays.
So I'm left in this daft position of having kit coming out of my ears and yet being unable to get rid of most of it since it all still has a purpose. Still feels like I should do some rationalisation though.
It's to gain defined release states, with defined roll-back points. The trunk will contain simply what's being worked on at any given moment - it may well not be in a deployable state (probably isn't). A branch...well, sort of. You'd create the tag to get your defined release point, the branch off that tag for any bug-fix releases prior to merging that branch back to the trunk. Any bug-fix releases made from that branch would also get their own tag.
Agreed, and I should have clarified - by virtualisation I mean full machines, such as VMWare instances. Not Apache virtual hosts. Ideally I'd get separate hardware for UAT and dev/system test but it sounds like the constraints the submitter is under won't allow for that. That's why I'm suggesting falling back on virtual machines as a good second base.
Even with a virtual host, you'll still be hitting the production hardware. Sounds like an ideal use for virtualisation here - mimic as much of the production environment as possible (OS versions, web server versions, application container versions etc.) and have a go with that.
Subversion is definitely a stride forward - well worth using and getting used to, it's good that you have a client there. You should be able to fix your config scripts such they they recognise the environment (prod, dev, uat) and can be deployed directly from a tag in svn. A tag of course, not the trunk. Given the constraints it sounds like you're up against, I would definitely be looking to virtualise at least three environments - one dev, one system test, one UAT. You may have multiple dev virtual machines depending on your needs.
From the summary: According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'.
To me, that's a gift not a bribe. I can't remember the specifics, but I'm sure Apple did something similar a while ago. They're saying "thanks for the coverage", and that's that.
I'm happy over here with my OS X machines with Linux installs on the server side, and I still can't see a reason to be going after Microsoft for this. They got coverage, and they said thanks.
... but they didn't. Because the whole point of the Roomba is that you don't
need to control it.
No and yes, in that order. My Roomba certainly came with a remote control that can steer the device, but I've never found a need to use it. However, I still appreciate this hack for what it is - a spot of fun done just because you can.
My wife's name and my own already went up in 2003, as part of this programme. I have the pre-take off and post-landing certificates for it. They are of absolutely no practical value whatsoever, but I simply don't care. I love the fact our names are up there, and now we have kids I think I'm going to sign up again and and put our kids' names there too.
It's a harmless, fun programme to generate some interest and I applaud its intent.
* The only people who are complaining are those who are true *idealists* when it comes to Linux and Open Source
....or in this case, the people that actually produce the software being used.
I have large customers (people who spend money on software AND use Open Source) who run Windows and Linux side by side. Their NUMBER ONE complaint has been lack of interoperability.
Precisely. Users will think this is great, but it's not users who are writing the software being abused. Large users in particular (I work for a very large corporate user of Linux) will think this is great, because they're already paying for their support contracts and are basically seeing Linux as a commercial OS anyway - that's true in their case, because they're paying for support and restricting themselves to supported configs etc.. But it's the people writing the code that are objecting to their labour being used in this way, not the end users.
How do you know it is Mr. Eran posting those messages?
Because he states he is, has stated he is in replies and has taken part in email conversations with members of the group - see this thread for more details.
I purchased a few of those apps at full price. I now find that the amount I've been charged was inflated, because clearly the developers are happy to settle for less. Now, were this a drop of 10%/15% or so I'd just shrug my shoulders and go ho hum. But such a drastic devaluation leaves a bad taste with me - particularly when followed up with comments such as:
"So I'm not really sabotaging my sales; I'm supplementing them. Seriously, if you came to me and said, "I'm going to resell Delicious Library to customers on the moon, who you've never met and can't reach, for $1 a copy," I'd say, "Go for it!" I don't care if I only get a penny if it's a penny more than I would have gotten on my own."
Differential pricing eh? $40 for me, $1 for someone else so you can get an extra $1? Just doesn't sit right with me.
If an individual has a message they feel is important that they want to get out, I don't see an issue with posting a reference or two. Flooding a board is another story.
...and flooding is what's taking place. Yes, a post such as "here's a new and interesting Apple-related blog, please come and have a look" would have gone down fine. Instead we get every single article he writes for this blog being dumped as a rhetorical question into a group which specifically forbids advertising, and then he never engages in any discussion regarding it. The regulars of the group have all asked him to stop. He just totally disregards us.
Besides, using the term "SPAM" is inaccurate: what is the commercial benefit of his links?
Advertising revenue. He's abusing a community discussion group to take every opportunity to dump links to his advert revenue-driven blog. The group does not exist for his enrichment, as we say on there: uk.comp.sys.mac.adverts is thataway -->.
Slashdot Mirror
This was a fun one. I had one of the first MINI Coopers, and ordered it with the CD player ('Wave' option? Seem to remember that name). I forget exactly when I took possession of the car, but I think it was around September or October. Something like that.
Anyway, at roughly 2:00am every morning the car alarm would go off, much to the 'delight' of myself, my neighbours and everyone in the vicinity. I'd go out, stop the alarm and then try to sleep. After which it would go off again, every hour or so.As if we weren't losing enough sleep with our then new-born daughter.
The cause was eventually traced, and it's one of the more obscure bugs I've ever come across. Turns out that the car had a low-power rather than completely off mode, and the CD player retained a tiny amount of power going through it. When it was cold, say at 2:00am on an autumn morning for example, the CD player would detect that condensation was forming and would wake up the car's electrics to create some warmth to clear the condensation. This is deliberate, and quite clever I think.
However, the problem came in that it did this too often and started causing a big drop in battery reserves. The security system interpreted this as an attempt to start the car by hotwiring it, and so the alarm would be set off. I'd come out to switch it off, then go back to bed on the cold autumn night at which point condensation would form again, the CD player would switch itself on again, the security system would sound the alarm again and a bleary-eyed version of me would stagger out to turn the alarm off again. At which point condensation would start to form again and...
Bah.
Cheers,
Ian
Windows wasn't a foregone conclusion - in the early days there was GEM, and during Windows' development there was also OS/2. Office didn't just materialise either, there was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect/WordStar/DBase III. Then there's Netscape - they killed Netscape-the-company completely by, despite the many myths, simply being better than Netscape v4.
Tried to eat into an existing market with Hotmail? Hotmail was the market - it's all the others that are the followers here. Some did it better of course, but MS were not trying to take away market share from others. They were trying to prevent losing users to web-based interfaces which they did not own.
Zune and MSN...yep, agreed. Doubleclick - different class. It's not an end-user product, and due to this I rather suspect they'll do well with it. MS do cater to developers and API users pretty well, and that's what you're talking about when it comes to an advert site. In the end it can only be good to have two vast firms competing for your site's space and offering you cash accordingly.
Well, good for the site creator of course. For me, I mutter a few words of gratitude for AdBlock and Pithhelmet and then carry on regardless.
Cheers,
Ian
From the article:Here at De Montfort I run an ICT degree, which does not assume that programming is an essential skill. The degree focuses on delivering IT services in organisations, on taking a holistic view of computing in organisations, and on holistic thinking.
ie. not Computer Science. For those not familiar with the UK education set up I should also explain that De Montfort University is the old Leicester Polytechnic. The Polys were set up to provide much more practical education than the theoretical stances of the Universities, and a damned good job many did of it too - I'm certainly not playing the one-upmanship card that some do about the old polys, Leicester Poly was a good place and its successor De Montford has reached even further.
But the point stands - this point of view is coming from an academic teaching at a more practically-oriented institution and already running a non-science based course. His viewpoint should be considered against that background.
Cheers,
Ian
I'm left-handed, and I already notice that I have to play Rayman Raving Rabids differently to the way they show you on the screen. I was wondering about Zelda, which I understand has Link being right-handed in this instalment.
Now, this isn't a fanboy "Link should be left-handed!" rant, it's a question about whether a left-handed person can play it at all. Are there any settings for left-handers?
Cheers,
Ian
From the summary: "According to the article, the cloak was missing for nearly 30 years, during which it was rented out to a number of other films, including the Mummy."
For rent: one cloak. Location: unknown. Cost: If sir needs to ask, sir cannot afford it. Renter collects.
Cheers,
Ian
Vista hasn't really been in consumer use enough to know what kind of problems people will hit in the real world. Surely this is a bit premature?
Cheers,
Ian
If you're even slightly more than a casual Beatles fan, wouldn't you already have all the Beatles music you need. Are there going to be people actually seeking out Beatles songs on iTunes?
There will be, yes. Me for one. I'm not even slightly more than a casual Beatles fan, I'm no form of Beatles fan at all. I like a few tracks that I've heard and that's that. I am, however, pretty curious and might well sample the off track of various albums. I'm not suddenly going to start buying the full collection, and I'd rather get individual tracks than full albums. I'm 35 - the Beatles never happened for me. I always new of them and there'll be many on here younger than me who know their music better, but that's because you actively sort it out. You didn't casually sample it, like I probably would if it appeared online.
Cheers,
Ian
I am so glad I switched to open office. Now whenever one of these things happens I send the article to my friends along with a link for OpenOffice
Do you send links to any of these OpenOffice vulnerabilities as well?
Cheers,
Ian
Want to be fair? Let's take another look at the Dell business model, shall we?...This is the Dell model. Hollow out your suppliers and when one dies, move to another. Scorched earth 21st century style. Nice for Dell, right? Not in the long run, because the day will come when there are either no more suppliers to kill, or no supplier will do business with them. Both of those have happened, and that is where we are today.
For further information, see Jack Tramiel and style and fate of Commodore. Sounds identical.
Cheers,
Ian
It's true that these won't produce fully fledged ready to move into homes, but it's still a start isn't it? Providing the quality is good then I'm all in favour of moves like this.
I have a couple of domestic robots, the Roomba and Scooba. I still need a vacuum cleaner and a mop, but only to handle the fiddly bits (stairs, furniture, round the back of the fridge etc.). The vast bulk of the work is handled by the two robots. I view these projects in the same way - they're a good starting point and will do a large amount of the work, but you'll still need some skill and manual work at the end to finish things off.
I used to live in the Barbican in London...
I'm working there and posting from there now. You have my deepest sympathies, horrible place. I'm from Sheffield - up there we dynamite places like the Barbican, not slap preservation orders on them.
Cheers,
Ian
Allow me to present my Apple credentials. An original LC owner from around 1993 (I think), then skipped out but back in for a 12" Powerbook when Jaguar was released. Our household has a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a dual G5 tower, an (Intel) Mac Mini and an SE/30 for nostalgia. Pro-Apple enough perhaps? Well then, I think that as announced so far, the iPhone is a poor product.
I love the look of the interface, though in practice I do wonder how well it's going to stand up to daily use (smears on the screen etc.). Right now though, the hardware itself just looks too weak to me. Not enough features for the cash - my N70 already does functionally more than the iPhone, and that came as a freebie with my contract. I'll admit the Nokia interface is terrible in comparison, but for me at least the OS X interface isn't enough to compensate for the lack of capability in the phone. Not asking for the moon on a stick here - everything I've mentioned can currently be done by other phones, all but GPS in already done by my freebie N70.
Roll on v1.x please.
Cheers,
Ian
Who says the iPhone has a resolution-independent UI?
The 160dpi screen says that - they won't have developed this software twice for both Macs and the phone, and even for phone-only software a 160dpi screen wouldn't have been available at the start of this device's development.
Who says that running Widgets requires Dashboard?
Dashboard itself isn't required of course, it's the WebKit development required to support Dashboard that I'm really referring to.
Who says that having the capabilities means that it's OS X?
That's easy - I do. Why on earth would you write this stuff twice?
Cheers,
Ian
Of course it's OS X. Think they put in Dashboard and then did all the resolution-independent UI work for nothing?
Cheers,
Ian
The UK only ever got Series 1 hardware - is this likely to work with a series 1 device?
Incidentally, for some more of those infamous hacks might I recommend TivoTool for the Mac and my own cross-platform TivoPodcast for handling podcasts of digital radio.
Cheers,
Ian
Not a resolution as such, but a general aim I've had for a while now. Time to rationalise and purge a lot of kit.
In our household there's currently a bit of an Apple-fest: MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a Mac Mini, a Power Mac G5 tower, a G3 Blueberry iMac and ye olde SE/30. There's also an Atari STe with SM124 monitor, a C64 with 1541, two SNES consoles (one PAL, one NTSC), a Wii, a Gamecube, a Playstation 1, a Playstation 2, two Gameboy Advance SPs, and an ancient P100 laptop that does duty as a disk drive for the C64. Oh, and currently I have three RAQ 4 servers of varying spec as well. A Series 1 Tivo (I'm in the UK) too, and a work-issued laptop rounds off the collection.
It doesn't take a genius to see that this is a bit much...
However, it's easy to say it's a bit much but actually paring it down is much harder. The MacBook Pro is my main machine, the MacBook is my wife's. The G3 has been handed to my 5 year-old daughter and does good service as a learning machine. The Power Mac...well, that can probably go although I do have one last PPC-only app (QuadraSID, a music plugin so Rosette is out). The Mac Mini? Nope - that's getting an expanded role next year as a DNS/svn/postgres/iPhoto/iTunes server. The SNES? No Streetfighter II Turbo on the Wii's virtual console yet so one at least will probably stay. The RaQs can all go now. The SE/30? Undecided - never used but there for nostalgic reasons rather than use. The STe? Llamatron. The C64? Over my dead body will that go - SID music plus all the great games. Emulators can only do so much - sitting in front of a real C64 is still a different experience to using the excellent Power64 emulator. The Playstation 1? Worms - the PS2 doesn't get the resolution quite right and the game looks better on a PS1. The PS2? Revz, Tekken 5, Grand Tourismo...can't emulate that yet. The GBAs? Maybe one - my three year-old son is getting into that a bit at the moment (mainly Spiro). The ancient P100 laptop - probably yes as I've sorted out a Flash-based interface for the C64 now. The Tivo? EyeTV on the Mac isn't good enough yet, so nope - the Tivo stays.
So I'm left in this daft position of having kit coming out of my ears and yet being unable to get rid of most of it since it all still has a purpose. Still feels like I should do some rationalisation though.
Cheers,
Ian
It's to gain defined release states, with defined roll-back points. The trunk will contain simply what's being worked on at any given moment - it may well not be in a deployable state (probably isn't). A branch...well, sort of. You'd create the tag to get your defined release point, the branch off that tag for any bug-fix releases prior to merging that branch back to the trunk. Any bug-fix releases made from that branch would also get their own tag.
Cheers,
Ian
Don't use virtual hosts at all.
Agreed, and I should have clarified - by virtualisation I mean full machines, such as VMWare instances. Not Apache virtual hosts. Ideally I'd get separate hardware for UAT and dev/system test but it sounds like the constraints the submitter is under won't allow for that. That's why I'm suggesting falling back on virtual machines as a good second base.
Cheers,
Ian
Even with a virtual host, you'll still be hitting the production hardware. Sounds like an ideal use for virtualisation here - mimic as much of the production environment as possible (OS versions, web server versions, application container versions etc.) and have a go with that.
Subversion is definitely a stride forward - well worth using and getting used to, it's good that you have a client there. You should be able to fix your config scripts such they they recognise the environment (prod, dev, uat) and can be deployed directly from a tag in svn. A tag of course, not the trunk. Given the constraints it sounds like you're up against, I would definitely be looking to virtualise at least three environments - one dev, one system test, one UAT. You may have multiple dev virtual machines depending on your needs.
Cheers,
Ian
From the summary:
According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'.
To me, that's a gift not a bribe. I can't remember the specifics, but I'm sure Apple did something similar a while ago. They're saying "thanks for the coverage", and that's that.
I'm happy over here with my OS X machines with Linux installs on the server side, and I still can't see a reason to be going after Microsoft for this. They got coverage, and they said thanks.
Cheers,
Ian
... but they didn't. Because the whole point of the Roomba is that you don't need to control it.
No and yes, in that order. My Roomba certainly came with a remote control that can steer the device, but I've never found a need to use it. However, I still appreciate this hack for what it is - a spot of fun done just because you can.
Cheers,
Ian
My wife's name and my own already went up in 2003, as part of this programme. I have the pre-take off and post-landing certificates for it. They are of absolutely no practical value whatsoever, but I simply don't care. I love the fact our names are up there, and now we have kids I think I'm going to sign up again and and put our kids' names there too.
It's a harmless, fun programme to generate some interest and I applaud its intent.
Cheers,
Ian
* The only people who are complaining are those who are true *idealists* when it comes to Linux and Open Source
....or in this case, the people that actually produce the software being used.
I have large customers (people who spend money on software AND use Open Source) who run Windows and Linux side by side. Their NUMBER ONE complaint has been lack of interoperability.
Precisely. Users will think this is great, but it's not users who are writing the software being abused. Large users in particular (I work for a very large corporate user of Linux) will think this is great, because they're already paying for their support contracts and are basically seeing Linux as a commercial OS anyway - that's true in their case, because they're paying for support and restricting themselves to supported configs etc.. But it's the people writing the code that are objecting to their labour being used in this way, not the end users.
Cheers,
Ian
How do you know it is Mr. Eran posting those messages?
Because he states he is, has stated he is in replies and has taken part in email conversations with members of the group - see this thread for more details.
Cheers,
Ian
I purchased a few of those apps at full price. I now find that the amount I've been charged was inflated, because clearly the developers are happy to settle for less. Now, were this a drop of 10%/15% or so I'd just shrug my shoulders and go ho hum. But such a drastic devaluation leaves a bad taste with me - particularly when followed up with comments such as:
"So I'm not really sabotaging my sales; I'm supplementing them. Seriously, if you came to me and said, "I'm going to resell Delicious Library to customers on the moon, who you've never met and can't reach, for $1 a copy," I'd say, "Go for it!" I don't care if I only get a penny if it's a penny more than I would have gotten on my own."
Differential pricing eh? $40 for me, $1 for someone else so you can get an extra $1? Just doesn't sit right with me.
Cheers,
Ian
If an individual has a message they feel is important that they want to get out, I don't see an issue with posting a reference or two. Flooding a board is another story.
...and flooding is what's taking place. Yes, a post such as "here's a new and interesting Apple-related blog, please come and have a look" would have gone down fine. Instead we get every single article he writes for this blog being dumped as a rhetorical question into a group which specifically forbids advertising, and then he never engages in any discussion regarding it. The regulars of the group have all asked him to stop. He just totally disregards us.
Besides, using the term "SPAM" is inaccurate: what is the commercial benefit of his links?
Advertising revenue. He's abusing a community discussion group to take every opportunity to dump links to his advert revenue-driven blog. The group does not exist for his enrichment, as we say on there: uk.comp.sys.mac.adverts is thataway -->.
Cheers,
Ian