recent experience with Forte
on
Java IDEs?
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· Score: 2
I have just recently started using Forte, which is Java based and produced by Sun. I think it is based off of their purchase of NetBeans some time back. The editor is quite nice, but it has far more features than I want. Personally I just edit with vi and use makefiles, but I'm required to find a development environment for multiple developers, and they aren't so keen on the old school methods.
I agree entirely. My software engineering class involved an overview of various estimated tools and it was all BS. The systems used lines of code as a metric. What a joke. I remember the magic number, which is just a way of them reverse engineering on historical data. The bean counters are desperate for a way to understand programmers without knowing a line of code.
I work for a federal agency and my bags are inspected every day I come to work. I don't like it, but I suspect this is the sort of treatment people have undergone at other more sensitive offices like the Pentagon, CIA and FBI for years. Like it or not, heightened security has come to many of our lives in the DC area.
Does that mean I'm rolling over and letting "the man" trample on civil liberties? No, it simply means that I recognize the change in climate that has come to my workplace. I don't like it, but the alternative could be much worse.
Most people would be in favor of searching the parsels of NIH employees. I don't know all the stuff that you do at NIH, but I have heard it is similar to the CDC. In these times, a bit of diligence and inconvenience will be worth it. This isn't very popular with much of the/. crowd, but residents of DC (like myself) are glad to see more stringent controls and searches.
I agree about the Bard's Tale. My eyes lit up at the mention of this old classic. I dare not say how many hours of my life have been invested/wasted on that game, but it was great stuff.
The Bard's Legacy site has some neat screen shots & such, but at this time it isn't clear what platform it runs on. Details are a little sketchy, but it looks like a noble effort.
I do use the original, but when I want to run X Window appliations the user interface looks very different because of the window manager in use on the Xfree86 side. This kind of project helps make the whole UI more consistent. Bear in mind that the Quartz rendering engine for the Mac OS X display can't display X11 applications.
And Apple should have the right to sue the hell out of anyone who creates derivitive works that dilute their own stuff. That means, if it isn't running on Apple hardware running Mac OS X, it shouldn't look like Aqua.
Hm... the package is a binary that runs on Apple computers with X11 in rootless mode under Mac OS X. Sounds like this one fits your criteria for non-sueing.
Don't get me wrong, I like MySQL. It is great and my company has donated to their organization to support the development. I use it on a daily basis and I am eager for 4.0.
My point is simply that./ takes it upon itself to replicate the function of Freshmeat.net. This annoys me a little, but I'll get over it.
Other than the fact that/. uses MySQL for their back end, how is this news? How many incremental alpha releases warrant news mention? This thing got my hopes up, and then I read that it is an alpha release. Yawn. New for nerds with too much time on their hands.
I also don't have a local phone number, but the person who brought this up does have a point. At least in Washington DC where I live it is a big pain. Utility service isn't that hard, but getting a parking permit is absolute hell. The person you deal with is entrenched in beauracracy and probably won't budge on the requirement. Eventually you can find a sensible person, but it is a big pain. Hopefully this will change in time.
For what it is worth, back when I had a phone line I found the phrase "put me on your do not call list" to be fairly effective. Conversations about how the person should get a real job or stop harrassing me weren't helpful in stopping the calls.
I work for a federal agency on a contract basis and I have some doubts about the feasibility of doing this stuff. As an example, there are about a dozen sub agencies in this single agency and each of them implement their own firewalls. The building itself is segmented off and there is a lack of uniform networking principles. In the end it doesn't hamper security that much, but it is *very* hard to consolidate the efforts into a single network idealogy.
Why? For starters, it is a political thing. One group likes NT, another Sun and another HP. There are vested skills and talents for managing the network for each sub agency. It may not look pretty on paper, but does anyone think you can really turn that sort of establishment on its head and impose a single network policy on the whole Government, let alone one agency?
A fresh start would in some ways be nice, and the terrorism as of late may be a strong impetus to get this off the ground, but I have some doubts about how productive it will be.
We are beginning to drift on the topic a bit, but I feel compelled to say a few things.
I remember taking my CS tests just a few years ago. In the programming classes I was required to write code on paper. It would be graded on its accuracy and ability to compile. I understand the need to demonstrate logic of a program, however losing points for forgetting a semicolon or other syntax issues is just plain stupid. That is what a compiler is for. Besides, I never write code on paper, I type it. The two may look similar, but our learning patters don't translate that well. This is one stupid thing about how intelligence is measure in the CS field.
It is high time we asked ourselves what would be wrong with searching for answers on Google. Really, what is wrong with it? Why do we continue to place such value on having factoids stored in our heads. Sure, we need a certain modicum of facts and info up there, but the brain is a pretty unreliable storage medium when you get right down to it. It is a much better skill to know *how* to find information than to know it "off the top of your head".
The counter argument of course would be that someone could plaguarize. Well, this is obviously wrong and should continue to be discouraged. What we need to do instead is come up with a new way of critiquing things. For example, who really needs another essay about Moby Dick? Seriously, the topic is covered ad nasusium and will unlikely get any deeper. If you are presented with a topic to research and write about, it behooves you to see who has already researched it. If you determine that the world has enough intelligent essays or research on a topic, don't reinvent the wheel. Cite the sources and instead show that the issue is well handled and ask to move onto better things.
We are told the reason is to develop the individual's analytic skills. Is writing another mediocre analysis of "Catcher in the Rye" the way to do this? Hell, no! A better demonstration of analytic skills would be to expect the person to either come up with something insightful, or acknowledge the body of insight already out there. This would really turn academia on its head, I think.
Although it is too early to tell, do you support any form of civil disobedience to new laws that restrict cyryptography usage? In essence, if the government orders that the next version of PGP include back doors, do you plan to disregard the law for personal or political reasons? Furthermore, do you believe that the liberty to use encryption is threatened enough that users of PGP should refuse to accept back doors and continue using the current version?
I find it ironic that radio stations are bastardizing songs with tacky media recorded overlays, yet they come up with a "do not play" list. How is it somehow sensitive and polite to take Enya's "Only Time" and overlay it with sounds of crashing, crying and voices of fear, yet it would be unsettling to play Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". I'm not making this up, and I've also heard tacky heart-tugs with Bette Middler's "From a Distance" song. Sick, just plain sick.
These people have no foot to stand on to tell us about respect and decency in my opinion.
I'm not sure where you get that impression? One of the first world leaders to speak out in support of the United States was the French Prime Minister.
I would confidently say that Apple had no political angle on this. I would suspect that Apple is primarily concerned about the logistics of people travelling all over the world to attend the conference. In addition, a sparcely attended event would only further aggrivate economic troubles that Apple will be facing from this tragedy. Like it or not, the terrorism has taken the wind out our sails for a little bit. I'm sure we will all get along with life once a critical mass of society feels normal again. That time hasn't been reached yet.
Or it will tell you if a passenger in the car has been drinking, which (last time I checked) isn't against the law.
I'm really of two minds on this subject. Personally, I think that drunk driving costs way too many lives and is penalized too lightly. Just imagine if car crimes were treated like gun crimes. We really shouldn't treat car abuse so differently, given the vast amount of death and harm that results from drunk driving.
That said, I doubt if the suggested change will make people more safe, and it certainly isn't lawful to report to the police if a passenger chose to drink alcohol.
I have this book and it has been helpful, however I don't know if I would call it essential. It is good reading and handy. It saved me some time once, and that makes it worth the money. As far as the negatives the reviewer points out, this calls upon the definition of "essential" instead of "complete". The author I believe tries to document the basic and common aspects of the system, not every possible use, like firewalling and clustering.
I'll say it yet again, since this is just another way of drudging up the Code Red issue. The problem isn't the platform, it is the administration of the platform. If Unix can be counted on to be mismanaged then an exploit will surely surface. In short, if the Unix world ever finds itself in the state of the Windows NT world, where boxes aren't administered and patched, we too will be nailed. I anyone surprised? No. Okay, lets let this tired topic die already.
You bring up some good points, but I think market forces exert more influence on quality control than the FDA. I think the original poster is right about how public funding messes things up. If people can't organize themselves for "needed research" then apparently it isn't really needed. Sad, but true. The market place is the best priority filter we have. We may not like that most people prefer to save a buck or two and ignore the plight of humankind, but that is the general trend. The alternative of government forcefully making the populace pay for unpopular things (by this I mean things they don't go out of their way to pay for voluntarily). Not a good alternative in my opinion.
I am a part owner of an internet company and I run a technology site, but I'm getting tired of it all. A little bit of advertising never hurt anyone and it wasn't a problem that people wanted to sell things on the Internet, but when you have idiots who think the 'Net was made for privacy invation and pilfering wallets of their neighbors I get sick. Sometimes I seriously want to shut down my email box and go do something else.
These feeling go away after a bit, but I miss the good old Internet. I'm referring to the one before everyone thought it was a well spring of financial bliss. It is getting embarrassing to tell people that I make my living on this medium. Some days it feels like a theme park, with all the cheesy sound and lights. Shudder.
Seriously, it doesn't matter. I use minidisc for much of my personal recording. Does it bother me that my neighbor doesn't use it? No. If.ogg works for you, then it has done its job. In addition, you got what you paid for. Who cares if someone else still uses mp3. It is irrelevant as long as you can play back *your* audio.
Of course, if what you really want is for the world to pirate their music and download it, that is another issue entirely.
Others have given great advice so far, but I really like to conclude the interview by asking the person if he or she has any questions. I'm impressed if the person came to the interview with some intelligent questions about the company. Consider that this person is making a major life decision about where he or she works. You should expect them to take it seriously and to have researched your organization. A few questions about the work environment and the company style would demonstrate some maturity.
This isn't a substitute for the other good questions, but this has helped me to make good character judgements.
I suggest you turn your questions toward paper currency and see if it yields any sense. What is the dollar (or yen or any other paper currency) except a mutual agreement on value? The only reason we value paper money is because we are sure that somone in turn will place the same value on it. By and large Gold could be considered the same, except there is one significant difference... the amount of Gold is fundamentally limited by nature.
Alchemists dreamed about a way of turning lead into gold, but our modern system allows just that. There is nothing that prevents the treasury departments from printing more money because there is no scarcity for paper and ink. If you get right down to it, we are trusting those who print the bills. In the US the printing press runs 24 hours a day.
In short, this is the major factor in inflation. In my short life of 27 years I have seen many prices double. As a consumer I think of it as an increase in price, but wages have also gone up. Everything is fine, right? Wrong. There is a brief period between the time when money is printed and when it is circulated where the value of money hasn't caught up with the new supply. It is a very small and gradual shift, but it basically acts a hidden tax that the majority of society pays. This isn't an entirely new process. It has been recorded that kings would require all citizens to turn in their coins and they would be clipped smaller and the king would have the clippings remelted into new smaller coins. After this point everyone's money was less valuable and wages had to raise to compensate... but not before the king enjoyed the spending power of his coins at the old perceived value.
So what is so great about gold? The fact that governments can't capricously manufacture more gold means that you are shielded from this problem. That deeply disturbs financial planners. Mind you, hard currency like gold does have its own set of problems, but the great thing about it is how it eliminates the arbitrary inflation and hidden tax of paper currency.
Slashdot Mirror
So like many others, I just had to see this site. Yeah, porn. So what. The funny part is they have a link on the front page for selling the domain">. What a riot. The guys asks the /. community, we hammer their server then the clowns decide the domain has *even* more value. Hm... I wonder if it was the porn guys who emailed about this instead of the radio station. What an irony.
I have just recently started using Forte, which is Java based and produced by Sun. I think it is based off of their purchase of NetBeans some time back. The editor is quite nice, but it has far more features than I want. Personally I just edit with vi and use makefiles, but I'm required to find a development environment for multiple developers, and they aren't so keen on the old school methods.
I agree entirely. My software engineering class involved an overview of various estimated tools and it was all BS. The systems used lines of code as a metric. What a joke. I remember the magic number, which is just a way of them reverse engineering on historical data. The bean counters are desperate for a way to understand programmers without knowing a line of code.
Does that mean I'm rolling over and letting "the man" trample on civil liberties? No, it simply means that I recognize the change in climate that has come to my workplace. I don't like it, but the alternative could be much worse.
Most people would be in favor of searching the parsels of NIH employees. I don't know all the stuff that you do at NIH, but I have heard it is similar to the CDC. In these times, a bit of diligence and inconvenience will be worth it. This isn't very popular with much of the /. crowd, but residents of DC (like myself) are glad to see more stringent controls and searches.
The Bard's Legacy site has some neat screen shots & such, but at this time it isn't clear what platform it runs on. Details are a little sketchy, but it looks like a noble effort.
I do use the original, but when I want to run X Window appliations the user interface looks very different because of the window manager in use on the Xfree86 side. This kind of project helps make the whole UI more consistent. Bear in mind that the Quartz rendering engine for the Mac OS X display can't display X11 applications.
Hm... the package is a binary that runs on Apple computers with X11 in rootless mode under Mac OS X. Sounds like this one fits your criteria for non-sueing.
Don't get me wrong, I like MySQL. It is great and my company has donated to their organization to support the development. I use it on a daily basis and I am eager for 4.0.
./ takes it upon itself to replicate the function of Freshmeat.net. This annoys me a little, but I'll get over it.
My point is simply that
Other than the fact that /. uses MySQL for their back end, how is this news? How many incremental alpha releases warrant news mention? This thing got my hopes up, and then I read that it is an alpha release. Yawn. New for nerds with too much time on their hands.
I also don't have a local phone number, but the person who brought this up does have a point. At least in Washington DC where I live it is a big pain. Utility service isn't that hard, but getting a parking permit is absolute hell. The person you deal with is entrenched in beauracracy and probably won't budge on the requirement. Eventually you can find a sensible person, but it is a big pain. Hopefully this will change in time.
For what it is worth, back when I had a phone line I found the phrase "put me on your do not call list" to be fairly effective. Conversations about how the person should get a real job or stop harrassing me weren't helpful in stopping the calls.
I work for a federal agency on a contract basis and I have some doubts about the feasibility of doing this stuff. As an example, there are about a dozen sub agencies in this single agency and each of them implement their own firewalls. The building itself is segmented off and there is a lack of uniform networking principles. In the end it doesn't hamper security that much, but it is *very* hard to consolidate the efforts into a single network idealogy.
Why? For starters, it is a political thing. One group likes NT, another Sun and another HP. There are vested skills and talents for managing the network for each sub agency. It may not look pretty on paper, but does anyone think you can really turn that sort of establishment on its head and impose a single network policy on the whole Government, let alone one agency?
A fresh start would in some ways be nice, and the terrorism as of late may be a strong impetus to get this off the ground, but I have some doubts about how productive it will be.
I don't know about clones, but twins have different fingerprints.
Is that because you get screwed?
We are beginning to drift on the topic a bit, but I feel compelled to say a few things.
I remember taking my CS tests just a few years ago. In the programming classes I was required to write code on paper. It would be graded on its accuracy and ability to compile. I understand the need to demonstrate logic of a program, however losing points for forgetting a semicolon or other syntax issues is just plain stupid. That is what a compiler is for. Besides, I never write code on paper, I type it. The two may look similar, but our learning patters don't translate that well. This is one stupid thing about how intelligence is measure in the CS field.
It is high time we asked ourselves what would be wrong with searching for answers on Google. Really, what is wrong with it? Why do we continue to place such value on having factoids stored in our heads. Sure, we need a certain modicum of facts and info up there, but the brain is a pretty unreliable storage medium when you get right down to it. It is a much better skill to know *how* to find information than to know it "off the top of your head".
The counter argument of course would be that someone could plaguarize. Well, this is obviously wrong and should continue to be discouraged. What we need to do instead is come up with a new way of critiquing things. For example, who really needs another essay about Moby Dick? Seriously, the topic is covered ad nasusium and will unlikely get any deeper. If you are presented with a topic to research and write about, it behooves you to see who has already researched it. If you determine that the world has enough intelligent essays or research on a topic, don't reinvent the wheel. Cite the sources and instead show that the issue is well handled and ask to move onto better things.
We are told the reason is to develop the individual's analytic skills. Is writing another mediocre analysis of "Catcher in the Rye" the way to do this? Hell, no! A better demonstration of analytic skills would be to expect the person to either come up with something insightful, or acknowledge the body of insight already out there. This would really turn academia on its head, I think.
Although it is too early to tell, do you support any form of civil disobedience to new laws that restrict cyryptography usage? In essence, if the government orders that the next version of PGP include back doors, do you plan to disregard the law for personal or political reasons? Furthermore, do you believe that the liberty to use encryption is threatened enough that users of PGP should refuse to accept back doors and continue using the current version?
I find it ironic that radio stations are bastardizing songs with tacky media recorded overlays, yet they come up with a "do not play" list. How is it somehow sensitive and polite to take Enya's "Only Time" and overlay it with sounds of crashing, crying and voices of fear, yet it would be unsettling to play Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". I'm not making this up, and I've also heard tacky heart-tugs with Bette Middler's "From a Distance" song. Sick, just plain sick.
These people have no foot to stand on to tell us about respect and decency in my opinion.
I'm not sure where you get that impression? One of the first world leaders to speak out in support of the United States was the French Prime Minister.
I would confidently say that Apple had no political angle on this. I would suspect that Apple is primarily concerned about the logistics of people travelling all over the world to attend the conference. In addition, a sparcely attended event would only further aggrivate economic troubles that Apple will be facing from this tragedy. Like it or not, the terrorism has taken the wind out our sails for a little bit. I'm sure we will all get along with life once a critical mass of society feels normal again. That time hasn't been reached yet.
I'm really of two minds on this subject. Personally, I think that drunk driving costs way too many lives and is penalized too lightly. Just imagine if car crimes were treated like gun crimes. We really shouldn't treat car abuse so differently, given the vast amount of death and harm that results from drunk driving.
That said, I doubt if the suggested change will make people more safe, and it certainly isn't lawful to report to the police if a passenger chose to drink alcohol.
I have this book and it has been helpful, however I don't know if I would call it essential. It is good reading and handy. It saved me some time once, and that makes it worth the money. As far as the negatives the reviewer points out, this calls upon the definition of "essential" instead of "complete". The author I believe tries to document the basic and common aspects of the system, not every possible use, like firewalling and clustering.
I'll say it yet again, since this is just another way of drudging up the Code Red issue. The problem isn't the platform, it is the administration of the platform. If Unix can be counted on to be mismanaged then an exploit will surely surface. In short, if the Unix world ever finds itself in the state of the Windows NT world, where boxes aren't administered and patched, we too will be nailed. I anyone surprised? No. Okay, lets let this tired topic die already.
You bring up some good points, but I think market forces exert more influence on quality control than the FDA. I think the original poster is right about how public funding messes things up. If people can't organize themselves for "needed research" then apparently it isn't really needed. Sad, but true. The market place is the best priority filter we have. We may not like that most people prefer to save a buck or two and ignore the plight of humankind, but that is the general trend. The alternative of government forcefully making the populace pay for unpopular things (by this I mean things they don't go out of their way to pay for voluntarily). Not a good alternative in my opinion.
These feeling go away after a bit, but I miss the good old Internet. I'm referring to the one before everyone thought it was a well spring of financial bliss. It is getting embarrassing to tell people that I make my living on this medium. Some days it feels like a theme park, with all the cheesy sound and lights. Shudder.
Of course, if what you really want is for the world to pirate their music and download it, that is another issue entirely.
This isn't a substitute for the other good questions, but this has helped me to make good character judgements.
Alchemists dreamed about a way of turning lead into gold, but our modern system allows just that. There is nothing that prevents the treasury departments from printing more money because there is no scarcity for paper and ink. If you get right down to it, we are trusting those who print the bills. In the US the printing press runs 24 hours a day.
In short, this is the major factor in inflation. In my short life of 27 years I have seen many prices double. As a consumer I think of it as an increase in price, but wages have also gone up. Everything is fine, right? Wrong. There is a brief period between the time when money is printed and when it is circulated where the value of money hasn't caught up with the new supply. It is a very small and gradual shift, but it basically acts a hidden tax that the majority of society pays. This isn't an entirely new process. It has been recorded that kings would require all citizens to turn in their coins and they would be clipped smaller and the king would have the clippings remelted into new smaller coins. After this point everyone's money was less valuable and wages had to raise to compensate... but not before the king enjoyed the spending power of his coins at the old perceived value.
So what is so great about gold? The fact that governments can't capricously manufacture more gold means that you are shielded from this problem. That deeply disturbs financial planners. Mind you, hard currency like gold does have its own set of problems, but the great thing about it is how it eliminates the arbitrary inflation and hidden tax of paper currency.