UML is more than boxes and arrows showing inheritance. Derivation, composition and aggregation are all distinct concepts, and having those immediately visible instantly clarifies a design. UML-based sequence diagrams clarify the structure of a project up front, getting the rationale behind a project's structure in your (and others') heads straight off. Normally it takes a lot more hands-on time with code to really grok a project the way UML helps you to do.
Seeing relevant data and methods there on the page also helps in rethinking the flow and arrangement of data. And good data arrangement is the most significant bit of optimization a project can have, and even a simple UML editor implementation like you get with dia can help you make positive sweeping changes before you've written a line of code.
Using UML, we've successfully shortcutted a lot of iterative design, and our prototype code tends to look very similar to our final code.
In all seriousness - is there any way Slashdot could add an optional filter to remove "funny" content for those of us who don't think the 1,001th iteration of "Microsoft bad!", Slashdotting references, Beowulf clustering references and the likes are "funny?"
I hate to come across as a prick, but it's kind of annoying when this is the class of response heading most every story one reads.
The Linux versions of games are often priced much higher than the corresponding Windows version. It's tough for me to justify buying the Linux version when I can get the Windows version for a much lower price.
It costs more to make a Windows version, the Linux market isn't as competitive, and the market is smaller. And your above comment just illustrated one of the biggest problems - if you're willing to purchase the Windows version, there's no reason for a company to create a Linux version at all.
There was a great MS-DOS program which claimed to be a "compression utility." It would simply save pointers to the sectors upon which the original files existed, the file lengths and random data some 10% of the original size.
"Compressing" your files, erasing the originals and uncompressing again generally worked, as it seemed to have some intelligence about recovering deleted files instead of overwriting.
I found this program when a gullible friend lost most of his girlie porn collection to the thing and was crying for help.:)
In talking to the SGI crew at Siggraph, SGI already took their last developer off Fahrenheit, and Microsoft only ever had two guys dedicated to the project.
I won't guess at Microsoft's motives, but I'll submit this: At the point where Fahrenheit was announced, OpenGL was the defacto standard for 3D. If Direct3D hadn't taken off, the Fahrenheit alliance would have put Microsoft in the perfect position to embrace and extend.
Today, and as of Direct3D 5, all major chip makers are designing 3D hardware to match the functionality of Direct3D. nVidia's new hardware is DirectX 8. From Microsoft's standpoint, there wouldn't be much to gain by relinquishing control.
No matter what the platform, I use the standard 8x8 monospaced system font with all vertical lines at least 2 pixels wide.
Next, I bring the screen resolution down to the point where individual pixels are easily visible, and I set the background to a dark-to-medium blue or purple and use all brightly colored text. If syntax highlighting is available, keywords and symbols are white, numbers are green, comments are purple, and the rest is yellow.
For me, this makes it really easy to scan through code and stay in context.
It's a bit premature to give up on Bluetooth. As the author says, USB didn't catch on quickly either.
USB caught on because of Apple's initial adoption of the technology. People were used to paying a premium for Mac peripherals, which made targetting USB desireable.
Today, Bluetooth is just starting to appear in laptops. (I'm buying a Dell Inspiron 8000 with Bluetooth support. Bluetooth is now shipping.) Again, with laptops, people are used to paying a premium for most peripherals. And once there are enough people with Bluetooth-ready laptops out there, just waiting to spend a few bucks to use them, we can expect to see hardware manufacturers racing for the opportunity to charge the premium prices.
If you can find some specialty service that you can drop in, deliver and move on, you may do well.
For example, I'll wager there are a million churches who could use web sites - dropping in to perform a few weeks of training and a bit of service and equipment selection before moving on may do you well, especially if you only ask a tiny sum and a place to stay for the duration.
Ditto, small specialty stores who could use an online web presence, or various types of service companies which still haven't moved to automated billing. I'll wager there's something similar out there that fits what you'd really like to be working on.
---
My opinions are mine -- not those of my employer.
Actually, it is likely that apple will not sue slashdot for using the logo. If you look very closely, you can see a little
copyright symbol at the lower right corner. Apple would have no grounds for suing slashdot, so there is no
possible way for them to hold up a case...
Actually, it looks more like a K. So, the only people who might be coming after Slashdot are the orthodox Jews...
---
My opinions are mine -- not those of my employer.
In the 2nd grade, I was in a classroom where both the 2nd and 3rd grades were taught. Generally, one grade level was brought to a small area for lessons while the other worked on assignments. I asked if I could take both grades at once if I kept up with the work. The teacher simply agreed, telling me I could proceed so long as my work was good. She didn't lean on me or breathe down my neck, simply let me do my thing. I got all As in all courses for both grade levels.
In high school, I had an English teacher who taught English almost as a secondary thing. Her class was all about life lessons; what it feels like to be an adult, to get older, to enter real relationships, to age - on and on. She tried to give us a picture of the real world, something which was lacking in every other classroom I've been in. Almost every time she'd start talking, I'd listen and drink it all in - no other teacher had me doing that.
Lastly, in my senior year of high school, I had a computer teacher who just got excited about what I was doing. That was it. He'd get excited, tell me it was cool, and stay out of my way. He let me work on pretty much whatever I wanted, so long as I was actively doing something. I ended up publishing a game I'd written in class, and that was the start of my career.
Legalities aside, punishing Nintendo is as simple as backing up your favorite N64 emulation project and doing all you can to spread ROM love.
There are already several CD-ROMs available on ebay with Windows N64 emulators and games on them. Not sure about anything mature for Linux. None of the CDs for sale are legal, of course.
Thing is - Nintendo is hurt the least by copying - game developers are hurt the most. Developers actually pay in advance for cartridge production. N64 has made its money no matter what, unless they miss out on the developer purchasing an additional run of games, which would take a pretty substantial copying campaign.
The only way the above method of hurting Nintendo is valid is if these are actual Nintendo-branded games that are being shared.
Yeah, it really strikes a blow against telemarketing to take it out on the poor guy making minimum wage whose circumstances have made him desperate enough to take one of the worst jobs in the universe.
Convince me that there are NO other choices for this person and maybe I'll listen to you play the violin a while.
If you take a job telemarketing, you KNOW that you're doing something to inconvenience them. There is ZERO sympathy deserved by these people, regardless of how little they earn.
I usually leave telemarketers off with something along the lines of, "Hey, buddy - is this really what you wanted to do when you grew up? Put me on your no-call list."
To digress - word to the wise: the wording you should use is "put me on your don't call list," not "take me off your call list." Telemarketers are required to keep a list of numbers not to call. Taking you OFF the list just means that you're not getting called again this cycle... which they wouldn't have done anyway.
Structured Programming, by O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare has been continuously in print since 1972. It came highly recommended by Don Knuth, no less, in his recent lecture.
I used to run a couple small websites. One day I forgot to close a table, causing the table to not display under Netscape. IE rendered the table just fine, assuming that since the page/HTML section was over, I was likely not adding more to it.
I got six or seven e-mails about this, all of them nasty and insulting. My logs showed that fewer than a dozen Netscape visitors had even visited!
I fixed the error, but included some code to suggest an IE download to Netscape users. Insults poured in, someone attempted to DoS the site, and I even received a snail mail letter with some rather nasty material (feces?) smeared on it.
Frankly, I don't know what conclusion to draw here. At least people seem to have calmed down about the browser wars -- things like the story's hilighted site are less the norm, though I'll wager his Netscape bashing has tripled his site traffic overnight thanks to Slashdot's troll story.
Oh, yeah. We wanna learn about our world using man pages...
# man hallway
HALL(1)
  House General Rooms Manual
  HALL(1)
NAME
hall - long room in a building
SYNOPSIS
hall [-benstuv] [-] [person...]
DESCRIPTION
The HALL location accepts persons sequentially, presenting them
with a standard hardwood floor support system. The persons may
be dispatched to alternate locations in an arbitrary order.
The person operands are processed in command line order. A
single dash represents the standard input.
DIAGNOSTICS
The HALL utility operates continually, catching fire if an
error occurs.
BUGS
Because of the selection mechanism used to perform input,
not all visitors may be interesting or even initially
invited.
SEE ALSO
porch(1), bedroom(2), park(1)
Martha Stewart, "Your Inviting Hallway", _Better Homes and
Gardens_, 1983.
The bottom line on this kind of stuff is that consumers will eventually win. The free market demands it. From a technology perspective, bulletproof copy protection is impossible. Every single attempt has been defeated. From the errors on Track 40 of a Commodore-64 floppy (and the copy programs that put those errors on the duplicate), to Macrovision on VHS (and the sync repeaters that worked around it), to CSS (and DeCSS), technology has proven time and again that you can't give a consumer access to some sort of media and completely lock out the ability to copy it. The only sure-fire way to prevent copying is to deliver all pay-per-view programming with an accompanying lawyer, policeman, or whatever in the consumer's living room. And that ain't gonna happen.
Unfortunately, you list some examples of just how evil/reckless business can be about trying to protect their intellectual property. I mean - the track 35+ disk logic was destroying the alignment of C-64 disk drives left and right - even legitimate software users would get a hold of the cracks just to save their hardware. Yet business persisted with this for YEARS just because it stopped the casual user for a few months each time. Like it or not - whatever draws capital will always put the user's best interests second, no matter how loudly they complain.
I visited my girlfriend at California State University in Chico.
They have a section of a park which is reserved for free speech. I asked a few people what that meant about the rest of the campus and it was eerie -- everybody seemed to think of it as a cool extra that had been granted to them. Nobody saw it as something taken away.
*shudder*... double plus good for the Orwelians, I suppose.
What is 4C's reponse to "why don't you push for enforcement of the current copyright laws instead of an unpopular techno "fix" that will be thwarted upon release?" How do they justify their position?
Most importantly - how does the 4C justify their position to the consumer? How is this in the consumer's best interest?
Stuart: Besides, meat tends to run away when possible, or fights. Either response presents behavioral challenges too complex for any existing robot so far...
Editor: So far?
Stuart: (evil grin) It can't catch meat... so far...
Editor: D-do you mind if I cut that part? You promised me you were going to stop saying that!
Stuart: (wringing hands) Yeeeeeeessss... cut that part... my robots will cut that part... MWA HA HA HA HA!!!!
Companies have been pitching this whole "Internet appliance" for the past five years, and it still hasn't caught on. WebTV was supposed to revolutionize TV and the Internet, and it hasn't made a dent in either. It's pretty apparent that no matter what some corporate visionary says, consumers just don't want "Internet appliances." They'd rather have a PC that also does word processing, or a music player that also plays CDs, or a game console for gaming...
My grandmother has asked about getting internet access a number of times. We've resisted because she lives a hundred miles away from her nearest computer-using relative. We're all afraid of having to support her over the phone.
Realistically, I don't think my mom has used her home PC for anything but web browsing and e-mail in over a year.
And if/when.NET takes off, your front end system will be substantially reduced to the point where it's feasible that an appliance like this could host remotely distributed.NET applications. With the included ethernet connection, a system like this could very well be all one needs to run a suite of.NET applications. If this is a coming trend, Sony is wise to get capable hardware out there early.
I like the portrait display orientation. This really makes more sense than landscape.
I've never understood why monitors have continued to have a wide aspect. When reading text, it's easy to lose one's line when advancing a line after scanning too far left and right.
More vertical space means less desk space. It offers a representation more closely resembling a conventional page of text. It means more lines of code (check out the amount of wasted screen space next time you're programming). The advantages are many, yet I haven't seen a new monitor with the portrait orientation in a LONG time.:/
Slashdot Mirror
UML is more than boxes and arrows showing inheritance. Derivation, composition and aggregation are all distinct concepts, and having those immediately visible instantly clarifies a design. UML-based sequence diagrams clarify the structure of a project up front, getting the rationale behind a project's structure in your (and others') heads straight off. Normally it takes a lot more hands-on time with code to really grok a project the way UML helps you to do.
Seeing relevant data and methods there on the page also helps in rethinking the flow and arrangement of data. And good data arrangement is the most significant bit of optimization a project can have, and even a simple UML editor implementation like you get with dia can help you make positive sweeping changes before you've written a line of code.
Using UML, we've successfully shortcutted a lot of iterative design, and our prototype code tends to look very similar to our final code.
---
My opinions are mine.
In all seriousness - is there any way Slashdot could add an optional filter to remove "funny" content for those of us who don't think the 1,001th iteration of "Microsoft bad!", Slashdotting references, Beowulf clustering references and the likes are "funny?"
I hate to come across as a prick, but it's kind of annoying when this is the class of response heading most every story one reads.
---
My opinions are mine.
It costs more to make a Windows version, the Linux market isn't as competitive, and the market is smaller. And your above comment just illustrated one of the biggest problems - if you're willing to purchase the Windows version, there's no reason for a company to create a Linux version at all.
---
My opinions are mine.
There was a great MS-DOS program which claimed to be a "compression utility." It would simply save pointers to the sectors upon which the original files existed, the file lengths and random data some 10% of the original size.
"Compressing" your files, erasing the originals and uncompressing again generally worked, as it seemed to have some intelligence about recovering deleted files instead of overwriting.
I found this program when a gullible friend lost most of his girlie porn collection to the thing and was crying for help. :)
---
My opinions are mine.
In talking to the SGI crew at Siggraph, SGI already took their last developer off Fahrenheit, and Microsoft only ever had two guys dedicated to the project.
I won't guess at Microsoft's motives, but I'll submit this: At the point where Fahrenheit was announced, OpenGL was the defacto standard for 3D. If Direct3D hadn't taken off, the Fahrenheit alliance would have put Microsoft in the perfect position to embrace and extend.
Today, and as of Direct3D 5, all major chip makers are designing 3D hardware to match the functionality of Direct3D. nVidia's new hardware is DirectX 8. From Microsoft's standpoint, there wouldn't be much to gain by relinquishing control.
---
My opinions are mine.
No matter what the platform, I use the standard 8x8 monospaced system font with all vertical lines at least 2 pixels wide.
Next, I bring the screen resolution down to the point where individual pixels are easily visible, and I set the background to a dark-to-medium blue or purple and use all brightly colored text. If syntax highlighting is available, keywords and symbols are white, numbers are green, comments are purple, and the rest is yellow.
For me, this makes it really easy to scan through code and stay in context.
---
My opinions are mine.
It's a bit premature to give up on Bluetooth. As the author says, USB didn't catch on quickly either.
USB caught on because of Apple's initial adoption of the technology. People were used to paying a premium for Mac peripherals, which made targetting USB desireable.
Today, Bluetooth is just starting to appear in laptops. (I'm buying a Dell Inspiron 8000 with Bluetooth support. Bluetooth is now shipping.) Again, with laptops, people are used to paying a premium for most peripherals. And once there are enough people with Bluetooth-ready laptops out there, just waiting to spend a few bucks to use them, we can expect to see hardware manufacturers racing for the opportunity to charge the premium prices.
---
My opinions are mine.
For smaller-scale UML diagrams on an underpowered machine, dia works just fine, and it couldn't be faster.
---
My opinions are mine -- not those of my employer.
If you can find some specialty service that you can drop in, deliver and move on, you may do well.
For example, I'll wager there are a million churches who could use web sites - dropping in to perform a few weeks of training and a bit of service and equipment selection before moving on may do you well, especially if you only ask a tiny sum and a place to stay for the duration.
Ditto, small specialty stores who could use an online web presence, or various types of service companies which still haven't moved to automated billing. I'll wager there's something similar out there that fits what you'd really like to be working on.
---
My opinions are mine -- not those of my employer.
Actually, it looks more like a K. So, the only people who might be coming after Slashdot are the orthodox Jews...
---
My opinions are mine -- not those of my employer.
Okay, kid. Gimme your lunch finger or I dunk ya in the toilet. ...what? Again? DAMN YOU! That threat used ta WORK!
I had 3 teachers who really made a difference...
In the 2nd grade, I was in a classroom where both the 2nd and 3rd grades were taught. Generally, one grade level was brought to a small area for lessons while the other worked on assignments. I asked if I could take both grades at once if I kept up with the work. The teacher simply agreed, telling me I could proceed so long as my work was good. She didn't lean on me or breathe down my neck, simply let me do my thing. I got all As in all courses for both grade levels.
In high school, I had an English teacher who taught English almost as a secondary thing. Her class was all about life lessons; what it feels like to be an adult, to get older, to enter real relationships, to age - on and on. She tried to give us a picture of the real world, something which was lacking in every other classroom I've been in. Almost every time she'd start talking, I'd listen and drink it all in - no other teacher had me doing that.
Lastly, in my senior year of high school, I had a computer teacher who just got excited about what I was doing. That was it. He'd get excited, tell me it was cool, and stay out of my way. He let me work on pretty much whatever I wanted, so long as I was actively doing something. I ended up publishing a game I'd written in class, and that was the start of my career.
There are already several CD-ROMs available on ebay with Windows N64 emulators and games on them. Not sure about anything mature for Linux. None of the CDs for sale are legal, of course.
Thing is - Nintendo is hurt the least by copying - game developers are hurt the most. Developers actually pay in advance for cartridge production. N64 has made its money no matter what, unless they miss out on the developer purchasing an additional run of games, which would take a pretty substantial copying campaign.
The only way the above method of hurting Nintendo is valid is if these are actual Nintendo-branded games that are being shared.
Convince me that there are NO other choices for this person and maybe I'll listen to you play the violin a while.
If you take a job telemarketing, you KNOW that you're doing something to inconvenience them. There is ZERO sympathy deserved by these people, regardless of how little they earn.
I usually leave telemarketers off with something along the lines of, "Hey, buddy - is this really what you wanted to do when you grew up? Put me on your no-call list."
To digress - word to the wise: the wording you should use is "put me on your don't call list," not "take me off your call list." Telemarketers are required to keep a list of numbers not to call. Taking you OFF the list just means that you're not getting called again this cycle... which they wouldn't have done anyway.
I can't find a copy of this anywhere. Pointers?
Ditto here.
I used to run a couple small websites. One day I forgot to close a table, causing the table to not display under Netscape. IE rendered the table just fine, assuming that since the page/HTML section was over, I was likely not adding more to it.
I got six or seven e-mails about this, all of them nasty and insulting. My logs showed that fewer than a dozen Netscape visitors had even visited!
I fixed the error, but included some code to suggest an IE download to Netscape users. Insults poured in, someone attempted to DoS the site, and I even received a snail mail letter with some rather nasty material (feces?) smeared on it.
Frankly, I don't know what conclusion to draw here. At least people seem to have calmed down about the browser wars -- things like the story's hilighted site are less the norm, though I'll wager his Netscape bashing has tripled his site traffic overnight thanks to Slashdot's troll story.
# man hallway
HALL(1)   House General Rooms Manual   HALL(1)
NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
1st Snowfox Home Distribution October 13, 1999
#
<Keanu>
Whoah. *crunch*
</Keanu>
Unfortunately, you list some examples of just how evil/reckless business can be about trying to protect their intellectual property. I mean - the track 35+ disk logic was destroying the alignment of C-64 disk drives left and right - even legitimate software users would get a hold of the cracks just to save their hardware. Yet business persisted with this for YEARS just because it stopped the casual user for a few months each time. Like it or not - whatever draws capital will always put the user's best interests second, no matter how loudly they complain.
Does there yet exist a Palm calculator program which can hold a light to the HP48 series calculators?
I visited my girlfriend at California State University in Chico.
They have a section of a park which is reserved for free speech. I asked a few people what that meant about the rest of the campus and it was eerie -- everybody seemed to think of it as a cool extra that had been granted to them. Nobody saw it as something taken away.
*shudder* ... double plus good for the Orwelians, I suppose.
Editor: So far?
Stuart: (evil grin) It can't catch meat... so far...
Editor: D-do you mind if I cut that part? You promised me you were going to stop saying that!
Stuart: (wringing hands) Yeeeeeeessss... cut that part... my robots will cut that part... MWA HA HA HA HA!!!!
My grandmother has asked about getting internet access a number of times. We've resisted because she lives a hundred miles away from her nearest computer-using relative. We're all afraid of having to support her over the phone.
Realistically, I don't think my mom has used her home PC for anything but web browsing and e-mail in over a year.
And if/when .NET takes off, your front end system will be substantially reduced to the point where it's feasible that an appliance like this could host remotely distributed .NET applications. With the included ethernet connection, a system like this could very well be all one needs to run a suite of .NET applications. If this is a coming trend, Sony is wise to get capable hardware out there early.
I like the portrait display orientation. This really makes more sense than landscape.
I've never understood why monitors have continued to have a wide aspect. When reading text, it's easy to lose one's line when advancing a line after scanning too far left and right.
More vertical space means less desk space. It offers a representation more closely resembling a conventional page of text. It means more lines of code (check out the amount of wasted screen space next time you're programming). The advantages are many, yet I haven't seen a new monitor with the portrait orientation in a LONG time. :/