In Japan, QR Codes are not only used to download data (i.e. a link to a web page), but also to upload data. I.e. after playing a video game in an arcade, a QR Code is shown on the screen. Take a picture of it, and your high score will be uploaded to the game provider's server (to have a global high-score table for that game). That's not possible with MS tags, as they are just pointers, never carrying additional information.
Wow, I am surprised that nobody mentioned the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF). EPF grew out of the Rational Unified Process (RUP). IBM donated a slimmed-down version of RUP to Eclipse, calling it OpenUP. To edit the processes, you use the free EPF Composer.
Now in my opinion, EPF isn't right for everybody. While the tools are free, it still takes some time to master, as it is quite complex. It doesn't make sense for small organizations that don't have a big budget for this (as mentioned by others, MediaWiki can be quite successful in those cases). But if you want high-quality process documentation, and are willing to put the required effort into it, this is an amazing tool. To get an idea on how the results look like, check out OpenUP - it has been built with these tools. For organizations of a certain size, especially if they aspire ISO 9001 or CMMI certification, this is a good choice. The biggest disadvantage: It doesn't encourage collaboration.
I once worked at a company in the late 90ies that had code of an exceptionally high quality (around 500k LoC in Java). It was pretty clear to me that this was because of good management. The VP of Technology had a very strong opinion about how to develop code:
Not a single line of code was written without source control and bug tracking in place
The architecture was defined before code was written
There were coding guidelines (style, etc.) that were ENFORCED
All code was reviewed
Incorrect documentation (including comments) were considered bugs of the hightest priority.
etc...
You get the picture. Bottom line: at some point, I had to work on code that was three years old and that I had never worked on or seen before. It was an absolute pleasure to work on the code: Due to the style everything looked familiar, comments described WHAT the methods were doing, the architecture was clean, etc.
Without good management that understood software development AND that was willing to impose some important rules, this would not have been necessary.
Actually, if you look at the Slashdot-post that announced the iPod, you'll see that most users where enthusiastic and embraced the iPod. The fact that the announcement itself considered it "lame" tells you more about the Slashdot Editors, not the Slashdot community.
I didn't install a PC game for quite a while (3 years), but when I did, it was always a nightmare: Either the game required the latest DirectX driver, or it shipped its own drivers that screwed something up, etc.
Likewise, it's certainly easier for game developers to know the exact specs of the machine the game is running on.
Ultimately, this goes back to the question whether an integrated tool (swiss army knife) or dedicated tool is better. And of course the dedicated tool is always better, but the quality comes at a price. With hardware prices dropping, I can see why users (like me) prefer the console. It's not that much more expensive, but it does a better job than the PC.
There will always be a market for swiss army knifes, and there will always be games for PCs, but I expect that the more interesting games will appear on concoles, not PCs.
Very cool project - the screenshots posted by the parent comment show nicely that the Tübingen Project forgot to adjust the colors - due to the Doppler effect, colors change dramatically.
A few years ago, MIT decided to make all their teaching materials available to the public to their now famous OpenCourseware Project. While this is not research, the impact is similar - essentially giving a $40k/year product away for free (well, not quite - but still). Likewise, they got similar comments - good and bad.
By now, OCW has over 900 MIT classes available, and is an amazing success. I hope that the Dutch will succeed in a similar fashion.
Honestly, I can't understand all the excitement about this play. I saw it a few weeks ago, and was quite disappointed: There was little original stuff: the jokes were almost all recycled from "Holy Grail". For someone knowing and liking Monty Python, it was amusing, but I would have expected a little more from an expensive Broadway show.
Remember that there was a time where pictures on credit cards were en vogue? That was a great way to prevent fraud when using a card in person. I was wondering why the credit card companies didn't make it mandatory (they should like it, as it would keep abuse rates down). Turned out they hated it, and making it mandatory was a big no-no. Why? Because it would have complicated to process of sending out preapproved credit card offers, especially if the customer would have been required to send them a photo back.
Likewise, I don't think this idea will take off, for the same reasons. The banks prefer to use heuristics and statistics, and live with a small fraud rate, rather than loosing potential customers.
I was going to MIT in 1995 when the film was released. Everybody at the adjacent Sloan School of Management was talking about it and called it a perfect case study of great project management and team work. The article confirms that - great read.
Reminds me of the California Coastline Project that got launched a few years ago. The idea behind it was to help people spot environmental crimes, building violations, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Google's maps will soon be used for similar things - although it would help to have a more frequent update than 18 months, and to be able to browse in the past. While that information is available now (for a fee), it'll have quite a different impact once it's free.
I am in the camp of those who gave OS X a sincere try, and there is one thing that's driving me crazy: There is no way of switching off mouse acceleration (I am not talking about adjusting the mouse speed - that's easy). Anybody out there who knows how to fix this?
This seems minor, but when I tried to find a solution to this online, I stumbled across this guy who sold his PowerBook after a month, because it was driving him so crazy!
Supposedly this can be switched off by using a Kensington mouse (and the Kensington drivers), but that doesn't help much with a build-in touchpad. Any experts dare to comment...?
...and those are legal reasons. Did you notice that Goole News has no ads? From a recent Wired Article:
The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.
Under these circumstances, I don't mind a beta - but arguably, that doesn't justify many of the other betas mentioned in the article.
Web servers can (and many do) negotiate locale with the web browser. All Web Browsers allow you to set not only one locale, but a list of locales. The Server then checks them in the order given, and uses the first one that matches.
In Firefox, it's under Tools -> Options -> General -> Languages. Once you're there, it's quite intutive. Make sure that [en] or [en-us] is on the top of the list.
You may also want to flush your cookies after doing the above. Some sites set your language preferences in a cookie, and once established, and would ignore the language settings if a cookie already gives them the "right" answer.
While this may not be an issue for beginners, it should be mentioned that you need a CRT for high-quality stereo viewing. By that I mean using active LCD shutter glasses that are synchronized with the screen, showing each eye the proper image at a time (usually there is a small IR sender connected to the video card to synchronize the glasses). For this to work, the light leaving the screen must not be polarized. But LCD displays use polarization to work in the first place!
Of course, you can still use VR goggles or poor-man's red/green glasses, but for professional 3D viewing, Active LCD glasses is the way to go.
So let's say you want to write a tool to validate that some Java code conforms to something or other. What's the hardest part of that task, that shouldn't be hard? Parsing the Java code.
I am sorry, but the problem you are proposing has already been solved - by the compiler - and you don't want to reinvent the wheel, or duplicate code.
You think I am kidding? Open any modern Java IDE (e.g. Eclipse). You see the whole structure of your program in a huge tree, where you can seamlessly browse through files, jar files, classes, methods, etc. How do you think this works under the hood? I'll tell you: It's nicely navigating along the compiled bytecode. Already parsed, and guaranteed to conform to a well-documented standard. No point in replacing the bytecode with XML.
Object instantiation is cheap!
on
How Tomcat Works
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Contrary to popular believe, object instantiation is quite cheap these days (see Hotspot Garbage Collection FAQ for great information on this topic). Over the years, garbage collection algorithms have changed quite a bit. As most objects are short-lived in a well-designed OO system, GCs are tuned to exploit that. In fact, if the object is disposed in less then 4-6 GC cycles, the cost is almost nothing, and it gets more expensive, the longer the object is kept around. This is the case because young generation objects are never copied within the heap, while old generation object may be copied multiple times.
From this follows that object pools are counterproductive for performance (unless, of course, if resources are associated with them, like Database connections, open sockets, etc.).
I heard that quite a few app servers (including JBoss) started to refactor to get rid of object pools, but I don't have a link to back this up.
Donate it to FireFox! [Re:gmail invites]
on
Gmail Adds Features
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If you don't know what to do with your invites, donate them to FireFox! (Well, it's currently suspended, but stay tuned!)
Slightly offtopic, but if we consider size, check out the idea of a Solar Tower, a completely different approach for harvesting sun energy by producing wind (in the form of an upward draft). There was a prototype in Spain (195m high), and now the Australian Government is considering to build one that is 1 km high, with a diameter of 5 km!
(1) New technology gets developed;
(2) Corporations see the potential, and start huge marketing campaigns;
(3) Industy trend setter (Wired, etc.) hype the technology beyond means;
(4) Technology doesn't deliver, because it isn't mature yet (and applications are missing);
(5) Industry trend setter declare the technology dead;
(6) Surprise - years later, the technology has a comeback, often without ordinary folks even noticing.
I have seen this happening often (Java, Bluetooth, etc.), and it seems to happen again. I once heard that new technologies, no matter whether software or otherwise, take an average of seven years to mature. Java is a great example: Released in 1995, and hyped like crazy, failed to deliver. Interestingly enough, it got hyped as a web language and succeeded in the enterprise.
Back to WAP: The article acknowledges this mechanism:
"WAP has such a negative stigma attached to it because that's what carriers
marketed several years ago, rather than what could be done with WAP"
Pure marketing hype, without knowing how to deliver.
"... the
technology got the blame for misguided and poorly implemented content."
Like with Java, the application of the technology was not yet completely understood.
"The majority of users don't care how
their phone gets the news headlines or sports scores"
... the same way that most users don't care whether the sites they visit are driven by JSP, PHP or ASP. I bet most uses think Java is dead (if they even know what it is). Likewise, myst users don't care about WAP.
Let's face it: Most technologies get only powerful and influencial once they are not sexy any more - and even then only geeks will notice.
Well, I have been on a quest for years to find the smallest usable keyboard. My desk is fairly small, and a small keyboard footprint makes a real difference. Small means no number pad, and usable means well-arrarnged control keys (cursor, Home, End, etc.)
I used to have a Cherry ML4100, which I really liked, but I just wore it out (letters wore off, unreliable action).
Now I switched to the really slick looking Blu Illuminated Keyboard. But I am not that happy with it: The feel is too hard and inconsistent, and worst of all, where I'd expect the left Ctrl key, is the "Fn" key (for alternate keys). Still, the looks make up for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, on the page you linked, they advertise a six year warranty:
> The Philips EnduraLED meets or exceeds these specifications with 806 lumens, 2700K, a CRI of 80 and a 6 year warranty.
The article doesn't mention it, but I would assume that the silkworms would be part of a closed food cycle, powered by light:
Sun -> Plants grow -> Silkworms eat plants -> Humans eat worms -> Excrement fertilizes soil -> Plants grow...
In Japan, QR Codes are not only used to download data (i.e. a link to a web page), but also to upload data. I.e. after playing a video game in an arcade, a QR Code is shown on the screen. Take a picture of it, and your high score will be uploaded to the game provider's server (to have a global high-score table for that game). That's not possible with MS tags, as they are just pointers, never carrying additional information.
The statement "the world population is increasing exponentially" is completely wrong. I wished that people would check their facts before posting decade-old misinformation!
Now in my opinion, EPF isn't right for everybody. While the tools are free, it still takes some time to master, as it is quite complex. It doesn't make sense for small organizations that don't have a big budget for this (as mentioned by others, MediaWiki can be quite successful in those cases). But if you want high-quality process documentation, and are willing to put the required effort into it, this is an amazing tool. To get an idea on how the results look like, check out OpenUP - it has been built with these tools. For organizations of a certain size, especially if they aspire ISO 9001 or CMMI certification, this is a good choice. The biggest disadvantage: It doesn't encourage collaboration.
- Not a single line of code was written without source control and bug tracking in place
- The architecture was defined before code was written
- There were coding guidelines (style, etc.) that were ENFORCED
- All code was reviewed
- Incorrect documentation (including comments) were considered bugs of the hightest priority.
- etc...
You get the picture. Bottom line: at some point, I had to work on code that was three years old and that I had never worked on or seen before. It was an absolute pleasure to work on the code: Due to the style everything looked familiar, comments described WHAT the methods were doing, the architecture was clean, etc.Without good management that understood software development AND that was willing to impose some important rules, this would not have been necessary.
Actually, if you look at the Slashdot-post that announced the iPod, you'll see that most users where enthusiastic and embraced the iPod. The fact that the announcement itself considered it "lame" tells you more about the Slashdot Editors, not the Slashdot community.
Likewise, it's certainly easier for game developers to know the exact specs of the machine the game is running on.
Ultimately, this goes back to the question whether an integrated tool (swiss army knife) or dedicated tool is better. And of course the dedicated tool is always better, but the quality comes at a price. With hardware prices dropping, I can see why users (like me) prefer the console. It's not that much more expensive, but it does a better job than the PC.
There will always be a market for swiss army knifes, and there will always be games for PCs, but I expect that the more interesting games will appear on concoles, not PCs.
Very cool project - the screenshots posted by the parent comment show nicely that the Tübingen Project forgot to adjust the colors - due to the Doppler effect, colors change dramatically.
By now, OCW has over 900 MIT classes available, and is an amazing success. I hope that the Dutch will succeed in a similar fashion.
Honestly, I can't understand all the excitement about this play. I saw it a few weeks ago, and was quite disappointed: There was little original stuff: the jokes were almost all recycled from "Holy Grail". For someone knowing and liking Monty Python, it was amusing, but I would have expected a little more from an expensive Broadway show.
I wrote a longer review last week - check it out: http://jastram.de/story.php?id=187
Remember that there was a time where pictures on credit cards were en vogue? That was a great way to prevent fraud when using a card in person. I was wondering why the credit card companies didn't make it mandatory (they should like it, as it would keep abuse rates down). Turned out they hated it, and making it mandatory was a big no-no. Why? Because it would have complicated to process of sending out preapproved credit card offers, especially if the customer would have been required to send them a photo back.
Likewise, I don't think this idea will take off, for the same reasons. The banks prefer to use heuristics and statistics, and live with a small fraud rate, rather than loosing potential customers.
I was going to MIT in 1995 when the film was released. Everybody at the adjacent Sloan School of Management was talking about it and called it a perfect case study of great project management and team work. The article confirms that - great read.
Reminds me of the California Coastline Project that got launched a few years ago. The idea behind it was to help people spot environmental crimes, building violations, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Google's maps will soon be used for similar things - although it would help to have a more frequent update than 18 months, and to be able to browse in the past. While that information is available now (for a fee), it'll have quite a different impact once it's free.
This seems minor, but when I tried to find a solution to this online, I stumbled across this guy who sold his PowerBook after a month, because it was driving him so crazy!
Supposedly this can be switched off by using a Kensington mouse (and the Kensington drivers), but that doesn't help much with a build-in touchpad. Any experts dare to comment...?
The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that "fair use" doesn't cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.
Under these circumstances, I don't mind a beta - but arguably, that doesn't justify many of the other betas mentioned in the article.
MIT's president Susan Hockfield.
Web servers can (and many do) negotiate locale with the web browser. All Web Browsers allow you to set not only one locale, but a list of locales. The Server then checks them in the order given, and uses the first one that matches.
In Firefox, it's under Tools -> Options -> General -> Languages. Once you're there, it's quite intutive. Make sure that [en] or [en-us] is on the top of the list.
You may also want to flush your cookies after doing the above. Some sites set your language preferences in a cookie, and once established, and would ignore the language settings if a cookie already gives them the "right" answer.
Of course, you can still use VR goggles or poor-man's red/green glasses, but for professional 3D viewing, Active LCD glasses is the way to go.
I am sorry, but the problem you are proposing has already been solved - by the compiler - and you don't want to reinvent the wheel, or duplicate code.
You think I am kidding? Open any modern Java IDE (e.g. Eclipse). You see the whole structure of your program in a huge tree, where you can seamlessly browse through files, jar files, classes, methods, etc. How do you think this works under the hood? I'll tell you: It's nicely navigating along the compiled bytecode. Already parsed, and guaranteed to conform to a well-documented standard. No point in replacing the bytecode with XML.
From this follows that object pools are counterproductive for performance (unless, of course, if resources are associated with them, like Database connections, open sockets, etc.).
I heard that quite a few app servers (including JBoss) started to refactor to get rid of object pools, but I don't have a link to back this up.
If you don't know what to do with your invites, donate them to FireFox! (Well, it's currently suspended, but stay tuned!)
Slightly offtopic, but if we consider size, check out the idea of a Solar Tower, a completely different approach for harvesting sun energy by producing wind (in the form of an upward draft). There was a prototype in Spain (195m high), and now the Australian Government is considering to build one that is 1 km high, with a diameter of 5 km!
(2) Corporations see the potential, and start huge marketing campaigns;
(3) Industy trend setter (Wired, etc.) hype the technology beyond means;
(4) Technology doesn't deliver, because it isn't mature yet (and applications are missing);
(5) Industry trend setter declare the technology dead;
(6) Surprise - years later, the technology has a comeback, often without ordinary folks even noticing.
I have seen this happening often (Java, Bluetooth, etc.), and it seems to happen again. I once heard that new technologies, no matter whether software or otherwise, take an average of seven years to mature. Java is a great example: Released in 1995, and hyped like crazy, failed to deliver. Interestingly enough, it got hyped as a web language and succeeded in the enterprise.
Back to WAP: The article acknowledges this mechanism:
"WAP has such a negative stigma attached to it because that's what carriers marketed several years ago, rather than what could be done with WAP"
Pure marketing hype, without knowing how to deliver.
"... the technology got the blame for misguided and poorly implemented content."
Like with Java, the application of the technology was not yet completely understood.
"The majority of users don't care how their phone gets the news headlines or sports scores"
Let's face it: Most technologies get only powerful and influencial once they are not sexy any more - and even then only geeks will notice.
I used to have a Cherry ML4100, which I really liked, but I just wore it out (letters wore off, unreliable action).
Now I switched to the really slick looking Blu Illuminated Keyboard. But I am not that happy with it: The feel is too hard and inconsistent, and worst of all, where I'd expect the left Ctrl key, is the "Fn" key (for alternate keys). Still, the looks make up for it.