They bill your clients and deposit the money (minus both sets of taxes, your health insurance fees if you want health insurance, whatever money you want to put into their 401(k) plan, and a roughly $300 per month fee) into your bank account.
It's simple to set up and saves a ton of time. Best of all, you make more money than your co-workers because they have to give 30% of their billings to their consulting companies.
What about having baseboards that pop off to reveal whatever wires you want? You could have a hub on each level, and run wires from the hub to any point through the baseboards. You could install a jack anywhere by drilling into the baseboards.
And where there is a door, you could go around it by having removable moulding (or whatever it's called) or go under it by having that piece of the floor directly under the door (which has a name too I bet) pop off.
Obviously, I don't know squat about building (or wiring), but it sounds logical to me.
I say we specifically look for titles with this sticker, purchase them, give them a whirl in our PCs and see them not play, and return them. Vote with not just our money, but their overhead costs to handle all the returned merchandise and bad publicity when stores don't want CDs with those stickers.
Listen up, everyone: the music belongs to the music publishers, not to you. If you want to own music, make it your damn self.
If you don't like their policies for selling their music, then don't buy it. Wasting their money by buying and returning their music is not right. And don't say that it's right because they have lots of money; that argument doesn't work for insurance fraud and it doesn't work here.
It worked for NeXT too. They gave big discounts to universities and then... uh... um... oh yeah, then they almost went out of business until they decided to buy Apple with Apple's own money.
Windows ABSTRACTS computers, removing the need (for most people) to actually know how a computer (and software) operates.
Which is of course the point of an operating system. You don't think the CPU on your computer knows English, do you? You don't think your hard disk stores files, do you?
Kids need computers in school to improve the effectiveness of their learning of things like language, math, science and history. They don't need to learn about computers. (Though it makes a great elective class.)
Re:How much does it cost to run Slashdot?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Um.... Do you know how much do all those freaking servers cost???? You need hundreds of servers to get Slashdot running the way it is running. What about bandwidth? You need some huge pipes to get the speed going. May be we should start donating servers to/.:)
Huh? Hundreds of servers? Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
How much does it cost to run Slashdot?
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2, Interesting
People might be more willing to pay for Slashdot if they understand why it costs so much to run it.
(Not me, but I'll happily look at big-ass ads as long as there's no popups or Flash ads.)
Since/. is just a bunch of links to articles on other sites, you don't have to pay for writers. The code that runs the site works and is open-sourced, so you shouldn't need to pay anyone to maintain that anymore. Hopefully your servers are maintained by whoever provides your bandwith. So I can see the need for maybe one full-time employee, a couple people to help out at night or something, plus whatever it costs for all the bandwidth and the server hosting.
Now that nobody is paying for AIDS drugs (Brazil isn't the first country to ignore the patents), what incentive do drug companies have to spend the money to develop new ones?
And before you say "to help sick people", let me ask this: how many people do you think would donate money to pharmaceutical companies for research? Many people think they are just greedy evil companies out to steal money from poor sick people.
I only listen to music in mp3 format, because instead of a stereo, I have speakers hooked up to my server. When I buy a CD, I rip it and then put the CD in a big box, never to be seen again.
If my computer can't read the CD, then I have two choices:
1. I don't get the music. The music company loses $15.
2. I download the music from Napster. The music company loses $15.
However, with a non-copy-protected CD, the music company would gain $15 because I'd buy the CD. I realize that many people still listen to music on old-fashioned CD players and so the music companies shouldn't be too worried right now, but that will change.
Can someone please tell me what could possibly be wrong with this device? As far as I can tell, it's a tool that lets people filter out TV shows based on their content, if they want to.
(And I won't accept any arguments like "next thing you know, they're going to take away your right to x" because that's just silly.)
I'm itching to give it a try, however, I do a lot of threaded and GUI programming, which XP programmers readily admit doesn't work well with the XP methodology
I don't readily admit this. I admit that it is hard to test for thread deadlock and hard to test the top layer of the UI, but if you design your program with a few layers, you can easily test everything but the thin UI layer.
And with Java you can simulate the user clicking on things (there was a recent JDC article about it), which should help with the UI testing.
First of all, "extreme programming" has got the stupidest name ever.
The name is one of its biggest drawbacks because of people's reactions to the word "extreme". In case anyone cares, the name comes from the fact that XP is just a bunch of well-known, tried-and-true programming practices "turned up to 11". (Since we know testing is good, we'll test everything and even write our tests first. Since we know short development cycles are good, we'll have a new cycle every three weeks. Since we know that communication is good, we'll put everyone in the same room.)
Second of all, the only programmer I'll allow to watch over my shoulder is a dead programmer. And the only way I'll watch some other dimwitted slowpoke feebly hunt-n-peck a single line is if I am allowed to threaten that person with a gun.
I think I can speak for all professional programmers who have just breathed a sigh of relief knowing they'll never have to work with you then. Maybe when you grow up a bit you'll understand something about working with other people.
However, I still worry about the fragility of a methodology that fails to provide benefits - or that actually makes things worse - if it's not followed precisely in every exacting detail (in short, religiously) by highly skilled people.
If you don't follow all of its principles than it's not XP and you can't complain about XP not working.
It's like saying your dishwasher doesn't work because you put the dishes in but don't turn it on (who needs to follow every exacting detail?).
Basically, everyone walked over everyone else's code
Had they been doing XP "by the book", then nobody would have had their own code. Collective ownership is one of the key points of XP.
things never once worked properly
Had they written unit tests for everything that could possibly break, then things would have always worked properly. Test-first, test-everything is another one of the key points of XP.
If you don't do XP properly, then you aren't doing XP, you're doing something XP-like. Successful XP projects prove that XP works. Unsuccessful XP-like projects prove nothing about XP, they only prove something about XP-like projects.
If someone watches me over my shoulder while I code, I'm looking for a new job.
Pair programming is not "someone watching over your shoulder".
It is two people working together on a problem. And incidentally, not working at one person's computer; they work at a computer set up just for pairing. Each person should have his or her own computer in a private location for reading email (and slashdot).
Don't people working together like this have to be adults, with functional egos, integrated personalities, and a willingness to give-and-take?
Yes, which is why it won't work at many companies, such as places where all-nighters are common, soda cans litter the desks, neon lights abound and programmers sleep on the couches in their offices.
We have been working on an XP project for about 9 months now. It is working out great. Every three weeks we have a release that we can prove works correctly (because we have unit tests for everything). The customer doesn't have to wait for 9 months to see the progress of the system; he gets to play with it every three weeks.
The planning meetings, stories and tasks keep everyone on track. The pair programming makes the code better and teaches everyone about the code.
It is working out far better than our previous development methodology, which I will call "Extreme Failure".
eToys == useful bastards, eToy == useless bastards
on
The etoy Strikes Back
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· Score: 2
I bought some Christmas presents from eToys this year. They were in stock, priced reasonably and shipped on time.
On the other hand, eToy sends me a crapload of spam. That's all they do as far as I know. I say F&*% ETOY! They get no sympathy from me.
P.S. I agree that eToys shouldn't be trying to get the etoy domain name, but that's been said here about a zillion times over the past however many months or years so there's no real reason to say it again.
This reminds me of the claim of extreme programming that working in pairs increases productivity. I think it's just because you feel more guilty screwing around when the other guy is working, so you both end up working. Kind of a prisoners' dilemma, I guess.
No, that's not the reason. The reason is increased communication. Extreme programming (XP) says that all the developers should be in one room with the product's customer.
Got a question about some code? Just ask; all the developers are there. Got a question about a requirement? The customer is there too, just ask.
Of course, this means that the person who wants the software written (the customer) has to be very involved in its development, because he has to work in that room until the project is done. It can be difficult to convince someone to do this, but the reward is that the system gets written exactly as the customer wants it.
The issue with noise is solved in two ways. First, XP says that people should have a private desk/minicube area for phone calls, web surfing, etc., around the edges of the war room (or perhaps outside the war room).
Second, XP says that all programming must be done in pairs: two people sitting at one computer writing one piece of code. (Right now, you're thinking to yourself: "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! That's going to slow me down!".) It is well-documented that pair programming is more productive than programming alone.
If programming only consisted of typing, then pair programming certainly would slow you down. But it's not. Programming is all about knowing what to type. Having two people figure out what to type results in better thought-out code as well as code that now two people fully understand. It also has the added benefit of helping you concentrate on your pairing partner and your task, thereby making it easier to block out the noise in the room.
And before you hit the reply button to tell everyone how it will never work, try it first, or ask all the people who have tried it over the years and see what they have to say about it. (BTW, some people just aren't cut out for pair programming. These are people who generally aren't cut out for teamwork in general. IMHO, they have no place in a professional software development environment in the first place.)
Also, everyone needs to understand that XP is not new; it's a specific collection of well-known and not so well-known time-tested practices. These practices are often taken to the extreme in XP (hence the name). Everyone knows writing tests is key; in XP, you write the tests first. Everyone knows that communication is important; in XP, you put everyone in one room to communicate better. Everyone knows that when a system is complete, it never looks like the original design; in XP, you don't do a big design up front, you do a little design and then start writing code, while all the time refactoring the system so that the final design is clean and meets your needs perfectly.
If I tell you my damn phone number is 999-555-1212, then write all those damn digits down on a damn piece of paper and when you need to talk to me, type all the damn digits into the damn phone. How is that any harder than dialing 7 damn digits?
And for people who are whining about the damn machines that need to be changed to handle 10 digits: it will be easier because currently, some damn places have 10 damn digit dialing and others have 7 damn digit dialing. If they all had 10 damn digit dialing, your machines would be easier to program.
Note to people outside the USA: Yes, we damn Americans really are so damn stupid that we can't handle dialing a few extra damn numbers. But at least we don't have damn warm bawls.
Oooh, Apache! Emacs! Little icons! "xwrxwrx---"! "/altos/src/apps/xspringies/lib/jello2.xsp"!
Not a particularly unique user experience.
I offer a suggestion to anyone out there who is currently working on creating a new OS. Before you get too far, think about these questions: do you really need files? Directories? Attributes? Applications? Daemons? Kernels? Shells? Commands? Apache? Emacs? Vi?
And if the answer is "yes", then ask yourself why you're creating something that's pretty much already been done.
Just because one OS a long time ago had these things, there's no reason yours has to.
There's representatives from Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. A couple more, too, but it's hard to remember them. They don't vote on legislation, but they get to talk.
Forgot to mention this: The citizens of the Washington DC don't get any representation in congress, but the federal government taxes them and makes a lot of decisions for the city (budget, etc.).
This upsets a lot of District residents.
There is a pretty big DC statehood movement, but there's also a lot of opposition. (It would mean two more Democratic senators and one (I assume) more Democratic representitive. Therefore, at least some of the opposition is coming from Republicans who don't want the balance of power to shift a little.)
The citizens of Puerto Rico, Guam, etc., periodically vote on becoming a state, staying the way they are, or becoming independent countries. They always vote to stay the same. (Becoming a state would mean higher taxes I think.)
Slashdot Mirror
They bill your clients and deposit the money (minus both sets of taxes, your health insurance fees if you want health insurance, whatever money you want to put into their 401(k) plan, and a roughly $300 per month fee) into your bank account.
It's simple to set up and saves a ton of time. Best of all, you make more money than your co-workers because they have to give 30% of their billings to their consulting companies.
And where there is a door, you could go around it by having removable moulding (or whatever it's called) or go under it by having that piece of the floor directly under the door (which has a name too I bet) pop off.
Obviously, I don't know squat about building (or wiring), but it sounds logical to me.
Anyone know why it isn't (or can't be) done?
Listen up, everyone: the music belongs to the music publishers, not to you. If you want to own music, make it your damn self.
If you don't like their policies for selling their music, then don't buy it. Wasting their money by buying and returning their music is not right. And don't say that it's right because they have lots of money; that argument doesn't work for insurance fraud and it doesn't work here.
It worked for NeXT too. They gave big discounts to universities and then... uh... um... oh yeah, then they almost went out of business until they decided to buy Apple with Apple's own money.
Which is of course the point of an operating system. You don't think the CPU on your computer knows English, do you? You don't think your hard disk stores files, do you?
Kids need computers in school to improve the effectiveness of their learning of things like language, math, science and history. They don't need to learn about computers. (Though it makes a great elective class.)
Huh? Hundreds of servers? Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
People might be more willing to pay for Slashdot if they understand why it costs so much to run it.
/. is just a bunch of links to articles on other sites, you don't have to pay for writers. The code that runs the site works and is open-sourced, so you shouldn't need to pay anyone to maintain that anymore. Hopefully your servers are maintained by whoever provides your bandwith. So I can see the need for maybe one full-time employee, a couple people to help out at night or something, plus whatever it costs for all the bandwidth and the server hosting.
(Not me, but I'll happily look at big-ass ads as long as there's no popups or Flash ads.)
Since
So what's the actual cost breakdown?
Like "Microsoft IIS Worm #400" or "Microsoft Outlook Virus #194"?
Maybe Microsoft will start patching up their crap if their name is associated with these things.
And before you say "to help sick people", let me ask this: how many people do you think would donate money to pharmaceutical companies for research? Many people think they are just greedy evil companies out to steal money from poor sick people.
Now if they were actual autonomous robots, that would be cool.
If my computer can't read the CD, then I have two choices:
1. I don't get the music. The music company loses $15.
2. I download the music from Napster. The music company loses $15.
However, with a non-copy-protected CD, the music company would gain $15 because I'd buy the CD. I realize that many people still listen to music on old-fashioned CD players and so the music companies shouldn't be too worried right now, but that will change.
Can someone please tell me what could possibly be wrong with this device? As far as I can tell, it's a tool that lets people filter out TV shows based on their content, if they want to.
(And I won't accept any arguments like "next thing you know, they're going to take away your right to x" because that's just silly.)
I don't readily admit this. I admit that it is hard to test for thread deadlock and hard to test the top layer of the UI, but if you design your program with a few layers, you can easily test everything but the thin UI layer.
And with Java you can simulate the user clicking on things (there was a recent JDC article about it), which should help with the UI testing.
The name is one of its biggest drawbacks because of people's reactions to the word "extreme". In case anyone cares, the name comes from the fact that XP is just a bunch of well-known, tried-and-true programming practices "turned up to 11". (Since we know testing is good, we'll test everything and even write our tests first. Since we know short development cycles are good, we'll have a new cycle every three weeks. Since we know that communication is good, we'll put everyone in the same room.)
Second of all, the only programmer I'll allow to watch over my shoulder is a dead programmer. And the only way I'll watch some other dimwitted slowpoke feebly hunt-n-peck a single line is if I am allowed to threaten that person with a gun.
I think I can speak for all professional programmers who have just breathed a sigh of relief knowing they'll never have to work with you then. Maybe when you grow up a bit you'll understand something about working with other people.
If you don't follow all of its principles than it's not XP and you can't complain about XP not working.
It's like saying your dishwasher doesn't work because you put the dishes in but don't turn it on (who needs to follow every exacting detail?).
Had they been doing XP "by the book", then nobody would have had their own code. Collective ownership is one of the key points of XP.
things never once worked properly
Had they written unit tests for everything that could possibly break, then things would have always worked properly. Test-first, test-everything is another one of the key points of XP.
If you don't do XP properly, then you aren't doing XP, you're doing something XP-like. Successful XP projects prove that XP works. Unsuccessful XP-like projects prove nothing about XP, they only prove something about XP-like projects.
Pair programming is not "someone watching over your shoulder".
It is two people working together on a problem. And incidentally, not working at one person's computer; they work at a computer set up just for pairing. Each person should have his or her own computer in a private location for reading email (and slashdot).
The first book was Extreme Programming Explained. This book is "Installed" because it talks less about what XP is and more about how to do it.
Yes, which is why it won't work at many companies, such as places where all-nighters are common, soda cans litter the desks, neon lights abound and programmers sleep on the couches in their offices.
The planning meetings, stories and tasks keep everyone on track. The pair programming makes the code better and teaches everyone about the code.
It is working out far better than our previous development methodology, which I will call "Extreme Failure".
On the other hand, eToy sends me a crapload of spam. That's all they do as far as I know. I say F&*% ETOY! They get no sympathy from me.
P.S. I agree that eToys shouldn't be trying to get the etoy domain name, but that's been said here about a zillion times over the past however many months or years so there's no real reason to say it again.
No, that's not the reason. The reason is increased communication. Extreme programming (XP) says that all the developers should be in one room with the product's customer.
Got a question about some code? Just ask; all the developers are there. Got a question about a requirement? The customer is there too, just ask.
Of course, this means that the person who wants the software written (the customer) has to be very involved in its development, because he has to work in that room until the project is done. It can be difficult to convince someone to do this, but the reward is that the system gets written exactly as the customer wants it.
The issue with noise is solved in two ways. First, XP says that people should have a private desk/minicube area for phone calls, web surfing, etc., around the edges of the war room (or perhaps outside the war room).
Second, XP says that all programming must be done in pairs: two people sitting at one computer writing one piece of code. (Right now, you're thinking to yourself: "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! That's going to slow me down!".) It is well-documented that pair programming is more productive than programming alone.
If programming only consisted of typing, then pair programming certainly would slow you down. But it's not. Programming is all about knowing what to type. Having two people figure out what to type results in better thought-out code as well as code that now two people fully understand. It also has the added benefit of helping you concentrate on your pairing partner and your task, thereby making it easier to block out the noise in the room.
And before you hit the reply button to tell everyone how it will never work, try it first, or ask all the people who have tried it over the years and see what they have to say about it. (BTW, some people just aren't cut out for pair programming. These are people who generally aren't cut out for teamwork in general. IMHO, they have no place in a professional software development environment in the first place.)
Also, everyone needs to understand that XP is not new; it's a specific collection of well-known and not so well-known time-tested practices. These practices are often taken to the extreme in XP (hence the name). Everyone knows writing tests is key; in XP, you write the tests first. Everyone knows that communication is important; in XP, you put everyone in one room to communicate better. Everyone knows that when a system is complete, it never looks like the original design; in XP, you don't do a big design up front, you do a little design and then start writing code, while all the time refactoring the system so that the final design is clean and meets your needs perfectly.
Everybody needs to quit their damn whining.
If I tell you my damn phone number is 999-555-1212, then write all those damn digits down on a damn piece of paper and when you need to talk to me, type all the damn digits into the damn phone. How is that any harder than dialing 7 damn digits?
And for people who are whining about the damn machines that need to be changed to handle 10 digits: it will be easier because currently, some damn places have 10 damn digit dialing and others have 7 damn digit dialing. If they all had 10 damn digit dialing, your machines would be easier to program.
Note to people outside the USA: Yes, we damn Americans really are so damn stupid that we can't handle dialing a few extra damn numbers. But at least we don't have damn warm bawls.
Not a particularly unique user experience.
I offer a suggestion to anyone out there who is currently working on creating a new OS. Before you get too far, think about these questions: do you really need files? Directories? Attributes? Applications? Daemons? Kernels? Shells? Commands? Apache? Emacs? Vi?
And if the answer is "yes", then ask yourself why you're creating something that's pretty much already been done.
Just because one OS a long time ago had these things, there's no reason yours has to.
Forgot to mention this: The citizens of the Washington DC don't get any representation in congress, but the federal government taxes them and makes a lot of decisions for the city (budget, etc.).
This upsets a lot of District residents.
There is a pretty big DC statehood movement, but there's also a lot of opposition. (It would mean two more Democratic senators and one (I assume) more Democratic representitive. Therefore, at least some of the opposition is coming from Republicans who don't want the balance of power to shift a little.)
The citizens of Puerto Rico, Guam, etc., periodically vote on becoming a state, staying the way they are, or becoming independent countries. They always vote to stay the same. (Becoming a state would mean higher taxes I think.)