I can never decide if the discount for the registered blind is...
One thing to bear in mind that being registered blind doesn't mean that you have no sight - just that it is difficult to perform activities for which eyesight is essential. Many registered blind can get a lot visually out of a TV broadcast.
Also remember that the licence fee pays for the beeb's web presence and (if you include digital) ten national radio stations + goodness knows how many local ones.
You're right that there isn't a discount for the deaf (but there is subtitling available on most programs AFAIK.)
In a Microsoft Shop developers will use Microsoft SourceSafe. period
Not in my experience. Some do and some don't. The absence of pain not using VSS can supply compensates for the lack of tool integration. Even MS doesn't use VSS internally;-)
Subversion doesn't have a chance to compete because there is absolutely no way that it can integrate fully into the.Net development tools the way Microsoft's Own Source Storage Software is designed to do.
I think the people writing the Subway and sourcecross subversion-SCC interfaces might disagree with you there.
This has got a lot better recently, and with the latest Berkeley DB you don't have to worry about cleaning up the log files. I find that CVS and subversion repository size are now roughly the same.
Quite hard to share repositories
No distributed development
Pretty weak merging
The SVK project (basically distributed repositories built on top of subversion) is addressing a lot of these issues. Seems to be coming along nicely. The merge support isn't quite at the same level as arch yet, but the naming and command line syntax is a lot nicer IMHO.
With a database, if things were to get corrupted enough (I have no evidence that this happens often, but still...) you are stuck. Just like with the windows registry, where if it gets messed up you lose big.
I worry more about disk crashes and accidental deletions. This is what backups are for;-)
You can also serialise everything into a fairly human readable file to with svnadmin dump and svnadmin load if you feel you need something non-binary.
Well, I've been a unix guy for about 15 years, and a mac and unix person for about 10 years.
The nice thing about Mac OS X is I get to be both on the same machine. If you have a piece of Linux/FreeBSD code you can almost certainly run it on Mac OS X.
While Mac OS X isn't a free OS - it is a *very* good free software platform (and there is also VirtualPC if you need to run some legacy Windows software - slowly:-)
However, I've been involved in lots of conversations (many with technical people who should know better) of the everything-should-be-digital / its-all-different-now / librarians-know-nothing variety in the past.
There does seem to be a tendency for some people in the technical arena to overlook/underestimate the field. I also think this lack of understanding is one of the reasons you see degrees in librarianship suddenly becoming Information Science, or variations thereof. Which I think is sad. Maybe that's just me.... but I'm wandering off topic so I'll shutup now (off topic on/. - shame on me:-)
Agree completely. Books (even on acidic paper) are a lot more robust than many people make out. The much maligned librarian profession have been doing this for many years and are *very* good at it.
That said, it is also possible to do non-destructive scans of material at a very high quality. There are some nice examples at the British Library (the actual place, no idea if it's online). However this, of course, expensive --- so is unlikely to be done in this case. Pity.
Having been involved with the evils of management for some time (one of the reasons I left my last job was that I was spending all my times in meetings rather than tapping at keyboards) I have to admit that it's not all bad. You can get an enormous amount of satisfaction over helping get a project finished --- and anybody who thinks a big project gets done without some sort of overall organisation is just plain wrong.
The warning: 20% of your time for managing a team of 4 sounds low. You can easily spend all of your time doing that, especially if you have to deal with the clients/upper-management a great deal. Get a clear description of what your responsibilities are before saying yes, and think long and hard about how long meeting those responsibilities is going to take.
If you *can't* get a description of what your responsibilities are kick up a fuss until you do. If your organisation doesn't know what you should be doing you'll get no gain, and all blame:-(
This all, of course, depends on how good/supportive your organisation is. If you've been managed well, then it's likely that you'll get some decent support. If you've been managed badly --- worry.
My recommended books to help you on your way (or, if you're working for a bad organisation --- your evidence that they're wrong and you're right) would be...
The Mythical Man Month
by Frederick Brooks
- as relevant today as it ever was
Peopleware
by Tom DeMarco, & T. Lister
- I found it a great book for going "look, it's not just me, other people think that you shouldn't [insert something stupid here]"
The Dilbert Principle
by Scott Adams
- because it's *all* true:-)
Slashdot Mirror
One thing to bear in mind that being registered blind doesn't mean that you have no sight - just that it is difficult to perform activities for which eyesight is essential. Many registered blind can get a lot visually out of a TV broadcast.
Also remember that the licence fee pays for the beeb's web presence and (if you include digital) ten national radio stations + goodness knows how many local ones.
You're right that there isn't a discount for the deaf (but there is subtitling available on most programs AFAIK.)
Not in my experience. Some do and some don't. The absence of pain not using VSS can supply compensates for the lack of tool integration. Even MS doesn't use VSS internally ;-)
I think the people writing the Subway and sourcecross subversion-SCC interfaces might disagree with you there.
This has got a lot better recently, and with the latest Berkeley DB you don't have to worry about cleaning up the log files. I find that CVS and subversion repository size are now roughly the same.
The SVK project (basically distributed repositories built on top of subversion) is addressing a lot of these issues. Seems to be coming along nicely. The merge support isn't quite at the same level as arch yet, but the naming and command line syntax is a lot nicer IMHO.
I worry more about disk crashes and accidental deletions. This is what backups are for ;-)
You can also serialise everything into a fairly human readable file to with svnadmin dump and svnadmin load if you feel you need something non-binary.
Really not a problem as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I've been a unix guy for about 15 years, and a mac and unix person for about 10 years.
:-)
The nice thing about Mac OS X is I get to be both on the same machine. If you have a piece of Linux/FreeBSD code you can almost certainly run it on Mac OS X.
While Mac OS X isn't a free OS - it is a *very* good free software platform (and there is also VirtualPC if you need to run some legacy Windows software - slowly
Didn't mean here :-)
... but I'm wandering off topic so I'll shutup now (off topic on /. - shame on me :-)
However, I've been involved in lots of conversations (many with technical people who should know better) of the everything-should-be-digital / its-all-different-now / librarians-know-nothing variety in the past.
There does seem to be a tendency for some people in the technical arena to overlook/underestimate the field. I also think this lack of understanding is one of the reasons you see degrees in librarianship suddenly becoming Information Science, or variations thereof. Which I think is sad. Maybe that's just me.
Cheers,
Adrian
Agree completely. Books (even on acidic paper) are a lot more robust than many people make out. The much maligned librarian profession have been doing this for many years and are *very* good at it.
That said, it is also possible to do non-destructive scans of material at a very high quality. There are some nice examples at the British Library (the actual place, no idea if it's online). However this, of course, expensive --- so is unlikely to be done in this case. Pity.
Having been involved with the evils of management for some time (one of the reasons I left my last job was that I was spending all my times in meetings rather than tapping at keyboards) I have to admit that it's not all bad. You can get an enormous amount of satisfaction over helping get a project finished --- and anybody who thinks a big project gets done without some sort of overall organisation is just plain wrong.
:-(
:-)
The warning: 20% of your time for managing a team of 4 sounds low. You can easily spend all of your time doing that, especially if you have to deal with the clients/upper-management a great deal. Get a clear description of what your responsibilities are before saying yes, and think long and hard about how long meeting those responsibilities is going to take.
If you *can't* get a description of what your responsibilities are kick up a fuss until you do. If your organisation doesn't know what you should be doing you'll get no gain, and all blame
This all, of course, depends on how good/supportive your organisation is. If you've been managed well, then it's likely that you'll get some decent support. If you've been managed badly --- worry.
My recommended books to help you on your way (or, if you're working for a bad organisation --- your evidence that they're wrong and you're right) would be...
The Mythical Man Month
by Frederick Brooks
- as relevant today as it ever was
Peopleware
by Tom DeMarco, & T. Lister
- I found it a great book for going "look, it's not just me, other people think that you shouldn't [insert something stupid here]"
The Dilbert Principle
by Scott Adams
- because it's *all* true
Hope this helps,
Adrian