Their packages are ancient. I don't want to install KDE 3.3.2 (came out November 2004) on an OS release that came out in May 2005. I don't expect to get packages that came out yesterday from a release that came out 5 months ago (even if {Free,Net}BSD and most Linuxes manage it), but I'd like to at least have the versions that were current when that release was made.
not a flame. Just some honest questions: 1. why are you running KDE on a server? 2. if you're not running it, then what specific application has been updated that is not included in OpenBSD? When I think of a server, I think of (for example) something like Apache or Bind. OK sure, if there is a newer version of Apache then I'd expect that to be in OpenBSD - and it probably is. I don't really care that OpenBSD doesn't include the newest version of some mouse driver. 3. Even on a desktop system, I can't imagine that I'd want something that just came out yesterday.
That said, I'm not an OpenBSD evangelist. I just didn't think that you made a very good point there.
I just want to point out that a working space elevator solves basically every problem of human civilization. Quickie example: energy. With a space elevator, you power your whole planet with nuclear energy. "but, but what about all that terrible waste???" No problem, you put the waste in beer-keg size container and lift it above geo-sync. Release it such that it impacts the moon at a crater that we've designated as a dumping ground. Absolute worse-case senario, the elevator breaks during one of the waste lifts. No problem. There isn't enough material in any one lift to kill anyone.
Thus, a space elevator makes going 100% nuclear a viable option. Everybody has all the electricity they can use. Far less CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere. You don't have to worry about storing the nuclear waste.
If you can name any hard hitting science that has been done at the ISS (aside from humans-in-space-duration sort of research), I'd be interested to hear it.
biopsy of human skeletal muscle after prolonged spaceflight
chromosomal aberrations in blood lymphocytes
dust aerosol measurement
spaceflight induced reactivation of Epstein-barr virus
if you ever need to get an ultrasound, I doubt that the doctor is going to take the time to tell you that the equipment was developed or improved on the space station. The benefits of the research they do up there make it into our lives, but it happens decades later and we never really notice. Oh well.
I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.
Be careful buddy. If the standard of good science is that it has to be "useful" then I think you'll find that a lot of the funding for those fancy telescopes you love so much will quickly dry up. I haven't heard of a single useful thing that any astronomer has done in my lifetime.
We should fund science - not because of a selfish "what do I get out of it" mentality. We should fund it because it is the search for truth, and that's *always* important.
Think of all the poor, hungry homo habilis' that could have been fed if Ogor hadn't wasted so much time rubbing sticks together in his useless "fire" research. He should have been out gathering rotten banannas with the rest of the tribe. Right? Right? Can I get an a-men here?
Don't let him get you mad. He's a typical liberal.
The Chinese government can put people in jail for speaking The Chinese government can put people in jail for going to a website The Chinese government can torture people for protesting The Chinese government murder people for disagreeing
But OMFG! GEORGE SHRUBA BUSH wont get close enough for me to throw a rock at him!!!111!!! The USA is teh EVIL just like ChinA!!! OMG OMG!
You are correct in saying that the comparison doesn't hold up. But people like him live in a fantasy world.
To the people who will flame me: Are things perfect in the US? No. I am fully aware that they are not. But we aren't even in the same order of magnitude as China. Yes, I am also fully aware that we have to fight every single day to hold on to what we've got so that we don't become like China. No, I didn't vote for Bush (I'm a libertarian). Yes, I know he's a terrible president. None of that changes this simple fact: here in the US, I can come on Slashdot and say these things. In China, I cannot.
The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state
Yep. The UN has that little caveat in their Declaration of Human Rights. It seems to be popular fine print to include. I really prefer a system that says, "the state can't do this, this, and this, no matter what" to a system that says, "you can do this so long as you don't get in our way."
As in the US: "Right X shall not be abridged" And yes, I know that the government tries to push the line - but here in the US, we the people can push back because the wording is clear, we are in the right. In China, there's no point in fighting it because it's spelled out in black and white, you don't have a right unless it doesn't bother us. So, the Chinese people live by the government's leave. They are and will always be subjects. In spite of all the rhetoric about equality, communism, and "the people's this" and "the people's that" the truth is that all the power is in the hands of a small group of ruling elite - just like it was before the revolution.
I don't think that any government is just unless it admits that its people have rights that supercede the governments needs and desires. A person has a right to think and to speak. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if it's convenient or not.
I'll just copy what I wrote above in case you don't see that one.
Alpha Centari takes place all on one planet. It's just civ on another planet. that's pretty much it. It's not, "in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc."?
I guess I should have been clearer. There is a genre of games where you send *space ships* to *other planets* and either invade or colonize those planets. To my knowledge, Sid Meier hasn't done one of those - and there hasn't been a new game of that type in years.
Alpha Centari takes place all on one planet. It's just civ on another planet. that's pretty much it. How is that, "in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc."?
I guess I should have been clearer. There is a genre of games where you send *space ships* to *other planets* and either invade or colonize those planets. To my knowledge, Sid Meier hasn't done one of those - and there hasn't been a new game of that type in years.
You have an impressive resume of games to your credit, but seemingly no sci-fi style games in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc. With the recent flop of Master of Orion 3, it's obvious that this genre could use someone with your skill and vision. Is there any reason why you haven't done these types of games in the past? Would you consider doing such a game?
uh huh. And there's the problem right there. I know that a lot of people like.net and I'm not trying to start a flame war, but there is a group at the university where I work that does all their development in.net and here's what I see from them:
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right on any browser that runs on a mac "oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right in firefox "oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right in opera "oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
etc. etc.
Now, I do a little web monkeying myself and I'm quite good in regular asp, macromedia coldfusion, php, and perl. My last big project at work was a class registration system. When a popup help window didn't quite work right on a mac, guess what. I fixed it.
You know why they can't fix their shit? Because it's practically magic to them. They have no idea how it works. How could they possibly fix it? So the end result of.net is basically the same as the end result of active X. It forces users to use IE. Oh sure, microsoft has made some magical control that implements ajax. I don't care. This is the 21st century. It is unacceptable to force people to use IE. It just does not fly with me.
The flaw in your argument is that you'd only need to be pushed far enough and you would become one of the aggressors.
I'd have to be pushed pretty damn far to rob a bank in the middle of a flooded city. Why is it so hard for you to face the fact that the armed gangs were not looking for food for their starving children. They were just having fun.
"hmm, my family needs food, I think I'll go rape someone. yeah!"
For many of the people causing problems in NOLA, what was actually going through their heads was, "the police are gone, I can do whatever I want to do! yeah!"
I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game - to say "We should not shoot more meat than we can carry". Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective.
uh, I think the feild testing was in error. Because I killed the heck out those animals and never felt the slightest guilt about it. Hunting kicked ass. I don't think I ever even made it to Oregon. My purpose was just to spend all my money on bullets and go hunting.
Those small projects are what self-employed programmers worked on in the past, but now it is do contract work , mantenence, or work for one of the large software houses.
I think what you're saying is that if I write _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ in my own spare time and give it away for free, then I'm hurting myself because, gosh, maybe someone would have paid me to write _Super-Duper Program Dujor_
I have to disagree. The cost to develop _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ is way outside the realm of what 99.9% of businesses are willing to pay, and furthermore, it's way more trouble than they are willing to put up with. If _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ didn't already exist, I promise you , nobody would be breaking down my door asking me to write it.
On the other hand, since it does exist, and since it's free, many business are likely to try it. There's little downside to just trying it out. And a small extension to it is well within their budget and it something they can conceive of and understand. I am far more likely to get a contract to extend or modify _Super Program Dujor_ for an existing (dare I say, dependant) user, than I am to get a job writting it from scratch.
Here's a real-world example. How many people have gotten work writing geocoding application using google maps? I have! I just finished a project to help people coordinate carpools with coworkers. You enter your street address. It shows you people who live near you who are also willing to carpool. You know why that application was possible? Because google maps is free software. What if google maps wasn't free? Do you think my boss would pay me to develop it? Hell no! It would take me forever, and the end result wouldn't be as nice as what google has. The fact that google maps is free *created* programming work for me and I'm sure for a lot of other people too.
I'm actually working on a research paper about Diebold right now. One thing I'd love to have, and maybe the slashdot community can help me, I'd love to have some ER diagrams or other technical documentation from them but I haven't (yet) found any. I've found stuff that blackboxvoting.org has done but I'm not sure I can reference it. If anyone can point me to something official from diebold I'll buy you a beer.
I'm not surprised that he didn't reply to this. Oh well.
He says that "Americans say the US is the best country." Has he ever been to any other country?? Guess what, Canadians say Canada is the best. Germans say Germany is the best. etc. etc. What's the big deal? What's the problem with people loving their country? Why is it only a problem for people like him when Americans love their country?
This country is ranked something like 43rd in rate of infant mortality. That's bad.
Until you learn why. In the US, we go to extrodinary (some would argue, stupid) measures to save premature babies. If a baby is born three months early in some other countries, sure they put it on an incubator, but when it dies an hour later they call it, "stillborn" and it doesn't count against their infant mortality statistics. For whatever reason, in the US we keep that baby alive on machines for weeks and we we finally admit defeat, we call it the death of a three week old baby.
As to poverty, another poster already replied to you and pointed out that Cuba has a lower poverty rate than the US. That just shows how (like the infant mortality rates) poverty statistics are BS. While in the military I had the opportunity to travel all over the world. I have seen poor people. I know what poor is. I have yet to see a single person who is below even one standard deviation *above* the mean standard of living for all humans. In other words, even the poorest of the poor in the US look pretty damn good next to what you see in other countries. I give to the poor. I feel sorry for people in the US who can't afford nice clothes etc. But I'm not fooling myself - they are still a lot better off than most human beings. I wish they had more and I help where I can, but I know they aren't really poor by the standard of the rest of the world.
We could be on the moon by the end of the month if someone was willing to pay for it and if we could accept risk.
When someone died in an accident in the '60s we the American people dusted ourselves off and got back on the horse. After the Apollo I accident, an investigation was performed and a report was presented in only three months. And then NASA went back to work going to the Moon. After Challenger, "OMFG! We should just cancel the space program! OMFG! OMFG!" And then years later we finally started flying again and years after that another, completely unrelated accident and, "OMFG THESE THINGS ARE DEATH TRAPS!"
One of the reasons we don't do things like go to the Moon anymore is that we're wimps. We don't accept risks and we crucify people who do.
The other reason is money. The cost of the Apollo program in 2005 dollars was nearly $200 billion, and that doesn't include the other programs like Gemini etc. Now we're going to do more (more as in, it's got to be 99.999% safe this time because we can't accept any risk at all) and we're going to do it for less. It should be a little cheaper because of modern computers etc. But not *that* much cheaper! Rockets are rockets. They haven't changed much in 50 years. They should still cost about the same.
And again, the culture is really whimpy now. The space program was a point of national pride back then. These days people are embarrassed to show any pride in their country - it's not fair that we have a space program and Zimbabwe doesn't. Plus, if you dare to spend $1 on science there will always be a crowd of idiots screaming, "OMFG some kid is poor* we can't spend this money on science until after every other problem on earth is solved!!!"
*poor in this case means that his family only has one TV and doesn't even have Tivo and somehow they managed to buy enough food to become morbidly obese but we still call them poor because otherwise we'd have to ask if maybe their lifestyle is influenced more by behaviors than by money or opportunity.
4) Reducing the idea that a car is an extension of your psyche, so that you don't feel like you have to have your own personal car, and instead can share cars amongst people. This can mean either less cars per household, or more car pooling.
At the risk of going way off topic (it's never stopped me before) I would just observe that men do whatever they have to do in order to appear cool for women. Most men feel they have to buy a car because most women will think they are losers if they don't.
Obviously, there are minority groups where this logic doesn't apply. If you like hippie chicks then you're likely to get rid of your car because that's what will impress them.
All I'm saying is that it's not entirely correct to say that a car is an extension of the psyche. It's more correct IMH(and yes OT)O to say that a car is just another feather that we men wave in the face of females.
And before anyone wastes valuable electrons flaming me, yes I know this doesn't apply to you. But I do think it applies to most people.
Fine, then pay for my internet connection and get me an equivalently spec'd computer for home that I use for work, and I will work from home.
Isn't the point of all this that you save money on gas? Why should your employer buy you a computer so that you can save money?? It's like if your employer says, "on friday you can wear jeans to work if you want to but obviously you don't have to." And then you cross your arms and stomp your feet and say, "FINE, THEN YOU BUY ME A PAIR OF JEANS!"
Uh no, if you don't want to do it then that's cool. Have fun driving to work.
I work at a university which is pretty liberal about this sort of thing, but I can make a recommendation to any private companies that want to encourage it.
Assign a work-at-home day. If everyone picks their own day then you'll never have a day where everyone is at work.
Make the work-at-home day Thursday. My experience suggests this is the day that you'll get the most productivity at home. Definitely don't do it on Monday or Friday or work-at-home day will just be a 3-day weekend! (what do you think this is, France?)
Have an online meeting at about 10:30. Set everyone up with cheap web cams and just spend 30 minutes to an hour on an informal, "here's what we did this week" meeting. Those kinds of informal meetings are good for small groups anyway.
Use an IM client. It's much better than email or phone calls for quickie questions: "hey bob, tell me again what the param list is."
Require a followup email at 5:00. Even if it's just to say, "I've been working on this all day but I'm not done yet."
On the technical side, obviously you're going to need to let employees set up a secure tunnel into a VPN - not the main company network. They need to be able to get to shares on file servers for example, and to hit their machines via remote desktop, but they shouldn't be able to hit shares on their local machines.
All of that said, I really prefer to be at work. My chair and desk here are more comfortable. I'm also one of the lucky ones who lives close to work and I try to ride my bike at least once a week.
> You know, it amazes me that the US is so keen to help out the rest of the world from tyranny and terrorism, yet can't even look after its own people.
Well, I don't know where you're from, but I grew up and live in the Southern US (close enough that I got tropical storm winds from Katrina). I also have some perspective on the world because I served in the Army and had the opportunity to travel to a dozen countries.
It is my opinion, based on actual real-world experience, based on things that I've seen with my own two eyes, that we do not have poor people in the US. What we call "poor" here are people with two TVs. There are fat people that we call "poor" in the US. I'm sorry, but that's not really poor.
I've seen poor people. I've seen people starving. Hell, I saw poor people in South Korea (a modern, industrial nation) who I'm sure would volunteer to go live in New Orleans right now, even though it's a disaster area because it's better than the shit they live in.
So yes, the US does try to help other countries. I don't think it's embarassing that we've managed to lift our own lower classes to the point that they all have TVs and cars and so many of them are actually fat. I think it is a testiment to the fact that our social programs have done all they can do and that now it's time to work on behaviors.
I think programming has to be a calling, to some degree
me too. And I spend extra time on the code I write because I really want it to be beautiful. If I write or if a coworker writes it, it will probably look the same to the end user. There's a button. there's my output. All pretty typical. But when I write it, I want the code to be beautiful. Maybe Bill Gates and so many other people are right. Maybe I wont have a job in a year. If that's true then it doesn't matter how fast I code (or what the code looks like). Given that reality, I choose to enjoy it. It is my calling.
I had great math teachers. For me math was always fun. The only class I remember hating was trigonometry and thinking back, I suspect it was because the teacher wasn't enthusiastic. She just went through the motions.
add to that basic logic classes,
If you don't enjoy logic classes why are you majoring in CS?
a bunch of semesters of statistics
That is weird. I only had to take one statistics class. It wasn't that bad.
on the compsci side you had algorithms,
Data Structures and Algorithms was the best class I ever took in my entire life. Ever. Dr. Jeremy Jones was the instructor's name. He really knew his stuff. I love being around smart people. I hope that some of it will rub off on me.
compiler stuff, basic operating systems,
Yeah, those were tedious. Networking classes were even harder, but I still enjoyed them.
basic processor design,
I can't really relate to that. My CS curriculum didn't include it.
time consuming practices for programming
?? Man, the best part of being a CS major is hanging out in the lab at 3:00 drinking mountain dew and joking with your buddies as you hack away on sparc workstations. If the assignment is to use recursion to traverse a binary tree, you have to love what you're doing enough to want to spend the time to implement the Towers of Hanoi problem. Wtf man? Why did you major in CS??
For me the hard classes were psychology, literature, stuff like that. It wasn't interesting to me.
or how about a phone that just rings? I don't get why people want their phones to start playing "can you take me to funky town" when they get a call.
As a geek, I like technology to just do its job. It's a phone. It should alert me in the most efficient way when I get a call. that's all it has to do. I don't need to be entertained. I have other gadgets for that.
"I'm still wondering if these guys are beyond stupid or somebody pays them to make alternative browsers look bad."
No, I've working in a situation where management painted us into a corner like this. Here's how it works:
1) the management idiots want some spiffy "feature" which adds nothing to the site. They just want it because it's cute. 2) you tell them that feature is only doable in IE (nobody ever asks for a firefox-only feature). They think about it for like 30 seconds and then decide that they don't care, because after all, "everybody uses IE" 3) you implement the feature and a few people complain. It turns out that a lot of people actually use really old versions of IE, or alternative browsers, or browsers on handhelds etc. 4) rather than admit the whole thing was a stupid idea and just remove the feature, management decides to just put a disclaimer up for browsers we don't support. Thus, you get a short list of browsers that you've actually tested and recorded the user agent on, and for anything else you just display an upgrade message.
So, the people who made the site you're talking about have tested the site with Opera 7. That's the only Opera user agent they've seen. But they put a message up that says, "Opera 7 or above"
BTW, none of this is an issue if you just develop to standards. It's not that hard once you get the hang of it. If your site validates with the w3c (and all mine do) then it's not your problem when someone can't render it - and best of all, EVERY new browser will be able to render it, unless there is a bug in that browser.
bingo. And the sence of community is great too. Knowing most or all of the people you're playing with is different from an anonymous game in the same way that online is different from single player. It's a whole other level of fun.
Tonight is my quake 3 threewave night (I know it's old but it's still fun). There are five guys that I've known for years and we all meet up once a week. If one of us is having a good night, he'll get congratulations and kudos from everyone else, as opposed to bitching and ranting on an anonymous server. If one of us is having a bad night, we'll all be good sports about it. A lot of times I'll even let someone kill me so they wont feel bad. As opposed to being called a loser and a noob on an anonymous server.
Playing with your friends rocks. It's the only way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Their packages are ancient. I don't want to install KDE 3.3.2 (came out November 2004) on an OS release that came out in May 2005. I don't expect to get packages that came out yesterday from a release that came out 5 months ago (even if {Free,Net}BSD and most Linuxes manage it), but I'd like to at least have the versions that were current when that release was made.
not a flame. Just some honest questions:
1. why are you running KDE on a server?
2. if you're not running it, then what specific application has been updated that is not included in OpenBSD? When I think of a server, I think of (for example) something like Apache or Bind. OK sure, if there is a newer version of Apache then I'd expect that to be in OpenBSD - and it probably is. I don't really care that OpenBSD doesn't include the newest version of some mouse driver.
3. Even on a desktop system, I can't imagine that I'd want something that just came out yesterday.
That said, I'm not an OpenBSD evangelist. I just didn't think that you made a very good point there.
I just want to point out that a working space elevator solves basically every problem of human civilization. Quickie example: energy. With a space elevator, you power your whole planet with nuclear energy. "but, but what about all that terrible waste???" No problem, you put the waste in beer-keg size container and lift it above geo-sync. Release it such that it impacts the moon at a crater that we've designated as a dumping ground. Absolute worse-case senario, the elevator breaks during one of the waste lifts. No problem. There isn't enough material in any one lift to kill anyone.
Thus, a space elevator makes going 100% nuclear a viable option. Everybody has all the electricity they can use. Far less CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere. You don't have to worry about storing the nuclear waste.
Here's what the current crew is working on:
http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/
if you ever need to get an ultrasound, I doubt that the doctor is going to take the time to tell you that the equipment was developed or improved on the space station. The benefits of the research they do up there make it into our lives, but it happens decades later and we never really notice. Oh well.
I'm an astronomer, and I haven't heard of a single thing useful having been produced by the ISS.
Be careful buddy. If the standard of good science is that it has to be "useful" then I think you'll find that a lot of the funding for those fancy telescopes you love so much will quickly dry up. I haven't heard of a single useful thing that any astronomer has done in my lifetime.
We should fund science - not because of a selfish "what do I get out of it" mentality. We should fund it because it is the search for truth, and that's *always* important.
Think of all the poor, hungry homo habilis' that could have been fed if Ogor hadn't wasted so much time rubbing sticks together in his useless "fire" research. He should have been out gathering rotten banannas with the rest of the tribe. Right? Right? Can I get an a-men here?
Don't let him get you mad. He's a typical liberal.
The Chinese government can put people in jail for speaking
The Chinese government can put people in jail for going to a website
The Chinese government can torture people for protesting
The Chinese government murder people for disagreeing
But OMFG! GEORGE SHRUBA BUSH wont get close enough for me to throw a rock at him!!!111!!! The USA is teh EVIL just like ChinA!!! OMG OMG!
You are correct in saying that the comparison doesn't hold up. But people like him live in a fantasy world.
To the people who will flame me:
Are things perfect in the US? No. I am fully aware that they are not. But we aren't even in the same order of magnitude as China. Yes, I am also fully aware that we have to fight every single day to hold on to what we've got so that we don't become like China. No, I didn't vote for Bush (I'm a libertarian). Yes, I know he's a terrible president. None of that changes this simple fact: here in the US, I can come on Slashdot and say these things. In China, I cannot.
The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state
Yep. The UN has that little caveat in their Declaration of Human Rights. It seems to be popular fine print to include. I really prefer a system that says, "the state can't do this, this, and this, no matter what" to a system that says, "you can do this so long as you don't get in our way."
As in the US: "Right X shall not be abridged" And yes, I know that the government tries to push the line - but here in the US, we the people can push back because the wording is clear, we are in the right. In China, there's no point in fighting it because it's spelled out in black and white, you don't have a right unless it doesn't bother us. So, the Chinese people live by the government's leave. They are and will always be subjects. In spite of all the rhetoric about equality, communism, and "the people's this" and "the people's that" the truth is that all the power is in the hands of a small group of ruling elite - just like it was before the revolution.
I don't think that any government is just unless it admits that its people have rights that supercede the governments needs and desires. A person has a right to think and to speak. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if it's convenient or not.
I'll just copy what I wrote above in case you don't see that one.
Alpha Centari takes place all on one planet. It's just civ on another planet. that's pretty much it. It's not, "in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc."?
I guess I should have been clearer. There is a genre of games where you send *space ships* to *other planets* and either invade or colonize those planets. To my knowledge, Sid Meier hasn't done one of those - and there hasn't been a new game of that type in years.
Alpha Centari takes place all on one planet. It's just civ on another planet. that's pretty much it. How is that, "in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc."?
I guess I should have been clearer. There is a genre of games where you send *space ships* to *other planets* and either invade or colonize those planets. To my knowledge, Sid Meier hasn't done one of those - and there hasn't been a new game of that type in years.
You have an impressive resume of games to your credit, but seemingly no sci-fi style games in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc. With the recent flop of Master of Orion 3, it's obvious that this genre could use someone with your skill and vision. Is there any reason why you haven't done these types of games in the past? Would you consider doing such a game?
Microsoft's entry ... integrates with ASP.NET
.net and I'm not trying to start a flame war, but there is a group at the university where I work that does all their development in .net and here's what I see from them:
.net is basically the same as the end result of active X. It forces users to use IE. Oh sure, microsoft has made some magical control that implements ajax. I don't care. This is the 21st century. It is unacceptable to force people to use IE. It just does not fly with me.
uh huh. And there's the problem right there. I know that a lot of people like
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right on any browser that runs on a mac
"oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right in firefox
"oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
When they develop something and it doesn't quite work right in opera
"oh, well we'll have to tell the users that this app requires IE on windows XP."
etc. etc.
Now, I do a little web monkeying myself and I'm quite good in regular asp, macromedia coldfusion, php, and perl. My last big project at work was a class registration system. When a popup help window didn't quite work right on a mac, guess what. I fixed it.
You know why they can't fix their shit? Because it's practically magic to them. They have no idea how it works. How could they possibly fix it? So the end result of
The flaw in your argument is that you'd only need to be pushed far enough and you would become one of the aggressors.
I'd have to be pushed pretty damn far to rob a bank in the middle of a flooded city. Why is it so hard for you to face the fact that the armed gangs were not looking for food for their starving children. They were just having fun.
"hmm, my family needs food, I think I'll go rape someone. yeah!"
For many of the people causing problems in NOLA, what was actually going through their heads was, "the police are gone, I can do whatever I want to do! yeah!"
I wanted the kids to develop a sense of conservation while playing the game - to say "We should not shoot more meat than we can carry". Our field testing showed that this lesson was indeed effective.
uh, I think the feild testing was in error. Because I killed the heck out those animals and never felt the slightest guilt about it. Hunting kicked ass. I don't think I ever even made it to Oregon. My purpose was just to spend all my money on bullets and go hunting.
Those small projects are what self-employed programmers worked on in the past, but now it is do contract work , mantenence, or work for one of the large software houses.
I think what you're saying is that if I write _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ in my own spare time and give it away for free, then I'm hurting myself because, gosh, maybe someone would have paid me to write _Super-Duper Program Dujor_
I have to disagree. The cost to develop _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ is way outside the realm of what 99.9% of businesses are willing to pay, and furthermore, it's way more trouble than they are willing to put up with. If _Super-Duper Program Dujor_ didn't already exist, I promise you , nobody would be breaking down my door asking me to write it.
On the other hand, since it does exist, and since it's free, many business are likely to try it. There's little downside to just trying it out. And a small extension to it is well within their budget and it something they can conceive of and understand. I am far more likely to get a contract to extend or modify _Super Program Dujor_ for an existing (dare I say, dependant) user, than I am to get a job writting it from scratch.
Here's a real-world example. How many people have gotten work writing geocoding application using google maps? I have! I just finished a project to help people coordinate carpools with coworkers. You enter your street address. It shows you people who live near you who are also willing to carpool. You know why that application was possible? Because google maps is free software. What if google maps wasn't free? Do you think my boss would pay me to develop it? Hell no! It would take me forever, and the end result wouldn't be as nice as what google has. The fact that google maps is free *created* programming work for me and I'm sure for a lot of other people too.
I'm actually working on a research paper about Diebold right now. One thing I'd love to have, and maybe the slashdot community can help me, I'd love to have some ER diagrams or other technical documentation from them but I haven't (yet) found any. I've found stuff that blackboxvoting.org has done but I'm not sure I can reference it. If anyone can point me to something official from diebold I'll buy you a beer.
thx
I'm not surprised that he didn't reply to this. Oh well.
He says that "Americans say the US is the best country." Has he ever been to any other country?? Guess what, Canadians say Canada is the best. Germans say Germany is the best. etc. etc. What's the big deal? What's the problem with people loving their country? Why is it only a problem for people like him when Americans love their country?
I think he's just arrogant and elitist.
This country is ranked something like 43rd in rate of infant mortality. That's bad.
Until you learn why. In the US, we go to extrodinary (some would argue, stupid) measures to save premature babies. If a baby is born three months early in some other countries, sure they put it on an incubator, but when it dies an hour later they call it, "stillborn" and it doesn't count against their infant mortality statistics. For whatever reason, in the US we keep that baby alive on machines for weeks and we we finally admit defeat, we call it the death of a three week old baby.
As to poverty, another poster already replied to you and pointed out that Cuba has a lower poverty rate than the US. That just shows how (like the infant mortality rates) poverty statistics are BS. While in the military I had the opportunity to travel all over the world. I have seen poor people. I know what poor is. I have yet to see a single person who is below even one standard deviation *above* the mean standard of living for all humans. In other words, even the poorest of the poor in the US look pretty damn good next to what you see in other countries. I give to the poor. I feel sorry for people in the US who can't afford nice clothes etc. But I'm not fooling myself - they are still a lot better off than most human beings. I wish they had more and I help where I can, but I know they aren't really poor by the standard of the rest of the world.
We could be on the moon by the end of the month if someone was willing to pay for it and if we could accept risk.
When someone died in an accident in the '60s we the American people dusted ourselves off and got back on the horse. After the Apollo I accident, an investigation was performed and a report was presented in only three months. And then NASA went back to work going to the Moon. After Challenger, "OMFG! We should just cancel the space program! OMFG! OMFG!" And then years later we finally started flying again and years after that another, completely unrelated accident and, "OMFG THESE THINGS ARE DEATH TRAPS!"
One of the reasons we don't do things like go to the Moon anymore is that we're wimps. We don't accept risks and we crucify people who do.
The other reason is money. The cost of the Apollo program in 2005 dollars was nearly $200 billion, and that doesn't include the other programs like Gemini etc. Now we're going to do more (more as in, it's got to be 99.999% safe this time because we can't accept any risk at all) and we're going to do it for less. It should be a little cheaper because of modern computers etc. But not *that* much cheaper! Rockets are rockets. They haven't changed much in 50 years. They should still cost about the same.
And again, the culture is really whimpy now. The space program was a point of national pride back then. These days people are embarrassed to show any pride in their country - it's not fair that we have a space program and Zimbabwe doesn't. Plus, if you dare to spend $1 on science there will always be a crowd of idiots screaming, "OMFG some kid is poor* we can't spend this money on science until after every other problem on earth is solved!!!"
*poor in this case means that his family only has one TV and doesn't even have Tivo and somehow they managed to buy enough food to become morbidly obese but we still call them poor because otherwise we'd have to ask if maybe their lifestyle is influenced more by behaviors than by money or opportunity.
4) Reducing the idea that a car is an extension of your psyche, so that you don't feel like you have to have your own personal car, and instead can share cars amongst people. This can mean either less cars per household, or more car pooling.
At the risk of going way off topic (it's never stopped me before) I would just observe that men do whatever they have to do in order to appear cool for women. Most men feel they have to buy a car because most women will think they are losers if they don't.
Obviously, there are minority groups where this logic doesn't apply. If you like hippie chicks then you're likely to get rid of your car because that's what will impress them.
All I'm saying is that it's not entirely correct to say that a car is an extension of the psyche. It's more correct IMH(and yes OT)O to say that a car is just another feather that we men wave in the face of females.
And before anyone wastes valuable electrons flaming me, yes I know this doesn't apply to you. But I do think it applies to most people.
Fine, then pay for my internet connection and get me an equivalently spec'd computer for home that I use for work, and I will work from home.
Isn't the point of all this that you save money on gas? Why should your employer buy you a computer so that you can save money?? It's like if your employer says, "on friday you can wear jeans to work if you want to but obviously you don't have to." And then you cross your arms and stomp your feet and say, "FINE, THEN YOU BUY ME A PAIR OF JEANS!"
Uh no, if you don't want to do it then that's cool. Have fun driving to work.
I work at a university which is pretty liberal about this sort of thing, but I can make a recommendation to any private companies that want to encourage it.
Assign a work-at-home day. If everyone picks their own day then you'll never have a day where everyone is at work.
Make the work-at-home day Thursday. My experience suggests this is the day that you'll get the most productivity at home. Definitely don't do it on Monday or Friday or work-at-home day will just be a 3-day weekend! (what do you think this is, France?)
Have an online meeting at about 10:30. Set everyone up with cheap web cams and just spend 30 minutes to an hour on an informal, "here's what we did this week" meeting. Those kinds of informal meetings are good for small groups anyway.
Use an IM client. It's much better than email or phone calls for quickie questions: "hey bob, tell me again what the param list is."
Require a followup email at 5:00. Even if it's just to say, "I've been working on this all day but I'm not done yet."
On the technical side, obviously you're going to need to let employees set up a secure tunnel into a VPN - not the main company network. They need to be able to get to shares on file servers for example, and to hit their machines via remote desktop, but they shouldn't be able to hit shares on their local machines.
All of that said, I really prefer to be at work. My chair and desk here are more comfortable. I'm also one of the lucky ones who lives close to work and I try to ride my bike at least once a week.
> You know, it amazes me that the US is so keen to help out the rest of the world from tyranny and terrorism, yet can't even look after its own people.
Well, I don't know where you're from, but I grew up and live in the Southern US (close enough that I got tropical storm winds from Katrina). I also have some perspective on the world because I served in the Army and had the opportunity to travel to a dozen countries.
It is my opinion, based on actual real-world experience, based on things that I've seen with my own two eyes, that we do not have poor people in the US. What we call "poor" here are people with two TVs. There are fat people that we call "poor" in the US. I'm sorry, but that's not really poor.
I've seen poor people. I've seen people starving. Hell, I saw poor people in South Korea (a modern, industrial nation) who I'm sure would volunteer to go live in New Orleans right now, even though it's a disaster area because it's better than the shit they live in.
So yes, the US does try to help other countries. I don't think it's embarassing that we've managed to lift our own lower classes to the point that they all have TVs and cars and so many of them are actually fat. I think it is a testiment to the fact that our social programs have done all they can do and that now it's time to work on behaviors.
I think programming has to be a calling, to some degree
me too. And I spend extra time on the code I write because I really want it to be beautiful. If I write or if a coworker writes it, it will probably look the same to the end user. There's a button. there's my output. All pretty typical. But when I write it, I want the code to be beautiful. Maybe Bill Gates and so many other people are right. Maybe I wont have a job in a year. If that's true then it doesn't matter how fast I code (or what the code looks like). Given that reality, I choose to enjoy it. It is my calling.
CS was pretty rough when I studied it
sorry it was so rough for you.
4 semester of advanced university mathematics,
I had great math teachers. For me math was always fun. The only class I remember hating was trigonometry and thinking back, I suspect it was because the teacher wasn't enthusiastic. She just went through the motions.
add to that basic logic classes,
If you don't enjoy logic classes why are you majoring in CS?
a bunch of semesters of statistics
That is weird. I only had to take one statistics class. It wasn't that bad.
on the compsci side you had algorithms,
Data Structures and Algorithms was the best class I ever took in my entire life. Ever. Dr. Jeremy Jones was the instructor's name. He really knew his stuff. I love being around smart people. I hope that some of it will rub off on me.
compiler stuff, basic operating systems,
Yeah, those were tedious. Networking classes were even harder, but I still enjoyed them.
basic processor design,
I can't really relate to that. My CS curriculum didn't include it.
time consuming practices for programming
?? Man, the best part of being a CS major is hanging out in the lab at 3:00 drinking mountain dew and joking with your buddies as you hack away on sparc workstations. If the assignment is to use recursion to traverse a binary tree, you have to love what you're doing enough to want to spend the time to implement the Towers of Hanoi problem. Wtf man? Why did you major in CS??
For me the hard classes were psychology, literature, stuff like that. It wasn't interesting to me.
or how about a phone that just rings? I don't get why people want their phones to start playing "can you take me to funky town" when they get a call.
As a geek, I like technology to just do its job. It's a phone. It should alert me in the most efficient way when I get a call. that's all it has to do. I don't need to be entertained. I have other gadgets for that.
"I'm still wondering if these guys are beyond stupid or somebody pays them to make alternative browsers look bad."
No, I've working in a situation where management painted us into a corner like this. Here's how it works:
1) the management idiots want some spiffy "feature" which adds nothing to the site. They just want it because it's cute.
2) you tell them that feature is only doable in IE (nobody ever asks for a firefox-only feature). They think about it for like 30 seconds and then decide that they don't care, because after all, "everybody uses IE"
3) you implement the feature and a few people complain. It turns out that a lot of people actually use really old versions of IE, or alternative browsers, or browsers on handhelds etc.
4) rather than admit the whole thing was a stupid idea and just remove the feature, management decides to just put a disclaimer up for browsers we don't support. Thus, you get a short list of browsers that you've actually tested and recorded the user agent on, and for anything else you just display an upgrade message.
So, the people who made the site you're talking about have tested the site with Opera 7. That's the only Opera user agent they've seen. But they put a message up that says, "Opera 7 or above"
BTW, none of this is an issue if you just develop to standards. It's not that hard once you get the hang of it. If your site validates with the w3c (and all mine do) then it's not your problem when someone can't render it - and best of all, EVERY new browser will be able to render it, unless there is a bug in that browser.
bingo. And the sence of community is great too. Knowing most or all of the people you're playing with is different from an anonymous game in the same way that online is different from single player. It's a whole other level of fun.
Tonight is my quake 3 threewave night (I know it's old but it's still fun). There are five guys that I've known for years and we all meet up once a week. If one of us is having a good night, he'll get congratulations and kudos from everyone else, as opposed to bitching and ranting on an anonymous server. If one of us is having a bad night, we'll all be good sports about it. A lot of times I'll even let someone kill me so they wont feel bad. As opposed to being called a loser and a noob on an anonymous server.
Playing with your friends rocks. It's the only way to go.