Back home in New Zealand there are huge numbers of used Japanese cars, I understood it was because the taxes or registration paid after a certain age were very much higher. [Both of course have right-hand drive cars which helps.]
They all come with radios that do not pick up most NZ stations because the frequency ranges are quite different. Also, most that I recall (it's been a while) had annoying "features" like a chime that sounded when going over 100km/h, or whatever number you picked - in one car it couldn't be turned off and it couldn't be adjusted outside a normal speed range. Nothing that some carefully placed wire cutters couldn't handle I suppose, but amusing nonetheless.
Anyway, if someone knows about the engines/cars - please let us know!
And then of course you have to watch out for the lonely, fiendless coder who works 90 hours a week and is still a terrible coder.
They do exist!
Re:The Problem With XML
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 1
There are also generic XML content editors which, although rather pricy, help reduce a lot of the negatives associated with working with XML (i.e. you would be crazy these days to be writing XML in e.g. Notepad).
I was looking the other day at what Telecom and TelstraClear (or whatever they're called these days) were offering these days. I was thinking I'd have to stay here in Canada until the situation improved drastically.
CAD57/mo gives me DSL (3mbps down, 512kbps up, no cap or limits) and cell phone (free evenings and weekends, etc.)
Having been in your situation a few years back, I feel your pain.
Unfortunately, at the moment few organizations are willing to pay enough for custom development (or system integration) to cover the actual costs, so to get any business at all, IT/SI/CS companies bid too low, and quality suffers (or they go out of business fast.)
If organizations were willing to spend what it actually costs to provide custom applications, then they wouldn't be so disappointed. I would include in "what it actually costs" things like people skilled in user interface design, and of course adequate project management, things that really matter to the customer.
Aside from that, we as IT professionals need to set these expectations much better. Customers really believe (because the sales guy blew so much sunshine up their asses) that it will all be perfect and on schedule. No one mentions (and few customers are perceptive enough to notice) that these projects are bid on before any of the requirements process has been performed, and the costings that go into the proposal are wildly inaccurate. But, no customer is going to go for a time and materials contract when some poor software company will offer fixed-price.
I am a big fan of iterative projects, with well understood features to be included in each release (that can be well costed out.) It's harder to go astray and the customer is getting incremental and obvious benefits from the money they are spending.
I was walking to work one day during a fairly normal New Brunswick winter, I slipped on an icy driveway and landed on my ass. I got to the office and opened my laptop bag and found that my laptop (a crappy old Tosh) was nicely packed in snow - presumably it got in there when I fell. I opened it about 30 degrees and stood it on its end to drain (and dry) off - worked fine when I turned it on.
For those interested (or still reading this article), since this was posted there has been a significant increase in team slashdot performance.
Totals:
Members (Rank) 2,891 (#1)
Current Members 2,844
Retired Members 47
Total Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) (Rank) 7:358:00:56:18 (#8)
Points Generated (Rank) 1,891,916 (#7)
Results Returned (Rank) 5,857 (#4)
Averages:
Avg. Run Time Per Calendar Day (y:d:h:m:s) 0:061:23:30:34
Avg. Run Time Per Result (y:d:h:m:s) 0:000:11:56:12
Avg. Points Per Hour of Run Time 27.06103
Avg. Points Per Calendar Day 40,253.53191
Avg. Points Per Result 323.01793
Avg. Results Per Calendar Day 124.61702
That's interesting, thanks for the informative responses.
I don't think I've ever seen a SCART socket/cable/plug. It seems that a fully-wired one would be the equivalent of a "component video", in that it sends the RGB signal without encoding into some composite form. I read after a little googling that SCART cannot carry component video signals as they are defined these days, so it must carry the RGB some other way.
On the topic of teletext, back home in NZ the service is still being used also (as far as I know) and is still fairly useful.
Are they not NTSC in as much as the TV still scans at 60Hz (interlaced)? Or am I bypassing that altogether when I send the signal to it via either S-Video or Component connections?
I see your point re PC-based software. I was not advocating it, merely suggesting that there is often more actual business use for PCs than as dumb terminals, and certainly moreso than playing games. Anyhow, being able to use your line-of-business apps from any standardly equipped PC is a big bonus, simply because they can be had so easily. You just leave the door open with a PC for some future flexibility, justified or not.
This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC
PCs are cheap enough now that they are competitive with terminals, consider the production volumes. I'm not talking about things you pick up from the dumpster around the back of the bank, but something that someone would pay for and get support for.
You also get some pretty good host integration features such as using the PC's local receipt printer without additional networking, not to mention the ability to change your POS software to something PC-based later on if you so choose.
I'm not so sure it's NTSC that does it. Here in Canada we use NTSC but I find the colour on Canadian networks quite different than on American networks. This seems to be the case whether via cable or satellite. I am not close enough to the border to tell whether this occurs on terrestrial signals however.
On a related note, with all the hype around digital signals these days, I was very surprised to see the quality difference between a good over-the-air signal and a good satellite signal. On a decent (but not HD) TV, I'd take the over-the-air signal any day, especially since the satellite and cable providers seem to be lowering their bit rates to get more channels on. Some channels show noticeable artifacts that you just don't get on analog signals.
DB2 is about as scalable as it gets (for general purpose DBMS)
Not sure about popular, but it runs on some fairly big IBM hardware, and would historically be used by larger organizations. I guess with the porting to Linux, they are hoping for more small scale business.
Actually as a child I had a dalek, created for a stage production of Doctor Who. They were piloted from the inside, and I could fit and move the thing fairly easily. Of course, that's before I reached 6'4". Nor did I wear a rubber suit, but that goes without saying:-)
What I find amusing is the part about Billie Piper being the sidekick.
My point was not that it could not be avoided by difference choices, but that with addictive disorders, it is easy to lose the ability to choose. It is a generalization to say that all obesity-related lifestyles are caused by addictive disorders, but generally (if not clinically) the effect is the same. People do not feel they have the choice that we can (from the outside) see so obviously. My real point is that you do no good by categorizing obese people as being intentionally so. They most certainly feel the social stigma of it and most want to change their situation (either that or simply do not know they are obese and so do nothing about it.)
Being healthy is more than being slim and smoke-free. Curiously, people often uncontrollably gain weight after quitting smoking. Addiction doesn't just go away for most people, their behaviours are just applied elsewhere.
Uh, obesity is a medical condition. There are many people who simply cannot help themselves in this area and you should be considerate of that. It's well recognised that poor people in Western nations often suffer from poor nutrition leading to obesity. My point is that most people that are obese are not so because they decided to be. People suffering from mental illness often do not seek the help they need for social reasons, it's a similar problem. Also, there wouldn't be many who decide to die from obesity. They may have made some harmful decisions that lead to death but it's rather simplistic to say that they intentionally killed themselves.
Yet another way of looking at it is this: dying from obesity is an extended form of food poisoning.
I have a similar situation, I also receive no spam in my catch-all account. You have to be fairly liberal with your e-mail address to get spam, I think. If you give it out to the world it becomes public knowledge. Just don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Unless the decline is the result of the hunting itself
At least then they have a 50% chance of getting the spyware not 100%...
Back home in New Zealand there are huge numbers of used Japanese cars, I understood it was because the taxes or registration paid after a certain age were very much higher. [Both of course have right-hand drive cars which helps.]
They all come with radios that do not pick up most NZ stations because the frequency ranges are quite different. Also, most that I recall (it's been a while) had annoying "features" like a chime that sounded when going over 100km/h, or whatever number you picked - in one car it couldn't be turned off and it couldn't be adjusted outside a normal speed range. Nothing that some carefully placed wire cutters couldn't handle I suppose, but amusing nonetheless.
Anyway, if someone knows about the engines/cars - please let us know!
And then of course you have to watch out for the lonely, fiendless coder who works 90 hours a week and is still a terrible coder.
They do exist!
Regardless, McIntosh made some awesome tube amps.
I was looking the other day at what Telecom and TelstraClear (or whatever they're called these days) were offering these days.
I was thinking I'd have to stay here in Canada until the situation improved drastically.
CAD57/mo gives me DSL (3mbps down, 512kbps up, no cap or limits) and cell phone (free evenings and weekends, etc.)
Having been in your situation a few years back, I feel your pain.
Unfortunately, at the moment few organizations are willing to pay enough for custom development (or system integration) to cover the actual costs, so to get any business at all, IT/SI/CS companies bid too low, and quality suffers (or they go out of business fast.)
If organizations were willing to spend what it actually costs to provide custom applications, then they wouldn't be so disappointed. I would include in "what it actually costs" things like people skilled in user interface design, and of course adequate project management, things that really matter to the customer.
Aside from that, we as IT professionals need to set these expectations much better. Customers really believe (because the sales guy blew so much sunshine up their asses) that it will all be perfect and on schedule. No one mentions (and few customers are perceptive enough to notice) that these projects are bid on before any of the requirements process has been performed, and the costings that go into the proposal are wildly inaccurate. But, no customer is going to go for a time and materials contract when some poor software company will offer fixed-price.
I am a big fan of iterative projects, with well understood features to be included in each release (that can be well costed out.) It's harder to go astray and the customer is getting incremental and obvious benefits from the money they are spending.
I was walking to work one day during a fairly normal New Brunswick winter, I slipped on an icy driveway and landed on my ass. I got to the office and opened my laptop bag and found that my laptop (a crappy old Tosh) was nicely packed in snow - presumably it got in there when I fell. I opened it about 30 degrees and stood it on its end to drain (and dry) off - worked fine when I turned it on.
At the beginning of Hybrid by Machinae Supremacy (great Swedish "SID-metal" band) you can hear samples comprising
A lot smaller? I mean, it's smaller than the USA, but it's not exactly small.
Also, Walmart (or others like it) are everywhere.
However, your point about the market still stands.
What is so bad with the AVI format? The content streams (and their patents) are irrelevant.
I'm totally with you on this one. I wish we'd started earlier with this on our product.
That's interesting, thanks for the informative responses.
I don't think I've ever seen a SCART socket/cable/plug. It seems that a fully-wired one would be the equivalent of a "component video", in that it sends the RGB signal without encoding into some composite form. I read after a little googling that SCART cannot carry component video signals as they are defined these days, so it must carry the RGB some other way.
On the topic of teletext, back home in NZ the service is still being used also (as far as I know) and is still fairly useful.
Are they not NTSC in as much as the TV still scans at 60Hz (interlaced)? Or am I bypassing that altogether when I send the signal to it via either S-Video or Component connections?
I see your point re PC-based software. I was not advocating it, merely suggesting that there is often more actual business use for PCs than as dumb terminals, and certainly moreso than playing games. Anyhow, being able to use your line-of-business apps from any standardly equipped PC is a big bonus, simply because they can be had so easily. You just leave the door open with a PC for some future flexibility, justified or not.
This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC
PCs are cheap enough now that they are competitive with terminals, consider the production volumes. I'm not talking about things you pick up from the dumpster around the back of the bank, but something that someone would pay for and get support for.
You also get some pretty good host integration features such as using the PC's local receipt printer without additional networking, not to mention the ability to change your POS software to something PC-based later on if you so choose.
I'm not so sure it's NTSC that does it. Here in Canada we use NTSC but I find the colour on Canadian networks quite different than on American networks. This seems to be the case whether via cable or satellite. I am not close enough to the border to tell whether this occurs on terrestrial signals however.
On a related note, with all the hype around digital signals these days, I was very surprised to see the quality difference between a good over-the-air signal and a good satellite signal. On a decent (but not HD) TV, I'd take the over-the-air signal any day, especially since the satellite and cable providers seem to be lowering their bit rates to get more channels on. Some channels show noticeable artifacts that you just don't get on analog signals.
DB2 is about as scalable as it gets (for general purpose DBMS)
Not sure about popular, but it runs on some fairly big IBM hardware, and would historically be used by larger organizations. I guess with the porting to Linux, they are hoping for more small scale business.
Pretty much any server board will take ECC RAM. Just have to get one made for 24/7 operation...
Actually as a child I had a dalek, created for a stage production of Doctor Who. They were piloted from the inside, and I could fit and move the thing fairly easily. Of course, that's before I reached 6'4". Nor did I wear a rubber suit, but that goes without saying :-)
What I find amusing is the part about Billie Piper being the sidekick.
My point was not that it could not be avoided by difference choices, but that with addictive disorders, it is easy to lose the ability to choose. It is a generalization to say that all obesity-related lifestyles are caused by addictive disorders, but generally (if not clinically) the effect is the same. People do not feel they have the choice that we can (from the outside) see so obviously. My real point is that you do no good by categorizing obese people as being intentionally so. They most certainly feel the social stigma of it and most want to change their situation (either that or simply do not know they are obese and so do nothing about it.)
Being healthy is more than being slim and smoke-free. Curiously, people often uncontrollably gain weight after quitting smoking. Addiction doesn't just go away for most people, their behaviours are just applied elsewhere.
Uh, obesity is a medical condition. There are many people who simply cannot help themselves in this area and you should be considerate of that. It's well recognised that poor people in Western nations often suffer from poor nutrition leading to obesity. My point is that most people that are obese are not so because they decided to be. People suffering from mental illness often do not seek the help they need for social reasons, it's a similar problem. Also, there wouldn't be many who decide to die from obesity. They may have made some harmful decisions that lead to death but it's rather simplistic to say that they intentionally killed themselves.
Yet another way of looking at it is this: dying from obesity is an extended form of food poisoning.
I have a similar situation, I also receive no spam in my catch-all account. You have to be fairly liberal with your e-mail address to get spam, I think. If you give it out to the world it becomes public knowledge. Just don't.