+1 I'm in the EFT field as well, and while it sounds like a fairly simple project, you are in way over your head. It's almost like building a kit car instead of buying a Kia to save money. But there's no kit. And even if you build it, you have to deal with the DMV, except instead of one bureaucratic institution it's a mile long list of processors, credit card companies, and banks who are much much worse.
Now if you said... "I build and sell closed POS platforms for a living and I want to build and sell a GPL POS platform." You might be in a position where that could happen. Heck I might even help.
Junk science is when Slashdot shines best. It usually only takes a few hours for some clever grad student slashdot readers to shred crazy claims to pieces and it's fricking hilarious to watch.
Unfortunately Steorn hasn't given us much to work with other than that cutesy magnet-circle animation.
Junk Science + Slashdot Goons = Perpetual Entertainment
Despite the naming of C#, I don't see why it is always shown as deriving from C. It is clearly a direct decendent of Java, maybe with a little Delphi thrown in for good measure. The value vs reference types, parameter passing, inheritance, scoping... all variations on Java.
Sure there are plenty features of C there, but most of those were in Java...
>1. Divide your project into a bunch of moduals Nope, come up with a set of stories which describe a functionality of the project. Prioritize, estimate, and figure out the smallest useful release possible.
>2. Make teams of 2 programmers and assign each modual. All code is collectively owned, not assigned. Teams change hourly, daily, or weekly atleast.
MODULES are not planned at the beginning, the simplest code which satisfies a current need is used, and then evolves into a set of objects.
>Program it without worrying too much about how things fit together. One of the pair is exclusively responsible for "how things fit together."
>3. Fit the moduals together This is performed atleast twice a day and a thorough list of tests proves it worked. No code is ever committed unless it integrates.
Careful, a little Software Engineering knowledge is just enough to really screw things up.
Generally when I run into people concerned with the "fine" arts, they are referring to an artform they believe has no room for growth or development. Stick to your ideas and maybe in a hundred years some unambitious dolt will call your work "fine" too.
Why does LASER have to be broken into a verb? Leave my acronyms alone thank you very much. And if you really wan't a verb it would be the LA part anyway. Besides lase sounds so dainty, i'd much prefer beam, or shoot, or even blast
It reminds me alot of the cities of geeks camped out to see Episode I. Only now they have a mission...
This is way better than any realtime strategy game. You have actual motivation, real rewards if you win, a stockpile of ingenuity, resources, and the affection of the city (as evident by donated food etc...), comradery, but is it enough to shake the evil empire from its tall dark tower?
There's probably marketability too. I know I'd rather watch the trials and tribulations of these guys every week than some smarmy MTV college kids, or whiny city slicker survivalists. Heck, I'd by a lunchbox!
Granted some of the Odysseus and Zarathustra symbols match up, and provide insight into this obtuse mesmerising film, Wheatley is looking just a little too hard.
Do you remember when that book Bible Code came out, and everyone thought for a moment that there were all these secret messages in the Bible... After a little analysis people applied those same techniques and found assassinations foretold in Moby Dick, prophecies in a MS access license, references to Bill Gates in Revelations (I'd believe that) and all kinds of stuff.
It's like crossing your eyes and looking at wall paper, amusing, but meaningless.
Thanks for the highlights of the book though Mr. Wheatley, now I really don't need to read it.
Does this have no application for the ISS. The ISS seems like it could serve as a wonderful testbed for extra-planetary networking. Sure it's still in orbit, and the distance is almost trivial (in Inter-planetary standards), but Alexander Graham Bell first made a call to another room.
Here's some interesting info about the use of laptops on the ISS but AFAIK no point of presence on the Internet for the floating condo yet...
I'm waiting to fork over my 20 million until I can get my/.!
Now your Windows problems will crop up when the machine is off. You'll have to cycle power ON just to flush it out.
Which raises an interesting question... Is the segmentation fault really there untill we look at it?
Wasn't this the computational unit that powered the "Heart of Gold" in the Hitchhiker's Guide? This is going to turn my desklamp into a grapefruit isn't it...
Regardless of how you feel about Newton, he spent much of his time and energy arguing about intellectual property.
He argued with Hooke about who discovered the ideas behind color diffusion. And then later tried to ruin his former friend Gottfried Liebniz's life because they both came up with similar ideas about integration and analysis by infinite series, about the same time. This wasn't for the good of the people (would your life be worse if you believed Liebniz invented Calculus?) this was only because he wanted to use important discovery to inflate public perception of him.
Gates took his cue from Newton, and took it a step farther. He didn't even bother trying to innovate, he merely did a good job convincing others that he was responsible for every major PC software innovation (BASIC, DOS, Windows, Word). If he has seen far it is because he stood on the dead shoulders of giants.
The real problem isn't that the end user needs source code, the platforms developers are the ones who need it. Could you imagine if tire manufacturers didn't know the size/weight specs for the car (ok so Bridgestone/Firestone just disregard it anyway)?
Developers for non "open" platforms develop mysterious black boxes that are supposed to flawlessly integrate with thousands of other mysterious black boxes (closed hardware and software) automagically. As the model becomes sufficiently complicated this really becomes absurd.
Psychic knowledge is (slightly) too much to expect from a good developer, and way too much to expect from poorly trained tech support people (who you have to admire, if just for the futility of their job).
Having grown up in the restaurant biz, I can assure you, your favorite eatery doesn't play that crappy music for fun (I garauntee there listening to something else in the kitchen). It's illegal to play any old CD in a restaurant without the rights. That's why most places have those horrid muzac satellite radio systems.
I got a Pogo Linux box, a couple months ago. I love it. I really enjoyed tinkering with hardware when I was young, but I don't have the time or money to burn anymore. I hope companies like pogo can keep on making it easy for normal people to shed their Chains That Bind (a M$ tm product).
Building copmlicated self healing servers will never work. You'll just need better techies to fix the self healing mechanism (or maybe a self healing mechanism self healing mechanism). What we really need is a fundamentally simpler server design.
Having Authentication problems? Turn authentication off...
Trouble with the ftp daemon? Don't run it...
Malfunctioning adapter? Take it out...
Get rid of all of the software. Remove the complicated hardware. I want a big blue box from IBM with no removable panels, no buttons, no leds, no ports (physical or otherwise).
No grounding, no shielding, no isolation, bad heat dissipation, huge propensity for static electricity...
no thanks i'll just keep my components in a running microwave, at least I know when everything will burn.
My 386 had huge external fans, which took up most of the room, and spun up to a deafening, albeit awe-inspiring roar as the machine's tape wheels began rotating in an endless supply of 1's & 0's((c) microsoft). A comforting warm glow seaped through the racks of breadboards from the monolithic tubes silently providing the raw number crunching power which enabled the computer age.
In the machines presence one felt as if he were the only person witnessing an ancient godess of spring rise from her slumber and shake away the decaying foliage. Her powerful breath defrosting the soul of the forest, bringing life, brillance and power to the world.
Finally a pale grey and awkwardly square sun rose and if you looked closely, on the northwest tip you could see a filecabinet drawer. Dotting its surface were brilliant icons which shown with each of the 256 colors of the rainbow.
This was an intel 386, and this... was MS Windows 3.1!
Slashdot Mirror
+1 I'm in the EFT field as well, and while it sounds like a fairly simple project, you are in way over your head. It's almost like building a kit car instead of buying a Kia to save money. But there's no kit. And even if you build it, you have to deal with the DMV, except instead of one bureaucratic institution it's a mile long list of processors, credit card companies, and banks who are much much worse.
... "I build and sell closed POS platforms for a living and I want to build and sell a GPL POS platform." You might be in a position where that could happen. Heck I might even help.
Now if you said
Junk science is when Slashdot shines best. It usually only takes a few hours for some clever grad student slashdot readers to shred crazy claims to pieces and it's fricking hilarious to watch.
Unfortunately Steorn hasn't given us much to work with other than that cutesy magnet-circle animation.
Junk Science + Slashdot Goons = Perpetual Entertainment
Hey! Someone should patent that...
Despite the naming of C#, I don't see why it is always shown as deriving from C. It is clearly a direct decendent of Java, maybe with a little Delphi thrown in for good measure. The value vs reference types, parameter passing, inheritance, scoping... all variations on Java.
Sure there are plenty features of C there, but most of those were in Java...
The droid wasn't as fast if you had a slow machine. It was fully playable on my old 486sx, but impossible on my pentium 75.
To contend with a few points:
>1. Divide your project into a bunch of moduals
Nope, come up with a set of stories which describe a functionality of the project. Prioritize, estimate, and figure out the smallest useful release possible.
>2. Make teams of 2 programmers and assign each modual.
All code is collectively owned, not assigned. Teams change hourly, daily, or weekly atleast.
MODULES are not planned at the beginning, the simplest code which satisfies a current need is used, and then evolves into a set of objects.
>Program it without worrying too much about how things fit together.
One of the pair is exclusively responsible for "how things fit together."
>3. Fit the moduals together
This is performed atleast twice a day and a thorough list of tests proves it worked. No code is ever committed unless it integrates.
Careful, a little Software Engineering knowledge is just enough to really screw things up.
Generally when I run into people concerned with the "fine" arts, they are referring to an artform they believe has no room for growth or development. Stick to your ideas and maybe in a hundred years some unambitious dolt will call your work "fine" too.
Why does LASER have to be broken into a verb? Leave my acronyms alone thank you very much. And if you really wan't a verb it would be the LA part anyway. Besides lase sounds so dainty, i'd much prefer beam, or shoot, or even blast
It reminds me alot of the cities of geeks camped out to see Episode I. Only now they have a mission... This is way better than any realtime strategy game. You have actual motivation, real rewards if you win, a stockpile of ingenuity, resources, and the affection of the city (as evident by donated food etc...), comradery, but is it enough to shake the evil empire from its tall dark tower? There's probably marketability too. I know I'd rather watch the trials and tribulations of these guys every week than some smarmy MTV college kids, or whiny city slicker survivalists. Heck, I'd by a lunchbox!
Do you remember when that book Bible Code came out, and everyone thought for a moment that there were all these secret messages in the Bible... After a little analysis people applied those same techniques and found assassinations foretold in Moby Dick, prophecies in a MS access license, references to Bill Gates in Revelations (I'd believe that) and all kinds of stuff.
It's like crossing your eyes and looking at wall paper, amusing, but meaningless.
Thanks for the highlights of the book though Mr. Wheatley, now I really don't need to read it.
Here's some interesting info about the use of laptops on the ISS but AFAIK no point of presence on the Internet for the floating condo yet...
I'm waiting to fork over my 20 million until I can get my /.!
Now your Windows problems will crop up when the machine is off. You'll have to cycle power ON just to flush it out.
Which raises an interesting question... Is the segmentation fault really there untill we look at it?
Wasn't this the computational unit that powered the "Heart of Gold" in the Hitchhiker's Guide? This is going to turn my desklamp into a grapefruit isn't it...
Regardless of how you feel about Newton, he spent much of his time and energy arguing about intellectual property. He argued with Hooke about who discovered the ideas behind color diffusion. And then later tried to ruin his former friend Gottfried Liebniz's life because they both came up with similar ideas about integration and analysis by infinite series, about the same time. This wasn't for the good of the people (would your life be worse if you believed Liebniz invented Calculus?) this was only because he wanted to use important discovery to inflate public perception of him. Gates took his cue from Newton, and took it a step farther. He didn't even bother trying to innovate, he merely did a good job convincing others that he was responsible for every major PC software innovation (BASIC, DOS, Windows, Word). If he has seen far it is because he stood on the dead shoulders of giants.
The real problem isn't that the end user needs source code, the platforms developers are the ones who need it. Could you imagine if tire manufacturers didn't know the size/weight specs for the car (ok so Bridgestone/Firestone just disregard it anyway)?
Developers for non "open" platforms develop mysterious black boxes that are supposed to flawlessly integrate with thousands of other mysterious black boxes (closed hardware and software) automagically. As the model becomes sufficiently complicated this really becomes absurd.
Psychic knowledge is (slightly) too much to expect from a good developer, and way too much to expect from poorly trained tech support people (who you have to admire, if just for the futility of their job).
You know, I remember when that came out, but I swear I remember it being an emacs variant. I really had no idea that emacs wasn't abuse...
Having grown up in the restaurant biz, I can assure you, your favorite eatery doesn't play that crappy music for fun (I garauntee there listening to something else in the kitchen). It's illegal to play any old CD in a restaurant without the rights. That's why most places have those horrid muzac satellite radio systems.
I got a Pogo Linux box, a couple months ago. I love it. I really enjoyed tinkering with hardware when I was young, but I don't have the time or money to burn anymore. I hope companies like pogo can keep on making it easy for normal people to shed their Chains That Bind (a M$ tm product).
Actually,
I think the quote is:
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum - Computer Networks
Building copmlicated self healing servers will never work. You'll just need better techies to fix the self healing mechanism (or maybe a self healing mechanism self healing mechanism). What we really need is a fundamentally simpler server design.
Having Authentication problems? Turn authentication off...
Trouble with the ftp daemon? Don't run it...
Malfunctioning adapter? Take it out...
Get rid of all of the software. Remove the complicated hardware. I want a big blue box from IBM with no removable panels, no buttons, no leds, no ports (physical or otherwise).
If you expect less, you'll get it.
No grounding, no shielding, no isolation, bad heat dissipation, huge propensity for static electricity... no thanks i'll just keep my components in a running microwave, at least I know when everything will burn.
My 386 had huge external fans, which took up most of the room, and spun up to a deafening, albeit awe-inspiring roar as the machine's tape wheels began rotating in an endless supply of 1's & 0's((c) microsoft). A comforting warm glow seaped through the racks of breadboards from the monolithic tubes silently providing the raw number crunching power which enabled the computer age. In the machines presence one felt as if he were the only person witnessing an ancient godess of spring rise from her slumber and shake away the decaying foliage. Her powerful breath defrosting the soul of the forest, bringing life, brillance and power to the world. Finally a pale grey and awkwardly square sun rose and if you looked closely, on the northwest tip you could see a filecabinet drawer. Dotting its surface were brilliant icons which shown with each of the 256 colors of the rainbow. This was an intel 386, and this... was MS Windows 3.1!