Of course, if people were a little more aware of ergonomics, maybe we could prevent the injuries in the first place.
Well, it's actually not as simple as that. What's "ergonomics"? There's a ton of definitions, but basically, it's the science that studies how people work. How does being aware of that science prevent injury?
I think what you're getting at is that more people need to go out and buy "ergonomic furniture," but really there is no such thing in the sense that you imply. That is, no one chair is going to be perfect for everybody to prevent injury. The real key to ergonomic furniture is to find furniture that will let you adjust its positioning in as many ways as possible. That's about it.
Yes folks, what I'm saying is that you can buy a Herman Miller chair and still end up with RSI. Awareness of ergonomics is not so much the issue. Awareness of the potential for injury is. Far and away the #1 factor in preventing RSI, and even in reversing some level of RSI, is not new furniture -- it's change in work habits.
And, in the event you feel like reading about some folks who probably aren't much older than you (and may be younger) who have indeed already developed what may be permanent injuries, read on. --
Sadly, a few years ago I lost my manuals that came with my Apple ][+. One of them was the Apple ][ System Reference, or something like this -- as opposed to the DOS manual and the Applesoft BASIC manual.
Anyway, this manual had a glossary in the back, and in that glossary was included this word and definition:
featuren. - A bug as described by the marketing department.
Whatever happened to that Apple Computer? That's what I want to know. I can't see today's Apple putting something like that in a manual. Hell, they don't even print manuals anymore. --
Sorry if this is getting off-topic but... since when is Hotline "peer-to-peer"?
As far as I understand it, there are two components to a Hotline system. Two different software programs. They even go so far as to call one the "Hotline client," and then they call the other the "Hotline server." Does this not sound more like... dare I say it, in this we're-way-past-all-that 21st Century... the Client-Server model??
It seems to me that the only reason they refer to Hotline as a peer-to-peer app is that peer-to-peer gets a lot of snazzy media attention these days, and since Hotline is now owned by some kind of corporation, they like that sort of thing. That, and it seemed like the upcoming Hotline2 was going to more resemble a true peer-to-peer app.
I'm actually surprised Microsoft hasn't started calling itself the "world leader in peer-to-peer file sharing," or something of the kind. Cuz after all, peer-to-peer is built right in to every Windows box.
If this is the "latest and greatest," and incorporates all the bug fixes etc., then how come 6 months after I compiled Perl 5.6 on my own machine, all the OS distros I could find (including, if I'm not mistaken, the just-released Mac OS X) were still shipping with some 5.00x release?
This is not a troll. I really want to know if there's some reason why more people aren't using Perl 5.6.x?
I thought COMDEX was lame. I wouldn't suggest anyone under the age of 21 attending. And really the only reason I can see for attending if you are 21 or older is to drive the Mercedes (they had free test drives).
You mean the Red Hat folks weren't buying rounds? --
He cites a report from sextracker.com that the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
The misleading assumption here is that each "site" represents a company that has set up shop to sell pornography online, much like Amazon.com is a "site."
In reality, a single pornographer is liable to have hundreds of sites under its "umbrella." I know a guy who used to run DNS for a Web pornographer, and he was regularly called upon to register or alter DNS info for hundreds of domain names every day.
Statistics like these prove there are a lot of porn sites out there, true. But they don't actually say anything about the health of the online pornography industry per se. --
I can't see anybody making money off consumer broadband Internet access, where there's an atmosphere of commodity pricing.
The real payoff will come when companies can successfully offer "bundled services" -- high-speed Internet, digital television, digital phone, all over the same wire, for one (not-so-low) monthly fee. That way, the provider can have their customer paying for TV while he surfs the Internet, paying for Internet while he's talking on the phone.
The only companies that have a viable shot at making that a reality, though, are gigantic telecommunications conglomerates that have interests in all these disparate areas. Read: somebody like AOL Time Warner.
I think what we're going to see is continued consolidation in the DSL market, with all the smaller providers and CLECs being either bought outright, or else going out of business and having their assets auctioned off to the larger players. The larger players will get larger and larger, until eventually we will be left with only a couple massive giants trying to offer every consumer in America the digital communications future we've all been dreaming of (cough).
My votes: AOL Time Warner and our old telco friends, AT&T.
Java (using one of those two refered to) was VERY well defined, and there are many good implimentations. What was 'incomplete' about this standard which forced them to break it. And not only do they modify the standard, but they can't even impliment it correctly without a discusting number of bugs.
I just don't buy this line of reasoning.
Java being a "standard" is just as much a figment of Sun Microsystems's marketing hype as the preceding interview is representative of Microsoft's marketing hype. Java isn't a "standard"! It's a product of Sun Microsystems! Just because they let other people play in their sandbox doesn't mean they have a purpose any higher than gaining market share.
So Microsoft foiled their market share bid, eh? Well,boo hoo. Looks like Sun's got that situation remedied now, though. So I suppose you're all going back to writing 100% Pure Java apps now?
Last time I was involved with a Java project for the desktop, it went from being 100% Pure Java, to being mostly-portable Java, then finally to being an application that could run only on the MS Java VM (meaning that in order to run it, you needed IE installed). The reason? The "pure" Java solution wasn't up to snuff.
Fair enough -- you can say that the people who spec'ed out this application should have known better. They should have understood Java engineering better to either have picked a different language, or else to design it in such a way that it didn't need Microsoft-specific Java extensions. That may be true, that may not -- I wasn't there for that part of it, and I'm not enough of a Java guru myself to make that call.
What I do know is that, using the Microsoft JVM, they could make it work. It would do what they wanted it to do, and it would do it fast enough that perofrmance was acceptable for the intended user base.
So... "embrace and extend" is evil? How so? Microsoft took the Sun Java specification and further developed it so that Java applications could run more efficiently in more real-world application situations. Sure, they only did it for Windows. But what the hell did you expect?
If you wanted Java to run more efficiently in more real-world application situations on all platforms -- well, isn't that Sun's job? They're the ones waving the flag for portability, aren't they? "Write once, run anywhere," right? Well, then they should deliver it, already!!
I do think Microsoft has carried on with some fairly nasty business practices. But sorry, I just don't think you can hold up Java as the best example. --
>Finally, Microsoft may port a few programs to Linux. The most likely thing: Internet Explorer.
And if it's a robust, stable browser that lets me view 90% of the Web sites out there, complete with all their JavaScript, ECMAscript, and (what?!) VBScript gee-gaws on the Linux platform, then I will use it.
The greater glory of Konqueror/Nautilus/Mozilla/Galeon/whatever be damned, I just want to surf the Web.
The average Mac user double clicks on both applications and documents indiscriminately. That makes passing Trojans on the Mac a cinch. Just give an executable a Microsoft Word icon, or a QuickTime icon or whatever, and then mail it, encoded with MacBinary.
If I wanted to write an Internet worm that affected the Mac, that would be easy too. I'd probably write it in AppleScript.
It's been so long since Mac users really had to worry about viruses that most of them are complacent. Complacency does not equal security.
BTW, please don't do the things I've described. As someone who's written a couple of viruses in my day (yes, I was even lame enough to use the non-word "virii"), viruses are trivial examples of programming that are annoying and a pain in the ass. There are countless better ways to demonstrate your superiority over other people than to waste everyone's time by writing viruses.
Want to show off your programming skills? Write a word processor that's competitive with MS Word, so the world doesn't need to worry about macro viruses anymore. Writing applications is difficult, challenging, and time consuming. Writing 2K worth of virus code doesn't impress me.
I can't imagine anybody will be able to argue that Microsoft Word is not, far and away, the dominant product in the word processor field, and has been for some time.
For this reason, I think it's at least worthwhile to have an Open Source project that tracks the MS Word format. Any OSS word processor that is going to succeed must support the most commonly used features of Word documents. This is not an option, it's mandatory!
If I wanted to switch to AbiWord while the rest of my organization used MS Word, I would be decreasing the productivity of the entire group, not just my own. This is the #1 reason for Microsoft's dominance in the office space: every Mac and every Windows machine in a given workgroup can all speak the same language. Any OSS alternative that's to succeed has to play ball.
That having been said, I don't necessarily think the creators of an OSS word processor should be the same ones worrying about what MS is doing with its document file format. Maybe a separate group, dedicated to an OSS translator of Word-format documents, would be sufficient? Let the word processor people worry about making a good, feature-rich word processor and text editor. Let someone else worry about the file formats. (Apple actually took this approach a few years back, upon realizing it was at a disadvantage to Windows in terms of file-format compatibility, when it took to bundling MacLink Plus with all new Macintosh computers...) --
Something like 14 responses asking "Gee whiz, doesn't the President use encryption?"
But not one pointing out the fact that, if someone of the dubious mental faculties of George W. Bush can't figure out how to use encryption, then half of America probably can't either.
Am I the only one thinking that SOMEBODY -- be it the PGP people, the Free Software Foundation, or Microsoft for that matter -- should figure out a TRULY easy, TRULY fast, TRULY seamless means for the common email user to encrypt a message?
Cuz I've got PGP installed on my Macintosh, and I'm telling you guys -- PGP ain't it.
I concur. But you should point out that developer efficiency is a good thing as well. For rapid application development, he should seriously consider using a wire-wrap kit, rather than etching the circuit boards himself. --
But I think Yahoo! is far enough ahead in the portal game that it can afford to wait to see if a marriage like the one between Excite and @Home Networks actually works out. The verdict's still out.
I don't typically float big balances on my credit cards, but I rely on them as a contractor because my cash flow is less predictable than my annual income. I know I'll get the money sooner or later -- I just may not have it right now. I might not have it next month, either. I might want to spend that money I don't have, though, if sufficient opportunity will arise from it. And in those cases, I sometimes carry a balance on my credit card.
I find rules like "never carry a balance" are overly restrictive. Understanding -- and limiting -- your own spending patterns is the real key to managing your finances.
Plus, if you spend enough money on credit cards they give you low rates anyway. 2.9% isn't such a big deal, to me anyway. --
...especially since the brilliance of The Cryptonomicon is the degree to which it blended clearly historical facts with clearly fictional events. I found myself wondering time and again where the line was drawn between what was made up and what was not. Time and again Neal used a series of facts (say Fact A, Fact B, Fact C, Fact D, and Fact E) the first of which (Fact A) was based on history and the last of which (Fact E) clearly could not have happened. The fiction was blended so well with the fact that I couldn't tell where the transition between fact and fiction began (Fact B? Fact C? Fact D?).
This is supposed to be brilliant? They do this in just about every Star Trek episode: "Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Sporkon of Cygnus 9..." (etc.)
This letter from Stephenson proves yet again what a clever guy he is, and what a good communicator. But I remain totally underwhelmed by Cryptonomicon, which I don't see as being much more than the average espionage potboiler. Tom Clancy probably does as much research as Stephenson does. Just because Stephenson researches "stuff that matters" (to you), doesn't make him any more of a genius. --
Am I mistaken, or is this another one of those situations where somebody's asking Slashdot when they should really be talking to a laywer?
Remember folks, this is the *LAW*. It has nothing whatsoever to do with who's right and who's wrong. It depends 100% on who can establish that their actions are valid based on current statutes, period.
(If you factor that figuring out exactly what those statutes are and how they will be interpreted by a judge takes time and money, then the depths of the participants' pockets factor as well. The poster, in this event, may merely be S.O.L.) --
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's actually not as simple as that. What's "ergonomics"? There's a ton of definitions, but basically, it's the science that studies how people work. How does being aware of that science prevent injury?
I think what you're getting at is that more people need to go out and buy "ergonomic furniture," but really there is no such thing in the sense that you imply. That is, no one chair is going to be perfect for everybody to prevent injury. The real key to ergonomic furniture is to find furniture that will let you adjust its positioning in as many ways as possible. That's about it.
Yes folks, what I'm saying is that you can buy a Herman Miller chair and still end up with RSI. Awareness of ergonomics is not so much the issue. Awareness of the potential for injury is. Far and away the #1 factor in preventing RSI, and even in reversing some level of RSI, is not new furniture -- it's change in work habits.
And, in the event you feel like reading about some folks who probably aren't much older than you (and may be younger) who have indeed already developed what may be permanent injuries, read on.
--
Such a person could be honest and courageous, maybe. Trustworthy? Hell no.
--
I thought Oracle 9i was an Apache-based application server, not a database.
--
Ah. Then on that score, I stand corrected. I'm almost certain that the Public Beta shipped with 5.005.
--
Anyway, this manual had a glossary in the back, and in that glossary was included this word and definition:
feature n. - A bug as described by the marketing department.
Whatever happened to that Apple Computer? That's what I want to know. I can't see today's Apple putting something like that in a manual. Hell, they don't even print manuals anymore.
--
Sorry if this is getting off-topic but ... since when is Hotline "peer-to-peer"?
As far as I understand it, there are two components to a Hotline system. Two different software programs. They even go so far as to call one the "Hotline client," and then they call the other the "Hotline server." Does this not sound more like... dare I say it, in this we're-way-past-all-that 21st Century... the Client-Server model??
It seems to me that the only reason they refer to Hotline as a peer-to-peer app is that peer-to-peer gets a lot of snazzy media attention these days, and since Hotline is now owned by some kind of corporation, they like that sort of thing. That, and it seemed like the upcoming Hotline2 was going to more resemble a true peer-to-peer app.
I'm actually surprised Microsoft hasn't started calling itself the "world leader in peer-to-peer file sharing," or something of the kind. Cuz after all, peer-to-peer is built right in to every Windows box.
--
If this is the "latest and greatest," and incorporates all the bug fixes etc., then how come 6 months after I compiled Perl 5.6 on my own machine, all the OS distros I could find (including, if I'm not mistaken, the just-released Mac OS X) were still shipping with some 5.00x release?
This is not a troll. I really want to know if there's some reason why more people aren't using Perl 5.6.x?
--
Personally, I'm still waiting for a language that will replace current server-side languages, rather than client-side.
You know -- things like shell scripting, TCL, Ada, and C.
--
You mean the Red Hat folks weren't buying rounds?
--
The misleading assumption here is that each "site" represents a company that has set up shop to sell pornography online, much like Amazon.com is a "site."
In reality, a single pornographer is liable to have hundreds of sites under its "umbrella." I know a guy who used to run DNS for a Web pornographer, and he was regularly called upon to register or alter DNS info for hundreds of domain names every day.
Statistics like these prove there are a lot of porn sites out there, true. But they don't actually say anything about the health of the online pornography industry per se.
--
I can't see anybody making money off consumer broadband Internet access, where there's an atmosphere of commodity pricing.
The real payoff will come when companies can successfully offer "bundled services" -- high-speed Internet, digital television, digital phone, all over the same wire, for one (not-so-low) monthly fee. That way, the provider can have their customer paying for TV while he surfs the Internet, paying for Internet while he's talking on the phone.
The only companies that have a viable shot at making that a reality, though, are gigantic telecommunications conglomerates that have interests in all these disparate areas. Read: somebody like AOL Time Warner.
I think what we're going to see is continued consolidation in the DSL market, with all the smaller providers and CLECs being either bought outright, or else going out of business and having their assets auctioned off to the larger players. The larger players will get larger and larger, until eventually we will be left with only a couple massive giants trying to offer every consumer in America the digital communications future we've all been dreaming of (cough).
My votes: AOL Time Warner and our old telco friends, AT&T.
--
I just don't buy this line of reasoning.
Java being a "standard" is just as much a figment of Sun Microsystems's marketing hype as the preceding interview is representative of Microsoft's marketing hype. Java isn't a "standard"! It's a product of Sun Microsystems! Just because they let other people play in their sandbox doesn't mean they have a purpose any higher than gaining market share.
So Microsoft foiled their market share bid, eh? Well,boo hoo. Looks like Sun's got that situation remedied now, though. So I suppose you're all going back to writing 100% Pure Java apps now?
Last time I was involved with a Java project for the desktop, it went from being 100% Pure Java, to being mostly-portable Java, then finally to being an application that could run only on the MS Java VM (meaning that in order to run it, you needed IE installed). The reason? The "pure" Java solution wasn't up to snuff.
Fair enough -- you can say that the people who spec'ed out this application should have known better. They should have understood Java engineering better to either have picked a different language, or else to design it in such a way that it didn't need Microsoft-specific Java extensions. That may be true, that may not -- I wasn't there for that part of it, and I'm not enough of a Java guru myself to make that call.
What I do know is that, using the Microsoft JVM, they could make it work. It would do what they wanted it to do, and it would do it fast enough that perofrmance was acceptable for the intended user base.
So ... "embrace and extend" is evil? How so? Microsoft took the Sun Java specification and further developed it so that Java applications could run more efficiently in more real-world application situations. Sure, they only did it for Windows. But what the hell did you expect?
If you wanted Java to run more efficiently in more real-world application situations on all platforms -- well, isn't that Sun's job? They're the ones waving the flag for portability, aren't they? "Write once, run anywhere," right? Well, then they should deliver it, already!!
I do think Microsoft has carried on with some fairly nasty business practices. But sorry, I just don't think you can hold up Java as the best example.
--
>Finally, Microsoft may port a few programs to Linux. The most likely thing: Internet Explorer.
And if it's a robust, stable browser that lets me view 90% of the Web sites out there, complete with all their JavaScript, ECMAscript, and (what?!) VBScript gee-gaws on the Linux platform, then I will use it.
The greater glory of Konqueror/Nautilus/Mozilla/Galeon/whatever be damned, I just want to surf the Web.
Think they'll port it to LinuxPPC?
--
The average Mac user double clicks on both applications and documents indiscriminately. That makes passing Trojans on the Mac a cinch. Just give an executable a Microsoft Word icon, or a QuickTime icon or whatever, and then mail it, encoded with MacBinary.
If I wanted to write an Internet worm that affected the Mac, that would be easy too. I'd probably write it in AppleScript.
It's been so long since Mac users really had to worry about viruses that most of them are complacent. Complacency does not equal security.
BTW, please don't do the things I've described. As someone who's written a couple of viruses in my day (yes, I was even lame enough to use the non-word "virii"), viruses are trivial examples of programming that are annoying and a pain in the ass. There are countless better ways to demonstrate your superiority over other people than to waste everyone's time by writing viruses.
Want to show off your programming skills? Write a word processor that's competitive with MS Word, so the world doesn't need to worry about macro viruses anymore. Writing applications is difficult, challenging, and time consuming. Writing 2K worth of virus code doesn't impress me.
--
For this reason, I think it's at least worthwhile to have an Open Source project that tracks the MS Word format. Any OSS word processor that is going to succeed must support the most commonly used features of Word documents. This is not an option, it's mandatory!
If I wanted to switch to AbiWord while the rest of my organization used MS Word, I would be decreasing the productivity of the entire group, not just my own. This is the #1 reason for Microsoft's dominance in the office space: every Mac and every Windows machine in a given workgroup can all speak the same language. Any OSS alternative that's to succeed has to play ball.
That having been said, I don't necessarily think the creators of an OSS word processor should be the same ones worrying about what MS is doing with its document file format. Maybe a separate group, dedicated to an OSS translator of Word-format documents, would be sufficient? Let the word processor people worry about making a good, feature-rich word processor and text editor. Let someone else worry about the file formats. (Apple actually took this approach a few years back, upon realizing it was at a disadvantage to Windows in terms of file-format compatibility, when it took to bundling MacLink Plus with all new Macintosh computers...)
--
Hey, that's great:
Something like 14 responses asking "Gee whiz, doesn't the President use encryption?"
But not one pointing out the fact that, if someone of the dubious mental faculties of George W. Bush can't figure out how to use encryption, then half of America probably can't either.
Am I the only one thinking that SOMEBODY -- be it the PGP people, the Free Software Foundation, or Microsoft for that matter -- should figure out a TRULY easy, TRULY fast, TRULY seamless means for the common email user to encrypt a message?
Cuz I've got PGP installed on my Macintosh, and I'm telling you guys -- PGP ain't it.
--
...who was ever "prevented" from copying analog content, either?
--
Shouldn't that be "arcade mainstay" rather than "arcade standby"?
--
I concur. But you should point out that developer efficiency is a good thing as well. For rapid application development, he should seriously consider using a wire-wrap kit, rather than etching the circuit boards himself.
--
Fair enough, but this is one reason Apache was designed with an API and is released Open Source.
Investigate mod_perl, etc., before casting aside Apache.
--
...for example.
But I think Yahoo! is far enough ahead in the portal game that it can afford to wait to see if a marriage like the one between Excite and @Home Networks actually works out. The verdict's still out.
--
I don't typically float big balances on my credit cards, but I rely on them as a contractor because my cash flow is less predictable than my annual income. I know I'll get the money sooner or later -- I just may not have it right now. I might not have it next month, either. I might want to spend that money I don't have, though, if sufficient opportunity will arise from it. And in those cases, I sometimes carry a balance on my credit card.
I find rules like "never carry a balance" are overly restrictive. Understanding -- and limiting -- your own spending patterns is the real key to managing your finances.
Plus, if you spend enough money on credit cards they give you low rates anyway. 2.9% isn't such a big deal, to me anyway.
--
This is supposed to be brilliant? They do this in just about every Star Trek episode: "Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Sporkon of Cygnus 9..." (etc.)
This letter from Stephenson proves yet again what a clever guy he is, and what a good communicator. But I remain totally underwhelmed by Cryptonomicon, which I don't see as being much more than the average espionage potboiler. Tom Clancy probably does as much research as Stephenson does. Just because Stephenson researches "stuff that matters" (to you), doesn't make him any more of a genius.
--
Am I mistaken, or is this another one of those situations where somebody's asking Slashdot when they should really be talking to a laywer?
Remember folks, this is the *LAW*. It has nothing whatsoever to do with who's right and who's wrong. It depends 100% on who can establish that their actions are valid based on current statutes, period.
(If you factor that figuring out exactly what those statutes are and how they will be interpreted by a judge takes time and money, then the depths of the participants' pockets factor as well. The poster, in this event, may merely be S.O.L.)
--
I've observed that people who point out how obscure their own references are probably don't understand the motive for making obscure references.
--