Who exactly were you referring to there? Slashdotters like to take to piss out of conspiracy theorists as much as they like to report on them. If it was a worthy conspiracy theory to start with in the first place; sounded more like a market analysis tool to most of us, I expect.
Not sure where it is at now, I bought the book when it was *current* and really liked the framework, but didn't get into developing a live app with it at the time. When I recently went back to look at using it, they have replaced 2 or 3 or more of the base libraries and the book appears to be redundant. Haven't yet investigated enough to see if there are clear and useful instructions available online for getting up and running with the latest version, but I would like to see an in-depth guide to things that are different from the book that was originally published.
I agree with that, but also would like to point at that, maybe there is a better reason that the blogger in question thought older programmers asked less questions. Maybe more of us prefer the traditional ways of investigating a programming chalenge, or new language, framework etc BEFORE going to a public forum to ask for assistance.
Sure, I have sometimes picked up useful pointers from Stackoverflow, but it wouldn't be my first stop when investigating a problem. Over the years I think the better programmers I have worked with have been those who know how to look up the manual/programming guide/whatever when necessary, and go bothering their workmates only after MSDN (for instance) failed to give a clear answer (yet again)
Well their scientists have shown great concern over killing off the whales, why should this be different? After all they spent huge amounts of resources going out there to fire harpoons into whales so that they could do some scientific research on them afterwards. I think the research went along the lines of "... hmm. it looks dead".
No it's not a wave, or a particle. They are just a field-effect generated by our holographic projector. And don't even ask how many sticks of RAM are being used to track them all.
I think I agree with you, tho this is probably why online gaming is the better option; in a single user game with any of the levels of complexity you mention, I think the end-user can quickly determine if there has been a lot of time and cleverness put into the AI side of things, and the ability of the NPC's to keep things interesting in the game can sometimes be what makes a game worth continuing to play (or at least, continuing to enjoy, as I have played some to the end just out of sheer bloody-mindedness).
In recent purchases that come to mind, portal 2 probably dissapointed, in terms of single player challenge, long-lasting playability and the thought of ever replaying the game for nostalgia. This is why, I think, the current trend is to sell a game as a basic intro to an environment or scenario, which then urges the player to join into an online interactive, where hopefully the real live (or partially drunk/asleep/stoned/whatever on a Friday night) players will provide the challenge to make the game popular.
I'm not sure I prefer it myself, but it must work for those who calculate sales and margins and such. Is any major game producer putting all that much time and effort, any more, into the long lasting epic single-player offline game? Even the concept of breaking the story development into episidic releases seems to have landed on the big red Go Straight To Fail square. How long have we waited for another episode in HL2?
p.s. Proof reading suggested almost a criticism of Valve. This is unintentional, Valve are my top favorites in software, all time, no more to say there.
The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
On analysis, the excitement level from reading that article appears to have been vastly overestimated. It now appears that the article was between 2 and 10 times less exciting than the original estimates.
The techniques used for measuring excitement levels were based on the amount of gas ejected from a nearby colleague of mine, whilst he was reading said article. But since gas can be misjudged due to its unpredictable effects on my olfactory organs, it now appears that the actual excitement levels generated by the article were exaggerated by an unknown factor related to what my colleague had for lunch.
I have preferred it for some time, but it does have those little quirks that put it above newb access level still.
Really wish I could have done the last dist upgrade without it dropping my display settings and losing my drivers. Come on, who really cared if the kernel was relying on some 'non free' firmware, I wasn't protesting outside Debian offices about it. Sometimes they take this free crap too far.
No, aside from bitching about minor inconveniences, I still have to choose Debian for all serious installs (and Puppy for the other installs:)
Wouldn't it be better to simply have an IE extension that lets us enable/disable javascript quickly via a toolbar toggle button?
The only two options I have found so far are switching the security settings, via about 8 clicks plus scrolling down a large list of options, or using the developer plugin. Unfortunately the developer plugin's option to disable scripting is itself disabled more often than not, making it quite useless.
Why can't MS just put a big button on the toolbar? When I specifically know I want to enable scripting I would like to do so quickly and easily.
Oh, and before somebody points out the 'prompt' option in security settings, check out how many times the prompt can appear while a single page is loading. Seriously unusable.
I have say mindmaps are the best tool I have found. Tracking a project, keeping notes on what I am doing at work or at home, mindmaps have proven quick and easy to both update and browse thru. They also make a great replacement for bookmarking web sites, as well as linking to local files and folders etc.
There are a number of free apps available, as well as web/cloud based services which let you forget about carrying data files around with you. Worth checking out, its a fantastic way to organize many things, with so much freedom in how it can be used.
My first fav was FreeMind, but now I use XMind for the more polished graphical capabilites.
There were a few manufacturers that have put out SATA units with faulty drivers which could not handle more than 1.2 TB. Got into a mess with that myself after installing a 2.5 TB drive and having it fail on a disk check for all space above 1.2. What confused me more was I switched the drive to another mobo from a different manufacturer and chipset, which had exactly the same fault in the driver provided with it.
Bottom line is, if you install a largish hard drive on any SATA system that is not very new, make sure you run a full checkdisk on it before using it (I was surprised that the drive installation notes recommended fast format and no full check), and it shouldn't need to be said, but make sure you have the latest SATA drivers for the chipset used.
At least the patent authors bothered to re-word the HTML specification a little bit, but it does sound quite similar to this...
'An image map is an image that has "active regions". When the user selects one of the regions, some action takes place -- a link may be followed, information may be sent to a server, etc.'
Which can be found among the rest of the HTML specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#image-maps
Still, it seems awfully silly that the legal system in any country should allow such wasteful tying up of resources that could otherwise be doing something useful.
Never heard of? Wait, did you ever over-hear a song on somebody's radio that made you feel like slinking off somewhere private to slash your wrists? That was prolly her...
I just got one of those from DealExtreme. Not ready to make a final judgement just yet but not excessively impressed so far.
It is running android 1.6, no clear indication at this stage if it is possible to upgrade it.
Wifi was working briefly then it seemed to start rebooting whenever a wifi connection was established, may be a config issue, need time to sort that out.
Eth connection fails to make a DHCP connection, got it working after typing in gateway, DNS etc myself.
Android Market appears to think it is working, but after registering an account I get to the download stage and it freezes. Cleared cache and tried every stoopid solution I could find from only about an hour of googling and reading. Hopefully I will find a more useful help site after I get more time to investigate this.
Downloaded a free PDF reader and managed to get reasonable access to a ebook, which is the main reason I got this thing. Would like to see a better PDF reader with useful navigation interface, but I will have to use a freebie until I can find a way to use the market thing.
So how is the uninformed user supposed to know if a product can actually use Android Market before buying? Ok I didn't have high expectations from ordering a cheapie from a foreign country, but this seems just a little bit ermm.. under tested? ill prepared? Or is it the Google software at fault? Really, I don't understand why it would freeze and offer no suggestion whatsoever on how to diagnose what went wrong; if the product is not licensed with Google or whatever, then why put me thru the process of registering, offer a bunch of products, then simply freeze once I actually decide to buy one? If the app has filled it cache or whatever, why the hell wouldn't you write software that detects this condition and warns first?
Seriously, Google software? WTF?
Oh, and as for purchasing stuff from DealExtreme... good service but it looked like the screen on this thing had been rubbed around on a dirty floor. No protective removable film over the screen, it was scratched to bejaysus and looked seriously second hand. Not likely to be a repeat customer.
Are you *trying* to sound like a twat or does it just come naturally to you?
In a company that produces and markets software, the developers are probably the most likely group of employees in the entire company who actually know what a 64bit system is, and want to be using one, as well as wanting to have compatible software running on it.
Once again, you echo the same stupid comments. The developers have nothing to do with business decisions made at the executive level. If *you* want to have an effect, determine the companies that do not have marketing policies that please you, and refuse to buy any of their products.
You seem to lack an awareness of the real world. Or do you work in a company where a bunch of "developers" sit around doing whatever they want while the company director hides in his office wondering what the company produces?
"Developers" work on projects which have been analysed, costed, approved and scheduled by company managers and directors.
A company which set out to manufacture a certain range of hardware will have developed drivers to run that hardware on the current most used platforms. What interest do they have in supporting a bunch of hardware that was marketed for last years target platform, when the current market goal is to produce and sell hardware which supports this years target platform? Oh wait, the board of directors will go ask the developers what they feel like doing, won't they.
You might think so, but I know somebody who picked a couple of these up in China. They did indeed look real cool, but after the juice ran out it was discovered that the battery would not recharge.
Guess it is cheaper to make a knock-off that just makes it past point-of-sale. Who you gonna call?
That's a wonderfully short sighted attitude you have there. My wife spent a year in training and getting certified in IT. She then started to work in what should have been an enjoyable and promising career, only to find very shortly that the attitudes of people she was working with/for put her off IT altogether. She was never incapable, she could investigate and implement a solution as well as anybody I have worked with in 20 years of IT.
Management would simply not assign a female to a technical job if they had a male available to give the task to. You can deny and sputter and posture all you like, but overall, that is the most common situation you will encounter. In the year or two my wife tried to get into IT, she was kept on the sidelines of the interesting or challenging work, while being dumped with all the support jobs, cos women are, like, really good at handling phone calls and stuff, you know.
Now she wouldn't go near an IT role again (but ironically has to depend on young inexperienced males for IT support in her current job).
I'm more inclined to believe the official statement that it was a mistake
Lets see, "...With more than 1,000 retailers and 17 million product offers..." "Overall, this case is an isolated instance within the larger Bing cashback"
So we are supposed to believe that the blogger just stumbled across this? Or maybe had nothing better to do than compare prices with and without cookies, for more than 1000 retailer sites? My bullshit detector is still processing the "isolated instance" statement, results expected in soon...
Do all Americans get trained at school on the subject of appropriately stereotyping people into roles? Do you get told as you leave school what your job is going to be because of the stereotype you fit into? What I'm really wondering is, does everybody else in the world think that everybody working in software must be a 'geek'?
After 20 years in software development, I have worked with a few people that could be classified as geeks, but the majority of people were not. They did their job well, and most had a busy life away from the pooters also. Here in NZ you don't have to fit an American character profile to get a job in IT.
It seems these days many people want to feel different, and out there, and weird, as opposed to an older, more puritanical society in which most people wanted to just fit in and appear normal. This does not seem to be exclusive to computer workers. As for the examples in the article tho, my impression is that these incidents are more of an indicator of the decline in good management, as a good manager should monitor new employees and provide guidance, instead of letting bad behavior persist in the workplace.
Slashdot Mirror
Who exactly were you referring to there? Slashdotters like to take to piss out of conspiracy theorists as much as they like to report on them. If it was a worthy conspiracy theory to start with in the first place; sounded more like a market analysis tool to most of us, I expect.
Not sure where it is at now, I bought the book when it was *current* and really liked the framework, but didn't get into developing a live app with it at the time.
When I recently went back to look at using it, they have replaced 2 or 3 or more of the base libraries and the book appears to be redundant. Haven't yet investigated enough to see if there are clear and useful instructions available online for getting up and running with the latest version, but I would like to see an in-depth guide to things that are different from the book that was originally published.
I agree with that, but also would like to point at that, maybe there is a better reason that the blogger in question thought older programmers asked less questions.
Maybe more of us prefer the traditional ways of investigating a programming chalenge, or new language, framework etc BEFORE going to a public forum to ask for assistance.
Sure, I have sometimes picked up useful pointers from Stackoverflow, but it wouldn't be my first stop when investigating a problem. Over the years I think the better programmers I have worked with have been those who know how to look up the manual/programming guide/whatever when necessary, and go bothering their workmates only after MSDN (for instance) failed to give a clear answer (yet again)
Well their scientists have shown great concern over killing off the whales, why should this be different?
After all they spent huge amounts of resources going out there to fire harpoons into whales so that they could do some scientific research on them afterwards. I think the research went along the lines of "... hmm. it looks dead".
No it's not a wave, or a particle. They are just a field-effect generated by our holographic projector.
And don't even ask how many sticks of RAM are being used to track them all.
I think I agree with you, tho this is probably why online gaming is the better option; in a single user game with any of the levels of complexity you mention, I think the end-user can quickly determine if there has been a lot of time and cleverness put into the AI side of things, and the ability of the NPC's to keep things interesting in the game can sometimes be what makes a game worth continuing to play (or at least, continuing to enjoy, as I have played some to the end just out of sheer bloody-mindedness).
In recent purchases that come to mind, portal 2 probably dissapointed, in terms of single player challenge, long-lasting playability and the thought of ever replaying the game for nostalgia. This is why, I think, the current trend is to sell a game as a basic intro to an environment or scenario, which then urges the player to join into an online interactive, where hopefully the real live (or partially drunk/asleep/stoned/whatever on a Friday night) players will provide the challenge to make the game popular.
I'm not sure I prefer it myself, but it must work for those who calculate sales and margins and such. Is any major game producer putting all that much time and effort, any more, into the long lasting epic single-player offline game? Even the concept of breaking the story development into episidic releases seems to have landed on the big red Go Straight To Fail square. How long have we waited for another episode in HL2?
p.s. Proof reading suggested almost a criticism of Valve. This is unintentional, Valve are my top favorites in software, all time, no more to say there.
Well by that reckoning, wouldn't they *want* people to be able to download the propaganda for free?
Well in his article he does say...
The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
On analysis, the excitement level from reading that article appears to have been vastly overestimated.
It now appears that the article was between 2 and 10 times less exciting than the original estimates.
The techniques used for measuring excitement levels were based on the amount of gas ejected from a nearby colleague of mine, whilst he was reading said article. But since gas can be misjudged due to its unpredictable effects on my olfactory organs, it now appears that the actual excitement levels generated by the article were exaggerated by an unknown factor related to what my colleague had for lunch.
I have preferred it for some time, but it does have those little quirks that put it above newb access level still.
Really wish I could have done the last dist upgrade without it dropping my display settings and losing my drivers. Come on, who really cared if the kernel was relying on some 'non free' firmware, I wasn't protesting outside Debian offices about it. Sometimes they take this free crap too far.
No, aside from bitching about minor inconveniences, I still have to choose Debian for all serious installs (and Puppy for the other installs :)
Wouldn't it be better to simply have an IE extension that lets us enable/disable javascript quickly via a toolbar toggle button?
The only two options I have found so far are switching the security settings, via about 8 clicks plus scrolling down a large list of options, or using the developer plugin. Unfortunately the developer plugin's option to disable scripting is itself disabled more often than not, making it quite useless.
Why can't MS just put a big button on the toolbar? When I specifically know I want to enable scripting I would like to do so quickly and easily.
Oh, and before somebody points out the 'prompt' option in security settings, check out how many times the prompt can appear while a single page is loading. Seriously unusable.
I have say mindmaps are the best tool I have found. Tracking a project, keeping notes on what I am doing at work or at home, mindmaps have proven quick and easy to both update and browse thru. They also make a great replacement for bookmarking web sites, as well as linking to local files and folders etc.
There are a number of free apps available, as well as web/cloud based services which let you forget about carrying data files around with you. Worth checking out, its a fantastic way to organize many things, with so much freedom in how it can be used.
My first fav was FreeMind, but now I use XMind for the more polished graphical capabilites.
There were a few manufacturers that have put out SATA units with faulty drivers which could not handle more than 1.2 TB. Got into a mess with that myself after installing a 2.5 TB drive and having it fail on a disk check for all space above 1.2. What confused me more was I switched the drive to another mobo from a different manufacturer and chipset, which had exactly the same fault in the driver provided with it.
Bottom line is, if you install a largish hard drive on any SATA system that is not very new, make sure you run a full checkdisk on it before using it (I was surprised that the drive installation notes recommended fast format and no full check), and it shouldn't need to be said, but make sure you have the latest SATA drivers for the chipset used.
At least the patent authors bothered to re-word the HTML specification a little bit, but it does sound quite similar to this...
'An image map is an image that has "active regions". When the user selects one of the regions, some action takes place -- a link may be followed, information may be sent to a server, etc.'
Which can be found among the rest of the HTML specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#image-maps
Still, it seems awfully silly that the legal system in any country should allow such wasteful tying up of resources that could otherwise be doing something useful.
Never heard of? Wait, did you ever over-hear a song on somebody's radio that made you feel like slinking off somewhere private to slash your wrists? That was prolly her...
I just got one of those from DealExtreme. Not ready to make a final judgement just yet but not excessively impressed so far.
It is running android 1.6, no clear indication at this stage if it is possible to upgrade it.
Wifi was working briefly then it seemed to start rebooting whenever a wifi connection was established, may be a config issue, need time to sort that out.
Eth connection fails to make a DHCP connection, got it working after typing in gateway, DNS etc myself.
Android Market appears to think it is working, but after registering an account I get to the download stage and it freezes. Cleared cache and tried every stoopid solution I could find from only about an hour of googling and reading. Hopefully I will find a more useful help site after I get more time to investigate this.
Downloaded a free PDF reader and managed to get reasonable access to a ebook, which is the main reason I got this thing. Would like to see a better PDF reader with useful navigation interface, but I will have to use a freebie until I can find a way to use the market thing.
So how is the uninformed user supposed to know if a product can actually use Android Market before buying? Ok I didn't have high expectations from ordering a cheapie from a foreign country, but this seems just a little bit ermm.. under tested? ill prepared? Or is it the Google software at fault? Really, I don't understand why it would freeze and offer no suggestion whatsoever on how to diagnose what went wrong; if the product is not licensed with Google or whatever, then why put me thru the process of registering, offer a bunch of products, then simply freeze once I actually decide to buy one? If the app has filled it cache or whatever, why the hell wouldn't you write software that detects this condition and warns first?
Seriously, Google software? WTF?
Oh, and as for purchasing stuff from DealExtreme... good service but it looked like the screen on this thing had been rubbed around on a dirty floor. No protective removable film over the screen, it was scratched to bejaysus and looked seriously second hand. Not likely to be a repeat customer.
Are you *trying* to sound like a twat or does it just come naturally to you?
In a company that produces and markets software, the developers are probably the most likely group of employees in the entire company who actually know what a 64bit system is, and want to be using one, as well as wanting to have compatible software running on it.
Once again, you echo the same stupid comments. The developers have nothing to do with business decisions made at the executive level. If *you* want to have an effect, determine the companies that do not have marketing policies that please you, and refuse to buy any of their products.
You seem to lack an awareness of the real world. Or do you work in a company where a bunch of "developers" sit around doing whatever they want while the company director hides in his office wondering what the company produces?
"Developers" work on projects which have been analysed, costed, approved and scheduled by company managers and directors.
A company which set out to manufacture a certain range of hardware will have developed drivers to run that hardware on the current most used platforms. What interest do they have in supporting a bunch of hardware that was marketed for last years target platform, when the current market goal is to produce and sell hardware which supports this years target platform? Oh wait, the board of directors will go ask the developers what they feel like doing, won't they.
So should I be concerned about preferring to drop all guns and super powers in a good zombie dream and just use a baseball bat?
What? who told you i was having an affair. Its lies, I was playing golf I tell you.
You might think so, but I know somebody who picked a couple of these up in China. They did indeed look real cool, but after the juice ran out it was discovered that the battery would not recharge.
Guess it is cheaper to make a knock-off that just makes it past point-of-sale. Who you gonna call?
That's a wonderfully short sighted attitude you have there. My wife spent a year in training and getting certified in IT. She then started to work in what should have been an enjoyable and promising career, only to find very shortly that the attitudes of people she was working with/for put her off IT altogether. She was never incapable, she could investigate and implement a solution as well as anybody I have worked with in 20 years of IT.
Management would simply not assign a female to a technical job if they had a male available to give the task to. You can deny and sputter and posture all you like, but overall, that is the most common situation you will encounter. In the year or two my wife tried to get into IT, she was kept on the sidelines of the interesting or challenging work, while being dumped with all the support jobs, cos women are, like, really good at handling phone calls and stuff, you know.
Now she wouldn't go near an IT role again (but ironically has to depend on young inexperienced males for IT support in her current job).
Underestimated them again... “Boom boom krak-oo krak-oo krak-oo" actually means
"I didn't really want to do this, you know. I want to be a lumberjack"
Seriously, how often does a monkey have to dodge falling trees?
I'm more inclined to believe the official statement that it was a mistake
Lets see,
"...With more than 1,000 retailers and 17 million product offers..."
"Overall, this case is an isolated instance within the larger Bing cashback"
So we are supposed to believe that the blogger just stumbled across this? Or maybe had nothing better to do than compare prices with and without cookies, for more than 1000 retailer sites? My bullshit detector is still processing the "isolated instance" statement, results expected in soon...
Do all Americans get trained at school on the subject of appropriately stereotyping people into roles? Do you get told as you leave school what your job is going to be because of the stereotype you fit into? What I'm really wondering is, does everybody else in the world think that everybody working in software must be a 'geek'?
After 20 years in software development, I have worked with a few people that could be classified as geeks, but the majority of people were not. They did their job well, and most had a busy life away from the pooters also. Here in NZ you don't have to fit an American character profile to get a job in IT.
It seems these days many people want to feel different, and out there, and weird, as opposed to an older, more puritanical society in which most people wanted to just fit in and appear normal. This does not seem to be exclusive to computer workers. As for the examples in the article tho, my impression is that these incidents are more of an indicator of the decline in good management, as a good manager should monitor new employees and provide guidance, instead of letting bad behavior persist in the workplace.