any organization contracting out such a significant job has a responsibility to exercise some due diligence.
The last two web enabed applications I have done have had no requirements requiring the browser that they be viewable in. I made sure they were viewable in all the browsers, but that was a professional choice.
I have also been involved in projects where we have partnered with an existing software company that had a Windows only solution, ActiveX throughout their "web components", there is basically no discussion about other platforms. I wouldnt be surprised if many of these decision were forced on the company by the vendors.
I dont think there is enough awareness about different platforms for requirements to specify multi platform and multiple browsers. Other than one website that had to be Netscape 4 compliant, I have not seen it explicitly in any requirements.
I've been using Mozilla Mail for 3 years now and I am quite happy with it. Before I was using Netscape mail (4.7) and I was happy too. Last year, I've been working at a company with Outlook.
Same here, my wife and I use it as our primary shared email account client. I think it is an excellent mail client. I use KMail on my laptop as well, it is good too. At work we are an Exchnage/Outlook officially supported office. I use the Mozilla browser to get the mail through the netmail feature to avoid Outlook. I would never use Outlook at home. Mozilla mail is far better IMHO.
Gattaca was perhaps one of the best pieces of sci-fi that I've ever seen on the big screen
Peter Jacksons 'Bad Taste' is the best Sci-Fi movie I have seen, when I wasnt laughing I was vomiting. The guy eating the Alien Spue and then trying to drink seconds..... and, "Geez they come apart easy.'
One would think the big number in each corner would be a pretty big giveaway as to the bill's value.
As a foreigner who had to learn all US money which is all the same color and all green, from brightly coloured Australian money, it is confusing at first. You have to organize your wallet different for starters. When I first starting using US dollars I would pull out a bunch of green notes and flick through them individually, looking at the numbers to determine their worth. Coins are all different sizes too and have different names.
It takes a while to get used to, but isnt an issue after about 6 months. That is about when the culture shock passes anyway. Things that were so obviously different cease to be after about 6 months.
That's the big bugaboo question with corporations:
We did a communications driver for a Government body. It used a couple of opensource libraries in it. They sent our design off to some Physics Lab to have the software design reviewed. The Physics Lab wrote up, since the libraries are opensource who is going to support them? The answer is of course we are will. I had to write another document explaining how we could be contracted to support the OSS libraries and be contracted to improve and add functionality to them as well.
Yeah, I love the Simpsons and South Park, but aside from this...
and sadly the New York Rangers. I would be happy to buy those three programs individually or as a package from the creators of the show. As to the New York Rangers, I would happily pay them directly to watch their games. Each time I have joined for cable and satellite I have told them that.
But I learned my lesson, Im getting my MBA and moving into management
Our office last year hired an over-40 engineer, he had gone through a protracted period of unemployment, he was recently layed off again when we ran out of engineering work. Last year wehn we were flush with work, I didnt care about business development, as I had plenty of software engineering and project management to do, it was ok to be isolated in the office and work too much.
Now I am going to economic development meetings to network, doing business development, developing relationships with customers, getting involved in bids and learning to be a better businessman. I dont want to be in my mid-40's and be in the same situation as the bloke I described above.
However, now there is almost always a free alternative that is of great quality
All that suggests is that those software components have become a commodity market. Opensource appears to work best on commodity software where there is great group interest and little fiscal benefit in lots of similar functional API's being written in isolation.
Several years ago any company that made a Servlet based website had to write their own Framework. Now there are several quality OSS Frameworks around. Mainly because they became a commodity, every Java shop was having to make their own. Much easier to chuck your time into an OSS one, the pay off is much greater for everyone.
I dont think there should be any surprise that software API's and components have become commodities. Most markets do eventually.
But isn't that in itself refactoring? Rewriting code, keeping the functionality of the original while improving the internals?
Not in our case, we threw out the database schema, the codebase, the Framework and the UI.
Our business objects had changed drastically enough that they were no longer pertinent. About all we kept of the Business Objects was the names of the most important ones. The previous system was built with the premise that it was for one particular application. Our sales and management team quickly saw growth in other areas and pitched to new customers accordingly. It meant the software had to catch up to where the market was taking it.
We rewrote it to become a flexible and transient application capable of meaning different things to different customers. We also did it without having to resort to different code repositorys for different customers either. Which is a bonus maintainability wise. The previous one wasintractable enough that it got forked for approximately 6 months. We havent the manpower to be maintaining two seperate codebases.
The UI was similar enough to the last application that existing customers didnt require retraining on it. There were a couple of "Hey its changed emails" but other than the fact it changed there were no complaints. The complimentary emails outweighed the "its changed" emails anyway so we were happy.
As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing ceases to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress.
We had a case were a system no longer proved ameniable to feature addition or continual improvement to match the changing operational and customer requirements. In the end the benefits of refactoring the codebase to match the changing production requirements were more costly than to rewrite the system using more modern libraries, methodologies and frameworks. It got rewritten and the old system phased out.
It wasnt a case of "fixing" inherently broken software, it worked perfectly well, just the operational flow it supported changed due to new customers and more efficient management procedures.
Incidentally we have found with each major rewrite of that system ( there has been two ) there has been an immediate growth spurt in customers. I am not sure if it is because it looks like something new, or that the software better matches the operational requirements or because of increasing feature addition. Either way the last two rewrites have been paid for almost immediately by the addition customers the new software has brought in.
simply configuring Linux to dial into an ISP (Internet service provider) is a challenge.
My wife bought a Dell with Win2000 on it last week, we tried to set it up to dial into our ISP, it will dial in but wont resolve DNS. It doesnt work properly in other words. There are fifty checkboxes, I dont know what they all do. We rang RCN three times, and once we were hung up on, another left to hang on the phone listening to music. We still dont have a functioning internet connection through it.
Compare that to my laptop (thinkpad 600) running Linux. It was configured with kppp to connect to the exact same ISP as a dial up. I entered the phone number and it worked, first time and without hassle.
In my opinion, of those two,Linux was easier to use and worked the first time. Further, Linux/KDE is more powerful, more reliable, has better applications and is better looking. My laptop (and future laptops) wont ever be going back to Windows.
I noticed also that asacomputers.com sells linux ready laptops at a good price. I am in need of a new laptop, for that reason also, they may get my business. Dell and IBM wont be for the exact same reason.
The CE appears to be comming along faster than Palm here but that could change.
For Field Force devices which can spend 20 hours out in the field at a time, the Palm device has better longevity from the battery. IMHO WinCE devices are great when there is a power supply consistently nearby.
I want to run linux on my shitty computers, not on my box of doom
This is being posted on a Thinkpad with a 233Mhz chip. Mozilla that came with Red Hat 7.2 runs fine on it, for that matter so does Konquerer. Good enough anyway that I havent bothered to update either of them. About 5 months ago I bought a new Thinkpad A21e, thinking to upgrade in power. It wasnt satisfactory with Linux, it had bios problems, plus other runtime problems, so it got sent back and I got re-imbursed.
This machine doesnt leave my shoulder, since I make a good part of my living with it, it looks like it is going to have to soldier on for another 12 months or so, unless it gets run into the dirt. Mozilla is ok on this machine anyway, I am thankful for the Mozilla teams efforts.
and they belive in the rights of the states (Australia like the US is a federation).
The Australian Senate is supposed to protect the states from encroaching Federalism, due to the two major parties, Liberals and Labour having rigid party discipline in the Senate, the Senate has failed to protect the States. The Federal Government has without a squek from the Senate taken responsibility for State loans and borrowing, the right to income tax was taken from the States during World War II by Curtin under the emergency powers, it was never given back, and more recently in 1997 the Federal Government took away the States right to tax alcohol, tobacco and petrol. The States have been made fiscal vassals of the Federal Government.
If the Liberals were serious about States rights they would exempt their Senators from party discipline and allow for Senators to conscience vote on all legislation.
Overt Federalism is part of the political problem in Australia, States needs their rights back. The other problem is Howard whose political career has been dominated by short term political stunts. I recall after Port Arthur he wore a flak jacket to a meeting of gun owners. Talk about cheapening the Prime Ministers standing. Immigration only became a defining issue when Howard looked like losing the election. Howard has selfishly given Australia numerous black eyes on the global stage for his own personal power gain.
people are bitching about how their rights are being taken away and everything
I bought a Cricket game for Play Station in Australia last year and brought it back to the US to play on my US bought Play Station. It didnt work. I was not happy. I dont give a rats arse about regions or whatever, if i stick a play station cd in a play station the bloody thing better work.
World Series Baseball (which contains only US teams)
In fairness to Baseball the finals series used to be sponsored by a paper called "The World". However Grid Iron calls their championship the same and the winning team the World Champions, wonder if the Sydney Swans can ever be World Champions in Australian rules.:)
This isn't simply a case of bureaucratic weirdness.
Because the Liberal Party is based upon Lockes Liberalism and hence expression of the individual, the party allow for each elected member to push through with party support a piece of legislation that they personally believe should be enacted. As the Liberal Party is a conservative party like all good conservatives they try to legislate behaviour. When the Liberal Party is in power for any length of time alot of inane laws try to get pushed through. This is a good reason why the Senators should not be subject to partty discipline and be able to consience vote in Australia. This is the failing of the Australian Federal system.
We set up a system that originally used a Watchguard Firewall. It developed lag for some reason that was sawtoothed like and would lock out our web-server. We ran out of time so we replaced it with a Linux Firewall on an old Dell. It has run without skipping a beat. A do it yourself firewall isnt much extra effort.
>A *SIMPSONS* philosophy class? Really, people!
>Will this insanity never end?!
Postmodern studies was one of the most interesting classes I did at University during an engineering degree. I got assigned punk to study closely which was fascinating. In the 70's punk was considered dross, but because of punk we have the ethic, "anyone can do it". Apart from the most banal of entertainment, most have deeper themes and narrative written through them if you are prepared to look. Most often we dont notice them as they are an expected part of narrative, that we only notice when they are missing. A bad movie usually contains some lack of narrative we are expecting to make the story complete.
Personally I think the name Homer Simpson is a synonym for "Homo Sapien". I would sign up for this philosophy class in a heartbeat.
>ou really didn't see violence but man 'o
>man did you see breasts!
Yes, US Television is sexually repressed. You have to order HBO to see any skin and hear any swearing. In Aus midday viewing see's plenty of breasts. I would rather see breasts than a corpse anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
The last two web enabed applications I have done have had no requirements requiring the browser that they be viewable in. I made sure they were viewable in all the browsers, but that was a professional choice.
I have also been involved in projects where we have partnered with an existing software company that had a Windows only solution, ActiveX throughout their "web components", there is basically no discussion about other platforms. I wouldnt be surprised if many of these decision were forced on the company by the vendors.
I dont think there is enough awareness about different platforms for requirements to specify multi platform and multiple browsers. Other than one website that had to be Netscape 4 compliant, I have not seen it explicitly in any requirements.
omico--
I write "DECEASED" on junk mail and return it.
omico--
Same here, my wife and I use it as our primary shared email account client. I think it is an excellent mail client. I use KMail on my laptop as well, it is good too. At work we are an Exchnage/Outlook officially supported office. I use the Mozilla browser to get the mail through the netmail feature to avoid Outlook. I would never use Outlook at home. Mozilla mail is far better IMHO.
mocom--
Hmmmmmm bet the Storm Troopers have a good Rugby Team.
macom
Peter Jacksons 'Bad Taste' is the best Sci-Fi movie I have seen, when I wasnt laughing I was vomiting. The guy eating the Alien Spue and then trying to drink seconds..... and, "Geez they come apart easy.'
mocom--
As a foreigner who had to learn all US money which is all the same color and all green, from brightly coloured Australian money, it is confusing at first. You have to organize your wallet different for starters. When I first starting using US dollars I would pull out a bunch of green notes and flick through them individually, looking at the numbers to determine their worth. Coins are all different sizes too and have different names.
It takes a while to get used to, but isnt an issue after about 6 months. That is about when the culture shock passes anyway. Things that were so obviously different cease to be after about 6 months.
mocom--
We did a communications driver for a Government body. It used a couple of opensource libraries in it. They sent our design off to some Physics Lab to have the software design reviewed. The Physics Lab wrote up, since the libraries are opensource who is going to support them? The answer is of course we are will. I had to write another document explaining how we could be contracted to support the OSS libraries and be contracted to improve and add functionality to them as well.
mocom--
and sadly the New York Rangers. I would be happy to buy those three programs individually or as a package from the creators of the show. As to the New York Rangers, I would happily pay them directly to watch their games. Each time I have joined for cable and satellite I have told them that.
mocom-
Our office last year hired an over-40 engineer, he had gone through a protracted period of unemployment, he was recently layed off again when we ran out of engineering work. Last year wehn we were flush with work, I didnt care about business development, as I had plenty of software engineering and project management to do, it was ok to be isolated in the office and work too much.
Now I am going to economic development meetings to network, doing business development, developing relationships with customers, getting involved in bids and learning to be a better businessman. I dont want to be in my mid-40's and be in the same situation as the bloke I described above.
mocom--
All that suggests is that those software components have become a commodity market. Opensource appears to work best on commodity software where there is great group interest and little fiscal benefit in lots of similar functional API's being written in isolation.
Several years ago any company that made a Servlet based website had to write their own Framework. Now there are several quality OSS Frameworks around. Mainly because they became a commodity, every Java shop was having to make their own. Much easier to chuck your time into an OSS one, the pay off is much greater for everyone.
I dont think there should be any surprise that software API's and components have become commodities. Most markets do eventually.
mocom--
Not in our case, we threw out the database schema, the codebase, the Framework and the UI.
Our business objects had changed drastically enough that they were no longer pertinent. About all we kept of the Business Objects was the names of the most important ones. The previous system was built with the premise that it was for one particular application. Our sales and management team quickly saw growth in other areas and pitched to new customers accordingly. It meant the software had to catch up to where the market was taking it.
We rewrote it to become a flexible and transient application capable of meaning different things to different customers. We also did it without having to resort to different code repositorys for different customers either. Which is a bonus maintainability wise. The previous one wasintractable enough that it got forked for approximately 6 months. We havent the manpower to be maintaining two seperate codebases.
The UI was similar enough to the last application that existing customers didnt require retraining on it. There were a couple of "Hey its changed emails" but other than the fact it changed there were no complaints. The complimentary emails outweighed the "its changed" emails anyway so we were happy.
mocom--
We had a case were a system no longer proved ameniable to feature addition or continual improvement to match the changing operational and customer requirements. In the end the benefits of refactoring the codebase to match the changing production requirements were more costly than to rewrite the system using more modern libraries, methodologies and frameworks. It got rewritten and the old system phased out.
It wasnt a case of "fixing" inherently broken software, it worked perfectly well, just the operational flow it supported changed due to new customers and more efficient management procedures.
Incidentally we have found with each major rewrite of that system ( there has been two ) there has been an immediate growth spurt in customers. I am not sure if it is because it looks like something new, or that the software better matches the operational requirements or because of increasing feature addition. Either way the last two rewrites have been paid for almost immediately by the addition customers the new software has brought in.
mocom--
My wife bought a Dell with Win2000 on it last week, we tried to set it up to dial into our ISP, it will dial in but wont resolve DNS. It doesnt work properly in other words. There are fifty checkboxes, I dont know what they all do. We rang RCN three times, and once we were hung up on, another left to hang on the phone listening to music. We still dont have a functioning internet connection through it.
Compare that to my laptop (thinkpad 600) running Linux. It was configured with kppp to connect to the exact same ISP as a dial up. I entered the phone number and it worked, first time and without hassle.
In my opinion, of those two ,Linux was easier to use and worked the first time. Further, Linux/KDE is more powerful, more reliable, has better applications and is better looking. My laptop (and future laptops) wont ever be going back to Windows.
I noticed also that asacomputers.com sells linux ready laptops at a good price. I am in need of a new laptop, for that reason also, they may get my business. Dell and IBM wont be for the exact same reason.
cam
For Field Force devices which can spend 20 hours out in the field at a time, the Palm device has better longevity from the battery. IMHO WinCE devices are great when there is a power supply consistently nearby.
mocom--
This is being posted on a Thinkpad with a 233Mhz chip. Mozilla that came with Red Hat 7.2 runs fine on it, for that matter so does Konquerer. Good enough anyway that I havent bothered to update either of them. About 5 months ago I bought a new Thinkpad A21e, thinking to upgrade in power. It wasnt satisfactory with Linux, it had bios problems, plus other runtime problems, so it got sent back and I got re-imbursed.
This machine doesnt leave my shoulder, since I make a good part of my living with it, it looks like it is going to have to soldier on for another 12 months or so, unless it gets run into the dirt. Mozilla is ok on this machine anyway, I am thankful for the Mozilla teams efforts.
mocom--
The Australian Senate is supposed to protect the states from encroaching Federalism, due to the two major parties, Liberals and Labour having rigid party discipline in the Senate, the Senate has failed to protect the States. The Federal Government has without a squek from the Senate taken responsibility for State loans and borrowing, the right to income tax was taken from the States during World War II by Curtin under the emergency powers, it was never given back, and more recently in 1997 the Federal Government took away the States right to tax alcohol, tobacco and petrol. The States have been made fiscal vassals of the Federal Government.
If the Liberals were serious about States rights they would exempt their Senators from party discipline and allow for Senators to conscience vote on all legislation.
Overt Federalism is part of the political problem in Australia, States needs their rights back. The other problem is Howard whose political career has been dominated by short term political stunts. I recall after Port Arthur he wore a flak jacket to a meeting of gun owners. Talk about cheapening the Prime Ministers standing. Immigration only became a defining issue when Howard looked like losing the election. Howard has selfishly given Australia numerous black eyes on the global stage for his own personal power gain.
mocom--
The Swing Sightings
mocom--
I bought a Cricket game for Play Station in Australia last year and brought it back to the US to play on my US bought Play Station. It didnt work. I was not happy. I dont give a rats arse about regions or whatever, if i stick a play station cd in a play station the bloody thing better work.
mocom--
In fairness to Baseball the finals series used to be sponsored by a paper called "The World". However Grid Iron calls their championship the same and the winning team the World Champions, wonder if the Sydney Swans can ever be World Champions in Australian rules. :)
Show'em Sydney.
macom--
I agree.
mocom--
Because the Liberal Party is based upon Lockes Liberalism and hence expression of the individual, the party allow for each elected member to push through with party support a piece of legislation that they personally believe should be enacted. As the Liberal Party is a conservative party like all good conservatives they try to legislate behaviour. When the Liberal Party is in power for any length of time alot of inane laws try to get pushed through. This is a good reason why the Senators should not be subject to partty discipline and be able to consience vote in Australia. This is the failing of the Australian Federal system.
mocom--
mocom--
Is his father's middle name Simpson too? Why not Smith? or Gazooks?
mocom--
>Will this insanity never end?!
Postmodern studies was one of the most interesting classes I did at University during an engineering degree. I got assigned punk to study closely which was fascinating. In the 70's punk was considered dross, but because of punk we have the ethic, "anyone can do it". Apart from the most banal of entertainment, most have deeper themes and narrative written through them if you are prepared to look. Most often we dont notice them as they are an expected part of narrative, that we only notice when they are missing. A bad movie usually contains some lack of narrative we are expecting to make the story complete.
Personally I think the name Homer Simpson is a synonym for "Homo Sapien". I would sign up for this philosophy class in a heartbeat.
macom--
>man did you see breasts!
Yes, US Television is sexually repressed. You have to order HBO to see any skin and hear any swearing. In Aus midday viewing see's plenty of breasts. I would rather see breasts than a corpse anyway.
macom