I have not done much more than a cursory look through the ATI dirvers pages. After not finding them quickly I, just as quickly, ditched ATI in favor of nVidia. If they do provide them, it would be quite helpful to make them more easiliy accessable.
And yes, I'm aware that if I really wanted to find them I could quickly google for the driver also....;)
At home I run about 7 computers, a mix of linux winXp 2k and 98. The fact that my geforceX cards can and will run great in all of the above os's using proper driver support is all I need to buy from nVidia. Good customer support, and good OS support. That will bring in my dollars...
[snip] The news has also thrown the program's owner into the defensive. Hemming defended Brilliant Digital's plan as a way for all Kazaa users to have a "richer P2P experience," including faster downloads, new kinds of content, and the ability to be compensated for use of their extra computing power. [snip] emphasis mine.
First off, I don't use kazaa, and don't ever intend to use it. I hate spyware and all of the bundled crap that they distribute. Putting that all alside, who is there right mind would want to give a company that has placed software designed to take over your computer and use it for commercial gainwithout proper concent/disclosure their bank/ccard information.
Not I for one. Give me a break, next thing you know they will be distrubuting the richer p2p experiance of loosing your credit card info to 3 million teenagers who use it to buy the new celion dion albumn that crashes your computer.
You have got to be kidding me! This is insane. As if banner ads that take up half the page were not bad enough, if this company is going to take over my entire browser, that is just unacceptable. All we can hope for is the ability to turn that insanity off...
Anything that forces and update on the user is a bad idea. This is the total MS philosophy that./ beats down on every day of the week. A simple reminder message, or a friendly notice that a new version might be a avialble is okay but even that might be a bit much.
I would say that the best sort of system would be an opt-in system that would let you know if and when there were any updates available... (think redhat). This way my disconnected machine stays alive and running until a hardware failure, my firewall gets patched iff there is a need, and my dev/test boxen get updated like crazy cuz I am in the know on all the latest and greatest patches.
Free software, free updates, and free will for the system admin. That is what its about. Responsible people running systems responsibly (we hope:D)
I don't even think an amendment to the consitution could help that one.... For the U.S. to have jurisdiction over the internet we would somehow have to convince the rest of the world that we own the internet and that it is ours to control....
With the stupid laws that the U.S. has been putting into place, and the general distaste for the U.S. from alot of the world, I for one don't see that happening...
But then again... If your on U.S. soil (wether or not you commited your crime here), and you get tried in a U.S. court... You're ppbly gonna have to hope to God that you have a really good U.S. lawyer to get you off... (or a whole lot of policital reasons for your case to get dropped...)
It could damange the revenue stream of the event, and could cause them to charge more... But I for one wouldn't go to any more or any less games than I go to know, but i would watch the game if I could get it. Which would possibly help to increase the revenue stream of the commercials and networks.... Possibly allowing all interested parties to profit more from the event. Anyways, the only reason the major networks carry NBA/NFL/MLB etc is so that they can advertise there shows... Fox lost money on the NFL last year, but gots tons of advertising to a huge viewer base for a small cost with the super bowl... (small is relative:D)
I hope that the law gets over turned. It was a pretty stupid law in the first place. Granted, with three hundred CBS/ABC/NBS networks at your fingure tips your gonna get pounded with the same programming, but having the news could prove to be very useful.
If your going to go to LA for the weekend and you have access to the Local News on your TV (yes, I realize you can get this all from the internet etc..) then you can quickly get aquianted with what has been going on recently over there, weather, traffic etc....
Also, consider this quote from the article... "Even Congressional members are today prevented by this antiquated law from monitoring TV news coverage from their home states while working in their offices in Washington, D.C". This seems to be unreasonable. These people are supposed to be represnting the people, how can you expect someone to stay in touch if they can't even see the news!;)
Any the real reason this would be awesome is to avoid that damn local blackout for sporting events;)
No way! This may be the way of the future, but I for one will hold out. I mean really, if you think about it logically using the keyboard you have 9 usuable fingures (not counting the both thumbs, they are pretty much interchangable....). That means that you have nine different "devices" to enter data into the computer. If users were simply more familiar with the keyboard and the shortcuts that are provided for keyboard use there would not be a problem. 9 input devices that allow me to type at anywhere from 60-100 wpm, try doing that with a pen!
Not only would the productivity of users go down, a keyboard sends a code to the computer to tell it what key was pressed, there is no question about it... No pen recognition software or anything crazy like that.
Granted... the mouse and the pen are good things, but nothing beats the keyboard. I just bought a new Zaurus (they rock) and I'll tell you what, anything that I can pull of on the keyboard, I use it. It is WAY more efficient than the stylus (pen concpet)...
I would say that if the purpose of xml was to transport binary data then yes, there should be a way to do it. However XML is simply a markup language. It's primary purpose was text, and text alone. Take a look at the DTD spec, there isn't support for strong datatypes or anything. XML schema has fixed alot of that, but IMHO XML is being used for quite a bit more than it was originally intended for.
One thing that it is just simply not good at is transfering binary data, or data that can simply go into a csv (rows from a database for example...). The overhead of XML can absolutly kill you on the speed side, but it is very cool when it come to structured data. XML has its strong points and its week points... Binary data is not one of the strong points;)
From the acticle... Software developers who want to dispense with Section 5's limitations can turn to schema-based serialization. This method works by publishing the interfaces of the SOAP service along with the schema(s) for the request/response messages. Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) is the current de facto standard for this purpose. Apache SOAP is not WSDL aware, but Axis (see Resources), Apache SOAP's successor toolkit, is.
The lack of WSDL support in the apahce toolkit is a huge limitation of this toolkit if you wish to utilize remote web services. However the axis project at apache does look like it will provide a solution to this problem. Although the axis project is still in beta stages, it looks like it will be a killer implemetation once it matures. If you are planning on working with Java and SOAP in the future, then you really should take a look at axis. Beta, but worth it;)
Yes, if you receive a digitally signed document, it could be considered to be a "valid legal document". But I still don't think that E-mail is a viable solution to simplifying the document exchange process. For some things yes, E-mail is great. It is a great way and cost effective method of communication for many people, but for legal documents and other such items (credit card disputes, applications for loans etc...) paper and the good old fashioned USPS seem to be the best way to go. Paper and a "wet" signature are very important and I think need to remain that way.
Until there is a valid way to really ensure that you are you and that you read what your email client/server said you read this just doesn't seem to me to be a good course of action.
Maybe I need to take off my tin-foil hat, but I just don't think this is the way to go....
Serving legal documents via e-mail could become more common in a world linked by the Internet where commerce and commercial disputes span international borders, said Ann McGinley, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"This is an important decision, which, if it is followed by other courts outside the 9th Circuit, will make it easier for lawyers to find elusive defendants," McGinley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I think we are moving in the direction of service by e-mail."
Moving in the direction of service by e-mail!?!?!?!... I can see it now, You got sued as the next AOL advertisement.
I mean seriously, e-mail as a source of legal document service? In this case, yes it made sense, but in normal day to day activities and lawsuits this sort of action is just not reasonable. If I have a legal battle that I have to fight, I do it on paper, and via certified mail for a reason. E-mail was never intended for something like this. I hope this just goes away.
Good point. I guess what I was trying to say was that if something is difficult to understand. Deep nested recursion or something along those lines then it needs to be commented and commented well.
But if your function/method is something as simple as int getIndex(); you really don't need much other than, what index your getting;)
If you look at what I said I did not mention i, j, and retval etc... Those are very usefull and I use them all the time in my programming. But having variable names such as: stuff or thing down the road you code will be VERY difficult to read. I am a Java developer and HATE it when I have to read through code that looks like what you posted. I agree, there are very good and valid places to use i, j, retval etc... But crap, stuff, thing etc... have no place in my world;)
From the what you said with different people and different or no methodologies there is a lot that needs to be done. First off, standards:
Literate Programing: What you write, should make sence. Variables such as a, b, c, thing, object, stuff, crap etc should not be allowed. A new programmer should be able to come into your shop, read the code and it should make sense.
Commenting: All source should be commented. That doesn't mean that hlaf your source files should be comments, but anything that doesns't make sense by simply reading the code needs to be commented. At a bare minimum, the person who wrote the code should have there name in there;)
Source Control: Please tell me you have CVS or something like that setup. If not, set it up
Testing: Test early and test often. When your done with that, test again.;) You might want to investigate Extreme Programming. This will help quite a bit to launch good solid projects, on time.
Standard Design Methods: It will help you out quite a bit to have standard design methodologies. Standard patterns to follow and ways of doing things will help you quite a bit.
Secondly, make sure you have a forum for you developers to work together. Setup an IRC channel or something, just make sure you have a place to chat and share experiances / bugs;)
Those few things should get you started. They don't totally address the commenting issues, but I would say that is the least of your problems... I could be reading way to much between the lines. Just my two cents.
Measuing the productivity of a software "designer/engineer/coder" or whatever you want to call them, is a very difficult thing to do. On our current project we are using a third party tool that is riddled with bugs, unfortuantly due to management desicions we are unable to ditch the product and search for a different tool. However, my team has remained highly productive during this past month while working with the vendor to solve the issues.
Have we produced many lines of code? Not really, probably around 9000 lines between the 6 of us over the past month, that is about 1500 lines per programmer... in over a month. According to any logic using "lines per day" or anything along those lines, we are in horrible shape. However, we have been solving many of the issues with the vendor, scouring over lines of code to ensure that the tools are working correctly, changing and tweaking our testing classes (Java) to ensure that everything is truly working the way that it is supposed to be.
Now, with about a month of time wasted according to typical programmer productivity analysis, we have a decent library of functionality built up (or easily migrated into a library), we are very familiar with the product that we are using and the APIs, and will probably come in on, or before schedule.
Was that time wasted? Were we unproductive? I would say no to both of those questions. Yes working with a vendor with broken software was frusterating and time consuming, however we now have an intamite knowledge of a third-party "black box" and we have, in the process of working with them, built up a suite of test cases that will help us immensily in the near-term future.
But, we only turned out 1500 lines per programmer in a month you say. However do to all of the debugging work, and API "scouring" we have done, we will probably be able to turn out closer to 500-1500 lines of good well documented and working code every day or so.
Well my point is simply this: Lines of code per day is simply not a good analysis. The best way to determin productivity is on a per project basis. How is the project coming? Are the objectives being met, are you solving the problems that are coming up in a timely fasion? There is no final answer, it must be evaluated per-project, per-team, per-company.
One tool used to corral unstructured data is XML (extensible markup language), which tags salient parts of unstructured electronic documents so they can be searched. The structure of XML documents resembles that of a tree, with branches of tagged information, while relational databases consist of regimented rows. "Being able to produce, accept, store, and search XML provides a little structure to unstructured information," explains Selinger of the Silicon Valley Lab.
This makes a lot of sense. When you think about it, things like images and audio clips can provide some very useful information, but they can be difficult to classify and store in a useful and searchable manner. Having a product or suite of products that would provide the facility to not only classify, but also search the many different types of XML signatures for each type of resource could prove to be a very valuable thing for buisnesses.
Imagine the amount of time that could be saved if you could simply search all of those images/diagrams that you have for different projects, and all of the audio clips from that conferences that you have attended for that key idea that your sure is in there, but just can't remember where!
We use a couple of methodologies in my work place. Granted we are a Java shop so some of this stuff doesn't apply across the board, but the concepts work for almost any language/development platform.
First, XP Style testing. Test first, and test often. Write a test case for every class you make, test everything, unit test, regression test, integration test you name it just TEST it.
Second, simplify your development process. There really should not be the need for multiple people to be working in the same file/class/header etc... Assing pieces of the project to different developers and model it out, have them work in there rescpective pieces, if you MUST assign multiple people to the same header, thats okay, but make sure they work together closely to not step on each others toes. This is really a planning issue.
Third, I assume you are following a build process (nightly, weekly etc..), we use Ant to help with this. Granted it doesn't help for the problems of developers stepping on each other during the day. But it forces everybody to check in there code and make sure it works, everyday (we use nightly builds).
Okay with all of this stuff, we rarly EVER have problems. Our code is usually close to bullet proof (the constant testing), each developer really knows the portions of the code they worked on, and can quickly make fixes if needed (the simplification of the development process), and we are constantly aware of our timeline and progress (nightly / weekly builds).
Europe and other nations need to take it upon themselves to ensure that they will maintain infrastructure during times of war. This idea would apply to russia, china and the like. Allowing any single nation to basically control critical services for the world is suicide for any nationsate other than the state in control.
I would venture that possibly control by a multi-national organization might not be that bad, however I would still feel more comfortable if my nation had its own... lucky for me.. I live in the US, and we have our own...;)
Okay now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I agree that a unified GPS would be a *good* thing for global communications and security etc.... however
from the article... The US has another vital unilateralist interest; if GPS is the only global positioning network, all positioning on the planet can only be done by America, so that if the US wants to block, say, a military or civilian aircraft sale by the Europeans it can simply ban the use of GPS avionics in the aircraft's positioning system. French President Chirac is uncompromising about the consequences - this would be economic, security and technological 'vassalage'.
This could really be a REAL concern for other nations. Granted living in the US, it doesn't conern me as much on the loss of communications end, but what does concern me is the potential for abuse, and the backlash that abuse might cause...
Maybe a second network, but compatible network isn't such a bad idea after all.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not done much more than a cursory look through the ATI dirvers pages. After not finding them quickly I, just as quickly, ditched ATI in favor of nVidia. If they do provide them, it would be quite helpful to make them more easiliy accessable.
And yes, I'm aware that if I really wanted to find them I could quickly google for the driver also.... ;)
-ryanWhen its all said and done, I have to place my vote for nVidia, hands down. There are many reasons for this... howerver this is the most compelling...
nVidia Drivers page link
ATI Drivers page link
At home I run about 7 computers, a mix of linux winXp 2k and 98. The fact that my geforceX cards can and will run great in all of the above os's using proper driver support is all I need to buy from nVidia. Good customer support, and good OS support. That will bring in my dollars...
[snip] The news has also thrown the program's owner into the defensive. Hemming defended Brilliant Digital's plan as a way for all Kazaa users to have a "richer P2P experience," including faster downloads, new kinds of content, and the ability to be compensated for use of their extra computing power. [snip] emphasis mine.
First off, I don't use kazaa, and don't ever intend to use it. I hate spyware and all of the bundled crap that they distribute. Putting that all alside, who is there right mind would want to give a company that has placed software designed to take over your computer and use it for commercial gain without proper concent/disclosure their bank/ccard information.
Not I for one. Give me a break, next thing you know they will be distrubuting the richer p2p experiance of loosing your credit card info to 3 million teenagers who use it to buy the new celion dion albumn that crashes your computer.
-ryanYou have got to be kidding me! This is insane. As if banner ads that take up half the page were not bad enough, if this company is going to take over my entire browser, that is just unacceptable. All we can hope for is the ability to turn that insanity off...
As for the name.. ooqa ooqa? wtf is that?
-ryanI can see it now....
Wife gets new car, new car has new improved oil change technology, I buy new engine every couple of months... :O
Anything that forces and update on the user is a bad idea. This is the total MS philosophy that ./ beats down on every day of the week. A simple reminder message, or a friendly notice that a new version might be a avialble is okay but even that might be a bit much.
I would say that the best sort of system would be an opt-in system that would let you know if and when there were any updates available... (think redhat). This way my disconnected machine stays alive and running until a hardware failure, my firewall gets patched iff there is a need, and my dev/test boxen get updated like crazy cuz I am in the know on all the latest and greatest patches.
Free software, free updates, and free will for the system admin. That is what its about. Responsible people running systems responsibly (we hope :D)
-ryanI don't even think an amendment to the consitution could help that one.... For the U.S. to have jurisdiction over the internet we would somehow have to convince the rest of the world that we own the internet and that it is ours to control....
With the stupid laws that the U.S. has been putting into place, and the general distaste for the U.S. from alot of the world, I for one don't see that happening...
But then again... If your on U.S. soil (wether or not you commited your crime here), and you get tried in a U.S. court... You're ppbly gonna have to hope to God that you have a really good U.S. lawyer to get you off... (or a whole lot of policital reasons for your case to get dropped...)
-ryanIt could damange the revenue stream of the event, and could cause them to charge more... But I for one wouldn't go to any more or any less games than I go to know, but i would watch the game if I could get it. Which would possibly help to increase the revenue stream of the commercials and networks.... Possibly allowing all interested parties to profit more from the event. Anyways, the only reason the major networks carry NBA/NFL/MLB etc is so that they can advertise there shows... Fox lost money on the NFL last year, but gots tons of advertising to a huge viewer base for a small cost with the super bowl... (small is relative :D)
-ryanI hope that the law gets over turned. It was a pretty stupid law in the first place. Granted, with three hundred CBS/ABC/NBS networks at your fingure tips your gonna get pounded with the same programming, but having the news could prove to be very useful.
If your going to go to LA for the weekend and you have access to the Local News on your TV (yes, I realize you can get this all from the internet etc..) then you can quickly get aquianted with what has been going on recently over there, weather, traffic etc....
Also, consider this quote from the article... "Even Congressional members are today prevented by this antiquated law from monitoring TV news coverage from their home states while working in their offices in Washington, D.C". This seems to be unreasonable. These people are supposed to be represnting the people, how can you expect someone to stay in touch if they can't even see the news! ;)
Any the real reason this would be awesome is to avoid that damn local blackout for sporting events ;)
-ryanNo way! This may be the way of the future, but I for one will hold out. I mean really, if you think about it logically using the keyboard you have 9 usuable fingures (not counting the both thumbs, they are pretty much interchangable....). That means that you have nine different "devices" to enter data into the computer. If users were simply more familiar with the keyboard and the shortcuts that are provided for keyboard use there would not be a problem. 9 input devices that allow me to type at anywhere from 60-100 wpm, try doing that with a pen!
Not only would the productivity of users go down, a keyboard sends a code to the computer to tell it what key was pressed, there is no question about it... No pen recognition software or anything crazy like that.
Granted... the mouse and the pen are good things, but nothing beats the keyboard. I just bought a new Zaurus (they rock) and I'll tell you what, anything that I can pull of on the keyboard, I use it. It is WAY more efficient than the stylus (pen concpet)...
My 2 cents...
-ryanI would say that if the purpose of xml was to transport binary data then yes, there should be a way to do it. However XML is simply a markup language. It's primary purpose was text, and text alone. Take a look at the DTD spec, there isn't support for strong datatypes or anything. XML schema has fixed alot of that, but IMHO XML is being used for quite a bit more than it was originally intended for.
One thing that it is just simply not good at is transfering binary data, or data that can simply go into a csv (rows from a database for example...). The overhead of XML can absolutly kill you on the speed side, but it is very cool when it come to structured data. XML has its strong points and its week points... Binary data is not one of the strong points ;)
-ryanTrue, but your original post stated... "You can't insert binary in XML, so the options are"
You can insert it, it might not be practicle, but it can be done.
-ryanFrom the acticle... Software developers who want to dispense with Section 5's limitations can turn to schema-based serialization. This method works by publishing the interfaces of the SOAP service along with the schema(s) for the request/response messages. Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) is the current de facto standard for this purpose. Apache SOAP is not WSDL aware, but Axis (see Resources), Apache SOAP's successor toolkit, is.
The lack of WSDL support in the apahce toolkit is a huge limitation of this toolkit if you wish to utilize remote web services. However the axis project at apache does look like it will provide a solution to this problem. Although the axis project is still in beta stages, it looks like it will be a killer implemetation once it matures. If you are planning on working with Java and SOAP in the future, then you really should take a look at axis. Beta, but worth it ;)
-ryan<element><![CDATA[ BINARY DATA HERE BASE 64 ENCODED ]]></element>
</root>
your blob has been placed in an xml document. next.
Yes, if you receive a digitally signed document, it could be considered to be a "valid legal document". But I still don't think that E-mail is a viable solution to simplifying the document exchange process. For some things yes, E-mail is great. It is a great way and cost effective method of communication for many people, but for legal documents and other such items (credit card disputes, applications for loans etc...) paper and the good old fashioned USPS seem to be the best way to go. Paper and a "wet" signature are very important and I think need to remain that way.
Until there is a valid way to really ensure that you are you and that you read what your email client/server said you read this just doesn't seem to me to be a good course of action.
Maybe I need to take off my tin-foil hat, but I just don't think this is the way to go....
-ryanServing legal documents via e-mail could become more common in a world linked by the Internet where commerce and commercial disputes span international borders, said Ann McGinley, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"This is an important decision, which, if it is followed by other courts outside the 9th Circuit, will make it easier for lawyers to find elusive defendants," McGinley told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "I think we are moving in the direction of service by e-mail."
Moving in the direction of service by e-mail!?!?!?!... I can see it now, You got sued as the next AOL advertisement.
I mean seriously, e-mail as a source of legal document service? In this case, yes it made sense, but in normal day to day activities and lawsuits this sort of action is just not reasonable. If I have a legal battle that I have to fight, I do it on paper, and via certified mail for a reason. E-mail was never intended for something like this. I hope this just goes away.
E-mail for a subpoena..... sheesh!
-ryanGood point. I guess what I was trying to say was that if something is difficult to understand. Deep nested recursion or something along those lines then it needs to be commented and commented well.
;)
But if your function/method is something as simple as int getIndex(); you really don't need much other than, what index your getting
-ryan
If you look at what I said I did not mention i, j, and retval etc... Those are very usefull and I use them all the time in my programming. But having variable names such as: stuff or thing down the road you code will be VERY difficult to read. I am a Java developer and HATE it when I have to read through code that looks like what you posted. I agree, there are very good and valid places to use i, j, retval etc... But crap, stuff, thing etc... have no place in my world ;)
My 2cents
-ryan
Sorry about that. I was reffering to the way your code would read. It should read like a book, not like an encrypted file ;) Sorry for the confusion.
-ryan
From the what you said with different people and different or no methodologies there is a lot that needs to be done. First off, standards:
- Literate Programing: What you write, should make sence. Variables such as a, b, c, thing, object, stuff, crap etc should not be allowed. A new programmer should be able to come into your shop, read the code and it should make sense.
- Commenting: All source should be commented. That doesn't mean that hlaf your source files should be comments, but anything that doesns't make sense by simply reading the code needs to be commented. At a bare minimum, the person who wrote the code should have there name in there
;)
- Source Control: Please tell me you have CVS or something like that setup. If not, set it up
- Testing: Test early and test often. When your done with that, test again.
;) You might want to investigate Extreme Programming. This will help quite a bit to launch good solid projects, on time.
- Standard Design Methods: It will help you out quite a bit to have standard design methodologies. Standard patterns to follow and ways of doing things will help you quite a bit.
Secondly, make sure you have a forum for you developers to work together. Setup an IRC channel or something, just make sure you have a place to chat and share experiances / bugsThose few things should get you started. They don't totally address the commenting issues, but I would say that is the least of your problems... I could be reading way to much between the lines. Just my two cents.
-ryanMeasuing the productivity of a software "designer/engineer/coder" or whatever you want to call them, is a very difficult thing to do. On our current project we are using a third party tool that is riddled with bugs, unfortuantly due to management desicions we are unable to ditch the product and search for a different tool. However, my team has remained highly productive during this past month while working with the vendor to solve the issues.
Have we produced many lines of code? Not really, probably around 9000 lines between the 6 of us over the past month, that is about 1500 lines per programmer... in over a month. According to any logic using "lines per day" or anything along those lines, we are in horrible shape. However, we have been solving many of the issues with the vendor, scouring over lines of code to ensure that the tools are working correctly, changing and tweaking our testing classes (Java) to ensure that everything is truly working the way that it is supposed to be.
Now, with about a month of time wasted according to typical programmer productivity analysis, we have a decent library of functionality built up (or easily migrated into a library), we are very familiar with the product that we are using and the APIs, and will probably come in on, or before schedule.
Was that time wasted? Were we unproductive? I would say no to both of those questions. Yes working with a vendor with broken software was frusterating and time consuming, however we now have an intamite knowledge of a third-party "black box" and we have, in the process of working with them, built up a suite of test cases that will help us immensily in the near-term future.
But, we only turned out 1500 lines per programmer in a month you say. However do to all of the debugging work, and API "scouring" we have done, we will probably be able to turn out closer to 500-1500 lines of good well documented and working code every day or so.
Well my point is simply this: Lines of code per day is simply not a good analysis. The best way to determin productivity is on a per project basis. How is the project coming? Are the objectives being met, are you solving the problems that are coming up in a timely fasion? There is no final answer, it must be evaluated per-project, per-team, per-company.
-ryanFrom the article:
One tool used to corral unstructured data is XML (extensible markup language), which tags salient parts of unstructured electronic documents so they can be searched. The structure of XML documents resembles that of a tree, with branches of tagged information, while relational databases consist of regimented rows. "Being able to produce, accept, store, and search XML provides a little structure to unstructured information," explains Selinger of the Silicon Valley Lab.
This makes a lot of sense. When you think about it, things like images and audio clips can provide some very useful information, but they can be difficult to classify and store in a useful and searchable manner. Having a product or suite of products that would provide the facility to not only classify, but also search the many different types of XML signatures for each type of resource could prove to be a very valuable thing for buisnesses.
Imagine the amount of time that could be saved if you could simply search all of those images/diagrams that you have for different projects, and all of the audio clips from that conferences that you have attended for that key idea that your sure is in there, but just can't remember where!
-ryanWe use a couple of methodologies in my work place. Granted we are a Java shop so some of this stuff doesn't apply across the board, but the concepts work for almost any language/development platform.
First, XP Style testing. Test first, and test often. Write a test case for every class you make, test everything, unit test, regression test, integration test you name it just TEST it.
Second, simplify your development process. There really should not be the need for multiple people to be working in the same file/class/header etc... Assing pieces of the project to different developers and model it out, have them work in there rescpective pieces, if you MUST assign multiple people to the same header, thats okay, but make sure they work together closely to not step on each others toes. This is really a planning issue.
Third, I assume you are following a build process (nightly, weekly etc..), we use Ant to help with this. Granted it doesn't help for the problems of developers stepping on each other during the day. But it forces everybody to check in there code and make sure it works, everyday (we use nightly builds).
Okay with all of this stuff, we rarly EVER have problems. Our code is usually close to bullet proof (the constant testing), each developer really knows the portions of the code they worked on, and can quickly make fixes if needed (the simplification of the development process), and we are constantly aware of our timeline and progress (nightly / weekly builds).
Anyways, thats just how we do it ;)
-ryanEurope and other nations need to take it upon themselves to ensure that they will maintain infrastructure during times of war. This idea would apply to russia, china and the like. Allowing any single nation to basically control critical services for the world is suicide for any nationsate other than the state in control.
I would venture that possibly control by a multi-national organization might not be that bad, however I would still feel more comfortable if my nation had its own... lucky for me.. I live in the US, and we have our own... ;)
-ryanOkay now I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I agree that a unified GPS would be a *good* thing for global communications and security etc.... however
from the article... The US has another vital unilateralist interest; if GPS is the only global positioning network, all positioning on the planet can only be done by America, so that if the US wants to block, say, a military or civilian aircraft sale by the Europeans it can simply ban the use of GPS avionics in the aircraft's positioning system. French President Chirac is uncompromising about the consequences - this would be economic, security and technological 'vassalage'.
This could really be a REAL concern for other nations. Granted living in the US, it doesn't conern me as much on the loss of communications end, but what does concern me is the potential for abuse, and the backlash that abuse might cause...
Maybe a second network, but compatible network isn't such a bad idea after all.
-ryan