I've had the pleasure of playing former US champion GM Yasser Seirawan on a few occasions (all of which I lost, natch). He is one of those few naturally gifted chess geniuses who hasn't let study impair is social abilities (but he has dropped from world #10 to #40 or so. Very well-adjusted charismatic guy, former Cosmo bachelor-of-the-month, who has had varying success as a businessman and (so far as I know) is happily married.
As a side note, for those of you thinking all chess geniuses are pale myoptic wormlike dweebs, Norwegian GM Simon Adgestein is a former team Norway soccer star!
OOP blew away any justification for Hungarian Notation. The variable declarations stay in scope of their methods and classes. If your methods/classes are so large that locating the variable declaration becomes difficult, then 99/100 times it indicates a poor design.
The only prefix I ever really use anymore is m_ (class member).
Software patents aren't necessarily bad as a concept. It's the implementation that sucks.
First of all, software is a nascient industry, and patent terms should reflect that. Patents should expire in less time for software.
Second, you need people who know the industry to make determinations on what is patentable. Prior art should be given priority, so to speak. A high bar should be set for determining what is obvious.
But there are some really novel and useful ideas that come up now and then, and some of them required significant investment. If the USPTO did a better job of separating the wheat from the chaff, I think we as professionals could stand to benefit from a properly implemented patent regime.
Perhaps we're seeing the reemergence of a cottage industry in software development.
Back in previous centuries, whole villages of craftsmen and women would do finishing work on mass-produced pieces that were then sold by a large retail company. The garment industry still operates this way in many instances.
As long as software remains a craft rather than a formal engineering discipline (it has elements of both, but each software project is pretty much unique to this day), then the economics of software will probably most resemble the crafts industry rather than industries based on mass production.
Anybody and their grandmother can create original MP3 files. There's lots of musicians who play good music nonprofessionally. If that's all that there was available on the Net, I'd gladly listen to it for free. And then maybe the record companies would wise up.
When I was at Boeing in the 90's, they still had many thousands of 80-column punchcards with large square holes in the middle. This spot was filled with a photograph of a line drawing. The card data served to catalog these graphics.
"I would say wait for 2006. Everyone will need one then and prices will drop drasticly."
So, when demand increases, prices will drop? I'm not sure the savings in production costs due to volume will outweigh the inflations caused by shortages as people come to grips at the last minute that their curren TV's will no longer function.
Of course, this is not an easy question to answer, but the right answer involves knowing three things:
1) Can certain records be considered 'atomic'?
This is similar to the RDBMS question of whether or not it makes sense to construct a view or not. View definitions represent a common query. If you considering a query as a means of tying together disparate data from many tables into a single, denormalized set of records, the record could just as easily be expressed in some XML format.
Now, if that record represents some physical or conceptual entity in the data model, it is in fact a set of properties about an object. This is what XML is good at representing. Decomposing that set of object data (record) into normalized relations may not make sense if such 'objects' are frequently requested; but there other considerations...
2) Ad hoc queries are difficult when data is stored internally in XML, because each XML blob has to be parsed and checked for the query values. If you don't know in advance if the XML structure even has the fields you're looking for, then you must do an exhaustive search. Some have used indexed XPath information to work around this issue. Since we're mentioning indexes...
3) How do you find the XML blobs you're looking for. We've used an ORDBMS for our XML data, and indexed on the ID or key values (as defined in an XML Schema) for each element stored in the database. This makes looking up element instances easier. It also makes relating them easier, too, if you use IDREF or keyrefs as your foreign keys.
Now every XML document has a single root element. If you're storing that document in a database, you could choose to store just that one root element instance. More likely, you'll want to decompose the root so that accessing subelements by ID or key in the database will be easier.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, man, that looked painful!
Good thing it was inanimate.
I've had the pleasure of playing former US champion GM Yasser Seirawan on a few occasions (all of which I lost, natch). He is one of those few naturally gifted chess geniuses who hasn't let study impair is social abilities (but he has dropped from world #10 to #40 or so. Very well-adjusted charismatic guy, former Cosmo bachelor-of-the-month, who has had varying success as a businessman and (so far as I know) is happily married.
As a side note, for those of you thinking all chess geniuses are pale myoptic wormlike dweebs, Norwegian GM Simon Adgestein is a former team Norway soccer star!
Can you guys get this installed to help with my fantasy Emma Peel choice? I'm really having a hard time deciding.
Do you feel that patent law is driving innovation as originally envisioned by our founding fathers?
Should we shorten the term of patents in emerging technology fields, such as in software and other relatively new high tech industries?
I scream!
You scream!
We all scream for ice-- SPLAT!
OOP blew away any justification for Hungarian Notation. The variable declarations stay in scope of their methods and classes. If your methods/classes are so large that locating the variable declaration becomes difficult, then 99/100 times it indicates a poor design.
The only prefix I ever really use anymore is m_ (class member).
Battlebots appeals to my raw manly desire to see well engineered machines disembered in brutal ways.
And to see Carmen Electra in a tight tanktop.
UGH! ME WANT MORE!
Software patents aren't necessarily bad as a concept. It's the implementation that sucks.
First of all, software is a nascient industry, and patent terms should reflect that. Patents should expire in less time for software.
Second, you need people who know the industry to make determinations on what is patentable. Prior art should be given priority, so to speak. A high bar should be set for determining what is obvious.
But there are some really novel and useful ideas that come up now and then, and some of them required significant investment. If the USPTO did a better job of separating the wheat from the chaff, I think we as professionals could stand to benefit from a properly implemented patent regime.
But I ain't holding my breath...
Perhaps we're seeing the reemergence of a cottage industry in software development.
Back in previous centuries, whole villages of craftsmen and women would do finishing work on mass-produced pieces that were then sold by a large retail company. The garment industry still operates this way in many instances.
As long as software remains a craft rather than a formal engineering discipline (it has elements of both, but each software project is pretty much unique to this day), then the economics of software will probably most resemble the crafts industry rather than industries based on mass production.
Cute little squashed lemony thing. Only one seat though, and only enough cargo space for about one sack of groceries or one briefcase.
Here's his website.
How come when I watch it's always a rerun?
I heard about it. Maybe you should read more.
Particle man, particle man...
He meant, of course, Atomantium. Adamantium would belong in the periodic table of glam rock singers.
From ICANN to UCANT.
Anybody and their grandmother can create original MP3 files. There's lots of musicians who play good music nonprofessionally. If that's all that there was available on the Net, I'd gladly listen to it for free. And then maybe the record companies would wise up.
Been a long, long, long time.
Wasn't that bought out and destroyed by Time-Warner wayyy back in '98?
When I was at Boeing in the 90's, they still had many thousands of 80-column punchcards with large square holes in the middle. This spot was filled with a photograph of a line drawing. The card data served to catalog these graphics.
Did the writer slip into Swedish Chef mode for a sec?
"I would say wait for 2006. Everyone will need one then and prices will drop drasticly."
So, when demand increases, prices will drop? I'm not sure the savings in production costs due to volume will outweigh the inflations caused by shortages as people come to grips at the last minute that their curren TV's will no longer function.
http://www.austega.com/diversions/FreeCell/freecel l.htm
Someone needs to run over and remind them that THEY LOST THE WAR!
Of course, this is not an easy question to answer, but the right answer involves knowing three things:
1) Can certain records be considered 'atomic'?
This is similar to the RDBMS question of whether or not it makes sense to construct a view or not. View definitions represent a common query. If you considering a query as a means of tying together disparate data from many tables into a single, denormalized set of records, the record could just as easily be expressed in some XML format.
Now, if that record represents some physical or conceptual entity in the data model, it is in fact a set of properties about an object. This is what XML is good at representing. Decomposing that set of object data (record) into normalized relations may not make sense if such 'objects' are frequently requested; but there other considerations...
2) Ad hoc queries are difficult when data is stored internally in XML, because each XML blob has to be parsed and checked for the query values. If you don't know in advance if the XML structure even has the fields you're looking for, then you must do an exhaustive search. Some have used indexed XPath information to work around this issue. Since we're mentioning indexes...
3) How do you find the XML blobs you're looking for. We've used an ORDBMS for our XML data, and indexed on the ID or key values (as defined in an XML Schema) for each element stored in the database. This makes looking up element instances easier. It also makes relating them easier, too, if you use IDREF or keyrefs as your foreign keys.
Now every XML document has a single root element. If you're storing that document in a database, you could choose to store just that one root element instance. More likely, you'll want to decompose the root so that accessing subelements by ID or key in the database will be easier.
Got to run off now,
Jeff Lowery
Bill Gates and Michael Eisner get together and form:
DisneySoft!
At that point, software and culture will have merged into a homogenized, wholesome, supermegacorporate dystopia.
Whee.
I hope this gives young, driven people striving for monetary success pause to reflect on what is truly important in their lives.