I actually have a free application on the BlackBerry App World called HP Printer Fun, which lets users mess with the LED screens on the HP Laser Jet printers (plus some inkjet ones too) for fun.
I've written some other apps as well and the experience is not so great. My gripes are as follows:
Java is limited to an ancient version (e.g. no generics or other recent goodness)
Very weak debugging support (compared to say, Android)
When the emulator is running, your app is basically locked. In other words, you have to restart the emulator each time you make a change to the code - which takes 1-3 minutes depending on your config.
The looks of the IDE make Windows 3.1 seem modern.
No support for modern programming fonts, for instance Consolas
On the other hand, the docs are pretty good. The support group at BlackBerry dev site is simple superb. Examples are plenty and the API just freaking makes a massive amount of sense. And for the adventurous, you could use a beta version (might be released by now) of an Eclipse plugin.
The Android Marketplace experience from the phone is really slick. However, there is no way to access it from the Internet. I released a really small free app called "That's not Funny" (check it out).
Dude, what are you smoking? Israel has left Gaza in 2005. Left, as in there wasn't a single Israeli there for 3 and half years (until the current action). How is that occupying? By that logic, England is still occupying US.
There are actually great reasons to upgrade to Vista. A massive boost in productivity (for power users, at least) is one of them. In defense of Vista article outlines some of the other reasons.
I've been using Vista since February and once file copy performance issues were sorted out, I have nothing bad to say about it.
I am not informed on most of items in the article, but the entries that I was informed on are complete BS. For instance, in #9 "The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall", the author continuously states that the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall is illegal. However, the author neglects to mention a little item - the court's decision is NON-BINDING to anybody. It could as well have been made by a tree.
Given that non-binding decisions are treated as be all end all of legal decision, I hereby declare in my non-binding decision that the author of the article is the sweat of baboon's ass.
In story #5 "High-Tech Genocide in Congo", the author states that the 1996 invasion of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda was US sponsored. Really? How was it sponsored? Were US troops involved? Was US involved less then other countries? There aren't are substantiations, the author just throws out flames.
The other parts of the article are written in similar tones - makes me question absolutely everything in it.
Maximize is just one example and I want it my way, not the what the developer thinks way. Besides it is just one example. What about the Home and End keys? Why does mac even ship with those? One would think that pressing Home key would take you to the beginning on the line in a textbox (like the Address Bar).
As far as Spotlight (Google Desktop), Dashboard (Confabulator, aka Yahoo Widgets), been there, done that. Nice repackaging on existing technology. Spring loaded folders? You are kidding, right? Wasn't it in Mac OS 8?
I don't know if this story is an indication of a problem, but here it is anyway. After seeing a couple of her girlfriends with macs and "how easy they are", my wife convinced me to get her one as well. So we got a white MacBook, which is nice and sleek. My wife used it for maybe 2-3 weeks, then went back to her old HP laptop. She keeps on saying that she'll be using her Mac, so we'll see. But one way or another there are some significant issues on the mac vis-a-vis migration for former windows users. For instance, the Mac store offers free migration which is good, but I feel there was no attention to detail. For instance, even though they were told that my had a Hotmail account, they setup email in the Mail application instead of Entourage, which can actually read Hotmail. There were a couple of other issues with migration as well.
Finally, if you are windows power user, MacOS leaves you underwhelmed. Where is the freaking maximize button? Seriously, not what the application thinks Maximize should be, but actually maximizing the window to the maximum real estate of the monitor. While at the store I asked one of the clerks where the real Maximize button was and his answer was (for real), that a "Maximize function was a Windows thing and unnecessary on the Mac". Ok, what if I like to browse full screen? "Well, most web sites display their content in 800x600". Slashdot immediately came to mind.
I switched last January from being employed at a bank to being a contractor at a primarily software development shop. The switch was kind of scary for me because I got a family which needs certainty and health insurance. So I got blue cross which isn't as good as what my employer used to provide but it does the trick.
Things I love? No more idiotic bank rules to follow, which only seek to prevent me from actually doing any productive work. Being able to work in an agile environment. Being able to actually focus on software development versus idiotic worksplace politics. Not having to sit in meetings half my life coming up with specs that will never be followed.
Things I don't like? You pay more taxes because you are self-employed and you have to deal with it (quarterly payments, etc...). That's my only complaint.
I think, what the guy above you meant is that Open Source makes sense to companies that are looking to commoditize products popularized by OSS.
For instance, it is in IBM's interest to commoditize functions such as Operating systems and web servers because they sell a lot of middleware on top of these products. Note that they are not participating in any OSS application server projects.
I am not quite sure what this guy is talking about. I haven't rebooted my home pc running WinXP since the last power outage, which was several months ago. I use most of the products he mentions, including outlook as well as a host of others. I've never had to reboot because of any one application.
My work PC gets rebooted maybe once in two weeks, mostly because I am debugging a memory leak or something like that.
>>Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet.
So, he should have attended the training seminar while at MS. But seriously, what is he talking about?
My dad drove me to school in the "Ukrainian jewel" in the eighties and the car was pretty durable. Sure, it looked like a box/joke, but it got the job done. It was particularly good in the harsh days of winter. Just try and drive a toyota in -10 celcius and you'll come to appreciate the little engine that could.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually have a free application on the BlackBerry App World called HP Printer Fun, which lets users mess with the LED screens on the HP Laser Jet printers (plus some inkjet ones too) for fun.
I've written some other apps as well and the experience is not so great. My gripes are as follows:
On the other hand, the docs are pretty good. The support group at BlackBerry dev site is simple superb. Examples are plenty and the API just freaking makes a massive amount of sense. And for the adventurous, you could use a beta version (might be released by now) of an Eclipse plugin.
I'd like to participate in this event, but can't find the download link for the game.
The Android Marketplace experience from the phone is really slick. However, there is no way to access it from the Internet. I released a really small free app called "That's not Funny" (check it out).
I signed up for it and was approved, but it is not yet opened. I couldn't get a solid date either.
Dude, what are you smoking? Israel has left Gaza in 2005. Left, as in there wasn't a single Israeli there for 3 and half years (until the current action). How is that occupying? By that logic, England is still occupying US.
It does NOT suck.
There are actually great reasons to upgrade to Vista. A massive boost in productivity (for power users, at least) is one of them. In defense of Vista article outlines some of the other reasons.
I've been using Vista since February and once file copy performance issues were sorted out, I have nothing bad to say about it.
I am not informed on most of items in the article, but the entries that I was informed on are complete BS. For instance, in #9 "The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall", the author continuously states that the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall is illegal. However, the author neglects to mention a little item - the court's decision is NON-BINDING to anybody. It could as well have been made by a tree.
m
Given that non-binding decisions are treated as be all end all of legal decision, I hereby declare in my non-binding decision that the author of the article is the sweat of baboon's ass.
Read about the non-binding decision here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3879057.st
In story #5 "High-Tech Genocide in Congo", the author states that the 1996 invasion of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda was US sponsored. Really? How was it sponsored? Were US troops involved? Was US involved less then other countries? There aren't are substantiations, the author just throws out flames.
The other parts of the article are written in similar tones - makes me question absolutely everything in it.
Maximize is just one example and I want it my way, not the what the developer thinks way. Besides it is just one example. What about the Home and End keys? Why does mac even ship with those? One would think that pressing Home key would take you to the beginning on the line in a textbox (like the Address Bar).
As far as Spotlight (Google Desktop), Dashboard (Confabulator, aka Yahoo Widgets), been there, done that. Nice repackaging on existing technology. Spring loaded folders? You are kidding, right? Wasn't it in Mac OS 8?
I don't know if this story is an indication of a problem, but here it is anyway. After seeing a couple of her girlfriends with macs and "how easy they are", my wife convinced me to get her one as well. So we got a white MacBook, which is nice and sleek. My wife used it for maybe 2-3 weeks, then went back to her old HP laptop. She keeps on saying that she'll be using her Mac, so we'll see. But one way or another there are some significant issues on the mac vis-a-vis migration for former windows users. For instance, the Mac store offers free migration which is good, but I feel there was no attention to detail. For instance, even though they were told that my had a Hotmail account, they setup email in the Mail application instead of Entourage, which can actually read Hotmail. There were a couple of other issues with migration as well.
Finally, if you are windows power user, MacOS leaves you underwhelmed. Where is the freaking maximize button? Seriously, not what the application thinks Maximize should be, but actually maximizing the window to the maximum real estate of the monitor. While at the store I asked one of the clerks where the real Maximize button was and his answer was (for real), that a "Maximize function was a Windows thing and unnecessary on the Mac". Ok, what if I like to browse full screen? "Well, most web sites display their content in 800x600". Slashdot immediately came to mind.
What? The newspaper did nothing wrong. It is the inherent right of anyone in the west to publish anything they want.
Here is a related article.e d.htm
http://www.vbrad.com/pf.asp?p=source/src_top10hyp
The self-employment tax? I agree, more is tax deductible, but I don't find that it offsets the self-employment tax.
I switched last January from being employed at a bank to being a contractor at a primarily software development shop. The switch was kind of scary for me because I got a family which needs certainty and health insurance. So I got blue cross which isn't as good as what my employer used to provide but it does the trick.
Things I love? No more idiotic bank rules to follow, which only seek to prevent me from actually doing any productive work. Being able to work in an agile environment. Being able to actually focus on software development versus idiotic worksplace politics. Not having to sit in meetings half my life coming up with specs that will never be followed.
Things I don't like? You pay more taxes because you are self-employed and you have to deal with it (quarterly payments, etc...). That's my only complaint.
Oops, I gave a bad URL. Here is the right one.
u alStudioHacks.htm
http://www.vbrad.com/pf.asp?p=Reviews/books/brVis
http://www.vbrad.com/Reviews/books/brVisualStudioH acks.htm
http://www.vbrad.com/pf.asp?p=source/src_top_10_fe atures_2004.htm
I've been using a similar indexing tool, called QuickSearch, that indexes files for quick retrieval. It is very lightweight and very quick.
http://www.vbrad.com/source/prg_qsearch.htm
Does TiVo work on Timer Warner Digital Cable?
I think, what the guy above you meant is that Open Source makes sense to companies that are looking to commoditize products popularized by OSS.
For instance, it is in IBM's interest to commoditize functions such as Operating systems and web servers because they sell a lot of middleware on top of these products. Note that they are not participating in any OSS application server projects.
I am not quite sure what this guy is talking about. I haven't rebooted my home pc running WinXP since the last power outage, which was several months ago. I use most of the products he mentions, including outlook as well as a host of others. I've never had to reboot because of any one application.
My work PC gets rebooted maybe once in two weeks, mostly because I am debugging a memory leak or something like that.
>>Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet.
So, he should have attended the training seminar while at MS. But seriously, what is he talking about?
>>something like getter/setter generator macros... found it for 100$ per seat! OMG!
This is really elementary. Track me down via the website and I'll send my implementation for $0 per seat. OMG!
My dad drove me to school in the "Ukrainian jewel" in the eighties and the car was pretty durable. Sure, it looked like a box/joke, but it got the job done. It was particularly good in the harsh days of winter. Just try and drive a toyota in -10 celcius and you'll come to appreciate the little engine that could.
Many fond memories from that era.
...this story is a plant to sell their ServerMask software.
The link is broke. Here is a better one.
v ancedRemoting.htm"
"http://www.vbrad.com/pf.asp?p=Reviews/books/brAd