Is it my imagination or has the moderation on Slashdot really gone to the dogs over the past several months? What explains this post getting a "+5 Insightful")?
Violent crime is caused by individuals, not weapons. However, weapons certainly up the ante, and it's unfortunate that we have a lot of violent people and easy access to weapons/firearms. The responsibility lies with those people, however.
I will say though that there are some aspects of our society/culture which tend to encourage people to become violent. Look at "road rage" statistics, or the number of fights breaking out at Little League games, or what's happening in schools here today. Those are symptoms of a deeper problem. And that's what scares me, not guns.
And most of those were by a family member... often these cases are around a custody battle. A parent gets tired of fighting through the courts, and does something much more effective (but stupid).
There are real problems that affect children and imiginary problems borne of paranoia.
I can attest to this. My mom is constantly worrying about things, and my dad is a conspiracy-theorist (the latest scare is there's a 'Planet X' destined to hit the Earth some time next year). As a result of their influence, I used to look at the world as a kind of scary, dangerous place. My perspective was always "What can go wrong here?", mentally/emotionally preparing for the worst. I was always afraid to do anything that might be "risky". That's a shitty way to live. I'm still good at being the devil's advocate:-), but now I (mostly) live for positive things, looking for opportunities and good things instead of constantly looking out for the bad.
Hmm. Didn't mean to write that much, but I guess I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading this far, if you made it:).
That's great, except it doesn't stop the abusive ex from coming over and beating the snot out of you, or worse. Over here in the U.S., some of those abused women take to buying a gun. (And the smart ones take a gun safety/shooting course if they aren't familiar with firearms.) Now _that's_ a deterrent.
Freshmeat (freshmeat.net) recently ran a wonderful editorial about a man who had a bad RSI case... and how he was able to recover fully, without surgery. If you learn and do the techniques he did, you may save yourself some serious pain.
Have you noticed how it seems like nearly every recent significant advance in materials sciences and engineering is based on carbon? Sheesh, pretty soon they'll be announcing carbon based life forms....
Totally agree, that is exactly what keeps me away from RTS games. Yeah, there's some "strategy" involved, you need to know how to develop your units and attack/defend... but it's largely real-time-micromanagement. The faster you can click and the better you are at remembering what your different units are doing and when they need to be told to do something new, the more games you win.
Perhaps a future RTS will have an AI-oriented language you can use to give "intelligence macros" to your units. Imagine the community you could build around sharing/developing intelligence strategies!
Of course, between work and family I hardly have time for games anymore anyway, so this is more a philosophical discussion than a practical matter for me....:)
Probably everybody knows about this one, but we use a digital camera to capture important whiteboarding sessions. Maybe not as much fun as one of these nifty Mimio's, but it works fine for us.
And someone else recently said VA has about 3-4 months of funding left.
On the positive side, they are moving towards profitability. (The pessimists amongst you who say they're still hemorrhaging are correct, but they're headed in the right direction.)
I hope they can reach profitability before having to take more drastic measures to cut expenses (read/l/a/y/o/f/f between the lines). I think SourceForge is a pretty nifty tool, and I'd like to see Slashdot survive as well.
The web is still viewed as a free medium... so if you charge people, you'll lose them -- they'll just go somewhere that's still free. And if you don't charge them, you keep burning through the money. And you can't do that forever if your website is your product/service. I.e., you're a Salon, Slashdot, or Yahoo.
The next few years will see a lot of companies whose website is the company focus either folding or finding new ways to generate revenue. There are already lots of experiments here. Some are successful or have the potential to be successful.
We're all very accustomed to the idea that everything on the web is, should be, must be free. But that's not a sustainable model. It's gonna change. And it's going to hurt when we can't just spend a few hours browsing without considering how much it's going to cost.
For now, it's still (mostly) free, and a lot of it will stay that way. So enjoy it. Just be aware that it's a precious thing, and some things will be changing.
First off: management is just as difficult as coding. There are lots of people writing code who are just 'winging it', you likely know a few where you are right now. The consequence of their mistakes is usually visible only to them or a handful of people on the development team (they or someone has to fix the bug, rework the code). Mistakes or poor choices at the management level are often visible throughout the organization.
You want to feel that you are contributing towards a greater good, i.e. the successful completion of a useful application/system/product. That's a pretty normal desire. It looks like you're not getting this desire, or expectation, fulfilled at your present job. You never (or too rarely) get the sense of satisfaction and pride of finishing a project that's well designed and coded. What to do?
One solution is to find a company where you can get those expectations met. Use your network of friends, find out who's working for "clueful" management.
Another solution is to revise your expectations at your current job. If you are constantly disappointed by management decisions, quit expecting management to make decisions you like. Find another focus where you can derive satisfaction. Maybe you can become a mentor to those around you. Maybe you can find a project outside work to focus on, or a hobby. Maybe you can get satisfaction out of the code you write, and ignore whether it actually goes to production.
These are just suggestions to get you thinking. Your answer will come from introspecting, thinking about what really satisfies you and motivates you. And then you have to figure out how to get it, in spite of your present situation at work, or again, by finding a new job.
I do wish you good fortune in finding a place/way to be happier. It's difficult to do something when you aren't feeling motivated or rewarded.
You pick the right tool for the job, not the other way around. Unless you're a language designer, I guess, and you're trying to figure out which jobs your language is well-suited for....
Okay, here are a few choices I can think of:
1. Try to figure out which language(s) actually support all of those features. Maybe some interesting research there. I've always enjoyed looking into different languages, anyway.
2. Try to figure out what answer the boss wants (C++ seems likely). Note, it may not be the boss, it may be his boss. This is one of those check-your-political-climate scenarios. It's the opposite of #1 -- instead of going by the technical merits of the languages, you go by the wishes of the boss.
3. Try to figure out what language(s) are well-suited for the project in question, and give him one of those as the answer.
4. Talk to your co-workers who are going to be on the project, and ask them which language they'd like to use (or think is best).
5. Talk openly and honestly with your boss about a better way to select tools for development. This can only succeed if you happen to have a boss who is able and willing to learn from the people he manages.
6. Make up a name for a new language. Don't actually bother with creating the language itself. Naturally, your new language has all the required features. When the boss asks why he can't find out anything about it, just tell him it's brand new and there isn't much information about it yet:).
Some of these options are "less than honest". If that bothers you, well, I don't blame you, because I wouldn't choose them myself.
At any rate, good luck -- and I'm sure we'd like to know how it turns out for you.
It's a neat idea. But I think it could use some improvement.
Your 3000 kids will have a great time for two days. Then, 95% of them will go back home to their regular lives, taking with them nothing more than a memory of a good time.
Two days is too short of an immersion time to build a longterm community or involvement. Especially when you consider that much of the first day is going to be spent on logistical issues -- getting the kids oriented, teaching them what this neat toy does, showing them where the bathroom is.
You need to keep them there for about a week, to fully ingrain new ideas and to *start* setting new habits, and follow up with a good amount of handholding/encouragement/prodding afterwards if you want them to keep participating.
1. No trailers or commercials to fast forward through. Just a few seconds of the FBI's you-better-not-copy-this-tape.
2. A storyline developed by someone over the age of 10.
3. Characters who act like human beings, instead of ludicrous puppets being jacked around by plot devices and ridiculous situations.
4. A soundtrack that supports the movie, instead of screaming "here's what you should be feeling".
5. Less makeup and other artifices to create the "perfect" visual image.
6. Characters who show good principles and morals, instead of "oh, well, I just felt like it" ethics.
I could go on. The point's been made.
Are there still good films being made? Sure. Are all older films better than today's? No. But the quality of the "average" film has IMO declined considerably.
-Thomas
Adoption and integration barriers
on
Digital Lifestyle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is all very cool stuff (for those of us who could benefit from this kind of technology). I am really looking forward to this kind of thing. I know I spend way too much time doing things that could be [more] automated or completely eliminated. But there are two barriers that will keep it from happening in the near future.
In order for this kind of lifestyle to be possible, many large (and small) companies across a wide variety of industries must adopt and integrate the technology to make this happen. Adoption of new technologies is slow enough by itself. How many of us work in companies where Win98 and NT4 are the default desktop OS's, despite the availability of new, better versions? And this is a technology that's well understood and relatively painless to upgrade. (Yes, I said relatively painless, not without pain.)
Integration between two or more companies takes much longer than adoption within a single organization. Remember the B2B craze? After all the fallout, there's not much of it left.
Companies exist to make money, not adopt and implement new technologies. New means risky, unproven, and that risk makes executives and shareholders nervous. And some of the things involved in creating this "digital lifestyle" are a hard sell, from a profitability standpoint. How do you convince the board or executive team that it makes good business sense to invest in developing a service that lets people know when their bus is going to arrive at the bus stop? So they change at a slow pace to reduce the perceived risk.
This is some amazing work, frankly I'm surprised at how much can be done just with today's technology! I'm really looking forward to the time when it can make a significant difference in the quality of my life.
Anyone who believes they have security and privacy in today's world is either ignorant or in denial. Any black hat with a few scripts and a modicum of social engineering can get almost any information about you that's stored in some company or government database/file.
If Microsoft is truly shifting focus to increase security and privacy, that's great news. There is an awful lot of effort put into recovering from and working around Microsoft products which are too easily exploitable. My guess is the "pain" of lost business due to these security/privacy issues is finally significant enough to justify the effort to address them.
It's difficult for business people to understand that there is value in giving something away. What are the biggest obstacles you face in speaking to executives about the business value of open source, and how do you work through them to get buy-in? What are the objections, the communication barriers, the comprehension gaps, and how do you counter them? Can you explain to them the value in such a way that they can understand it from a "business value" perspective, or do you need to get them outside the typical "business value" framework to communicate with them?
Kidding aside, I wish I could mod the parent up to 6. Tim's right on. Probably the biggest mistake you can make in this kind of task is to bite off more than you can chew. And the more crud there is in the codebase, the easier it is to do! So take it slow. Refactoring is like orbital mechanics; you slow down to speed up:).
I recommend Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" book. It's geared towards object-oriented Java development, but the basic principles will apply across languages.
My company made the mistake of trying to rewrite our product from scratch. The "Tiger Team" effort got about halfway completed. Nobody knows if it would have actually resulted in a better product.
-Thomas
Meanwhile, in the offices of Slashdot...
on
LinuxBIOS Gains Steam
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"Yes, this was a slashdot story in March this year but this article is relevant for updating the project status and for providing indepth information.
I can see it now... (delicate fade...)
CT: Gee, we're really getting hammered on these duplicate stories.
Timothy: Yeah, we should do a little more checking. Ah, here comes a submission now. Wow, this is cool! It's Linux! It's a BIOS! Post it, Taco!
CT: Hold on pardner, what did we just talk about?
Timothy: Alright, alright, hold on... aww gee, we posted this back in March! Darn it, this is just so cool, too! It's Linux, it's a BIOS, it's LinuxBIOS!
CT: Calm down, Timmy boy. I tell you what we'll do. We'll link to the original story, and justify this one by calling it an update, with new information.
Timothy: Can we really do that, Taco? That would be great!
CT: Sure. This way, we can't get flamed for re-posting an old story, you get to post a cool article, and all our readers can learn about what's new with LinuxBIOS. Everybody wins!
Timothy: Gosh Taco, you're the greatest.
CT: Just doin' my job, just doin' my job.
(Fade back to reality) And that's how this story was posted.
We have a set of C++ toolkits which should do a lot of what you need, and support a variety of platforms, OSs, and compilers. They've been around for a long time, are very stable (they have been used in mission-critical software) and are a lot cheaper than Rogue Wave's tools. Go to ObjectSpace for more.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it my imagination or has the moderation on Slashdot really gone to the dogs over the past several months? What explains this post getting a "+5 Insightful")?
Violent crime is caused by individuals, not weapons. However, weapons certainly up the ante, and it's unfortunate that we have a lot of violent people and easy access to weapons/firearms. The responsibility lies with those people, however.
I will say though that there are some aspects of our society/culture which tend to encourage people to become violent. Look at "road rage" statistics, or the number of fights breaking out at Little League games, or what's happening in schools here today. Those are symptoms of a deeper problem. And that's what scares me, not guns.
And most of those were by a family member... often these cases are around a custody battle. A parent gets tired of fighting through the courts, and does something much more effective (but stupid).
There are real problems that affect children and imiginary problems borne of paranoia.
I can attest to this. My mom is constantly worrying about things, and my dad is a conspiracy-theorist (the latest scare is there's a 'Planet X' destined to hit the Earth some time next year). As a result of their influence, I used to look at the world as a kind of scary, dangerous place. My perspective was always "What can go wrong here?", mentally/emotionally preparing for the worst. I was always afraid to do anything that might be "risky". That's a shitty way to live. I'm still good at being the devil's advocate :-), but now I (mostly) live for positive things, looking for opportunities and good things instead of constantly looking out for the bad.
Hmm. Didn't mean to write that much, but I guess I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading this far, if you made it :).
That's great, except it doesn't stop the abusive ex from coming over and beating the snot out of you, or worse. Over here in the U.S., some of those abused women take to buying a gun. (And the smart ones take a gun safety/shooting course if they aren't familiar with firearms.) Now _that's_ a deterrent.
Freshmeat (freshmeat.net) recently ran a wonderful editorial about a man who had a bad RSI case... and how he was able to recover fully, without surgery. If you learn and do the techniques he did, you may save yourself some serious pain.
I told my girlfriend about this record. She didn't understand why I laughed when she said "Yeah, but I bet they aren't receiving it that fast".
No, I didn't try to explain it to her.
Have you noticed how it seems like nearly every recent significant advance in materials sciences and engineering is based on carbon? Sheesh, pretty soon they'll be announcing carbon based life forms....
Totally agree, that is exactly what keeps me away from RTS games. Yeah, there's some "strategy" involved, you need to know how to develop your units and attack/defend... but it's largely real-time-micromanagement. The faster you can click and the better you are at remembering what your different units are doing and when they need to be told to do something new, the more games you win.
:)
Perhaps a future RTS will have an AI-oriented language you can use to give "intelligence macros" to your units. Imagine the community you could build around sharing/developing intelligence strategies!
Of course, between work and family I hardly have time for games anymore anyway, so this is more a philosophical discussion than a practical matter for me....
Probably everybody knows about this one, but we use a digital camera to capture important whiteboarding sessions. Maybe not as much fun as one of these nifty Mimio's, but it works fine for us.
-Thomas
And someone else recently said VA has about 3-4 months of funding left.
On the positive side, they are moving towards profitability. (The pessimists amongst you who say they're still hemorrhaging are correct, but they're headed in the right direction.)
I hope they can reach profitability before having to take more drastic measures to cut expenses (read /l/a/y/o/f/f between the lines). I think SourceForge is a pretty nifty tool, and I'd like to see Slashdot survive as well.
-Thomas
and damned if you don't.
The web is still viewed as a free medium... so if you charge people, you'll lose them -- they'll just go somewhere that's still free. And if you don't charge them, you keep burning through the money. And you can't do that forever if your website is your product/service. I.e., you're a Salon, Slashdot, or Yahoo.
The next few years will see a lot of companies whose website is the company focus either folding or finding new ways to generate revenue. There are already lots of experiments here. Some are successful or have the potential to be successful.
We're all very accustomed to the idea that everything on the web is, should be, must be free. But that's not a sustainable model. It's gonna change. And it's going to hurt when we can't just spend a few hours browsing without considering how much it's going to cost.
For now, it's still (mostly) free, and a lot of it will stay that way. So enjoy it. Just be aware that it's a precious thing, and some things will be changing.
-Thomas
First off: management is just as difficult as coding. There are lots of people writing code who are just 'winging it', you likely know a few where you are right now. The consequence of their mistakes is usually visible only to them or a handful of people on the development team (they or someone has to fix the bug, rework the code). Mistakes or poor choices at the management level are often visible throughout the organization.
You want to feel that you are contributing towards a greater good, i.e. the successful completion of a useful application/system/product. That's a pretty normal desire. It looks like you're not getting this desire, or expectation, fulfilled at your present job. You never (or too rarely) get the sense of satisfaction and pride of finishing a project that's well designed and coded. What to do?
One solution is to find a company where you can get those expectations met. Use your network of friends, find out who's working for "clueful" management.
Another solution is to revise your expectations at your current job. If you are constantly disappointed by management decisions, quit expecting management to make decisions you like. Find another focus where you can derive satisfaction. Maybe you can become a mentor to those around you. Maybe you can find a project outside work to focus on, or a hobby. Maybe you can get satisfaction out of the code you write, and ignore whether it actually goes to production.
These are just suggestions to get you thinking. Your answer will come from introspecting, thinking about what really satisfies you and motivates you. And then you have to figure out how to get it, in spite of your present situation at work, or again, by finding a new job.
I do wish you good fortune in finding a place/way to be happier. It's difficult to do something when you aren't feeling motivated or rewarded.
Regards,
Thomas
You pick the right tool for the job, not the other way around. Unless you're a language designer, I guess, and you're trying to figure out which jobs your language is well-suited for....
:).
Okay, here are a few choices I can think of:
1. Try to figure out which language(s) actually support all of those features. Maybe some interesting research there. I've always enjoyed looking into different languages, anyway.
2. Try to figure out what answer the boss wants (C++ seems likely). Note, it may not be the boss, it may be his boss. This is one of those check-your-political-climate scenarios. It's the opposite of #1 -- instead of going by the technical merits of the languages, you go by the wishes of the boss.
3. Try to figure out what language(s) are well-suited for the project in question, and give him one of those as the answer.
4. Talk to your co-workers who are going to be on the project, and ask them which language they'd like to use (or think is best).
5. Talk openly and honestly with your boss about a better way to select tools for development. This can only succeed if you happen to have a boss who is able and willing to learn from the people he manages.
6. Make up a name for a new language. Don't actually bother with creating the language itself. Naturally, your new language has all the required features. When the boss asks why he can't find out anything about it, just tell him it's brand new and there isn't much information about it yet
Some of these options are "less than honest". If that bothers you, well, I don't blame you, because I wouldn't choose them myself.
At any rate, good luck -- and I'm sure we'd like to know how it turns out for you.
-Thomas
It's a neat idea. But I think it could use some improvement.
Your 3000 kids will have a great time for two days. Then, 95% of them will go back home to their regular lives, taking with them nothing more than a memory of a good time.
Two days is too short of an immersion time to build a longterm community or involvement. Especially when you consider that much of the first day is going to be spent on logistical issues -- getting the kids oriented, teaching them what this neat toy does, showing them where the bathroom is.
You need to keep them there for about a week, to fully ingrain new ideas and to *start* setting new habits, and follow up with a good amount of handholding/encouragement/prodding afterwards if you want them to keep participating.
-Thomas
I've got moderator points today, and boy, I sure wish I could mod your statement up to +6.
"We don't like the looks of you, you can't live in our neighborhood."
"We don't like the looks of you, you can't fly on our airplane."
Boy, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
-Thomas
Advantages of watching older movies:
1. No trailers or commercials to fast forward through. Just a few seconds of the FBI's you-better-not-copy-this-tape.
2. A storyline developed by someone over the age of 10.
3. Characters who act like human beings, instead of ludicrous puppets being jacked around by plot devices and ridiculous situations.
4. A soundtrack that supports the movie, instead of screaming "here's what you should be feeling".
5. Less makeup and other artifices to create the "perfect" visual image.
6. Characters who show good principles and morals, instead of "oh, well, I just felt like it" ethics.
I could go on. The point's been made.
Are there still good films being made? Sure. Are all older films better than today's? No. But the quality of the "average" film has IMO declined considerably.
-Thomas
This is all very cool stuff (for those of us who could benefit from this kind of technology). I am really looking forward to this kind of thing. I know I spend way too much time doing things that could be [more] automated or completely eliminated. But there are two barriers that will keep it from happening in the near future.
In order for this kind of lifestyle to be possible, many large (and small) companies across a wide variety of industries must adopt and integrate the technology to make this happen. Adoption of new technologies is slow enough by itself. How many of us work in companies where Win98 and NT4 are the default desktop OS's, despite the availability of new, better versions? And this is a technology that's well understood and relatively painless to upgrade. (Yes, I said relatively painless, not without pain.)
Integration between two or more companies takes much longer than adoption within a single organization. Remember the B2B craze? After all the fallout, there's not much of it left.
Companies exist to make money, not adopt and implement new technologies. New means risky, unproven, and that risk makes executives and shareholders nervous. And some of the things involved in creating this "digital lifestyle" are a hard sell, from a profitability standpoint. How do you convince the board or executive team that it makes good business sense to invest in developing a service that lets people know when their bus is going to arrive at the bus stop? So they change at a slow pace to reduce the perceived risk.
This is some amazing work, frankly I'm surprised at how much can be done just with today's technology! I'm really looking forward to the time when it can make a significant difference in the quality of my life.
-Thomas
Anyone who believes they have security and privacy in today's world is either ignorant or in denial. Any black hat with a few scripts and a modicum of social engineering can get almost any information about you that's stored in some company or government database/file.
If Microsoft is truly shifting focus to increase security and privacy, that's great news. There is an awful lot of effort put into recovering from and working around Microsoft products which are too easily exploitable. My guess is the "pain" of lost business due to these security/privacy issues is finally significant enough to justify the effort to address them.
-Thomas
It's difficult for business people to understand that there is value in giving something away. What are the biggest obstacles you face in speaking to executives about the business value of open source, and how do you work through them to get buy-in? What are the objections, the communication barriers, the comprehension gaps, and how do you counter them? Can you explain to them the value in such a way that they can understand it from a "business value" perspective, or do you need to get them outside the typical "business value" framework to communicate with them?
-Thomas
IIRC a presidential candidate must be at least 35 years old.
:).
Do the math, Slashdotters
-Thomas
I hope these guys have a great time and let us all know what the experience is like.
Me too!
:).
Kidding aside, I wish I could mod the parent up to 6. Tim's right on. Probably the biggest mistake you can make in this kind of task is to bite off more than you can chew. And the more crud there is in the codebase, the easier it is to do! So take it slow. Refactoring is like orbital mechanics; you slow down to speed up
I recommend Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" book. It's geared towards object-oriented Java development, but the basic principles will apply across languages.
My company made the mistake of trying to rewrite our product from scratch. The "Tiger Team" effort got about halfway completed. Nobody knows if it would have actually resulted in a better product.
-Thomas
I can see it now... (delicate fade...)
CT: Gee, we're really getting hammered on these duplicate stories.
Timothy: Yeah, we should do a little more checking. Ah, here comes a submission now. Wow, this is cool! It's Linux! It's a BIOS! Post it, Taco!
CT: Hold on pardner, what did we just talk about?
Timothy: Alright, alright, hold on... aww gee, we posted this back in March! Darn it, this is just so cool, too! It's Linux, it's a BIOS, it's LinuxBIOS!
CT: Calm down, Timmy boy. I tell you what we'll do. We'll link to the original story, and justify this one by calling it an update, with new information.
Timothy: Can we really do that, Taco? That would be great!
CT: Sure. This way, we can't get flamed for re-posting an old story, you get to post a cool article, and all our readers can learn about what's new with LinuxBIOS. Everybody wins!
Timothy: Gosh Taco, you're the greatest.
CT: Just doin' my job, just doin' my job.
(Fade back to reality) And that's how this story was posted.
We have a set of C++ toolkits which should do a lot of what you need, and support a variety of platforms, OSs, and compilers. They've been around for a long time, are very stable (they have been used in mission-critical software) and are a lot cheaper than Rogue Wave's tools. Go to ObjectSpace for more.