I love using tabs, and I can't go back to IE because of that. However, when you think of the concept of "tabs", it really is the same as opening as a new window. The same basic functionally exists in the Windows toolbar ( or KDE/Gnome/other WM toolbar ). And before tabs, that's how I would work, and it worked fine.
The big difference is that tabs have some advanced functionality that isn't present in using and MDI style browsing, namely:
Bookmarking a Group of Tabs
Reloading a Group of Tabs at once
Opening new pages/bookmarks or doing location bar search with the results appearing in a new tab.
Reordering tabs ( useful to have all slashdot pages together, then all other pages after it; good for organization )
Easily open links from main page in background (middle click in Mozilla)
Browsing is ( more easily ) contained in one window, so switching between tabs is easier and quiting out is easier. Being in one process is an issue ( one error brings down entire browser with all tabs )
Granted, I'm not saying that they following things are possible via some sort of tweaks or hacks to a MDI style browser, but they seem to work better with tabs.
> I've seen specs come down from higher-ups who have no idea what they are asking for.
That is most difficult part of being a programmer: design.
I've been working on a major project for a year where I've been wearing both the coder and designer hats. Of the total time spent, I'd say it would be 80/20 design/coding ( design split between meeting with them and putting together design specs for them ). Granted it's fairly early on so this is expected, but I've also had my fair share of difficulty pulling the specs out of them at times. The humerous part of it is that it almost seems like I know how they work better that they do.
I've sat thru those meetings where someone asks "I want the screen to turn red when something is due!" in the middle of data design, and you just want to shoot yourself in the head. It's difficult to shift some people's brains into abstract mode, which in turn makes it like pulling teeth out to get anywhere. However, those are the most important parts of development, and now I don't hesitate spending as much time as needed there to make my life easier down the road.
"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."
Re:Basically...
on
F'd Companies
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The whole era taught us (again), that there truely is no thing as a free lunch. A successful internet company actually has to have a non-internet side of it to be successful, with some exceptions ( namely Ebay, Yahoo, Google to name a few ). You can't just start a internet business in your basement and expect the money to come rolling in.
You also have to be able to sell something online that someone would likely buy thru that medium. For example, selling cars and furniture online doesn't work as well as going to the car dealership or the furniture store; it's just not something that we can be comfortable with. And back then, everyone tried to find a way to sell everything possible online; some found success ( ex. books/videos/CDs with Amazon, CDnow, etc ) and some realized it just couldn't be done easily or at all.
This can be extending to advertisement space ( ie banner ads, popups ). This works well outside of the internet ( TV/radio ads, billboards ), but it's value was overrated during the.com era. Paying a website to refer someone to some other website was predicated on the idea of that person actually buying something there, which never really panned out as they hoped (ie Web Site Visitor != Web Site Customer). Then to make things worse, a company solely built around income from such referrals (AllAdvantage.com) was just a ticking timebomb, especially when people figured out the cheats ( I know I did )
Today companies with a large online presence typically have a similarly sized complimenting offline presence. For example, you can go to an Apple store or dealer and buy and iBook, or goto the Apple Online Store and buy one. It seems to be the best bet.
And were the bastards that pushed them out ( especially WENZ "The End", which was my favorite modern rock station ever ) for none other than the same Pop 40/Urban Mix that pollutes MTV. Thank God for SomaFM
Re:Why I prefer PHP to Perl
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk. We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection, reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.
How is this? PHP's OO is weak and kludged together ( but will be much better come Zend 2/ PHP 5 ).
I'm not sure if either (a) Smalltalk is horrible ( which from my understanding isn't ) or (b) the parent should be modded +1 Funny. Seriously, putting PHP in the same OO ranks as Smalltalk is like putting a Ford Escort in the same offroad handling ranks as a F-150 truck.
On a side note, is it just me or is/. really slow right now?
Now what I know may only apply to Leukemia ( since I have a nephew with it and I'm learning alot about bone marrow and such things ), but if you have the choice, stem cells from umbilical cords are the best choice. Otherwise human donors are possible.
Basically the pull blood out of one arm, feed it though a machine to filter out stem cells, and return it in the other arm. Simple, relatively painless ( as opposed to the giant needle in the hip ), and from what I understand, much better results than the needle in the hip.
Again, I not a doctor, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I've heard about something like this with Leukemia patients. Basically, they can get you in remission, extract some stem cells from you, then use those stem cells for a bone marrow transplant for you later on. Someone elaborate on this if you know more, as I'm not a doctor and could be speaking out of my ass on this one.
Is there anyone with much experience doing PHP-GTK? On the outside it seems like a nice way to use PHP's DB interaction on the desktop, but it seems the development is slow on it and I haven't seen many people using it ( and have heard bad things about it, but from the same people who say bad things about PHP).
Wow, I just got a special offer in the mail with my DirecTV bill to get service for $39.95 a month for the first year. Good thing I didn't call today to get it activated!
And it really was worse than that. Even though although I do look forward to chrisd's segments on the Screen Savers, the are just painful sometimes to follow. One previous segment had him showing people how to do using flocks (which I didn't understand that choice, but whatever) do make a webpage counter. He briefly showed the code and then the code working, soon after followed by his site being slashdotted. The code presentation was a quick camera shot at a few lines and a quick description. It seemed a bit to daunting of a task to do for thier audience, and I think it should have been presented differently.
And I don't put chrisd completely at fault for this. His segments are the only ones that use the command line or viewing text in a text file, so the producers should try to better gear those segments to that they are easier to follow for thier audience via better camera shots, etc. If I hadn't a clue about linux and watched those episodes, I'd avoid Linux like the plague.
I had setup an old WinBook FX (P166MMX, 48mb) using Red Hat 6.2, Blackbox, Opera, xmms, AbiWord, and Gaim, and it ran very well. I imagine IceWM would work just as well.
Just about anything out there will work with 2.2.x kernels, although some X based utilities seem to want you to use XFree 4.x, while most older distros come with 3.3.x and older, and many older cards lack compatibility with the 4.x series. But all the major stuff seems to work fine.
My Dell P2-366 laptop is much faster with page rendering, switching tabs, and going from minimized to maximized than with Mozilla 1.1 on Win 2000. Plus the themes still use native widgets, which makes it nice so I can update the look without sacrificing performance.
The best Windows by far is Win 2000. Upgrade to the latest Service Pack ( SP2 unless you don't fear the EULA of SP3 ) and install the Windows 2000 application compatiblity update. Then in the properties of the shortcuts to the programs, you can set the programs to run in Window 98 compatiblity mode.
I've used this several times to run older games ( Descent 2, GTA ) and have had great results thus far. Stability of XP, compatibility of 9x, and none of the fluff that XP installs by default.
I gets lots of service drop-offs in the Akron/Cleveland, OH, region, including one big one that's 2 miles away from the Cingular store ( Fairlawn, OH ) I bought the phone from.
When I was in school 2 years ago it was even better. You could buy Office, etc, for $10 a CD, OR you could rent it out of the school library for free. Which is how I have Windows 2000 now ( would have got Office et al, but (a) I already have Office copies available to me if needed and (b) OpenOffice fits the bill for Office, and I don't use Visual Studio for work at home ).
On my P2-366 laptop, Phoenix is much faster than Moz 1.1. The biggest website improvement has been Thinkgeek.com; before Mozilla would scroll the site *horribly* slow and choppy but now Phoenix has no problems at all. I also would see issues with Mozilla hanging when switching tabs; happens some on Phoenix but it's not nearly as bad.
Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.
In both places I've worked, a public school system and in a financial services company, we've had to wear ties. However, I was part time at the school system so all I've had to do was not wear something tasteful ( jeans/t-shirt OK ), unless I wanted to be jockeying for a full time post like some of the tools here were.
Honestly, unless you're in meetings or what not, I just can't see the purpose of ties. Most of the consultant types that pass thru here are in the polo shirt w/ kahkis or jeans routine, which I think should be a norm for IT people who (a) mainly program since you want to be comfortable yet presentable or (b) mainly service equipment or do field work since you are generally are on the floor or under a desk mucking with computers.
It seems that as technology gets better, more productive, and easier for Joe/Jane User to use, the entertainment industry's grip on content tightens. It's like they want it to be the next cable; full of content that may or may not appeal to the masses, but certain to be full of cruft with advertisements to support it. And with one of the biggest cable modem services ( Roadrunner ) ran buy one of the entertainment industry's big dogs ( Time Warner ), I see no hope in sight.
Personally, I've advised everyone I know to jump the cable modem ship. But the low competitive pricing ( It cost $55/month in my market, but my father-in-law can get it for $29.99/month which is much cheaper than DSL ), what can you say. But give DSL time and it will turn sour as well.
Given a set of operations to carry out, someone using a GUI file manager and someone else using a command line, I bet more than 9 times out of 10 the command line is faster.
And nobody is doubting that. Command line is faster, but just isn't as practical nor as intuitive as a well designed File Manager. However, Joe/Jane Regular User doesn't want to learn cp, mv, rm and doesn't want to have to type that for each file he/she wants to copy, move, or delete.
For scripting, I'll take my command line. But for everyday work, give me a GUI.
My install went great as well. KDE 3 is much faster than in RH 7.3, mainly due to gcc 3.2, but still great to see. I have only three issues.
Supermount just doesn't work right. It just loses it's mind after a while and it seems the way to fix it is a "eject; eject -t", which is kludgy at best. Winex doesn't like it at all, so it gets turned off. This is a nice feature, I just wish Mandrake wouldn't ship it broken like this.
My old AHA-1542 SCSI card just won't be recognized. This has been one of the big reasons I've used Mandrake, since every version since 7.1 AFAIK has found it and configured it flawlessly, but this one just won't do it. I can't even load the module manually.
Connection Sharing doesn't work as it should with a PPP connection. It thinks it should be up all the time ( as opposed to dial on demand ), and then needs reconfigured after the PPP link goes down. I think I'll just install diald manually and do things that way, but you'd think it should do that for you.
Both work great for me, and that's since the ~0.9.8 days. My issues is Ebay crashing Mozilla. I know there are Bugzilla reports out on it, and I have a feeling it's more of an Ebay issue than a Mozilla, but that's Ebay for you.
Slashdot Mirror
I love using tabs, and I can't go back to IE because of that. However, when you think of the concept of "tabs", it really is the same as opening as a new window. The same basic functionally exists in the Windows toolbar ( or KDE/Gnome/other WM toolbar ). And before tabs, that's how I would work, and it worked fine.
The big difference is that tabs have some advanced functionality that isn't present in using and MDI style browsing, namely:
Granted, I'm not saying that they following things are possible via some sort of tweaks or hacks to a MDI style browser, but they seem to work better with tabs.
> I've seen specs come down from higher-ups who have no idea what they are asking for.
That is most difficult part of being a programmer: design.
I've been working on a major project for a year where I've been wearing both the coder and designer hats. Of the total time spent, I'd say it would be 80/20 design/coding ( design split between meeting with them and putting together design specs for them ). Granted it's fairly early on so this is expected, but I've also had my fair share of difficulty pulling the specs out of them at times. The humerous part of it is that it almost seems like I know how they work better that they do.
I've sat thru those meetings where someone asks "I want the screen to turn red when something is due!" in the middle of data design, and you just want to shoot yourself in the head. It's difficult to shift some people's brains into abstract mode, which in turn makes it like pulling teeth out to get anywhere. However, those are the most important parts of development, and now I don't hesitate spending as much time as needed there to make my life easier down the road.
"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."
The whole era taught us (again), that there truely is no thing as a free lunch. A successful internet company actually has to have a non-internet side of it to be successful, with some exceptions ( namely Ebay, Yahoo, Google to name a few ). You can't just start a internet business in your basement and expect the money to come rolling in.
You also have to be able to sell something online that someone would likely buy thru that medium. For example, selling cars and furniture online doesn't work as well as going to the car dealership or the furniture store; it's just not something that we can be comfortable with. And back then, everyone tried to find a way to sell everything possible online; some found success ( ex. books/videos/CDs with Amazon, CDnow, etc ) and some realized it just couldn't be done easily or at all.
This can be extending to advertisement space ( ie banner ads, popups ). This works well outside of the internet ( TV/radio ads, billboards ), but it's value was overrated during the .com era. Paying a website to refer someone to some other website was predicated on the idea of that person actually buying something there, which never really panned out as they hoped (ie Web Site Visitor != Web Site Customer). Then to make things worse, a company solely built around income from such referrals (AllAdvantage.com) was just a ticking timebomb, especially when people figured out the cheats ( I know I did )
Today companies with a large online presence typically have a similarly sized complimenting offline presence. For example, you can go to an Apple store or dealer and buy and iBook, or goto the Apple Online Store and buy one. It seems to be the best bet.
And were the bastards that pushed them out ( especially WENZ "The End", which was my favorite modern rock station ever ) for none other than the same Pop 40/Urban Mix that pollutes MTV. Thank God for SomaFM
How is this? PHP's OO is weak and kludged together ( but will be much better come Zend 2/ PHP 5 ).
I'm not sure if either (a) Smalltalk is horrible ( which from my understanding isn't ) or (b) the parent should be modded +1 Funny. Seriously, putting PHP in the same OO ranks as Smalltalk is like putting a Ford Escort in the same offroad handling ranks as a F-150 truck.
On a side note, is it just me or is /. really slow right now?
Now what I know may only apply to Leukemia ( since I have a nephew with it and I'm learning alot about bone marrow and such things ), but if you have the choice, stem cells from umbilical cords are the best choice. Otherwise human donors are possible.
Basically the pull blood out of one arm, feed it though a machine to filter out stem cells, and return it in the other arm. Simple, relatively painless ( as opposed to the giant needle in the hip ), and from what I understand, much better results than the needle in the hip.
Again, I not a doctor, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I've heard about something like this with Leukemia patients. Basically, they can get you in remission, extract some stem cells from you, then use those stem cells for a bone marrow transplant for you later on. Someone elaborate on this if you know more, as I'm not a doctor and could be speaking out of my ass on this one.
Is there anyone with much experience doing PHP-GTK? On the outside it seems like a nice way to use PHP's DB interaction on the desktop, but it seems the development is slow on it and I haven't seen many people using it ( and have heard bad things about it, but from the same people who say bad things about PHP).
Wow, I just got a special offer in the mail with my DirecTV bill to get service for $39.95 a month for the first year. Good thing I didn't call today to get it activated!
Getting money out of spammer that's trying to get money out of you. Hmmmm....
Sure it may work -- in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory. (simpsons credit)
And it really was worse than that. Even though although I do look forward to chrisd's segments on the Screen Savers, the are just painful sometimes to follow. One previous segment had him showing people how to do using flocks (which I didn't understand that choice, but whatever) do make a webpage counter. He briefly showed the code and then the code working, soon after followed by his site being slashdotted. The code presentation was a quick camera shot at a few lines and a quick description. It seemed a bit to daunting of a task to do for thier audience, and I think it should have been presented differently.
And I don't put chrisd completely at fault for this. His segments are the only ones that use the command line or viewing text in a text file, so the producers should try to better gear those segments to that they are easier to follow for thier audience via better camera shots, etc. If I hadn't a clue about linux and watched those episodes, I'd avoid Linux like the plague.
I had setup an old WinBook FX (P166MMX, 48mb) using Red Hat 6.2, Blackbox, Opera, xmms, AbiWord, and Gaim, and it ran very well. I imagine IceWM would work just as well.
Just about anything out there will work with 2.2.x kernels, although some X based utilities seem to want you to use XFree 4.x, while most older distros come with 3.3.x and older, and many older cards lack compatibility with the 4.x series. But all the major stuff seems to work fine.
My Dell P2-366 laptop is much faster with page rendering, switching tabs, and going from minimized to maximized than with Mozilla 1.1 on Win 2000. Plus the themes still use native widgets, which makes it nice so I can update the look without sacrificing performance.
The best Windows by far is Win 2000. Upgrade to the latest Service Pack ( SP2 unless you don't fear the EULA of SP3 ) and install the Windows 2000 application compatiblity update. Then in the properties of the shortcuts to the programs, you can set the programs to run in Window 98 compatiblity mode.
I've used this several times to run older games ( Descent 2, GTA ) and have had great results thus far. Stability of XP, compatibility of 9x, and none of the fluff that XP installs by default.
I gets lots of service drop-offs in the Akron/Cleveland, OH, region, including one big one that's 2 miles away from the Cingular store ( Fairlawn, OH ) I bought the phone from.
When I was in school 2 years ago it was even better. You could buy Office, etc, for $10 a CD, OR you could rent it out of the school library for free. Which is how I have Windows 2000 now ( would have got Office et al, but (a) I already have Office copies available to me if needed and (b) OpenOffice fits the bill for Office, and I don't use Visual Studio for work at home ).
On my P2-366 laptop, Phoenix is much faster than Moz 1.1. The biggest website improvement has been Thinkgeek.com; before Mozilla would scroll the site *horribly* slow and choppy but now Phoenix has no problems at all. I also would see issues with Mozilla hanging when switching tabs; happens some on Phoenix but it's not nearly as bad.
Check out these guides for repackaging either a Beige G3 or Blue/White G3 in a standard ATX case. All that's needed that is "Apple offical" is the motherboard stuff; memory, video ( uses Mac PCI video cards ), HD, and CD-ROM are off the shelf PC items. They use ZIF CPUs which can be obtained from Apple, Sonnet, NewerTech, and many others.
In both places I've worked, a public school system and in a financial services company, we've had to wear ties. However, I was part time at the school system so all I've had to do was not wear something tasteful ( jeans/t-shirt OK ), unless I wanted to be jockeying for a full time post like some of the tools here were.
Honestly, unless you're in meetings or what not, I just can't see the purpose of ties. Most of the consultant types that pass thru here are in the polo shirt w/ kahkis or jeans routine, which I think should be a norm for IT people who (a) mainly program since you want to be comfortable yet presentable or (b) mainly service equipment or do field work since you are generally are on the floor or under a desk mucking with computers.
It seems that as technology gets better, more productive, and easier for Joe/Jane User to use, the entertainment industry's grip on content tightens. It's like they want it to be the next cable; full of content that may or may not appeal to the masses, but certain to be full of cruft with advertisements to support it. And with one of the biggest cable modem services ( Roadrunner ) ran buy one of the entertainment industry's big dogs ( Time Warner ), I see no hope in sight.
Personally, I've advised everyone I know to jump the cable modem ship. But the low competitive pricing ( It cost $55/month in my market, but my father-in-law can get it for $29.99/month which is much cheaper than DSL ), what can you say. But give DSL time and it will turn sour as well.
What's the best bet? Save up for a T-1.
... the only worms with EULA will be from Microsoft. See how things will be better.
Given a set of operations to carry out, someone using a GUI file manager and someone else using a command line, I bet more than 9 times out of 10 the command line is faster.
And nobody is doubting that. Command line is faster, but just isn't as practical nor as intuitive as a well designed File Manager. However, Joe/Jane Regular User doesn't want to learn cp, mv, rm and doesn't want to have to type that for each file he/she wants to copy, move, or delete.
For scripting, I'll take my command line. But for everyday work, give me a GUI.
My install went great as well. KDE 3 is much faster than in RH 7.3, mainly due to gcc 3.2, but still great to see. I have only three issues.
Other than that, everything has been great.
Both work great for me, and that's since the ~0.9.8 days. My issues is Ebay crashing Mozilla. I know there are Bugzilla reports out on it, and I have a feeling it's more of an Ebay issue than a Mozilla, but that's Ebay for you.