"While the present invention has been described in connection with specific embodiments, variations of these embodiments will be apparent. [...] Therefore, the spirit and scope of the appended claims should not be limited to the foregoing description."
Frankly, claim 1 doesn't seem particularly specific or limited to me.
A very nice chart.
In many ways, Algol 60 is the Latin of programming languages. It's effectively a dead language (how much new programming is done in Algol 60?), and but it's concepts, structures and syntax are the underpinnings of many of the major modern languages.
I live and vote in San Diego. I used the touchscreen devices; my wife used an absentee ballot. After using the Diebold boxes, I thought my wife had found a way to evade their problems. From today's article, it looks like I was wrong.
When I went to vote in the morning, at about 8:30 AM (well after the polls were scheduled to open), the machines were still non-functional (you've no doubt already heard the details) and the polling workers couldn't say when the help they requested would arrive. They suggested waiting or going to another polling location to submit a provisional ballot. (At this point, feel free to ponder why these were not tested by the vendor beforehand. Isn't that what YOU would have done?)
Nothing makes democracy feel real to you like being turned away from a voting booth.
When I returned in the evening, the missing cables were provided, instructions corrected and the devices functional. But not well.
In California, each voter receives a balllot information booklet before the election. With the old punch-card paper ballots, the booklet and the ballot were laid out in exactly the same way. You could transfer your decisions from booklet to ballot trivially. The touchscreen display, on the other hand, had the same visual look as the booklet, and the screen was laid out in pages, but page layouts did not correspond to the booklet. Candidates were in different locations on the touchscreen and the booklet. Matching up the two were a pain, and it took a very careful attention to detail to avoid error! Considering that the visual cues implied that that they should correspond, and that they did correspond in the old punchcard system, and I'd be very surprised if it didn't contribute to incorrect selections. (It was at least as bad, probably much worse, than the Florida butterfly ballots.)
Now, if you are replacing an existing system, isn't Rule #1 finding out how the existing system works, so that you know which functionality needs to be replicated?
The last page of the ballot is a vote summary. (Good idea.) It was multi-column on a virtual page that was one screen wide but much, much longer vertically than the physical screen. This is an atrocious user interface. (Imaging reading a PDF of a three-column, 8-1/2" x 11" page on a normal portrait monitor.) Prior to this summary page, the entire previous program was logical page = physical screen, with a horizontal prev page/next page paradigm. So, a bad user interface that's inconsistent with the rest of the application's UI.
Is that how you like to design YOUR software?
Finally, there's the fact that there's no paper record or physical trail of the votes. I can't begin to imagine how this passed Day One of requirements review!
All in all, it did not feel like the polished, professional effort that I want democracy and the control of our nation to depend on.
Once, when I was looking, a friend told me about a job opening. Since, I'd already been working with a head hunter, I called and told her about the direct contact (to avoid any possible misunderstandings or hurt feelings if she had also gotten that lead.)
We discussed the position. When she found out who I would be working for, she immediately said that he is fantastic, and that if I had the opportunity to work for him, I absolutely should take the job. She had already done a fair amount of work for me, but if I took her advice, she'd get nothing. Zip! Nada! She was really, really looking out for my benefit.
Well, I did take that job, and she was absolutely right. He's great, the company is wonderful, and I've been with them for 7 1/2 happy years, the longest I've ever stayed with one company.
I've become so addicted to mouse gestures that I feel hampered when I need to use IE. (Yes, there are other great Mozilla featuers, too.)
Can anyone offer advice on the which is the better upgrade: Mozilla 1.4 or Netscape 7.1?
- Are they basically the same under the skin? Is one a superset of the other? - Can either be configured to have all the useful features of both? Does either have any non-removable "you really don't want that" features? (AOL Instant Messenger? Instantly removed!)
Back in the 1980's, I wrote a few programs that performed back-office calculations for a major Wall Street brokerage firm. The earliest of those ran in (??? ZDS ???) Basic under CP/M on Northstar Horizons. Those programs were used daily for many years, possibly into the 1990's. If they had held on a bit longer (and thank goodness they were retired and replaced by modern tools), but if they had, they might have been in the running.
Interesting days, back then.
I was interested, a frankly a bit bothered, by this:
"The source code control system we use now is new, because we really pushed the scale of the previous version with Windows 2000. Mark [Lucovsky] personally lead the development of the new system and introduced it post-2000."
The process described in the article depends heavily on branching and migrating changes between branches. Microsoft's version control product, Visual SourceSafe (VSS), has some serious and well known weaknesses in precisely those areas, which is why we are looking at a replacement.
VSS development has been minimal for years. Since Microsoft advertises that use the same development tools (Visual Studio, Visual C++, etc.) that they sell, I find it frustrating that for version control they've gone forward internally but left us VSS customers behind.
Slashdot Mirror
Very specific? Here's the end of the patent:
"While the present invention has been described in connection with specific embodiments, variations of these embodiments will be apparent. [...] Therefore, the spirit and scope of the appended claims should not be limited to the foregoing description."
Frankly, claim 1 doesn't seem particularly specific or limited to me.
A very nice chart. In many ways, Algol 60 is the Latin of programming languages. It's effectively a dead language (how much new programming is done in Algol 60?), and but it's concepts, structures and syntax are the underpinnings of many of the major modern languages.
I live and vote in San Diego. I used the touchscreen devices; my wife used an absentee ballot. After using the Diebold boxes, I thought my wife had found a way to evade their problems. From today's article, it looks like I was wrong.
When I went to vote in the morning, at about 8:30 AM (well after the polls were scheduled to open), the machines were still non-functional (you've no doubt already heard the details) and the polling workers couldn't say when the help they requested would arrive. They suggested waiting or going to another polling location to submit a provisional ballot. (At this point, feel free to ponder why these were not tested by the vendor beforehand. Isn't that what YOU would have done?)
Nothing makes democracy feel real to you like being turned away from a voting booth.
When I returned in the evening, the missing cables were provided, instructions corrected and the devices functional. But not well.
In California, each voter receives a balllot information booklet before the election. With the old punch-card paper ballots, the booklet and the ballot were laid out in exactly the same way. You could transfer your decisions from booklet to ballot trivially. The touchscreen display, on the other hand, had the same visual look as the booklet, and the screen was laid out in pages, but page layouts did not correspond to the booklet. Candidates were in different locations on the touchscreen and the booklet. Matching up the two were a pain, and it took a very careful attention to detail to avoid error! Considering that the visual cues implied that that they should correspond, and that they did correspond in the old punchcard system, and I'd be very surprised if it didn't contribute to incorrect selections. (It was at least as bad, probably much worse, than the Florida butterfly ballots.)
Now, if you are replacing an existing system, isn't Rule #1 finding out how the existing system works, so that you know which functionality needs to be replicated?
The last page of the ballot is a vote summary. (Good idea.) It was multi-column on a virtual page that was one screen wide but much, much longer vertically than the physical screen. This is an atrocious user interface. (Imaging reading a PDF of a three-column, 8-1/2" x 11" page on a normal portrait monitor.) Prior to this summary page, the entire previous program was logical page = physical screen, with a horizontal prev page/next page paradigm. So, a bad user interface that's inconsistent with the rest of the application's UI.
Is that how you like to design YOUR software?
Finally, there's the fact that there's no paper record or physical trail of the votes. I can't begin to imagine how this passed Day One of requirements review!
All in all, it did not feel like the polished, professional effort that I want democracy and the control of our nation to depend on.
Pleased to meet you
Hope you caught my return address...
Windows NT will be "a better Unix than Unix"
- Bill Gates
Did anyone ever actually use the POSIX API under Windows NT?
Once, when I was looking, a friend told me about a job opening. Since, I'd already been working with a head hunter, I called and told her about the direct contact (to avoid any possible misunderstandings or hurt feelings if she had also gotten that lead.)
We discussed the position. When she found out who I would be working for, she immediately said that he is fantastic, and that if I had the opportunity to work for him, I absolutely should take the job. She had already done a fair amount of work for me, but if I took her advice, she'd get nothing. Zip! Nada! She was really, really looking out for my benefit.
Well, I did take that job, and she was absolutely right. He's great, the company is wonderful, and I've been with them for 7 1/2 happy years, the longest I've ever stayed with one company.
So, thank you, Amy Moser!
Can anyone offer advice on the which is the better upgrade: Mozilla 1.4 or Netscape 7.1?
- Are they basically the same under the skin? Is one a superset of the other?
- Can either be configured to have all the useful features of both? Does either have any non-removable "you really don't want that" features? (AOL Instant Messenger? Instantly removed!)
Thanks!
Back in the 1980's, I wrote a few programs that performed back-office calculations for a major Wall Street brokerage firm. The earliest of those ran in (??? ZDS ???) Basic under CP/M on Northstar Horizons. Those programs were used daily for many years, possibly into the 1990's. If they had held on a bit longer (and thank goodness they were retired and replaced by modern tools), but if they had, they might have been in the running. Interesting days, back then.
Ha!! You had electricity? Our CPU clock speed nose dived when your arm got tired turning the crank.
I was interested, a frankly a bit bothered, by this:
"The source code control system we use now is new, because we really pushed the scale of the previous version with Windows 2000. Mark [Lucovsky] personally lead the development of the new system and introduced it post-2000."
The process described in the article depends heavily on branching and migrating changes between branches. Microsoft's version control product, Visual SourceSafe (VSS), has some serious and well known weaknesses in precisely those areas, which is why we are looking at a replacement.
VSS development has been minimal for years. Since Microsoft advertises that use the same development tools (Visual Studio, Visual C++, etc.) that they sell, I find it frustrating that for version control they've gone forward internally but left us VSS customers behind.