I tried to get the Games Industry software developers to even discuss forming a union for 15 years while being a senior developer for EA, Sony and several smaller houses... I finally gave up. Developers are dumb asses, is my only conclusion.
Actually, there is a comprehensive networking and collaborative side to this WebApp, and those clients selecting to use the app with no network simply loose out on that feature. However, it's fully available within Intranets. Plus, mobile workstations can operate without any connection and then collaborate filly and securely when a connection is established.
I'm somewhat amused by how much people have read into my situation from the scant info I've offered. Simple story: limited resources, and a client that wants it everywhere, with it scaling to consume available resources if present.
Perhaps it was the lack of documentation or bread crumbs to follow that led me to think it was dead. (It's somewhat of a pain that searches reveal very old documents that ought to simply be removed.)
Actually, technically, Drupal IS a framework that happens to come with a CMS built in that framework. The Drupal API is huge, fairly well organized, modular and capable of creating practically anything. Comparisons with Drupal are difficult because it is not JUST a framework but is ALSO a content management system. I've heard the term content management framework used in an effort for clarity.
A major goal of yours should be sparking interest and a desire to learn more from each class the students attend. A good way to do this is to have each class give the students something they can walk away with and use immediately in a manner they appreciate.
For example: class one could cover the basis of what a web page is, and how the html, css and so on make the page. Don't go into detail, just hit the high lights of each, compartmentalizing the web page elements and their respective purpose. Don't say how they are constructed, only describe what they are used for - html=content, css=layout, php=logic and so on. Then give them one example of editing a MySpace page, showing something simple for students seeing this for the first time, and something advanced for the students that already use MySpace Editors for their own pages.
Class one, you give them a mental picture of a web page and then show them how to modify a MySpace page. That should get many students' attention. In the following classes, touch upon each area a bit, exploring your student's interest and letting the class explore. They may go into Flash games or widget development, it's hard to say. But in each case, it's not to hard to take baby steps into a complex area. Remember, you're not making CS graduates here, you're giving a class of students a "guided interactive tour" with the goal of sparking their interest and creativity to learn more.
I suggest you turn him on to the NeHe OpenGL tutorials. He'll get a series of tutorials on how to create basic opengl graphics, animation and the supporting infrastructure logic for making games. That is a great doorway to everything computer science and an endless ladder of geekdom. (Worked for me... [game making that is, I started long before NeHe was around.])
Owning a song provides one with "fair use", and within that fair use you can place your songs on various devices, such as a phone.
www.phonezoo.com enables you to convert any song you own into a ring tone, for free. It's an ad supported service.
Real reform would to to return to the requirement for a working version of the patent to be submitted with one's patent application. Currently, one can patent an intended innovation before it has been implemented. Researching through awarded patents yields many things that are not yet possible - like Sony's patent for controlling a video game with your thoughts. Now, because of that patent and Sony owning the IP space, any would be innovators in that field are discouraged from seeking a solution in that area.
Reading through this thread reminds me of the typical conflict points between engineers and non-engineers. The engineers are all fact, completely missing the human element in (every?) situation. The distinction between "available information" and "announced information" is a very real and important distinction. The changes to Facebook also create new in-context information that did not exist previously. For example, the new system includes declining invitations to events; this transfers the previous situation of an individual receiving an invite and selecting to attend from a completely private situation to a public event; likewise, the newsfeed containing a relationship change creates a "transition event" piece of information that previously did not exist.
Some of this information was available previously, such that the relationship status, but the "transition event" was not. Likewise with declining an invite to an event, that what a completely private situation previously.
The human element is the fact that no one, outside of a stalker, has the time or energy to keep this much context information about their friends. Even for best friends, the Newsfeeds feature is way too much information.
I suggest they simply add more privacy options. Something as simple as an option to include activities in the Newsfeed or keep them private would be enough. Sometimes, a change of address or cellphone number should be broadcast... but individuals should be able to make that selection.
More and more, as our world becomes a society of instant information, I rely upon a passage I read from a Hesse novel years ago. The gist was: the vast majority of people are children, and children like to exaggerate and tell lies. The only information you can trust is that information you can verify yourself. And then you must guard against self deception, because lying to yourself is very common too. This is true for all aspects of life. Religion? Politics? Levels of crime? The love of your spouse? There is no way of knowing the truth. The mature individual realizes this and guards their beliefs and actions appropriately.
I remember having an extensive conversation with the Burst folks at Comdex back in 1991. At the time, I was working at Philips, in the CDI development group, working on streaming video off CD's. During this conversation, I could tell that what they were doing was fundimentally different from what everyone else thought was the correct way to stream data. Reading about the case lately, I think they have a valid claim...
Re:This is arguably *the* most critical problem
on
Version Fatigue
·
· Score: 1
I feel the same way, but from a game developer's perspective. I learned 3D from a software rendering perspective back in the mid 80's. When OpenGL came out it was an easy transfer. Then the numerious versions of DirectX started rolling out, each one requiring a completely different mental approach to address the latest (necessary) features, plus having to code 3DO, PSX, DC and then PS2 consoles- each with their own unique mental approach to achieve essentially the same thing. It is insane and I'm looking to figure out how to stop writing code. My head is filled with too many contexts! Throw in all the flavors of COM (including the non-M$ flavors) and STL and you're still doing the same stuff, just different enough that you can't rely on past progress to guage how long a task will take or how it will eventually end up. This is where "engineer burnout" comes from...
Asside from the code bloat and lack of control over memory allocations, a big problem I've had is working with programmers (usually fairly fresh out of college) who were taught how to program with STL and we find that they can't program without it! They are too used to the hand holding and don't know the algorithms they are using to begin with. I also grit my teeth every time I hear the "never write a linked list again!" quote... that dismays me every time! I wrote my last linked list (in C) back in 1985- and I've been using that "linked list management" code ever since. It strikes me that when people learn something like STL, they shut down their brain from ever thinking about the problem that STL was created for in the first place. A long time ago I built a set of "personal programming" routines that handles everything that I encounter during my programming. I understand this logic and I can fix and extend it as needed. People that start with STL never get to develop such expertise over their "bag of STL tricks" since they did not write it to begin with, can't debug it even of they had to and find themselves shit out of luck should they find themselves in an environment that does not have "their" STL implementation.
Check out the book "Peopleware". If I remember correctly there's a whole chapter on how people get into their "zone", they call it "flow". It discusses how long it takes to attain "flow", what type of environments are best for attaining and maintaining "flow" and other related issues. It's a very good read.
Slashdot Mirror
I tried to get the Games Industry software developers to even discuss forming a union for 15 years while being a senior developer for EA, Sony and several smaller houses... I finally gave up. Developers are dumb asses, is my only conclusion.
Actually, there is a comprehensive networking and collaborative side to this WebApp, and those clients selecting to use the app with no network simply loose out on that feature. However, it's fully available within Intranets. Plus, mobile workstations can operate without any connection and then collaborate filly and securely when a connection is established. I'm somewhat amused by how much people have read into my situation from the scant info I've offered. Simple story: limited resources, and a client that wants it everywhere, with it scaling to consume available resources if present.
Limited resources all around: not enough time, not enough engineers, and not enough money.
Perhaps it was the lack of documentation or bread crumbs to follow that led me to think it was dead. (It's somewhat of a pain that searches reveal very old documents that ought to simply be removed.)
After searching around for two days, it did not look like the project was active any longer. Simple as that.
Actually, technically, Drupal IS a framework that happens to come with a CMS built in that framework. The Drupal API is huge, fairly well organized, modular and capable of creating practically anything. Comparisons with Drupal are difficult because it is not JUST a framework but is ALSO a content management system. I've heard the term content management framework used in an effort for clarity.
A major goal of yours should be sparking interest and a desire to learn more from each class the students attend. A good way to do this is to have each class give the students something they can walk away with and use immediately in a manner they appreciate.
For example: class one could cover the basis of what a web page is, and how the html, css and so on make the page. Don't go into detail, just hit the high lights of each, compartmentalizing the web page elements and their respective purpose. Don't say how they are constructed, only describe what they are used for - html=content, css=layout, php=logic and so on. Then give them one example of editing a MySpace page, showing something simple for students seeing this for the first time, and something advanced for the students that already use MySpace Editors for their own pages.
Class one, you give them a mental picture of a web page and then show them how to modify a MySpace page. That should get many students' attention. In the following classes, touch upon each area a bit, exploring your student's interest and letting the class explore. They may go into Flash games or widget development, it's hard to say. But in each case, it's not to hard to take baby steps into a complex area. Remember, you're not making CS graduates here, you're giving a class of students a "guided interactive tour" with the goal of sparking their interest and creativity to learn more.
I suggest you turn him on to the NeHe OpenGL tutorials. He'll get a series of tutorials on how to create basic opengl graphics, animation and the supporting infrastructure logic for making games. That is a great doorway to everything computer science and an endless ladder of geekdom. (Worked for me... [game making that is, I started long before NeHe was around.])
Owning a song provides one with "fair use", and within that fair use you can place your songs on various devices, such as a phone. www.phonezoo.com enables you to convert any song you own into a ring tone, for free. It's an ad supported service.
Real reform would to to return to the requirement for a working version of the patent to be submitted with one's patent application. Currently, one can patent an intended innovation before it has been implemented. Researching through awarded patents yields many things that are not yet possible - like Sony's patent for controlling a video game with your thoughts. Now, because of that patent and Sony owning the IP space, any would be innovators in that field are discouraged from seeking a solution in that area.
I'm interested in hearing if ZFS would effectively replace Xsan. Anyone know?
Jellomizer: you have wisdom. Too bad so few do too...
Reading through this thread reminds me of the typical conflict points between engineers and non-engineers. The engineers are all fact, completely missing the human element in (every?) situation. The distinction between "available information" and "announced information" is a very real and important distinction. The changes to Facebook also create new in-context information that did not exist previously. For example, the new system includes declining invitations to events; this transfers the previous situation of an individual receiving an invite and selecting to attend from a completely private situation to a public event; likewise, the newsfeed containing a relationship change creates a "transition event" piece of information that previously did not exist.
Some of this information was available previously, such that the relationship status, but the "transition event" was not. Likewise with declining an invite to an event, that what a completely private situation previously.
The human element is the fact that no one, outside of a stalker, has the time or energy to keep this much context information about their friends. Even for best friends, the Newsfeeds feature is way too much information.
I suggest they simply add more privacy options. Something as simple as an option to include activities in the Newsfeed or keep them private would be enough. Sometimes, a change of address or cellphone number should be broadcast... but individuals should be able to make that selection.
More and more, as our world becomes a society of instant information, I rely upon a passage I read from a Hesse novel years ago. The gist was: the vast majority of people are children, and children like to exaggerate and tell lies. The only information you can trust is that information you can verify yourself. And then you must guard against self deception, because lying to yourself is very common too. This is true for all aspects of life. Religion? Politics? Levels of crime? The love of your spouse? There is no way of knowing the truth. The mature individual realizes this and guards their beliefs and actions appropriately.
I remember having an extensive conversation with the Burst folks at Comdex back in 1991. At the time, I was working at Philips, in the CDI development group, working on streaming video off CD's. During this conversation, I could tell that what they were doing was fundimentally different from what everyone else thought was the correct way to stream data. Reading about the case lately, I think they have a valid claim...
Yes! Great film.
I feel the same way, but from a game developer's perspective. I learned 3D from a software rendering perspective back in the mid 80's. When OpenGL came out it was an easy transfer. Then the numerious versions of DirectX started rolling out, each one requiring a completely different mental approach to address the latest (necessary) features, plus having to code 3DO, PSX, DC and then PS2 consoles- each with their own unique mental approach to achieve essentially the same thing. It is insane and I'm looking to figure out how to stop writing code. My head is filled with too many contexts! Throw in all the flavors of COM (including the non-M$ flavors) and STL and you're still doing the same stuff, just different enough that you can't rely on past progress to guage how long a task will take or how it will eventually end up. This is where "engineer burnout" comes from...
Asside from the code bloat and lack of control over memory allocations, a big problem I've had is working with programmers (usually fairly fresh out of college) who were taught how to program with STL and we find that they can't program without it! They are too used to the hand holding and don't know the algorithms they are using to begin with. I also grit my teeth every time I hear the "never write a linked list again!" quote... that dismays me every time! I wrote my last linked list (in C) back in 1985- and I've been using that "linked list management" code ever since. It strikes me that when people learn something like STL, they shut down their brain from ever thinking about the problem that STL was created for in the first place. A long time ago I built a set of "personal programming" routines that handles everything that I encounter during my programming. I understand this logic and I can fix and extend it as needed. People that start with STL never get to develop such expertise over their "bag of STL tricks" since they did not write it to begin with, can't debug it even of they had to and find themselves shit out of luck should they find themselves in an environment that does not have "their" STL implementation.
Check out the book "Peopleware". If I remember correctly there's a whole chapter on how people get into their "zone", they call it "flow". It discusses how long it takes to attain "flow", what type of environments are best for attaining and maintaining "flow" and other related issues. It's a very good read.