Denmark really is a very soft opponent. The viewpoint is: we have a parlimant election in 5 days so don't rock the boat, m-kay.
So the natural thing to do is stall and delay. Fortunately this help the good guys in this case but it's purely accidential. Poland deserves a hell of a lot more praise.
The only surefire way to end this crap once and for all is to go after the companies whose products are being hawked through spam. In 100% of the spam I get I can clearly figure out who wants to sell me something. Whack that guy and the spammer will crawl back under his rock.
The seller can always claim ignorance but would any semi-sane person send out 10^7 mails pointing to your web-shop if You didn't pay them to do it ?
In our outfit we got to departments using Linux. One with the clueless manager the other with a clued in manager.
In order to run Linux in clueless's department you have to deliver the warm and fuzzy. Novell is already big in the company so Novell/Suse is the way to go here. In clued in's department Debian rules.
And how am I supposed to write my own requirements when the customer has a very different view? Customer requirements are a result of back-and-forth discussions, they know the market and the process better than you do.
I have a very simple system for figuring out requirements.
First throw out the spec. it's either written by the users (and they don't know how to write it) or a manager (who don't have to write the code himself). Anyway the spec is wrong incomplete and misleading.
Go see the users themselves (great excuse: I need to clear out some details) and have them TEACH you how to do the relevant part of their job. Then you know the environment, the lingo and get into a ping-pong on requirements and possibilities. This part can easy turn into the most interesting part of your day to day work and you end up knowing your business top-to-bottom.
Second: The version 2 excuse. Promise two releases: rel 1 that only covers the bare essentials and rel 2 that covers the whole shebang including a gold-plated kitchen sink. The trick is to be agressive about moving features to rel 2 and focus on rel 1. When rel 1 is rolled out only the morons will complain about the missing sink or it's lack of gold. These morons are easily marginalised in a debate on return on investment on sinks wiht gold plating.
These methods only works on reasonable small projects for inhouse consumtion. YMMW etc.
The statement is absolutely correct when we talk about an 11 K change in temperature. The only difference between the Kelvin and Celcius scale is where the zero i put. When we talk about a temperature difference it's completely irrelevant where you stick the zero.
Anyway this is high school physics. I can't belive it's open for debate. If this is representive for the state of education in the US then we are so going to 0wn you;-).
In a scenario with two Skype(tm) clients behind NAT firewall/router/whatever that blocks UDP (ie. only allows TCP) I'd really like to hear how you set up a direct connection between the two clients.
At the very least; In the connection setup the third-party (ie supernode) has to open a server socket that both clients connect to using client sockets. The supernode then forwards information between the two.
Now what type of magic is used to hook up a direct connection between the two clients ? TCP connection hi-jacking ? This scores high on my bullshit-o-meter.
Use XML in places where it makes sense: Interfaces between different companies/business partners/departments etc, interfaces between mutually hostile vendors, really long time data storage.
Using xml as data format between two tightly coupled Java programs, standing next to each other and who's exchanging massive amounts of data is insane.
This is of course a simplified example BUT the point is ALWAYS beware of the trade-offs you do when you make a technology choice. Same things go for algorithms... think !!!
Iceland is not much better named. Last year I went there in January and had a bitch of a time to find a place to run a snow scooter... And it was also named by us vikings;-)
Fact of life: On the average consumer PC is a shitload of pirated software, mp3, divX and so forth. We want it all and we dont want to pay if we can avoid it.
When the NC was first announced around 95 this was also the case. So the choice at the time was: a. Tight central control and no piracy or b. Free-wheeling piracy as usual. Absolutely no contest.
Piracy is the cornerstone of the pc business. You pay a "large" upfront cost for a computer, admin it yourself and in return you can do whatever you want including pirating to your hearts content.
Now if we throw Longhorn and tight DRM into the mix then things looks quite a bit different: All of a sudden piracy becomes a lot harder (and therefore for a lot of consumers it will be considered to hard to bother). Then the tradeof gain in buying the pc disapears and you end up with a rotten deal: Pay for (and regulary upgrade) a full pc, pay for all your software and content plus you have to admin the stupid thing yourself.
With DRM on the PC the NC looks mighty attractive. Of course there is F/OSS but that is an entirely different story...
One of the really fun parts of this whole cirkus is that a lot of the big shareholders are our own pension fonds. They sell out your job in order to give you more money when you retire. Feel free to roll your own conclusions... and actions
Personaly I prefer Java. BUT you need to be aware of a couple of dangers.
First of all don't use EJB's unless you have to. If you don't need distributed transactions then stay away. You don't want heavy weight frameworks to drag you down. Read: Better, Faster, Lighter Java.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bfljava/ For a free introduction read: http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/4744
For the record: I'm not afraid of databases. I spend 75% of my time working on databases.
I'm just sick of dancing to the db vendors tune. It's off key and has been for a while now...
The overlooked fact of this whole discussion is the fact that databases are becomming a commodity. Using object-relationa mapping tools like Hipernate you can completely hide the details of the underlying database from your code. This enables you to use whatever database is on sale this week and even change your mind mid-stream.
This makes it really easy for open-source databases to step-in since there is no lock-in. Later on if you figure out you need a big honking Oracle/DB2/whatever you can easily change your mind.
Like Java makes the OS and HW a commodity these tools makes the database a commodity and by definition commodities ends up being really cheap. And it's kind of hard to find cheaper than free;-)
My favorite play is to develop on Hypersonic/McKoi and deploy on PostgreSQL. No sweat.
This is so typical. Due to the same media circus Armstrong & Co had to sit in qurantine when they returned from the moon. No politicians or administrators had the balls to tell the media to go piss up a rope. So they went along with the farce.
Until we actually find a single trace of life there this is all due to an overintake of Hollywood crap.
The problem is, that's at odds with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" wisdom.
That guy is my boss: We don't do patches, they only break stuff. Build a stable system and never touch it again until we throw it out (years later).
Just today we had a box owned: Red Hat 7.3 (unpatched) and Tomcat 3.3. It took two years of neglegence with that box. We have other box'es that's older than that..
Right now we are (i shit you not) migrating our self-service system to.not, including access to all your phone records. Combine loads of personal sensitive material (who calls who) with MS servers and anti-patching strategy. Of course the ISP section of the company is moving in exactly the opposite direction MS to Linux.
I think we are missing an important part of the puzzle.
The gameplan is: Lump some eight laws together in a package. Make one of them outrageous stupid. The stupid one gets all the flak, is pulled from the package and the rest sails straight trough congres.
Don't worry to much about Danish wind power. We'll fuck that up shortly. My brother is a structural engineer at Vestas (worlds larges producer of wind turbines) and after their latest merger they are runing around like headless chickens. When people say merger think: mine won't float much long, yours are sinking too, lets strap them together...
Mentioning AutoCAD proves nothing. It's a cad-wannabe program. Pro-Engineer beats it hands-down. And yes Pro-E come in a Linux version plus a Linux cluster version for element-model number crunching.
The rest of the world is not to impressed by Diebold either. A couple of Dutch jokers have put together this little thing on Diebold and voting (in Florida):
Slashdot Mirror
So the natural thing to do is stall and delay. Fortunately this help the good guys in this case but it's purely accidential. Poland deserves a hell of a lot more praise.
The seller can always claim ignorance but would any semi-sane person send out 10^7 mails pointing to your web-shop if You didn't pay them to do it ?
In order to run Linux in clueless's department you have to deliver the warm and fuzzy. Novell is already big in the company so Novell/Suse is the way to go here. In clued in's department Debian rules.
Roll your own conclusions from there on ...
I have a very simple system for figuring out requirements.
First throw out the spec. it's either written by the users (and they don't know how to write it) or a manager (who don't have to write the code himself). Anyway the spec is wrong incomplete and misleading.
Go see the users themselves (great excuse: I need to clear out some details) and have them TEACH you how to do the relevant part of their job. Then you know the environment, the lingo and get into a ping-pong on requirements and possibilities. This part can easy turn into the most interesting part of your day to day work and you end up knowing your business top-to-bottom.
Second: The version 2 excuse. Promise two releases: rel 1 that only covers the bare essentials and rel 2 that covers the whole shebang including a gold-plated kitchen sink. The trick is to be agressive about moving features to rel 2 and focus on rel 1. When rel 1 is rolled out only the morons will complain about the missing sink or it's lack of gold. These morons are easily marginalised in a debate on return on investment on sinks wiht gold plating.
These methods only works on reasonable small projects for inhouse consumtion. YMMW etc.
Well Norway's economy is pretty much fuel'ed by oil. Now what kind of people does that remind me of ;-)
The statement is absolutely correct when we talk about an 11 K change in temperature. The only difference between the Kelvin and Celcius scale is where the zero i put. When we talk about a temperature difference it's completely irrelevant where you stick the zero.
Anyway this is high school physics. I can't belive it's open for debate. If this is representive for the state of education in the US then we are so going to 0wn you ;-).
At the very least; In the connection setup the third-party (ie supernode) has to open a server socket that both clients connect to using client sockets. The supernode then forwards information between the two.
Now what type of magic is used to hook up a direct connection between the two clients ? TCP connection hi-jacking ? This scores high on my bullshit-o-meter.
Use XML in places where it makes sense: Interfaces between different companies/business partners/departments etc, interfaces between mutually hostile vendors, really long time data storage.
Using xml as data format between two tightly coupled Java programs, standing next to each other and who's exchanging massive amounts of data is insane.
This is of course a simplified example BUT the point is ALWAYS beware of the trade-offs you do when you make a technology choice. Same things go for algorithms ... think !!!
Iceland is not much better named. Last year I went there in January and had a bitch of a time to find a place to run a snow scooter... And it was also named by us vikings ;-)
When the NC was first announced around 95 this was also the case. So the choice at the time was: a. Tight central control and no piracy or b. Free-wheeling piracy as usual. Absolutely no contest.
Piracy is the cornerstone of the pc business. You pay a "large" upfront cost for a computer, admin it yourself and in return you can do whatever you want including pirating to your hearts content.
Now if we throw Longhorn and tight DRM into the mix then things looks quite a bit different: All of a sudden piracy becomes a lot harder (and therefore for a lot of consumers it will be considered to hard to bother). Then the tradeof gain in buying the pc disapears and you end up with a rotten deal: Pay for (and regulary upgrade) a full pc, pay for all your software and content plus you have to admin the stupid thing yourself.
With DRM on the PC the NC looks mighty attractive. Of course there is F/OSS but that is an entirely different story ...
One of the really fun parts of this whole cirkus is that a lot of the big shareholders are our own pension fonds. They sell out your job in order to give you more money when you retire. Feel free to roll your own conclusions ... and actions
First of all don't use EJB's unless you have to. If you don't need distributed transactions then stay away. You don't want heavy weight frameworks to drag you down. Read: Better, Faster, Lighter Java. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bfljava/ For a free introduction read: http://www.onjava.com/lpt/a/4744
My personal advice is a stack made of:
- JSF for the webfront. Struts if you are a bit more conservative. http://struts.apache.org/
- Spring for the business logic. http://www.springframework.org/
- Hibernate for persistence. http://www.hibernate.org/
If your need a thick client then use Swing instead of JSF. Then you can stick RMI in between two of the layers.Don't forget to have fun.
For the record: I'm not afraid of databases. I spend 75% of my time working on databases. I'm just sick of dancing to the db vendors tune. It's off key and has been for a while now ...
Sounds very much like prevayler. http://www.prevayler.org/ DISCLAIMER: I haven't tried it but in some former /. one guy raved about it.
This makes it really easy for open-source databases to step-in since there is no lock-in. Later on if you figure out you need a big honking Oracle/DB2/whatever you can easily change your mind.
Like Java makes the OS and HW a commodity these tools makes the database a commodity and by definition commodities ends up being really cheap. And it's kind of hard to find cheaper than free ;-)
My favorite play is to develop on Hypersonic/McKoi and deploy on PostgreSQL. No sweat.
Until we actually find a single trace of life there this is all due to an overintake of Hollywood crap.
That guy is my boss: We don't do patches, they only break stuff. Build a stable system and never touch it again until we throw it out (years later).
Just today we had a box owned: Red Hat 7.3 (unpatched) and Tomcat 3.3. It took two years of neglegence with that box. We have other box'es that's older than that ..
Right now we are (i shit you not) migrating our self-service system to .not, including access to all your phone records. Combine loads of personal sensitive material (who calls who) with MS servers and anti-patching strategy. Of course the ISP section of the company is moving in exactly the opposite direction MS to Linux.
The gameplan is: Lump some eight laws together in a package. Make one of them outrageous stupid. The stupid one gets all the flak, is pulled from the package and the rest sails straight trough congres.
My money is on GE wind in the long run.
Mentioning AutoCAD proves nothing. It's a cad-wannabe program. Pro-Engineer beats it hands-down. And yes Pro-E come in a Linux version plus a Linux cluster version for element-model number crunching.
Imagine my culture shock coming straight from a place where you had to buy the stuff in bottles...
And by the way that's the Faroe Islands. Somewhere between Iceland and the UK. Total population roughly equal to the number of slashdotters.
http://www.boomchicago.nl/Section/Latest-News/Boom ChicagoVotingMachine
Mirror: http://politiken.dk/media/wvx/3223.WVX
Let the Slashdot'ing begin ;-)
Goodbye to backwards compactability. Cracked equals forward compatible. Future proof no-matter which standard wins ... Sweet
The radioactivity is not the point. Plutonium is exeptional toxic (ie. poison).