I subscribe to some RSS feeds from CM Crossroads. The list of articles gets so long that it extends "above" and "below" the screen, especially on my laptop. I get these tiny up and down arrows at the top & bottom to scroll the list. There are several problems with this:
The arrows that allow me to scroll the list up/down are not very big. This makes them harder to "hit" when using a laptop touchpad.
The "scrolling via hovering over arrow" paradigm feels dated. IMHO. No, I don't have an alternative.
Granted, CM Crossroads should be actively trimming this list so that only the most recent articles appear. Why can't I explicitly specify "only show me the most recent X (say, 20) entries"?
Yes, these complaints may be Firefox-specific. I haven't gone to the trouble of finding, installing, and configuring a dedicated RSS reader.
Shipping with Microsoft Windows XP Home as standard, Rockdirect adds in Microsoft Works 8, Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7, Bullguard Anti-Virus
I would have thought Pro edition, or maybe this "Linux" thing I've heard about. Obviously this is aimed at the PC gamers, but why use XP Home? Also, I'm not familiar with the Bullguard product. Anyone have any experience with it?
Microsoft has announced a competitive service : X-Claus.net. This service will be integrated into "Vista", the next generation Windows operating system, which is due for release "real soon now" according to a representative for the Redmond company. There are no plans to release an XP version of the X-Claus.net service. MS also plans an online, multiplayer game "Naughty/Nice Xtreme" for the XBox-360. This game will allow the combatant to play as Santa, one of his elves, or the evil Dr. Evil, intent on kidnapping Santa and turning Christmas into a mostly commercial occasion. Playing as Santa, you will have your choice of weapons, including gingerbread particle weapons, fruitcake bazooka, raindeer dropping carpet bombing, and hyper-velocity elf snot.
Some replys suggest xcopy32 or Norton Ghost to make mirror backups. I suggest Robocopy ("robust copy") from (yea, I know I know) Microsoft. It comes in the Win 2003 Server RK, or Google it. It includes a lot of options more suited to performing mirror operations, especially when copying over a network.
90% of Windows problems can be solved with a different OS, oops, I mean a reboot.
5% of the users really know their stuff, and could do your job better than you, but choose not to, because the pay sucks.
Most users, including engineering types who are very intelligent in their own field, know a specific sequence to run the program or programs they normally use. They don't know how to set environment variables, fire up (much less use) a DOS command line, or organize their data in a hierarchical fashion. And, they sure has h*ll don't know how to edit the registry. Don't expect 'em to.
If you don't provide and enforce a directory structure and naming convention on shared/networked drives, users will place every single file and directory at the root.
"MSTSC/console". Don't leave home without it. 50% of the time you can stay home & work in your undies because of it.
Backup servers every night. This'll save your *ss more than once.
When someone is requesting new services or features, learn to ask "What do you really want?". Ask this question a lot. Keep repeating until the requestor finally discovers what he or she reallywants. It won't be obvious to them.
WiFi in the local coffee shop is kewl. That plus VPN is even kewler. But WiFi in the office makes be very nervous.
You never have time to read the magazines you've subscribed to.
The office coffee sucks. Buy a french press & your own coffee. I recommend Ethiopean Yirga Cheff.
You can never have too many bookshelves.
Users will end up going to p0rn web sites. 95% of this is unintentional. The rest you ignore until the user starts whacking off in the office, then you threaten to report them to "human resources" (i.e. the Dept of Political Correctness).
Frequence of Google usage = Fg Average wealth of user = Wu
Which is the independent variable and which is the independent variable? In this case, does use of Google cause wealth for the user? Does my use of Google make me more "internet savvy" and richer (bring it on!), or do I use Google because I'm smart and socially secure.... no, wait. That can't be the case. Well, anyway, we already know Google usage creates wealth for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. Even after sales of 5.3 million shares of Google stock, they retain 33 million more, currently worth over $13 billion (story). Which begs the question: are these two fish (and the other Google execs) big enough to overwhelm the "average wealth" pool of all internet users? If Bill Gates uses Google (and I'll bet he does), does that leave no room in the aquarium for the rest of us? Do we become noise in the equation?
P.S. Of course I used Google to research this post...
History file "history.dat" (for Windows users), is under
C:\Documents and Settings\your_login_id\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
. If you've created a profile, "history.dat" will be in the directory bearing the same name. If you're using the default profile, it will be in the "default.XXX" directory, where "XXX" is some random set of characters.
All entrances to work have a sign that says, basically, "No recording devices such as cameras, voice, video recorders, etc...". Very strange because it is a disk drive company.
There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2", or a pair of 'em (or here), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.
PECL for 5.1.0 is non-existant at this time...
on
PHP 5.1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
The Releases page doesn't show the PECL download. Nor does the downloads page. I hope this is just an oversight and will eventually be corrected.
Ah yes, the infamous Asynchronous Visual Basic Script and XML. Makes my heart go all a-pitter-patter, then say something useful like : "Firefox has caused a fault in vbscript.dll".
Actually, my biggest problem with Javascript was (is?) trying to understand all the little (or sometimes not-so-little) implementation differences, and write cross-browser script that didn't turn into zillions of checks:
if browser == msie 3.x then do this else if browser == msie 4.x do this else if browser == msie 5.x do this else if browser == msie 6.x
...etc...
That becomes a maintenance nightmare. Every few months a new browser version becomes available and must be tested and it's niggling quirks discovered and handled. This is not an insignificant task. Personally, I would rather be a content creator, not a browser beta tester for MS and Mozilla.
WHAT IS COPYRIGHT? Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works....
Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.
In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration.
A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
A key enabler of AJAX is XMLHttpRequest (Apple Dev Connection , JJ Garrett's previously mentioned article). MS was an early implementor of this feature, in MSIE 5.0 back in 2000 (see this MSDN article). It seems that the capability lay in wait for years. Only recently has this synergistic combination of technologies truely come into focus. It's looking like AJAX and broadband could threaten the MS hegemony - we no longer need a local install of MS-Office, at 600+ Mb and $250+. A web server-based implementation may work just as well, a lot cheaper, a little slower, and without the problems inherent with installing software on Windows. note to intolerant moderators: I'm not bashing MS - Windows (the OS) works fine for me, I just wish I could say the same for the software I install and use under Windows. Would I be surprised if MS choose to cripple, subvert, or remove XMLHttpRequest? No. But I do expect them to FUD the landscape, and introduce a proprietary.NET "alternative".
Many companies have dedicated I.T. departments with at least a few people who are Oracle admins. Once a company has faith in a product (or has built s significant infrastructure upon a product), it becomes very difficult to switch the foundation. Giving away a small edition that would, from the sales pitch, appear to compete head-on with MySql and PostGRE, is a smart move. Take the case of a company where there are developers considering or starting their own "stealth" db apps - I don't mean the Oracle db admins, I mean the engineer who read about PHP and MySql and wants to try a small task-tracking system for his group. She or he knows that the company uses, and has blessed Oracle, so that might lend some weight to using the XE package rather than the "unproven" (from the IT department's point of view) FOSS database. In addition, Oracle has an enormous amount of administrative tools and documentation. MySQL and PostGRE really can't compare in that arena (IMHO). The downside, in my experience, is that Oracle administration really does require someone who has take a heap of Oracle admin classes.
My experience with humor in the workplace is a tale of cultures, political correctness, and caution.
I began using humor in my work many years ago. I worked for a high-tech company doing software tools, which requires (on my part) some level of user support in the form of documentation, web pages, and email - the end-user in this case being the other engineers employed there. Technical documentation is such a droll, dry medium, and I wanted to make it more interesting, and help hold the reader's attention. There is nothing funny about the X3T9 or 1394 specs. I also felt the need to extend my personal creativity beyond the realm of interesting code comments.
Things went ok, even fine, for a few years. I received lots of positive feedback from users, indicating how they always looked forward to my next group broadcast email, or how funny a web site was. But such feedback encouraged me to "push the envelope" in terms of content. Our company is multi-culture, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. What might be funny or innocuous in American English can be mis-interpreted by people in Thailand or Singapore. Eventually I crossed an invisible line, and the Political Correction department, sometimes ironically referred to as "Human Resources", came down on me like a ton of diarhea. With my future at stake, I retracted my email and publically apologized. My job had been saved, but my manager's reputation had been compromised. He was in trouble for not "keeping the reins tight enough", as if any manager can effectively herd cats. Of course, while my actions caused problems for my boss, they caused greater problems for me. My future with that company had suddenly grown much more circumscribed, a fact I was not to learn for some time, when raises and promotions sailed past me like leaves in a nor-easter.
After several years, that incident was forgotten. I glided under the radar during subsequent management shake-ups and re-orgs, and ended up working for another manager. Our company policy forbids managers and HR personel from officially discussing individual employee records, so I felt that my past was behind me - safely locked away in the depths of HR. I could relax and drop my guard, which I did but, as you can probably guess, this led to another lapse in judgement, which resulted in the "final warning" from HR. My manager at that time issued an edict demanding "no more humor, no more creativity" in all my work. At the time, it felt like a knife through the heart, but it actually inspired me to redirect my energies and intellect for my own gain, not the company's. The company would survive.
Or course, I accept responsibility for what I said. I could have kept my keyboard locked, toed the company line, and been a happy drone. That company is ancient history, so all I can do now is reflect, and use my talents elsewhere.
Bottom line? The HR department is no longer the "personel" department. It's geared toward protecting the company, not representing the individual worker unit. HR's primary task is protecting the company from harrasement and defamation lawsuits brought by current and former employees. This is extremely difficult in America, with it's current "Politically Correct" atmosphere - an attitude that people are not responsible for their own feelings, thoughts, and interpretations, combined with a "get rich quick" lotto mentality.
The TX is at a great price point compared to its competition which is wireless PDAs. The iPod Nano only plays music. Complete apples and oranges comparison.
How much is a 4Gb SD card? Hard to tell, as there are none at this time, but let's assume a rough incremental of 75% over a 2Gb card.... how about $260? So sometime in the future I can spend $560 and get my 4Gb flash PDA. Groovy. That's a difference of $310.
When observed at a less detailed level, it's an apples/apples comparison. The ipod nano has flash, some other electronics, user interface buttons, and software. The TX has flash, some other electronics, user interface buttons, and software. The user interface cost difference (mostly the LCD) probably accounts for $20, but let's be generous and say $60. That leaves a delta of $250. The software has essentially zero cost to the consumer - that's considered part of the NRE. The only other differentiating factor I see is "the other electronics", which boils down to some VLSI, probably in the form of another ASIC, plus any licensing fees. I seriously doubt that wifi costs $250. I don't know how much Intel charges for the processor I.P., but they won't stay in business charging $250 -- ARM doesn't charge anywhere near that much. From a cost analysis standpoint, I see no reason why it can't be done.
...I think Apple expects to make money on iTunes and accessories...
Agreed. Services - that's where the money is. IBM knew this 50 years ago. The razor metaphor says "give away the razor for free, make it back on the blades". Can Palm follow this business model? I don't know, but me thinks not, unless they can come up with some as-yet-to-be-invented, but shortly-thereafter-invaluable service.
The 4 gig Apple nano is something like $250, right? That's 4Gb of memory, folks -- not 128 Mb. Why can't I get a sub-$300 PDA with a boat-load of memory? The Palm lIfeDrive is $500. Cut that price in half and you got me.
Do not ask why I need that much memory, or I'll just toss a Bill Gates quote back at you.
The EU and UN deserve the right to manage the root servers for a little while. Root server ownership should go to the majority. Then,in a year or three, when Chinese citizens comprise the majority of internet users, root server management should go to the Chinese government. That's sure to improve security and connectivity! Personally, I can't wait for the Chinese-approved web pa
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, these complaints may be Firefox-specific. I haven't gone to the trouble of finding, installing, and configuring a dedicated RSS reader.
I find most androids crumple like a pop can after a well-placed kick to the ball bearings.
To my mind, this slogan is easily confused with the Daylight Savings Time mnemonics (no relation) "Spring Forward" and "Fall Back".
I don't think they meant "feeing", which means "to tip" or (if you're in Scotland) "to hire".
Microsoft has announced a competitive service : X-Claus.net. This service will be integrated into "Vista", the next generation Windows operating system, which is due for release "real soon now" according to a representative for the Redmond company. There are no plans to release an XP version of the X-Claus.net service. MS also plans an online, multiplayer game "Naughty/Nice Xtreme" for the XBox-360. This game will allow the combatant to play as Santa, one of his elves, or the evil Dr. Evil, intent on kidnapping Santa and turning Christmas into a mostly commercial occasion. Playing as Santa, you will have your choice of weapons, including gingerbread particle weapons, fruitcake bazooka, raindeer dropping carpet bombing, and hyper-velocity elf snot.
Some replys suggest xcopy32 or Norton Ghost to make mirror backups. I suggest Robocopy ("robust copy") from (yea, I know I know) Microsoft. It comes in the Win 2003 Server RK, or Google it. It includes a lot of options more suited to performing mirror operations, especially when copying over a network.
My only thought is, "Depressed Hamster Behavior" would be a good name for a band.
Which is the independent variable and which is the independent variable? In this case, does use of Google cause wealth for the user? Does my use of Google make me more "internet savvy" and richer (bring it on!), or do I use Google because I'm smart and socially secure.... no, wait. That can't be the case. Well, anyway, we already know Google usage creates wealth for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. Even after sales of 5.3 million shares of Google stock, they retain 33 million more, currently worth over $13 billion (story). Which begs the question: are these two fish (and the other Google execs) big enough to overwhelm the "average wealth" pool of all internet users? If Bill Gates uses Google (and I'll bet he does), does that leave no room in the aquarium for the rest of us? Do we become noise in the equation?
P.S. Of course I used Google to research this post...
History file "history.dat" (for Windows users), is under
. If you've created a profile, "history.dat" will be in the directory bearing the same name. If you're using the default profile, it will be in the "default.XXX" directory, where "XXX" is some random set of characters.All entrances to work have a sign that says, basically, "No recording devices such as cameras, voice, video recorders, etc...". Very strange because it is a disk drive company.
yea I know: -9 Troll/Flamebait/Non-TNK (True,Necessary,Kind).
There are a lot of other factors to "system performance", like memory, video, and disk subsystem speed. How much of a gain will a dual core CPU buy if the system is waiting for a (relatively) slow disk? If you want to put in a 7200 rpm 2 1/2", or a pair of 'em (or here), well ok. But then power consumption and it's cousin heat go up. Bigger batteries, Ok. Now you've got weight. I guess it's all about trade-offs, and what do you really want.
The Releases page doesn't show the PECL download. Nor does the downloads page. I hope this is just an oversight and will eventually be corrected.
Actually, my biggest problem with Javascript was (is?) trying to understand all the little (or sometimes not-so-little) implementation differences, and write cross-browser script that didn't turn into zillions of checks:
That becomes a maintenance nightmare. Every few months a new browser version becomes available and must be tested and it's niggling quirks discovered and handled. This is not an insignificant task. Personally, I would rather be a content creator, not a browser beta tester for MS and Mozilla.WHAT IS COPYRIGHT?
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works....
A key enabler of AJAX is XMLHttpRequest (Apple Dev Connection , JJ Garrett's previously mentioned article). MS was an early implementor of this feature, in MSIE 5.0 back in 2000 (see this MSDN article). It seems that the capability lay in wait for years. Only recently has this synergistic combination of technologies truely come into focus. It's looking like AJAX and broadband could threaten the MS hegemony - we no longer need a local install of MS-Office, at 600+ Mb and $250+. A web server-based implementation may work just as well, a lot cheaper, a little slower, and without the problems inherent with installing software on Windows. note to intolerant moderators: I'm not bashing MS - Windows (the OS) works fine for me, I just wish I could say the same for the software I install and use under Windows. Would I be surprised if MS choose to cripple, subvert, or remove XMLHttpRequest? No. But I do expect them to FUD the landscape, and introduce a proprietary .NET "alternative".
Many companies have dedicated I.T. departments with at least a few people who are Oracle admins. Once a company has faith in a product (or has built s significant infrastructure upon a product), it becomes very difficult to switch the foundation. Giving away a small edition that would, from the sales pitch, appear to compete head-on with MySql and PostGRE, is a smart move. Take the case of a company where there are developers considering or starting their own "stealth" db apps - I don't mean the Oracle db admins, I mean the engineer who read about PHP and MySql and wants to try a small task-tracking system for his group. She or he knows that the company uses, and has blessed Oracle, so that might lend some weight to using the XE package rather than the "unproven" (from the IT department's point of view) FOSS database. In addition, Oracle has an enormous amount of administrative tools and documentation. MySQL and PostGRE really can't compare in that arena (IMHO). The downside, in my experience, is that Oracle administration really does require someone who has take a heap of Oracle admin classes.
I began using humor in my work many years ago. I worked for a high-tech company doing software tools, which requires (on my part) some level of user support in the form of documentation, web pages, and email - the end-user in this case being the other engineers employed there. Technical documentation is such a droll, dry medium, and I wanted to make it more interesting, and help hold the reader's attention. There is nothing funny about the X3T9 or 1394 specs. I also felt the need to extend my personal creativity beyond the realm of interesting code comments.
Things went ok, even fine, for a few years. I received lots of positive feedback from users, indicating how they always looked forward to my next group broadcast email, or how funny a web site was. But such feedback encouraged me to "push the envelope" in terms of content. Our company is multi-culture, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. What might be funny or innocuous in American English can be mis-interpreted by people in Thailand or Singapore. Eventually I crossed an invisible line, and the Political Correction department, sometimes ironically referred to as "Human Resources", came down on me like a ton of diarhea. With my future at stake, I retracted my email and publically apologized. My job had been saved, but my manager's reputation had been compromised. He was in trouble for not "keeping the reins tight enough", as if any manager can effectively herd cats. Of course, while my actions caused problems for my boss, they caused greater problems for me. My future with that company had suddenly grown much more circumscribed, a fact I was not to learn for some time, when raises and promotions sailed past me like leaves in a nor-easter.
After several years, that incident was forgotten. I glided under the radar during subsequent management shake-ups and re-orgs, and ended up working for another manager. Our company policy forbids managers and HR personel from officially discussing individual employee records, so I felt that my past was behind me - safely locked away in the depths of HR. I could relax and drop my guard, which I did but, as you can probably guess, this led to another lapse in judgement, which resulted in the "final warning" from HR. My manager at that time issued an edict demanding "no more humor, no more creativity" in all my work. At the time, it felt like a knife through the heart, but it actually inspired me to redirect my energies and intellect for my own gain, not the company's. The company would survive.
Or course, I accept responsibility for what I said. I could have kept my keyboard locked, toed the company line, and been a happy drone. That company is ancient history, so all I can do now is reflect, and use my talents elsewhere.
Bottom line? The HR department is no longer the "personel" department. It's geared toward protecting the company, not representing the individual worker unit. HR's primary task is protecting the company from harrasement and defamation lawsuits brought by current and former employees. This is extremely difficult in America, with it's current "Politically Correct" atmosphere - an attitude that people are not responsible for their own feelings, thoughts, and interpretations, combined with a "get rich quick" lotto mentality.
How much is a 4Gb SD card? Hard to tell, as there are none at this time, but let's assume a rough incremental of 75% over a 2Gb card .... how about $260? So sometime in the future I can spend $560 and get my 4Gb flash PDA. Groovy. That's a difference of $310.
When observed at a less detailed level, it's an apples/apples comparison. The ipod nano has flash, some other electronics, user interface buttons, and software. The TX has flash, some other electronics, user interface buttons, and software. The user interface cost difference (mostly the LCD) probably accounts for $20, but let's be generous and say $60. That leaves a delta of $250. The software has essentially zero cost to the consumer - that's considered part of the NRE. The only other differentiating factor I see is "the other electronics", which boils down to some VLSI, probably in the form of another ASIC, plus any licensing fees. I seriously doubt that wifi costs $250. I don't know how much Intel charges for the processor I.P., but they won't stay in business charging $250 -- ARM doesn't charge anywhere near that much. From a cost analysis standpoint, I see no reason why it can't be done.
Agreed. Services - that's where the money is. IBM knew this 50 years ago. The razor metaphor says "give away the razor for free, make it back on the blades". Can Palm follow this business model? I don't know, but me thinks not, unless they can come up with some as-yet-to-be-invented, but shortly-thereafter-invaluable service.
Do not ask why I need that much memory, or I'll just toss a Bill Gates quote back at you.