I wish someone would write a book about Maven that was as helpful as this Ant book sounds like it might be. I am also put off by the not-quite-helpful documentation on the Maven site.
I believe his recent book, Pragmatic Version Control, is self-published. Last I heard, he was in his garage boxing up orders, due to a really large spike that arose from the recent book report on/..
He would probably be able to give you considerable insight into the process.
I think it speaks volumes against the "don't leave it plugged in" theory that Apple sells a dock which is designed to hold the thing all the time(and keep it charged all the time.)
I think the only thing it speaks volumes of is that Apple made a dock which is designed to make it easy to synchronize the iPod with the computer.
If you read any of the articles that were linked to in the initial post, you would see the lithium ion batteries have only two real enemies: time and heat. Full discharges do you no good, keeping it always topped up does you no real good, your lithium battery is gonna go to battery heaven in about 2 years, less if it is exposed to heat all the time, such as the heat in your car. This isn't an Apple issue, this is the state of battery technology today.
Bottom line, leave it plugged in or don't, you'll get about the same battery life from your iPod.
The tech industry is full of failures, massive and small. Most of the projects I've been a part of never made it to the light of day, or were canned right before going to production. This usually is because the initial Good Idea that started the whole project got buried under featuritis as different departments, user groups, marketing groups, development groups, and vendors added their pet features. Scope creep is the killer in this industry. As the despair.com poster says, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
Number of lines notwithstanding, if you're going to use someone elses code, at least strip out the comments. It's one of the first things an auditor looks for. Sheesh.
The rest of the morning routine?
on
Tai Chi Robots
·
· Score: 1
Now if they can just make them do my situps and take a dump for me, they'll have my entire morning routine!
How is this "news for nerds"???
Well, even though I am more interested than most of the people in my neighborhood about Linux, php, the BSD license, etc., I am also interested in other things as well, like what is going on in the world around me.
Given recent actions by the administration, and the fact that the economy is tanked, leaving me with more spare time than I like between assignments, I find that I have become increasingly politicized. Given also that many of the things that are happening are very much affecting those of us who spend considerable time in front of the monitor, in ways that we did not perhaps foresee (like DMCA), I think we should definitely watch the actions of this administration with a little more interest.
I would say that we should be a voice of reason, but this is/. and so that's out of the question...;)
I don't think he's off-base at all. There's not just one portrait or one still-life or one landscape photo or painting, there's lots of them. They're all the same in one way, but all different as well, as each artist (insert programmer) tries to take the body of work that's out there and distill something better. Doesn't always work out, no doubt.
Maybe if there were an MFA in Software, and if students did study code the way art students study art, then there would be fewer IRC clients and more good IRC clients, as they jumped in on existing projects and helped them along.
I think his call for more iterative development, where the end-user was more involved in the process, would have made all those solutions that deal with the problems that business has faced for "200 years" less buggy to begin with. That and studying code from the "masters", as he suggests.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Chick-Fil-A (TM)Space Station. Let's head over to the Coca-Cola (TM) Refreshment Center before we start our tour of the Archer-Daniels (TM) food laboratory and the Exxon/Mobil (TM) energy lab..."
I always countered the request for personal information with a whole slew of questions of my own, such as the clerk's name, phone, address, sometimes I'd ask for blood type or favorite color. Usually managed to get out of the store pretty quickly...
Same goes for wait staff at restaurants who, with forced perkiness, say, "Hi! I'm , and I'll be your server today!", at which point I introduce the whole table, start asking them to tell us a little more about themselves, etc.
I have also had great response to emails from my representatives. They have shown that an email carries just as much weight as a letter. Unfortunately, they haven't agreed with me on anything yet, but I'll keep swinging.
Giving up on something before you ever get started is the only sure way to never win.
There's also EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center).
You're right however, most of these types of organizations are mostly US-centric. Of course, the reason is that our dear government has taken a decidely Orwellian stance lately, plus large corporate interests seem to have the ear of our lawmakers at the expense of privacy and choice.
You might want to consider this: Do you think it is possible that these types of laws and policies might spread to other parts of the globe just like McDonald's?
I think you're caught up in the chicken and egg syndrome, if the EFF had more support and more people faxing, writing and emailing their congressperson/senator, they might have won. Money is a powerful foe, so it's never going to be a foregone conclusion, even if you are on the moral high ground.
Just last week, a Slashdot poll showed that approximately 70-75% of you who responded took no action to fax or email Congress about issues like this.
Since you haven't spent any money with the EFF, I would say you *are* currently getting your money's worth.
Interesting to see someone thinking beyond the actual act of making the backup. All to often, the sysadmin thinks that getting a backup system up and going, and changing a tape each day, is the end of it. They forget that purpose of a backup is a restore. I've seen it happen over and over that the restore fails because of bad media, corruption, etc.
Home networks definitely get short shrift. I must admit I don't do an offsite of my home network, but I do burn to CD pretty regularly. Haven't played with the Net backup services. Is there one that folks recommend?
Now, before you start going off on managers, read on.
The tech world suffers from lack of good, trained managers. Most managers started out on development teams, then sort of got thrown into management positions.
I worked for a Fortune 50 company for 11 years, and while I was damn happy to leave it, I had some top-notch managers, who were truly dedicated to the development of the people under them. Why? Because if the folks under them succeeded, so did they.
Since leaving that company, I have dealt with some of the worst or most clueless managers ever. Is it any wonder we're reading articles about how buggy software is?
We need managers who can really lead, who can plan and schedule resources, and who can forecast. There's always a demand for that.
It is interesting that most "techies" work in a business, but know very little about that business beyond their rather narrow base of knowledge (narrow in the sense of the whole business). Techies that truly understand how their contributions affect the bottom line, and have the ability to communicate across many areas of a company, are a valuable resource. A lot of doors get opened to folks who have that sensibility.
Every team or programmer is free to take the parts of XP that work for them or their projects and discard the parts that don't.
I think that XP as a concept is fantastic. I don't think it's good for all projects or all people all of the time.
If a manager is shoving it down a team's throat, it likely won't work. If everyone buys into it except one hotshot, it can be undermined to the point of not working (of course, you can always fire the arrogant little SOB). Just like other methodology, it will work only if there is buy-in from everyone involved. Adoption can often be more of an HR issue than anything else.
I've always interpreted working in pairs to mean that the programmers do frequent code reviews of each others work. They can be working on different areas, but are constantly getting feedback on their code, more frequently than with a formal code review.
I don't buy the blanket statement that "the collaborative process is inherently worse that the distributed process". In fact, the distributed process requires significant amounts of collaboration and communication in order to produce a decent result. You equate collaboration with meetings, which is not correct. Collaboration is people working toward a common goal. Badly run meeting or lousy collaboration will produce lousy results, no doubt. However, the world is full of great collaborative projects, many of which are distributed.
Perhaps the assumption is false, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence out there that suggests otherwise. I have seen reports of issues with OS X and mod_perl as a DSO in the documentation for RT:Request Tracker, for one, where they recommend compiling mod_perl statically. I've seen it in a few other places as well. Now, I don't know for sure if it's true or not, but I usually leave it up to folks with more time and sense of adventure to figure out, since I just need the stuff to work right.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish someone would write a book about Maven that was as helpful as this Ant book sounds like it might be. I am also put off by the not-quite-helpful documentation on the Maven site.
Our smoke from time to time, but they never boom.
Should work like a champ on Linux.
You beat me to it! That was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the post! Sign of the times...
I believe his recent book, Pragmatic Version Control, is self-published. Last I heard, he was in his garage boxing up orders, due to a really large spike that arose from the recent book report on /..
He would probably be able to give you considerable insight into the process.
The tech industry is full of failures, massive and small. Most of the projects I've been a part of never made it to the light of day, or were canned right before going to production. This usually is because the initial Good Idea that started the whole project got buried under featuritis as different departments, user groups, marketing groups, development groups, and vendors added their pet features. Scope creep is the killer in this industry. As the despair.com poster says, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."
Number of lines notwithstanding, if you're going to use someone elses code, at least strip out the comments. It's one of the first things an auditor looks for. Sheesh.
Now if they can just make them do my situps and take a dump for me, they'll have my entire morning routine!
How is this "news for nerds"??? Well, even though I am more interested than most of the people in my neighborhood about Linux, php, the BSD license, etc., I am also interested in other things as well, like what is going on in the world around me. Given recent actions by the administration, and the fact that the economy is tanked, leaving me with more spare time than I like between assignments, I find that I have become increasingly politicized. Given also that many of the things that are happening are very much affecting those of us who spend considerable time in front of the monitor, in ways that we did not perhaps foresee (like DMCA), I think we should definitely watch the actions of this administration with a little more interest. I would say that we should be a voice of reason, but this is /. and so that's out of the question... ;)
Dunno. What does Big Brother say?
I don't think he's off-base at all. There's not just one portrait or one still-life or one landscape photo or painting, there's lots of them. They're all the same in one way, but all different as well, as each artist (insert programmer) tries to take the body of work that's out there and distill something better. Doesn't always work out, no doubt.
Maybe if there were an MFA in Software, and if students did study code the way art students study art, then there would be fewer IRC clients and more good IRC clients, as they jumped in on existing projects and helped them along.
I think his call for more iterative development, where the end-user was more involved in the process, would have made all those solutions that deal with the problems that business has faced for "200 years" less buggy to begin with. That and studying code from the "masters", as he suggests.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Chick-Fil-A (TM)Space Station. Let's head over to the Coca-Cola (TM) Refreshment Center before we start our tour of the Archer-Daniels (TM) food laboratory and the Exxon/Mobil (TM) energy lab..."
I always countered the request for personal information with a whole slew of questions of my own, such as the clerk's name, phone, address, sometimes I'd ask for blood type or favorite color. Usually managed to get out of the store pretty quickly...
Same goes for wait staff at restaurants who, with forced perkiness, say, "Hi! I'm , and I'll be your server today!", at which point I introduce the whole table, start asking them to tell us a little more about themselves, etc.
I have also had great response to emails from my representatives. They have shown that an email carries just as much weight as a letter. Unfortunately, they haven't agreed with me on anything yet, but I'll keep swinging.
Giving up on something before you ever get started is the only sure way to never win.
There's also EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center). You're right however, most of these types of organizations are mostly US-centric. Of course, the reason is that our dear government has taken a decidely Orwellian stance lately, plus large corporate interests seem to have the ear of our lawmakers at the expense of privacy and choice. You might want to consider this: Do you think it is possible that these types of laws and policies might spread to other parts of the globe just like McDonald's?
I think you're caught up in the chicken and egg syndrome, if the EFF had more support and more people faxing, writing and emailing their congressperson/senator, they might have won. Money is a powerful foe, so it's never going to be a foregone conclusion, even if you are on the moral high ground.
Just last week, a Slashdot poll showed that approximately 70-75% of you who responded took no action to fax or email Congress about issues like this.
Since you haven't spent any money with the EFF, I would say you *are* currently getting your money's worth.
Interesting to see someone thinking beyond the actual act of making the backup. All to often, the sysadmin thinks that getting a backup system up and going, and changing a tape each day, is the end of it. They forget that purpose of a backup is a restore. I've seen it happen over and over that the restore fails because of bad media, corruption, etc.
Home networks definitely get short shrift. I must admit I don't do an offsite of my home network, but I do burn to CD pretty regularly. Haven't played with the Net backup services. Is there one that folks recommend?
I'm sure all of you voted, and got your friends to vote, right?
Right?
Now, before you start going off on managers, read on.
The tech world suffers from lack of good, trained managers. Most managers started out on development teams, then sort of got thrown into management positions.
I worked for a Fortune 50 company for 11 years, and while I was damn happy to leave it, I had some top-notch managers, who were truly dedicated to the development of the people under them. Why? Because if the folks under them succeeded, so did they.
Since leaving that company, I have dealt with some of the worst or most clueless managers ever. Is it any wonder we're reading articles about how buggy software is?
We need managers who can really lead, who can plan and schedule resources, and who can forecast. There's always a demand for that.
It is interesting that most "techies" work in a business, but know very little about that business beyond their rather narrow base of knowledge (narrow in the sense of the whole business). Techies that truly understand how their contributions affect the bottom line, and have the ability to communicate across many areas of a company, are a valuable resource. A lot of doors get opened to folks who have that sensibility.
Every team or programmer is free to take the parts of XP that work for them or their projects and discard the parts that don't.
I think that XP as a concept is fantastic. I don't think it's good for all projects or all people all of the time.
If a manager is shoving it down a team's throat, it likely won't work. If everyone buys into it except one hotshot, it can be undermined to the point of not working (of course, you can always fire the arrogant little SOB). Just like other methodology, it will work only if there is buy-in from everyone involved. Adoption can often be more of an HR issue than anything else.
I've always interpreted working in pairs to mean that the programmers do frequent code reviews of each others work. They can be working on different areas, but are constantly getting feedback on their code, more frequently than with a formal code review.
I don't buy the blanket statement that "the collaborative process is inherently worse that the distributed process". In fact, the distributed process requires significant amounts of collaboration and communication in order to produce a decent result. You equate collaboration with meetings, which is not correct. Collaboration is people working toward a common goal. Badly run meeting or lousy collaboration will produce lousy results, no doubt. However, the world is full of great collaborative projects, many of which are distributed.
As long as it's OS X Server version 10.2 or better.
Perhaps the assumption is false, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence out there that suggests otherwise. I have seen reports of issues with OS X and mod_perl as a DSO in the documentation for RT:Request Tracker, for one, where they recommend compiling mod_perl statically. I've seen it in a few other places as well. Now, I don't know for sure if it's true or not, but I usually leave it up to folks with more time and sense of adventure to figure out, since I just need the stuff to work right.