It's that sort of attitude which makes people work against, rather than with, the IT department.
So what if people have some MP3s on their hard disk - if listening to music is affecting their work then it's the responsibility of their supervisor to deal with that.
I've worked support before, and as much as users can be a pain in the ass, the only reason you have a job is because of them - without users, there is no point in an IT department.
Agreed... I've got a bunch to use up, but I'm not doing it today unless they add a "-1: Bitter Old Man" rating so I can mod all those people who just don't get why April Fools is so fun.
I'd never thought of it that way... I guess it would make sense though - they can arrange the yearly company party without anyone knowing they're gone!
My guess is that builds correspond to (think this one through...) builds.
Each time the entire system is rebuilt (probably automatically at a certain interval), the build number is incremented, and then the QA teams are let loose.
It may just be an urban myth, but didn't they fund an entire public health system from domain name sales?
Really... are the people likely to be more worried about getting myname.tv, or getting fixed up when someone hits them because they didn't look while crossing the road?
Sadly, Micheal Crichton wrote that novel already, and probably owns the movie rights.
It was set on Earth, but the rest seems to fit - nano swarm designed for exploring, goes crazy after being let loose in the wild, [leap of imagination], attempt to take over the world.
I stopped caring what happened when I got to them trying to take over the world, but like a lot of Crichton books, the science kept me reading.
Would you like to completely reword that... I may just be on crack today (I don't think I am), but about half way through the second paragraph I realised that there didn't seem to be any message, just a lot of jumbled words that looked like they should make sense.
I really don't think you need to worry too much about having them on seperate servers, from http://hula-project.org/index.php/FAQ#How_well_doe s_it_scale.3F:
Scalability was the primary design parameter for the original codebase. Anecdotally, people have run 200,000 registered users on a single $4,000 PC, with a 25% concurrency rate (that's over 50,000 concurrently-connected users).
I'm one of the developers for the Jaws Project, which is currently taking off as an Open Source project, rather than a pet project under an OS license.
All my development right now is on a Windows box. What's the best way to go about ensuring Linux/POSIX compatibility over the web? Compile farms? Recruiting a Linux maintainer?
If you don't have any experience of developing under Linux, and you aren't motivated to get any, then let someone else do it. If you want to get to know Linux, there's nothing quite like porting software to do it.
If I don't have access to my own server, where is the best place to host? Sourceforge (the only one I really know about) or somewhere else?
Sourceforge is probably enough to begin with, obviously a dedicated server with everything you want running on it would be nice, but if you can't/don't want to afford it right now, just stick with Sourceforge. There's much worse out there. For the record, Jaws is currently using SF's CVS and we havn't had any problems other than it being CVS and not Subversion:P
Somebody's submitted a patch. What's the protocol for crediting them for the work?
I tend to credit the bumitter in the commit message, and add them to the THANKS and AUTHORS files which get distributed with each release (you should have both of these).
What are the criteria for determining whether or not something is "pre-alpha", "alpha", "beta", etc. Is there a set standard, or do I get to determine this on my own?
Largely it's a case of picking one depending on how things are going - if things are working, but not thoroughly tested, it's probably beta. If things are working when the moon is aligned right, it's pre-alpha.
How useful are wikis for OS projects?
We recently created a Wiki for Jaws, and it's been incredibly useful as somewhere to coordinate development of ideas. Sure, it could be done in CVS with plain text files, but a Wiki tends to be a lot quicker to use. We're using DokuWiki, which as far as I'm aware will run happily on SF's servers.
If I have legal questions regarding licenses or IP, who should I talk to?
Thankfully we havn't had to deal with this one yet. I'd reccomend a lawyer, preferably one with previous experience in software licensing, although that is likely to get expensive.
I have the advantage of being self-employed, so I don't have to do the crap like sitting in meetings with a boss who doesn't know what he's talking about, and get to make the final decision on things. I do still have to put up with moody clients, changing requirements, and all the other junk that every developer has to deal with.
And yes, I do have days when I can't bear the thought of sitting in front of a computer any more. I also have days when I will work until the point of burning out - at some point I'll realise I've written 10 lines of code in the last hour, and decide it's time to do something else. Of course things vary - nobody is going to love doing something all the time.
There are days when I sit down to do work, and slog through hours of mindless, boring, code. There are other days when I will sit and scream at my computer until my voice goes hoarse (one of the joys people working in a cube farm don't get:P).
But despite all those things, I wouldn't want to do anything else, at least not yet - I fully expect to want a change of career sometime between 40 and 50 at the latest. That's also completely normal, people need a change of scenery.
In fact, the hardest bit of my job most of the time is remembering that there is a life beyond my keyboard and stopping.
Schools should be considering why there is so much cheating, and why it isn't so apparent in the workplace post-school.
Because it's so much harder to "cheat" in the workplace post-school? If you're doing a college course on programming and given something to develop, the rest of the class is also developing it and you can copy answers if you want to.
In the workplace this is called "code reuse" and encouraged by most employers.
If you're going to use your computer primarily for running a certain OS (in this case Linux), then check that your hardware is supported when you buy it.
My computer is fairly advanced (SATA hard disks, DVD burning, firewire etc.), and because I had the forethought to check that things are going to work, runs perfectly.
Come on - you wouldn't buy a BMW part for a Ford, so don't buy Windows only hardware to run run Linux.
I just bought a new gaming/development machine, and part of that was a pair of LG L1715S flat panels.
They're absolutely gorgeous, doing 1280x1024 at 75hz, with a 16ms response time. It's wonderful for playing games on as well, since it gives a really crisp, flat picture, instead of the slightly dull curved one from my old CRT.
Storage has been more or less dead as far as I can see for a while now, however Beagle is showing good progress on the same front, having been demoed at conferences recently.
Slashdot Mirror
It's that sort of attitude which makes people work against, rather than with, the IT department.
So what if people have some MP3s on their hard disk - if listening to music is affecting their work then it's the responsibility of their supervisor to deal with that.
I've worked support before, and as much as users can be a pain in the ass, the only reason you have a job is because of them - without users, there is no point in an IT department.
Wow... is it just me or does the entire item look like gibberish?
And if you use annoying abbreviations then you're going to be penalized another 20.
Bad luck...
Agreed... I've got a bunch to use up, but I'm not doing it today unless they add a "-1: Bitter Old Man" rating so I can mod all those people who just don't get why April Fools is so fun.
I'd never thought of it that way... I guess it would make sense though - they can arrange the yearly company party without anyone knowing they're gone!
It's genious really.
My guess is that builds correspond to (think this one through...) builds.
Each time the entire system is rebuilt (probably automatically at a certain interval), the build number is incremented, and then the QA teams are let loose.
It may just be an urban myth, but didn't they fund an entire public health system from domain name sales?
Really... are the people likely to be more worried about getting myname.tv, or getting fixed up when someone hits them because they didn't look while crossing the road?
Sadly, Micheal Crichton wrote that novel already, and probably owns the movie rights.
It was set on Earth, but the rest seems to fit - nano swarm designed for exploring, goes crazy after being let loose in the wild, [leap of imagination], attempt to take over the world.
I stopped caring what happened when I got to them trying to take over the world, but like a lot of Crichton books, the science kept me reading.
It seems to me that Apple are doing versioning right.
The way it should work is x.y.z
z: Bug fixes
y: New features
x: Backwards compatibility break
Since 10.4 appears to have new features, but not break backwards compatibility, it's the right version.
Get a real ISP then, my ISP (Andrews & Arnold) assigned a v6 block to me, and have been doing so for at least a year.
apt-get install xfce not good enough for you?
Would you like to completely reword that... I may just be on crack today (I don't think I am), but about half way through the second paragraph I realised that there didn't seem to be any message, just a lot of jumbled words that looked like they should make sense.
1500m = 1.5km =~ 1 mile
I'm feeling pedantic, so I'll point out that soc.soton.ac.uk is the Southampton Oceanography Centre.
;)
And I guess that may explain why my connection is so slow today, since I'm on the same exchange
I havn't benchmarked it, but in terms of how fast it "feels" SVN is a little quicker than CVS - not heaps, but definately not any slower.
I'm one of the developers for the Jaws Project, which is currently taking off as an Open Source project, rather than a pet project under an OS license.
If you don't have any experience of developing under Linux, and you aren't motivated to get any, then let someone else do it. If you want to get to know Linux, there's nothing quite like porting software to do it.
Sourceforge is probably enough to begin with, obviously a dedicated server with everything you want running on it would be nice, but if you can't/don't want to afford it right now, just stick with Sourceforge. There's much worse out there. For the record, Jaws is currently using SF's CVS and we havn't had any problems other than it being CVS and not Subversion
I tend to credit the bumitter in the commit message, and add them to the THANKS and AUTHORS files which get distributed with each release (you should have both of these).
Largely it's a case of picking one depending on how things are going - if things are working, but not thoroughly tested, it's probably beta. If things are working when the moon is aligned right, it's pre-alpha.
We recently created a Wiki for Jaws, and it's been incredibly useful as somewhere to coordinate development of ideas. Sure, it could be done in CVS with plain text files, but a Wiki tends to be a lot quicker to use. We're using DokuWiki, which as far as I'm aware will run happily on SF's servers.
Thankfully we havn't had to deal with this one yet. I'd reccomend a lawyer, preferably one with previous experience in software licensing, although that is likely to get expensive.
In general I love my job, I do web development.
:P).
I have the advantage of being self-employed, so I don't have to do the crap like sitting in meetings with a boss who doesn't know what he's talking about, and get to make the final decision on things. I do still have to put up with moody clients, changing requirements, and all the other junk that every developer has to deal with.
And yes, I do have days when I can't bear the thought of sitting in front of a computer any more. I also have days when I will work until the point of burning out - at some point I'll realise I've written 10 lines of code in the last hour, and decide it's time to do something else. Of course things vary - nobody is going to love doing something all the time.
There are days when I sit down to do work, and slog through hours of mindless, boring, code. There are other days when I will sit and scream at my computer until my voice goes hoarse (one of the joys people working in a cube farm don't get
But despite all those things, I wouldn't want to do anything else, at least not yet - I fully expect to want a change of career sometime between 40 and 50 at the latest. That's also completely normal, people need a change of scenery.
In fact, the hardest bit of my job most of the time is remembering that there is a life beyond my keyboard and stopping.
Because it's so much harder to "cheat" in the workplace post-school? If you're doing a college course on programming and given something to develop, the rest of the class is also developing it and you can copy answers if you want to.
In the workplace this is called "code reuse" and encouraged by most employers.
If you're going to use your computer primarily for running a certain OS (in this case Linux), then check that your hardware is supported when you buy it.
My computer is fairly advanced (SATA hard disks, DVD burning, firewire etc.), and because I had the forethought to check that things are going to work, runs perfectly.
Come on - you wouldn't buy a BMW part for a Ford, so don't buy Windows only hardware to run run Linux.
Heh, I thought exactly the same thing, having just finished reading the book again the other night.
Ummm, those people who died of cancer aren't gonna be filing suit anytime soon.
Unless of course it's the suit they were burried in.
Yup, you're out to lunch :P
I just bought a new gaming/development machine, and part of that was a pair of LG L1715S flat panels.
They're absolutely gorgeous, doing 1280x1024 at 75hz, with a 16ms response time. It's wonderful for playing games on as well, since it gives a really crisp, flat picture, instead of the slightly dull curved one from my old CRT.
Woot! I got a mention (if indirectly :P).
pear, peardoc, and phpdoc
Storage has been more or less dead as far as I can see for a while now, however Beagle is showing good progress on the same front, having been demoed at conferences recently.