My time frame for comparing the two packages, which I did not mention, was about a month ago. It wasn't that it was difficult to install; it was the configuration after it was installed that felt like I was on a treadmill, I was spending all my time working backwards and fighting with features I didn't need and managing permission settings way beyond the complexity that I required. In trac I was customizing ticket fields and setting up project workflows in a fraction of the time that it had taken me to give up on RT. I don't think I could have accomplished as much as I have done in the past month if I had tried to do so with RT, but this might just be an instance of trac being the right tool for the right job.
When researching a ticket tracking system to implement at my workplace I came with no experience in any non-proprietary system. I compared RT and trac side-by-side and found trac to be much more readable and user-friendly. Even for me, when setting it up, I spent an entire day trying to make heads or tails of the RT interface, while in a day I already had trac up and running and I was showing others how to log in and use it. Now that it is in production, what surprises me the most is the ease with which the non-IT department managers use it for tracking their tickets and project progress.
The irony of the situation is that I do specialize in Perl, which is why I went toward RT first. I assumed it would have been the better choice for making any changes to the underlying system, but in the process of working with trac I've learned Python enough to hack together a number of custom solutions for our needs.
Since I didn't go any further with RT after that first day, I can't say how well that would have worked, but in my case RT did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I implemented trac at my workplace as a change control and task management system. We use it for both internal projects as well as billable work, with a number of custom fields for supporting our quoting system and quality control. The built-in Wiki also doubles as our IT documentation repository, all in one easy to access location.
It is extremely extensible, and anything not readily available can be easily created. It didn't take much time to learn the class and data structures and I've modified existing plugins and written a few of my own to support our needs.
I work with a terminal of 120x34 whenever I use a GUI application that supports it. I typically keep my code/comments to 80 characters wide, so I don't irritate anyone else (or myself) using 80x24. I work with a lot of csv and other flat text files, so the extra width helps a lot. It's also useful for displaying things that word wrap, such as the web (via lynx) or irc.
Interesting. It seems that F6 gives focus to the toolbar in general, not the address bar specifically. In my configuration I've always had the address bar as the first item. I just switched them to test that theory and it did indeed give focus to the search bar.
I love the Ctrl+L shortcut that gives focus to the address bar.
I have yet to see a browser for which F6 does not provide the same functionality. Mozilla's Firefox Keyboard Shortcut page doesn't even mention it. Granted you won't find the 'gg' or 'wiki' pseudo-commands in, say, IE, but F6 still does its job. As for the search bar, I'm not sure if there is a shortcut to get into there directly, but I do know you can tab into it once you have the focus in the address bar. This assumes, probably, that you don't have any other input field between the address and search bars in the toolbar. The Firefox help page does mention that Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down will let you cycle through the search engines, too.
PC Connection has an excellent selection of computers (both desktops and laptops) that are bundled with XP Pro without too much of a price hit. In fact, at a quick glance at their site, I don't see any Vista-loaded systems at all. I have been purchasing from them at work because of this.
Employee was the wrong term. Perhaps "puppet" would be better. Both of my parents are teachers at a public high school, and I don't go a visit to them without hearing them complain about problems at work stemming from legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act. While their paycheck may not come from the federal government, they are still very much at its mercy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating or agreeing with this type of structure. I'm very opposed to the NCLB Act and any other such blanket education laws, and I believe they breach the 10th Amendment. I'm just telling it like it is.
What the hell does the United States government have to do with any of this? Since when is the United States government tasked with keeping high school students from cheating on papers?
The government is responsible for setting the policy on the response to plagiarism in its own education system. If it's a public school, the GP's mother is a federal employee.
The biggest drawback with wikipedia is that you can't do that. The information may be completely accurate and objective, but if you can't give a better source than "HanSolo666" it isn't worth squat.
Wikipedia is still a good starting point, for a quick overview and a pointer to more substantial sources. If you use it that way that's great. However, if your literature search ends at Wikipedia you are not doing legitimate academic research
I complete agree. Wikipedia's citing system is very robust, and your HanSolo666 could be the most respected expert on the topic for which he is writing. The big issue at hand with Wikipedia is the fact that I, as a non-expert, can go in and modify the cited material to be inaccurate and contradictory to the citation. I would see no problem using Wikipedia as a springboard to find other sources, but there is no way to trust the dynamic source enough to cite it. I do agree with the professors' decision in that respect. The downside to the student is Wikipedia's rules preventing someone from using the system to promote their own materials for personal gain. This means that HanSolo666 would be treading lightly to cite his own works, which are hypothetically the best on the topic, and may not be able to provide that reference to the researcher. Like any other research tool, Wikipedia should not be the only avenue of research to be considered.
You may not have meant it that way, but I'd like to point out that facts are not democraticly elected or the result of who prevails in an edit war. Most of the greatest minds have at one point been in fundamental disagreement with a larger community.
Unless there are theories being formed in the absence of concrete evidence, such as evolution vs intelligent design, most historical information can be classified as either objective or subjective. To that end, I think the biggest complaint the history professors would have had would be students citing work that was based on articles that were subjective and questionably biased. It does not seem much different than any of the published works found in a library that could also be just as subjective and biased.
I did find some possibly unintended humor in your comment, though. With an edit war, just as any other war, it is always the victor that defines the facts.
Wouldn't a poor area have a lower adoption rate though? It wouldn't make sense to build infrastructure to a community of 10,000 people where only 1% can afford your service, when you can instead rollout to a community of 1,000 with a 20% signup rate.
Or, more efficiently, press ^w 5 times. If you are fortunate enough to be using the computer right-handed, you can even do it with your free left hand without moving your mouse a pixel. Standard browsing position for me is right hand on mouse and left hand resting near ^w.
I do use the middle finger in the standard position. When I use the mouse I have my hand tilted toward the far side, such that most of the weight is on my pinky and ring finger. My index finger comes close to leaning on the center button and is what I use for middle click and scrolling (when applicable). I pinch the mouse between the tips of my pinky/ring fingers and my thumb when I need to pick the mouse up to reposition. I use a higher-than-normal mouse speed and I only need to move 2" (just measured) to move from one side of the screen to the other, so just about anything I need to do can be accomplished with a few clicks and a twitch or two. I tried using the ring finger for the right click and felt like I was trying to use a gear shift as a mouse. The top of the mouse was more cramped than I would prefer, and I don't have particularly large hands. It did force me to move my whole arm, though, which might be useful for prolonged use. About 70% of the time spent in front of my computer on a given workday is in a terminal with both hands on the keyboard so that might be why I can get away with it.
I am able to use these nice Logitech mice with my right hand and don't have to worry about continually annoying everyone by moving the mouse to the left side and wanting to switch the two buttons (it actually annoys me when other left handed people do it).
That's strange, I learned to use my mouse on the right side but I retained the ability to use it left handed with the default button mapping (left clicking with my middle finger, right clicking with my index) just as fluently. I used to use that in combination with my right hand on the numpad only when gaming for a few years until the WASD controls became a ubiquitous default, and I switched to right handed all the time. That left-handed control remains useful when using the mouse for a few quick clicks from an awkward position on someone else's desk (such as standing behind it).
I have ran Debian amd64 unstable since I built the box in February of last year. The only issue it had was with grub and the drive numbering scheme (using SATA as primary gave issues with the Asus K8V Deluxe SE board, which would have happened regardless of the arch I was using). Other than that, it ran perfectly, and, short of hiccups here and there due to the unstable nature of the distribution, it has continued running well to this day. That is, of course, except for the last few weeks where the box has sat in Windows to feed my World of Warcraft addiction.
On the other hand, I just bought a new dual 64bit Xeon RAID system for work, and I installed a 32bit Debian stable yesterday. Granted it is irrelevant when discussing an amd64 distribution, but even if I had bought an amd64 server (which I wouldn't) I would be using 32bit to maximize stability.
We got half a dozen 5' subs from subway from our FedEx rep. Only thing I saw DHL bring us is a bunch of grief and extra work. Nothing like a free lunch to make sure your clients' managers will fight tooth and nail to keep you on board.
While large chunks of reusable modules can be useful for large projects, efficiency is also key. Simple db functions would probably be in a module that is also referenced by a user account or cart module, and those types of modules would also include many other functions. This can be something as complex as an encryption routine or something as simple as a particularly useful XML-parsing loop. I believe the overlying question is how to maintain a comprehensive reference for useful loops and one-liners, while also keeping a repository of functions and whole modules that need not be used as a whole module (such as user accounts) just to include one item (like encryption support).
To that, I have no answer. My work varies enough that I often only need to go pull one or two functions from older projects, and they're always specific enough that I always know right where to find them. But, at the same time, most of that is not web work. When doing my web work (in perl, as I do most everything else), I usually copy old modules and tinker with them to add whatever functionality that I need. There are very few modules that I will reuse between unrelated projects without editing.
Actually, in Islam the proper word to use would be 'Bismillah', which basically means "in the name of God". It is used as a subsitute for what would otherwise be a curse word. Many consider it a way to bless the moment in which the exclamation is uttered, and is intrinsically the only word that you could use that wouldn't be vulgar (by virtue of the fact that you are cursing, whatever you say is still a curse, while 'bismillah' is the exception).
Slashdot Mirror
My time frame for comparing the two packages, which I did not mention, was about a month ago. It wasn't that it was difficult to install; it was the configuration after it was installed that felt like I was on a treadmill, I was spending all my time working backwards and fighting with features I didn't need and managing permission settings way beyond the complexity that I required. In trac I was customizing ticket fields and setting up project workflows in a fraction of the time that it had taken me to give up on RT. I don't think I could have accomplished as much as I have done in the past month if I had tried to do so with RT, but this might just be an instance of trac being the right tool for the right job.
When researching a ticket tracking system to implement at my workplace I came with no experience in any non-proprietary system. I compared RT and trac side-by-side and found trac to be much more readable and user-friendly. Even for me, when setting it up, I spent an entire day trying to make heads or tails of the RT interface, while in a day I already had trac up and running and I was showing others how to log in and use it. Now that it is in production, what surprises me the most is the ease with which the non-IT department managers use it for tracking their tickets and project progress.
The irony of the situation is that I do specialize in Perl, which is why I went toward RT first. I assumed it would have been the better choice for making any changes to the underlying system, but in the process of working with trac I've learned Python enough to hack together a number of custom solutions for our needs.
Since I didn't go any further with RT after that first day, I can't say how well that would have worked, but in my case RT did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I implemented trac at my workplace as a change control and task management system. We use it for both internal projects as well as billable work, with a number of custom fields for supporting our quoting system and quality control. The built-in Wiki also doubles as our IT documentation repository, all in one easy to access location.
It is extremely extensible, and anything not readily available can be easily created. It didn't take much time to learn the class and data structures and I've modified existing plugins and written a few of my own to support our needs.
By most definitions, Slashdot is a blog. I would say their ode to /. could be considered very on topic.
I work with a terminal of 120x34 whenever I use a GUI application that supports it. I typically keep my code/comments to 80 characters wide, so I don't irritate anyone else (or myself) using 80x24. I work with a lot of csv and other flat text files, so the extra width helps a lot. It's also useful for displaying things that word wrap, such as the web (via lynx) or irc.
Your trafficking of my ROT key violates my DMCA-protected copyrights. Please accept this as a takedown notice.
Interesting. It seems that F6 gives focus to the toolbar in general, not the address bar specifically. In my configuration I've always had the address bar as the first item. I just switched them to test that theory and it did indeed give focus to the search bar.
As my sibling posts indicated, it is indeed Ctrl-K for the web search. Apparently I decided to ignore that last line on the keyboard shortcuts page.
I love the Ctrl+L shortcut that gives focus to the address bar.
I have yet to see a browser for which F6 does not provide the same functionality. Mozilla's Firefox Keyboard Shortcut page doesn't even mention it. Granted you won't find the 'gg' or 'wiki' pseudo-commands in, say, IE, but F6 still does its job. As for the search bar, I'm not sure if there is a shortcut to get into there directly, but I do know you can tab into it once you have the focus in the address bar. This assumes, probably, that you don't have any other input field between the address and search bars in the toolbar. The Firefox help page does mention that Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down will let you cycle through the search engines, too.
PC Connection has an excellent selection of computers (both desktops and laptops) that are bundled with XP Pro without too much of a price hit. In fact, at a quick glance at their site, I don't see any Vista-loaded systems at all. I have been purchasing from them at work because of this.
Employee was the wrong term. Perhaps "puppet" would be better. Both of my parents are teachers at a public high school, and I don't go a visit to them without hearing them complain about problems at work stemming from legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act. While their paycheck may not come from the federal government, they are still very much at its mercy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating or agreeing with this type of structure. I'm very opposed to the NCLB Act and any other such blanket education laws, and I believe they breach the 10th Amendment. I'm just telling it like it is.
The government is responsible for setting the policy on the response to plagiarism in its own education system. If it's a public school, the GP's mother is a federal employee.
I did find some possibly unintended humor in your comment, though. With an edit war, just as any other war, it is always the victor that defines the facts.
Wouldn't a poor area have a lower adoption rate though? It wouldn't make sense to build infrastructure to a community of 10,000 people where only 1% can afford your service, when you can instead rollout to a community of 1,000 with a 20% signup rate.
Or, more efficiently, press ^w 5 times. If you are fortunate enough to be using the computer right-handed, you can even do it with your free left hand without moving your mouse a pixel. Standard browsing position for me is right hand on mouse and left hand resting near ^w.
I do use the middle finger in the standard position. When I use the mouse I have my hand tilted toward the far side, such that most of the weight is on my pinky and ring finger. My index finger comes close to leaning on the center button and is what I use for middle click and scrolling (when applicable). I pinch the mouse between the tips of my pinky/ring fingers and my thumb when I need to pick the mouse up to reposition. I use a higher-than-normal mouse speed and I only need to move 2" (just measured) to move from one side of the screen to the other, so just about anything I need to do can be accomplished with a few clicks and a twitch or two. I tried using the ring finger for the right click and felt like I was trying to use a gear shift as a mouse. The top of the mouse was more cramped than I would prefer, and I don't have particularly large hands. It did force me to move my whole arm, though, which might be useful for prolonged use. About 70% of the time spent in front of my computer on a given workday is in a terminal with both hands on the keyboard so that might be why I can get away with it.
I am able to use these nice Logitech mice with my right hand and don't have to worry about continually annoying everyone by moving the mouse to the left side and wanting to switch the two buttons (it actually annoys me when other left handed people do it).
That's strange, I learned to use my mouse on the right side but I retained the ability to use it left handed with the default button mapping (left clicking with my middle finger, right clicking with my index) just as fluently. I used to use that in combination with my right hand on the numpad only when gaming for a few years until the WASD controls became a ubiquitous default, and I switched to right handed all the time. That left-handed control remains useful when using the mouse for a few quick clicks from an awkward position on someone else's desk (such as standing behind it).
I have ran Debian amd64 unstable since I built the box in February of last year. The only issue it had was with grub and the drive numbering scheme (using SATA as primary gave issues with the Asus K8V Deluxe SE board, which would have happened regardless of the arch I was using). Other than that, it ran perfectly, and, short of hiccups here and there due to the unstable nature of the distribution, it has continued running well to this day. That is, of course, except for the last few weeks where the box has sat in Windows to feed my World of Warcraft addiction.
On the other hand, I just bought a new dual 64bit Xeon RAID system for work, and I installed a 32bit Debian stable yesterday. Granted it is irrelevant when discussing an amd64 distribution, but even if I had bought an amd64 server (which I wouldn't) I would be using 32bit to maximize stability.
Currently I'm drinking 6 cups of tea a day instead ;)
Good tea, I hope, such as loose stuff from Adagio. (I say this while enjoying some black apricot)
That's 5'. About 1.5 meters. A party sub. Fillings come separately, so everyone can pick their own.
We got half a dozen 5' subs from subway from our FedEx rep. Only thing I saw DHL bring us is a bunch of grief and extra work. Nothing like a free lunch to make sure your clients' managers will fight tooth and nail to keep you on board.
While large chunks of reusable modules can be useful for large projects, efficiency is also key. Simple db functions would probably be in a module that is also referenced by a user account or cart module, and those types of modules would also include many other functions. This can be something as complex as an encryption routine or something as simple as a particularly useful XML-parsing loop. I believe the overlying question is how to maintain a comprehensive reference for useful loops and one-liners, while also keeping a repository of functions and whole modules that need not be used as a whole module (such as user accounts) just to include one item (like encryption support).
To that, I have no answer. My work varies enough that I often only need to go pull one or two functions from older projects, and they're always specific enough that I always know right where to find them. But, at the same time, most of that is not web work. When doing my web work (in perl, as I do most everything else), I usually copy old modules and tinker with them to add whatever functionality that I need. There are very few modules that I will reuse between unrelated projects without editing.
Sutter's Exceptional C++ is similar to the Effective series and is also quite good.
Actually, in Islam the proper word to use would be 'Bismillah', which basically means "in the name of God". It is used as a subsitute for what would otherwise be a curse word. Many consider it a way to bless the moment in which the exclamation is uttered, and is intrinsically the only word that you could use that wouldn't be vulgar (by virtue of the fact that you are cursing, whatever you say is still a curse, while 'bismillah' is the exception).