I'm actually a heavy Eclipse user myself, and I depend on the color support.
What version are you using? If you're still on 2.x you're right -- but the version 3 milestone builds are quite stable (the current one, M7, is what I'm using now and I haven't had any problems yet... though M6 and M5 had some noticeable bugs). They have a new and vastly improved code formatter, too -- you should try it out.
Now that I think about it, I think I started trying out the version 3 builds *because* I needed more control over the colors....
Anyway, in any of the recent builds: In the preferences window, drill down to Java --> Editor, and flip through the tabs. Set the colors here, mostly on the Syntax tab. It'll take you a few minutes to get them tweaked right (there aren't preset color schemes, like "Twilight" in JBuilder), but it's worth the time.
I also noticed that in Windows at least (and I'm guessing other platforms as well) Eclipse 3.0 does pick up the systems colors for shading buttons, menus, etc..
You can also change font sizes, in Preferences under Workbench --> Fonts.
One interesting tidbit -- he mentions a study that found that while monkeys with their eyes sewn shut and untouched monkeys (oh, to be in the control group!) did NOT develop any vision problems, monkeys with their eyes sewn partly shut -- so they could only see dimly -- became myopic.
That seems like a pretty good hint that you might want to take breaks from the monitor. As other posters have noted -- it's a good idea to refocus your eyes on objects at other distances frequently during the day, and this should help avoid the eyestrain (and the other problems you might not notice for a while...)
I'm dealing with more vision problems right now, but I've found that viewing a monitor is MUCH more comfortable if you change the colors of your main tools to use black backgrounds with light text, usually green or yellow.
All good text editors and IDE's let you change the background/text colors. Same with telnet apps, etc.. I spend most of my time on win2K, and use a slightly tweaked version of the "High-Contrast Black" scheme. There are always a few apps that don't conform, but it's easy to switch back and forth, or if you have switchable desktops you can switch over for those few apps that are hard-coded to use black text.
have ev1 customers ended up entering a contract with sco? has ev1's license purchase actually made their customers more likely to be sued?
There are reasons why one might not want to support EV1 now that they've bought licenses from SCO, but they do NOT include "EV1 clients are now more likely to be sued".
SCO is trying to encourage as many large Linux-using companies as possible to purchase licenses. Do you think sueing the companies like EV1, who get suckered into paying up, will help this cause? No, no, no. EV1 is actually right in thinking that they are shielding their customers and themselves from SCO lawsuits.
The trick here is that it seems pretty clear after a bit of research (thank you PJ) that SCO isn't going to prevail in any of these lawsuits, and when companies like EV1 take the easy way out instead of standing up for themselves, the money they give keeps that nasty bloated spider that is SCO from strangling in its own web for yet another month.
SCO will be stopped eventually. But they can be stopped sooner rather than later if we can convince companies in EV1's position to take the honorable path and stop feeding the troll under the bridge.
I'm up for jury duty later this month. Time for some experimentation with the system....
BTW, you're sort of right -- except that if you are smart enough to know what's going on in jury selection it's not terribly hard to either get out, OR get in, unless you have to admit that yes, you do have that doctorate in rocket science.
And, open-source software would be inconsistent because.......?
You mention Apache, MySql, Perl, PHP, and so on, but none of these projects are at risk of a malicious fork the way Java is.
We all know what Microsoft did with Java the first time around -- added in a bunch of MS-only extensions and more subtle incompatibilities, then shipped their version with every version of Windows, and put out an IDE that encouraged the use of their proprietary extensions. They also put a lot of work into making their JVM the fastest one out there, which further encouraged its use (and misuse).
Why in the world wouldn't they do that again, given this golden opportunity? Dual licensing, GPL restrictions, etc., don't help from what I can see.
Okay, under the GPL they would have to distribute it for free -- no problem, that's what they were doing before. Ah, and they'd have to release the source -- again, no problem, since it's all Windows-only extensions that cannot be supported in a cross-platform Java (do you think Sun really wants to be playing catch-up with MS, anyway?).
Java on the server would still be safer than on the client. MS could add in extensions to encourange interaction with.NET and other MS software, but you still have developers who make a choice that's (hopefully) informed about lock-in. But Java on the client would be back under total MS control.
It wouldn't matter if they couldn't call it "Java". It would simply be the same old jview.exe that ran when you hit a JNLP link, applet, or application JAR.
Am I missing something here? I'm not neccessarily against open-sourcing Java (because I'd feel slightly safer, and I think the GUI libs would get a boost), but I think this needs to be addressed first.
...cash will be cheaper. This is normally due to the fees that credit card company charge the store
That's interesting... in the US the retailer *never* charges you for the credit card processing fees he pays. I think it is actually illegal (either that, or part of the standard agreement with the credit card companies). They do sometimes set minimum purchase limits for using a card ($5 or thereabouts), but they never charge you extra.
Quitting is always an option. It probably won't net you the same outcome, but I would never stay at such a blinded company.
It probably won't net you the same *income*, either.
Personally, I would advice against toughing it out for now (but start looking for another job in the meantime). For now, start making lists. Try to build up some valid numbers on what it will cost you and your group to switch over to locked-down Windows computers. Tally up the software that you use constantly (including your shell!) that either has no analog or only a poor substitute in the new environment. Discuss your development processes (now's the time to document, if you haven't), and how they will suffer, and what you will be losing.
Once you've built your case, present it, give your strong recommendation, and wait a while. Don't bitch about the conversion, etc. (or they'll think you're perfectly capable of switching, but you're a whiner), just make sure they know you're concerned about the costs for sensible reasons.
Chances are, they want you to use their standardized XP image because they want to manage everyone's anti-virus software centrally, ease trouble-shooting work for their sys admins, etc.. Maybe you need to firewall off your network segment to keep them happy, and sign a paper guaranteeing that you won't need their help to support your machines.:)
You might gain some sort of an exemption for your group from the corporate standards... though often sense does NOT prevail, and you'll have to bail eventually.
Good luck. [Apologies if this post is confused... I should be sleeping]
You seem to have screwed up your own argument. Here, let me help out.
You might have discussed "fools who thank their technology for limiting their control over the computer" or something along those lines. Then you might have had a leg to stand on, because of course there are trade-offs when you give up explicit control over your pointers, for example (a point that I touched on).
But I'll eat my keyboard if you can find me one programmer who scorns a technology purely because it limits their errors.
Buffer overflows, bad pointers, stack problems...
on
Debugging
·
· Score: 1
Wow, I'm glad I'm coding in Java.
Even when garbage collection and VM-managed pointers meant significantly slower performance (not anymore in most situations), it was worth it.
And I sat down years ago and learned Java threading inside and out, and I always manage thread communication very carefully (which is easy - define your thread boundaries well, and there's not much code at risk)... and voila, no Heisenbugs.
I actually like debugging nowadays. It's like being a storybook detective -- you always get your man.
Um, why not install in peoples cars that have had at least one DUI or DWI or whatever?
No, that would never work, because the drunks would just find a way to disable or trick the thing. The people most affected by this would be the regular, law-abiding folks who are too scared to try disabling it.
And wow, is life going to suck for them.
Think of a family where more than one person shares the same car, i.e., most families. Yeah, I'm gonna want to blow into the same nasty tube as everyone else, including Mom who has a horrible stomach virus at the moment, Grandpa who needs some bridgework done soon because his teeth are kinda disintegrating, and Junior who smokes 3 packs a day of the cheapest cigarettes he can find.
Don't even try to tell me that tube will be nice and pristing, either. Anyone who's ever played a wind instrument knows there's a lot of spit involved. If everyone has their own mouthpiece, does that mean you have to carry it around with you all day? What do you do when it fell out of your pocket into the urinal, but you have to get home somehow?
And good lord, what about rental cars?
Then there are the time issues. 30 seconds before you can start the car seems not too bad on the face of it. Your aren't usually driving accident victims to hospitals, and so on (though of course if you're late for work you're going to be pretty pissed off, just sitting there waiting).
Now change the situation. It's -10 F outside, and you want to start your car to warm it up, then run back inside. That's right, that remote starter you were so thrilled to get for Christmas is useless now.
Okay, now imagine your battery's low, and you can't get it started on the first few tries. If you're really lucky, the flaky power will cause some odd behavior in the breath analyser, too!
Next: what does the thing do when it breaks? When it's molded over from too much spit? Oh, just drive it to a nearby garage. Wait, did I say drive? I meant push. Unless of course it lets you start the car when it malfunctions... in which case I guarantee there are going to be a lot of "malfunctions" that people "didn't notice" so they haven't had their unit fixed.
</sarcasticRant>
I applaud the sentiment -- drunk driving is a serious problem and needs continuing efforts to stop it -- but this seriously affects the quality of life for NON-offenders without even significantly helping the problem.
Great advice. Look at it this way -- one of the main things interviewers want to know is how you will react to adversity.
If you whine about the successive layoffs (or lie about them, or rapidly change the subject), they're going to have a pretty clear picture of what you'll do when your project hits a big snag, or the customer comes back with last minute requirements: you're going to whine to everyone (even people you don't know, apparently) and drag down the morale of your team instead of doing anything useful. I guarantee this will leave a bad taste in their mouths after the interview.
Don't get tripped up because it's not an on-the-job problem. This is just as much an opportunity to prove yourself and how you respond to serious problems (the worse the better, to some extent). Take a second to discuss what happened, and what you've been doing to get back into the game. If you were creative, or if you used your downtime to learn something new, all the better. Maybe you got dropped because you were too much of a one-trick pony... so you learned a new language, and wrote a mini webserver to practice. Tell them your plan (and make sure you've put a lot of thought into it). Be frank, crisp, logical, and upbeat.
If you had to take some strange jobs to keep food on the table, that's okay. If you're uncomfortable about it, they will be too... but if you aren't, they'll probably just like you better for being pragmatic.
[And of course, if you've been sitting there in a funk for 6 months, leeching off your girlfriend and watching TV, now's the time to move your ass, kiddo.]
There was Mr. Bunny's Big Cup 'O Java, too, which I ran across when a guy I worked with got a pre-publication review copy.
It was... entertaining, from what I recall, but I wouldn't recommend it for learning Java (well, it's out of date now anyway). But the main problem was that the book often sacrificed precision and accuracy for humor, and would have led to some strange misconceptions about Java, for a beginner reading it.
This book looks interesting, though I only skimmed the beginning (gotta get back to work) -- I'd be interested to hear a review from someone who really knows Ruby. Would it really be useful for someone learning the language, or is it better for getting people interested (...and convincing them to find a book with a more direct approach to actually learn the practical stuff)?
Absolutely, absolutely. It is 100x better to point out the problem yourself and take credit (then suggest fixes and how to prevent it next time!) than to cover it up or blame it on someone else and find it in your lap again a few days later. The first can get you a raise and more trust (out of your ERROR, remember?) and the second can get you fired.
Also, if you are frank about your weaknesses (like a seeming inability to get in before 9am), if they are getting to be a problem your boss can comfortably talk to you about that instead of just blowing up and firing you in a single confrontation.
"I know you're trying to cut down on the late-night hacking and get in early... [response: sheepish grin] but you have to try harder, because our biggest customer was upset that you weren't available this morning." Right. Good warning. Set an alarm so you know when it's time to go to bed.
I've had a lot of good luck with all of these approaches, though I had one screw-up that was entertaining in retrospect.... I was in a conference call with our head honchos and those from an Indian tech firm to which we were considering outsourcing a massive and not-yet-fully-defined project. They asked me, repeatedly, for an estimate of how long development should take. Of course, I had no way of saying, since we hadn't even started requirements gathering.... and I eventually (unthinkingly) used the choice phrase "pull a number out of my ass" (since of course that's what I'd be doing).
Boom. Full stop. After a painful silence, the conversation managed to recover, and I was reminded yet again of how it is that "honesty" is only one part of the equation. "Phrasing" and tact are just as important and, um, very context-sensitive.
Well, the fact that India was an English colony for a long time has something to do with it.
That's a great point. I'd say the single largest reason for English being so widespread was the massive reach of the British Empire. The people they conquered and colonized, of course, but also the people they did commerce with.
And the effect spreads -- the U.S. is the obvious example of a colony that broke off from Britain, but became a massive economic force using the English language.
a Hindi and an Urdu speaker can understand each others language as well as an Englishman can understand American English.
Not quite that much, but definitely on the level of colloquial exchanges you're right. On abstract topics, talking politics and other more "elite" subjects, they diverge enough that the speakers often won't be able to understand (though the grammar stays the same). And the different script *does* make a difference when you're trying to do any kind of business with anyone beyond "I'll take two of those".
Either way, though, there are plenty of Indian languages that are completely different from each other. My wife speaks Tamil, which is great in Tamil Nadu or thereabouts, but no help at all when we're in the north of India anywhere, since neither of us knows more than a few scraps of Hindi.
Guess what we spoke? Yep, English. There seemed to me to be a greater percentage of people in India who spoke English than I remember running into in Europe, actually.
Which in a way is weird (to argue against my own point above) because I think Hindi is required in schools in most of the Indian states, even though the "home" language is often something else, PLUS the attraction of the Hindi Bollywood movies is huge... so in general, an Indian trying to talk to another Indian would still have Hindi in common.
I'm thinking of the transitive verb (it is slang, I guess), as in "Come on, quit sandbagging! You aren't even trying!"
It's when you do something (i.e., running a race) badly on purpose, often to trick your competitors into overconfidence (or just to get out of working hard).
From the article: The constant security-related problems associated with Microsoft's products are due to its fundamental platform architecture. Java technology, in contrast, enjoys exceptional immunity to virusesbecause of its sandbag architecture.
Clearly, she's suggesting that Java is "sandbagging" (moving intentionally and painfully slowly) as a means to escape viruses, which require fast processing to get their bulk mailing done.
I suppose it's effective, after all, but this is by no means a real compliment! Some programmers may desire the levels of performance that a less "secure" platform may offer!
["Sandbag, sandbox - what's the difference? Post the damned article!" -java.sun.com editor]
It would have been helpful if you'd mentioned the language you're using, and the types of applications (since of course both of those make a huge difference).
It's a collection of documentation and applications using Struts that are really "done right" -- with documentation, sensible and scalable design, fully implemented testing (unit level AND on the HTTP level). I'm currently roaming through the AppFuse source in there -- it's basically designed to give you a complete setup to start building your app on, with common functions already built-in.
From the site: AppFuse An application for starting your Struts-based applications. Checkout from CVS and execute "ant -Dapp.name=yourApp -Ddb.name=database" to instantly be up and running with a Tomcat/MySQL app. Uses Ant, XDoclet, Hibernate, JUnit, Cactus, StrutsTestCase, Canoo's WebTest, Struts Menu, Display Tag Library, JSTL and Struts (including Validator and Tiles). Features include CMA, Remember Me, Self Registration, Password Hint. The fuse to start your apps.
E.g., "unidirectional" meetings. I've been in meetings where only the boss talked for 2 hours straight.
I'm with you 100% on this one. I'm pretty lucky in that in my current position, my opinion actually counts for quite a lot with the higher-ups, so I've repeatedly been able to bow out of meetings that I felt weren't worth my time.
I also explicitly try to make it a normal option for people to leave meetings when the topic is no longer relevant to them. I've been in a lot of meetings where we conference someone in so they can explain the details of a process in their domain, or a program they wrote, etc. -- and I often make a point of letting them know when we got the info we needed and they don't need to keep waiting on the line. Why? Their time is valuable. I want people to understand that mine is, too. Do unto others, and so on. I'll drop out personally if the meeting moves on to other topics, or devolves into discussions of details in systems I don't work on. "You guys don't need me for this part, right? Drop me an email with the final decision."
It's worked well for me, and without (I hope) ruffling any feathers... though of course this isn't possible in all environments.
Wonderful parent post, though I'm going to argue for a different alternative to the big hopeless meeting.
Sure, you could argue that we could have cleared the same question by email instead of having a two-hour meeting, but still.
It depends on who you're working with, obviously, but I've found that often a meeting is a MUCH faster way to resolve something than email. An remotely complicated issue can be better figured out face to face.
People often don't realize their faulty assumptions, and will write out a whole email based on that one flawed idea -- and once they've spent that much time working out a solution, it's damned hard to rewind them all the way back to the beginning, ESPECIALLY in an email where you have to walk on eggshells to avoid insulting people (and you're going *nowhere* after that happens).
My usual answer is the "unofficial" meeting, where no invitations are sent and max 3 people are involved. Then as soon as the invalid assumptions get trotted out, I can offer up the confused-but-trusting look and tactfully sort that out before we go on. And I can MOVE ON as soon as I see that we're all on the same page again, which is also impossible via email.
I'm with you all about larger meetings... most meetings with more than 4-5 people are doomed unless the format is really locked down and there's someone running the thing who's really on-track and not afraid to shut down the jokers, the random-question-generators, the class-participators, the eternally-befogged, the story-tellers, the tangent-surfers, the argument-incitors, the pickers-of-nits, and all the other highly-valued team members that can't be left out because they're, well, on the team. Unfortunately, that's a rare occurance indeed.
I was travelling around northern India from late December to mid-January of this year, so I can comment on the cost of living expenses.
Comment: yeah, it's pretty damned cheap. Big stores and most restaurants have fixed prices, but you are supposed to bargain for most things, including taxis and even room prices at some hotels. So you get in the habit, but every once in a while you start to feel like an ass arguing over pennies when you're paying prices that low. Even if you don't bargain at all (and pay up to 3x or 4x the "real" price), it's *still* cheap. I got into the habit of paying bicycle rickshaw drivers *more* than they asked for just because I could bear paying some guy 50 cents for busting his ass dragging us all the way across town.
Mind you, I did get "ripped off" a lot because I was an American tourist, but still...
When we got to Delhi it was colder than we'd expected, so I bought a thick knit coat for 250 rupees ($5.50) and had it altered to fit me better for another 50 rupees (a little over a buck). I didn't even argue on the price for the alterations -- I was so suprised how cheap it was -- so I'm sure the real price was more like 20 rupees, if that.
Everything with a large labor component, especially, is on a massively different scale from the U.S. My wife and I stayed in a hotel in Jaipur with attractive, well-maintained rooms cleaned daily, laundry service, available internet-connected computers, etc. etc. for Rs. 750 ($17) a night. Fire-eating and Rajasthani dance exhibition in hotel courtyard included. We stayed in another, less-nice but still clean hotel (with a magnificently friendly and helpful proprietor) in Delhi for Rs. 300 ($7) a night. We ate in some pretty posh restaurants and had final bills of about 1/10th what they would be for similar food/service/atmosphere in the States (well, the atmosphere of "terrace next to palace, on water's edge" isn't available, but you know what I mean).
Jewelry, artwork (like the miniature paintings Udaipur is famous for), crafts, etc. etc. are also amazingly cheap. When I was last in India in 1999 I bought a beautiful, double-gourd sitar with a hard case for about $100, and have seen similar instruments selling in the U.S. for $2000 and up.
I hope this gives you all some perspective on cost of living. I'm sure it's rising in some parts of India (and it *will* obviously rise in the real tech centers), but it's got a long way to go.
I understand why they'd want to disable that format... but it is a standard, after all -- why not just pop up a warning showing the site you're really going to?
I missed posting on version one of this story (doing work... frustrating how that gets in the way) so I'm posting my prior art example here.
My personal email address for a long time has been with MailBank.com (now called NetIdentity.com). This is how their ENTIRE BUSINESS has been working since 1996: you pay them (yearly) to get email/web addresses using your last name; they own domains like smith.net, and they give you (supposing your name is bubba):
bubba@smith.net
http://bubba.smith.net
Again, the operative year is 1996 (I got my email from them in 97 or 98).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually a heavy Eclipse user myself, and I depend on the color support.
What version are you using? If you're still on 2.x you're right -- but the version 3 milestone builds are quite stable (the current one, M7, is what I'm using now and I haven't had any problems yet... though M6 and M5 had some noticeable bugs). They have a new and vastly improved code formatter, too -- you should try it out.
Now that I think about it, I think I started trying out the version 3 builds *because* I needed more control over the colors....
Anyway, in any of the recent builds:
In the preferences window, drill down to Java --> Editor, and flip through the tabs. Set the colors here, mostly on the Syntax tab. It'll take you a few minutes to get them tweaked right (there aren't preset color schemes, like "Twilight" in JBuilder), but it's worth the time.
I also noticed that in Windows at least (and I'm guessing other platforms as well) Eclipse 3.0 does pick up the systems colors for shading buttons, menus, etc..
You can also change font sizes, in Preferences under Workbench --> Fonts.
The Straight Dope covered this subject in an interesting (but not completely conclusive) article.
One interesting tidbit -- he mentions a study that found that while monkeys with their eyes sewn shut and untouched monkeys (oh, to be in the control group!) did NOT develop any vision problems, monkeys with their eyes sewn partly shut -- so they could only see dimly -- became myopic.
That seems like a pretty good hint that you might want to take breaks from the monitor. As other posters have noted -- it's a good idea to refocus your eyes on objects at other distances frequently during the day, and this should help avoid the eyestrain (and the other problems you might not notice for a while...)
I'm dealing with more vision problems right now, but I've found that viewing a monitor is MUCH more comfortable if you change the colors of your main tools to use black backgrounds with light text, usually green or yellow.
All good text editors and IDE's let you change the background/text colors. Same with telnet apps, etc.. I spend most of my time on win2K, and use a slightly tweaked version of the "High-Contrast Black" scheme. There are always a few apps that don't conform, but it's easy to switch back and forth, or if you have switchable desktops you can switch over for those few apps that are hard-coded to use black text.
have ev1 customers ended up entering a contract with sco? has ev1's license purchase actually made their customers more likely to be sued?
There are reasons why one might not want to support EV1 now that they've bought licenses from SCO, but they do NOT include "EV1 clients are now more likely to be sued".
SCO is trying to encourage as many large Linux-using companies as possible to purchase licenses. Do you think sueing the companies like EV1, who get suckered into paying up, will help this cause? No, no, no. EV1 is actually right in thinking that they are shielding their customers and themselves from SCO lawsuits.
The trick here is that it seems pretty clear after a bit of research (thank you PJ) that SCO isn't going to prevail in any of these lawsuits, and when companies like EV1 take the easy way out instead of standing up for themselves, the money they give keeps that nasty bloated spider that is SCO from strangling in its own web for yet another month.
SCO will be stopped eventually. But they can be stopped sooner rather than later if we can convince companies in EV1's position to take the honorable path and stop feeding the troll under the bridge.
I'm up for jury duty later this month.
Time for some experimentation with the system....
BTW, you're sort of right -- except that if you are smart enough to know what's going on in jury selection it's not terribly hard to either get out, OR get in, unless you have to admit that yes, you do have that doctorate in rocket science.
And, open-source software would be inconsistent because.......?
.NET and other MS software, but you still have developers who make a choice that's (hopefully) informed about lock-in. But Java on the client would be back under total MS control.
You mention Apache, MySql, Perl, PHP, and so on, but none of these projects are at risk of a malicious fork the way Java is.
We all know what Microsoft did with Java the first time around -- added in a bunch of MS-only extensions and more subtle incompatibilities, then shipped their version with every version of Windows, and put out an IDE that encouraged the use of their proprietary extensions. They also put a lot of work into making their JVM the fastest one out there, which further encouraged its use (and misuse).
Why in the world wouldn't they do that again, given this golden opportunity? Dual licensing, GPL restrictions, etc., don't help from what I can see.
Okay, under the GPL they would have to distribute it for free -- no problem, that's what they were doing before. Ah, and they'd have to release the source -- again, no problem, since it's all Windows-only extensions that cannot be supported in a cross-platform Java (do you think Sun really wants to be playing catch-up with MS, anyway?).
Java on the server would still be safer than on the client. MS could add in extensions to encourange interaction with
It wouldn't matter if they couldn't call it "Java". It would simply be the same old jview.exe that ran when you hit a JNLP link, applet, or application JAR.
Am I missing something here? I'm not neccessarily against open-sourcing Java (because I'd feel slightly safer, and I think the GUI libs would get a boost), but I think this needs to be addressed first.
...cash will be cheaper. This is normally due to the fees that credit card company charge the store
That's interesting... in the US the retailer *never* charges you for the credit card processing fees he pays. I think it is actually illegal (either that, or part of the standard agreement with the credit card companies). They do sometimes set minimum purchase limits for using a card ($5 or thereabouts), but they never charge you extra.
Quitting is always an option. It probably won't net you the same outcome, but I would never stay at such a blinded company.
:)
It probably won't net you the same *income*, either.
Personally, I would advice against toughing it out for now (but start looking for another job in the meantime). For now, start making lists. Try to build up some valid numbers on what it will cost you and your group to switch over to locked-down Windows computers. Tally up the software that you use constantly (including your shell!) that either has no analog or only a poor substitute in the new environment. Discuss your development processes (now's the time to document, if you haven't), and how they will suffer, and what you will be losing.
Once you've built your case, present it, give your strong recommendation, and wait a while. Don't bitch about the conversion, etc. (or they'll think you're perfectly capable of switching, but you're a whiner), just make sure they know you're concerned about the costs for sensible reasons.
Chances are, they want you to use their standardized XP image because they want to manage everyone's anti-virus software centrally, ease trouble-shooting work for their sys admins, etc.. Maybe you need to firewall off your network segment to keep them happy, and sign a paper guaranteeing that you won't need their help to support your machines.
You might gain some sort of an exemption for your group from the corporate standards... though often sense does NOT prevail, and you'll have to bail eventually.
Good luck. [Apologies if this post is confused... I should be sleeping]
You seem to have screwed up your own argument. Here, let me help out.
You might have discussed "fools who thank their technology for limiting their control over the computer" or something along those lines. Then you might have had a leg to stand on, because of course there are trade-offs when you give up explicit control over your pointers, for example (a point that I touched on).
But I'll eat my keyboard if you can find me one programmer who scorns a technology purely because it limits their errors.
Wow, I'm glad I'm coding in Java.
Even when garbage collection and VM-managed pointers meant significantly slower performance (not anymore in most situations), it was worth it.
And I sat down years ago and learned Java threading inside and out, and I always manage thread communication very carefully (which is easy - define your thread boundaries well, and there's not much code at risk)... and voila, no Heisenbugs.
I actually like debugging nowadays. It's like being a storybook detective -- you always get your man.
Um, why not install in peoples cars that have had at least one DUI or DWI or whatever?
No, that would never work, because the drunks would just find a way to disable or trick the thing. The people most affected by this would be the regular, law-abiding folks who are too scared to try disabling it.
And wow, is life going to suck for them.
Think of a family where more than one person shares the same car, i.e., most families. Yeah, I'm gonna want to blow into the same nasty tube as everyone else, including Mom who has a horrible stomach virus at the moment, Grandpa who needs some bridgework done soon because his teeth are kinda disintegrating, and Junior who smokes 3 packs a day of the cheapest cigarettes he can find.
Don't even try to tell me that tube will be nice and pristing, either. Anyone who's ever played a wind instrument knows there's a lot of spit involved. If everyone has their own mouthpiece, does that mean you have to carry it around with you all day? What do you do when it fell out of your pocket into the urinal, but you have to get home somehow?
And good lord, what about rental cars?
Then there are the time issues. 30 seconds before you can start the car seems not too bad on the face of it. Your aren't usually driving accident victims to hospitals, and so on (though of course if you're late for work you're going to be pretty pissed off, just sitting there waiting).
Now change the situation. It's -10 F outside, and you want to start your car to warm it up, then run back inside. That's right, that remote starter you were so thrilled to get for Christmas is useless now.
Okay, now imagine your battery's low, and you can't get it started on the first few tries. If you're really lucky, the flaky power will cause some odd behavior in the breath analyser, too!
Next: what does the thing do when it breaks? When it's molded over from too much spit? Oh, just drive it to a nearby garage. Wait, did I say drive? I meant push. Unless of course it lets you start the car when it malfunctions... in which case I guarantee there are going to be a lot of "malfunctions" that people "didn't notice" so they haven't had their unit fixed.
</sarcasticRant>
I applaud the sentiment -- drunk driving is a serious problem and needs continuing efforts to stop it -- but this seriously affects the quality of life for NON-offenders without even significantly helping the problem.
Don't whine. Don't Whine. DON"T WHINE!
Great advice. Look at it this way -- one of the main things interviewers want to know is how you will react to adversity.
If you whine about the successive layoffs (or lie about them, or rapidly change the subject), they're going to have a pretty clear picture of what you'll do when your project hits a big snag, or the customer comes back with last minute requirements: you're going to whine to everyone (even people you don't know, apparently) and drag down the morale of your team instead of doing anything useful. I guarantee this will leave a bad taste in their mouths after the interview.
Don't get tripped up because it's not an on-the-job problem. This is just as much an opportunity to prove yourself and how you respond to serious problems (the worse the better, to some extent). Take a second to discuss what happened, and what you've been doing to get back into the game. If you were creative, or if you used your downtime to learn something new, all the better. Maybe you got dropped because you were too much of a one-trick pony... so you learned a new language, and wrote a mini webserver to practice. Tell them your plan (and make sure you've put a lot of thought into it). Be frank, crisp, logical, and upbeat.
If you had to take some strange jobs to keep food on the table, that's okay. If you're uncomfortable about it, they will be too... but if you aren't, they'll probably just like you better for being pragmatic.
[And of course, if you've been sitting there in a funk for 6 months, leeching off your girlfriend and watching TV, now's the time to move your ass, kiddo.]
There was Mr. Bunny's Big Cup 'O Java, too, which I ran across when a guy I worked with got a pre-publication review copy.
It was... entertaining, from what I recall, but I wouldn't recommend it for learning Java (well, it's out of date now anyway). But the main problem was that the book often sacrificed precision and accuracy for humor, and would have led to some strange misconceptions about Java, for a beginner reading it.
This book looks interesting, though I only skimmed the beginning (gotta get back to work) -- I'd be interested to hear a review from someone who really knows Ruby. Would it really be useful for someone learning the language, or is it better for getting people interested (...and convincing them to find a book with a more direct approach to actually learn the practical stuff)?
Here's the Mr. Bunny home page, anyway.
Absolutely, absolutely. It is 100x better to point out the problem yourself and take credit (then suggest fixes and how to prevent it next time!) than to cover it up or blame it on someone else and find it in your lap again a few days later. The first can get you a raise and more trust (out of your ERROR, remember?) and the second can get you fired.
Also, if you are frank about your weaknesses (like a seeming inability to get in before 9am), if they are getting to be a problem your boss can comfortably talk to you about that instead of just blowing up and firing you in a single confrontation.
"I know you're trying to cut down on the late-night hacking and get in early... [response: sheepish grin] but you have to try harder, because our biggest customer was upset that you weren't available this morning." Right. Good warning. Set an alarm so you know when it's time to go to bed.
I've had a lot of good luck with all of these approaches, though I had one screw-up that was entertaining in retrospect.... I was in a conference call with our head honchos and those from an Indian tech firm to which we were considering outsourcing a massive and not-yet-fully-defined project. They asked me, repeatedly, for an estimate of how long development should take. Of course, I had no way of saying, since we hadn't even started requirements gathering.... and I eventually (unthinkingly) used the choice phrase "pull a number out of my ass" (since of course that's what I'd be doing).
Boom. Full stop. After a painful silence, the conversation managed to recover, and I was reminded yet again of how it is that "honesty" is only one part of the equation. "Phrasing" and tact are just as important and, um, very context-sensitive.
Well, the fact that India was an English colony for a long time has something to do with it.
That's a great point. I'd say the single largest reason for English being so widespread was the massive reach of the British Empire. The people they conquered and colonized, of course, but also the people they did commerce with.
And the effect spreads -- the U.S. is the obvious example of a colony that broke off from Britain, but became a massive economic force using the English language.
a Hindi and an Urdu speaker can understand each others language as well as an Englishman can understand American English.
Not quite that much, but definitely on the level of colloquial exchanges you're right. On abstract topics, talking politics and other more "elite" subjects, they diverge enough that the speakers often won't be able to understand (though the grammar stays the same). And the different script *does* make a difference when you're trying to do any kind of business with anyone beyond "I'll take two of those".
Either way, though, there are plenty of Indian languages that are completely different from each other. My wife speaks Tamil, which is great in Tamil Nadu or thereabouts, but no help at all when we're in the north of India anywhere, since neither of us knows more than a few scraps of Hindi.
Guess what we spoke? Yep, English. There seemed to me to be a greater percentage of people in India who spoke English than I remember running into in Europe, actually.
Which in a way is weird (to argue against my own point above) because I think Hindi is required in schools in most of the Indian states, even though the "home" language is often something else, PLUS the attraction of the Hindi Bollywood movies is huge... so in general, an Indian trying to talk to another Indian would still have Hindi in common.
I'm thinking of the transitive verb (it is slang, I guess), as in "Come on, quit sandbagging! You aren't even trying!"
It's when you do something (i.e., running a race) badly on purpose, often to trick your competitors into overconfidence (or just to get out of working hard).
From the article:
The constant security-related problems associated with Microsoft's products are due to its fundamental platform architecture. Java technology, in contrast, enjoys exceptional immunity to viruses because of its sandbag architecture.
Clearly, she's suggesting that Java is "sandbagging" (moving intentionally and painfully slowly) as a means to escape viruses, which require fast processing to get their bulk mailing done.
I suppose it's effective, after all, but this is by no means a real compliment! Some programmers may desire the levels of performance that a less "secure" platform may offer!
["Sandbag, sandbox - what's the difference? Post the damned article!" -java.sun.com editor]
It would have been helpful if you'd mentioned the language you're using, and the types of applications (since of course both of those make a huge difference).
If you're using Java for web development, I'd suggest reviewing the Struts Applications Project on SourceForge.
It's a collection of documentation and applications using Struts that are really "done right" -- with documentation, sensible and scalable design, fully implemented testing (unit level AND on the HTTP level). I'm currently roaming through the AppFuse source in there -- it's basically designed to give you a complete setup to start building your app on, with common functions already built-in.
From the site:
AppFuse
An application for starting your Struts-based applications. Checkout from CVS and execute "ant -Dapp.name=yourApp -Ddb.name=database" to instantly be up and running with a Tomcat/MySQL app. Uses Ant, XDoclet, Hibernate, JUnit, Cactus, StrutsTestCase, Canoo's WebTest, Struts Menu, Display Tag Library, JSTL and Struts (including Validator and Tiles). Features include CMA, Remember Me, Self Registration, Password Hint. The fuse to start your apps.
E.g., "unidirectional" meetings. I've been in meetings where only the boss talked for 2 hours straight.
I'm with you 100% on this one. I'm pretty lucky in that in my current position, my opinion actually counts for quite a lot with the higher-ups, so I've repeatedly been able to bow out of meetings that I felt weren't worth my time.
I also explicitly try to make it a normal option for people to leave meetings when the topic is no longer relevant to them. I've been in a lot of meetings where we conference someone in so they can explain the details of a process in their domain, or a program they wrote, etc. -- and I often make a point of letting them know when we got the info we needed and they don't need to keep waiting on the line. Why? Their time is valuable. I want people to understand that mine is, too. Do unto others, and so on. I'll drop out personally if the meeting moves on to other topics, or devolves into discussions of details in systems I don't work on. "You guys don't need me for this part, right? Drop me an email with the final decision."
It's worked well for me, and without (I hope) ruffling any feathers... though of course this isn't possible in all environments.
Wonderful parent post, though I'm going to argue for a different alternative to the big hopeless meeting.
Sure, you could argue that we could have cleared the same question by email instead of having a two-hour meeting, but still.
It depends on who you're working with, obviously, but I've found that often a meeting is a MUCH faster way to resolve something than email. An remotely complicated issue can be better figured out face to face.
People often don't realize their faulty assumptions, and will write out a whole email based on that one flawed idea -- and once they've spent that much time working out a solution, it's damned hard to rewind them all the way back to the beginning, ESPECIALLY in an email where you have to walk on eggshells to avoid insulting people (and you're going *nowhere* after that happens).
My usual answer is the "unofficial" meeting, where no invitations are sent and max 3 people are involved. Then as soon as the invalid assumptions get trotted out, I can offer up the confused-but-trusting look and tactfully sort that out before we go on. And I can MOVE ON as soon as I see that we're all on the same page again, which is also impossible via email.
I'm with you all about larger meetings... most meetings with more than 4-5 people are doomed unless the format is really locked down and there's someone running the thing who's really on-track and not afraid to shut down the jokers, the random-question-generators, the class-participators, the eternally-befogged, the story-tellers, the tangent-surfers, the argument-incitors, the pickers-of-nits, and all the other highly-valued team members that can't be left out because they're, well, on the team. Unfortunately, that's a rare occurance indeed.
Think legimate mailing lists.
Any solution to stop spam must be designed to ALLOW emails that are closest to spam, i.e., solicited bulk email.
It's not hard to block everything from your inbox except message from your friends. But that's not the real problem now, is it?
I was travelling around northern India from late December to mid-January of this year, so I can comment on the cost of living expenses.
Comment: yeah, it's pretty damned cheap. Big stores and most restaurants have fixed prices, but you are supposed to bargain for most things, including taxis and even room prices at some hotels. So you get in the habit, but every once in a while you start to feel like an ass arguing over pennies when you're paying prices that low. Even if you don't bargain at all (and pay up to 3x or 4x the "real" price), it's *still* cheap. I got into the habit of paying bicycle rickshaw drivers *more* than they asked for just because I could bear paying some guy 50 cents for busting his ass dragging us all the way across town.
Mind you, I did get "ripped off" a lot because I was an American tourist, but still...
When we got to Delhi it was colder than we'd expected, so I bought a thick knit coat for 250 rupees ($5.50) and had it altered to fit me better for another 50 rupees (a little over a buck). I didn't even argue on the price for the alterations -- I was so suprised how cheap it was -- so I'm sure the real price was more like 20 rupees, if that.
Everything with a large labor component, especially, is on a massively different scale from the U.S. My wife and I stayed in a hotel in Jaipur with attractive, well-maintained rooms cleaned daily, laundry service, available internet-connected computers, etc. etc. for Rs. 750 ($17) a night. Fire-eating and Rajasthani dance exhibition in hotel courtyard included. We stayed in another, less-nice but still clean hotel (with a magnificently friendly and helpful proprietor) in Delhi for Rs. 300 ($7) a night. We ate in some pretty posh restaurants and had final bills of about 1/10th what they would be for similar food/service/atmosphere in the States (well, the atmosphere of "terrace next to palace, on water's edge" isn't available, but you know what I mean).
Jewelry, artwork (like the miniature paintings Udaipur is famous for), crafts, etc. etc. are also amazingly cheap. When I was last in India in 1999 I bought a beautiful, double-gourd sitar with a hard case for about $100, and have seen similar instruments selling in the U.S. for $2000 and up.
I hope this gives you all some perspective on cost of living. I'm sure it's rising in some parts of India (and it *will* obviously rise in the real tech centers), but it's got a long way to go.
I understand why they'd want to disable that format... but it is a standard, after all -- why not just pop up a warning showing the site you're really going to?
I missed posting on version one of this story (doing work... frustrating how that gets in the way) so I'm posting my prior art example here.
My personal email address for a long time has been with MailBank.com (now called NetIdentity.com). This is how their ENTIRE BUSINESS has been working since 1996: you pay them (yearly) to get email/web addresses using your last name; they own domains like smith.net, and they give you (supposing your name is bubba):
bubba@smith.net
http://bubba.smith.net
Again, the operative year is 1996 (I got my email from them in 97 or 98).