Don't worry about insulting or correcting me. I am one of the rare people who assume criticism is meant to be constructive.
I am prideful. I have great pride in my abilities. I am rarely called modest (except as a joke.)
We both used the first definitions for modesty and modest. Other definitions are about not calling attention to oneself, conforming, and being inoffensive. The usual connotations for "modest" imply an element of humbleness. Being humble and being a top freelance consultant is very difficult.
For a project last year, I played the confident consultant very well during the interview process. When I arrived at the client, I toned it down, since I needed to be part of the team to accomplish the goals I was set. While I was obviously hired to be the expert that would resolve all of the difficult problems, I did not feel I needed to shove it down their throats that my presence indicated they were lacking.
On the second day, the manager called the consulting company with doubts about my abilities. They said that I did not demonstrate the same confidence on-site that I had demonstrated on the phone. In the two days it took for the phone calls to resolve, I had already resolved all of the major issues. The client was satisfied, but the consulting company ORDERED me to return to the extremely confident persona I use for sales.
I do not know if there is a good way to resolve the conflict between needing to impress clients with my abilities and showing the modesty necessary to integrate well into an existing team. It helps when I am hired without the expectation of arrogance. Consulting companies sometimes build me up enough that I do not feel the need to enhance my reputation. But many clients insist on talking to me before they hire me, and they get the sales persona. It is much easier when a client asks for me to return for another engagement, since my abilities are already proven and I can just do the job.
Appearances are everything. Is there a way to demonstrate extreme confidence without giving an impression of arrogance? This might be a good AskSlashdot question.
I cannot envision how it could work without unbalancing the Segway, but the concept of having someone strapped in and at the mercy of the driver in such an unstable vehicle is quite humorous.
--- Could they find some way to add a tow hitch that does not interfere with the Segway's operation? Since the base rotates forward and back, maybe they could make the tow truck have an open channel so the hitch could move up and down.
The Segway has a top speed of 12 mph. Do they have the power to pull anything? If the speed is being limited by the controls, which seems possible since the top speed is determined by which key is used, then maybe the power is already there. But that leaves the possibility of mods that allow much faster movement. There are some people who would be zipping around at 40 mph until they damaged themselves, bystanders, or property.
I cannot imagine to would be a comfortable ride for anybody being pulled on a stretcher on the tow truck. And if it slows the Segway, then having four people run with the stretcher would be both faster and more comfortable.
--- I did think of one use for Segways: parking enforcement. Zip around putting parking tickets on cars. It is unlikely that anyone would steal one with police markings.
$40 per hour is definitely closer to renting a jetski for amusement than a car for travel. Do these things have a purpose?
I did see one used recently. A security guard at Epcot at Disneyworld was using it between the Innovations buildings, never moving more than 30 feet at a time. He was asked to take a photo, and took the picture without getting off of it. He was probably under orders to stay on it.
I thought it was a great idea for security to be able to move fast. But they already have golf carts, which have the additional ability of transporting unwell customers and emergency equipment.
the meaning of modesty is not "knowing one's abilities" but is in fact "freedom from conceit or vanity". Conceit is "excessive appreciation of one's own worth or virtue" and vanity is "inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance".
Equate "abilities", "worth", "virtues", and "appearance" since we are using them to mean "qualities" of a person. "Oneself" is referring to those qualities directly.
So "modesty" is: freedom from excessive OR inflated appreciation OR pride of/in one's (your own) qualities (abilities, worth,...)
Am I stretching anything yet?
To decide if someone has modesty, you need to compare their opinion of themself with their qualities. Is their opinion excessive or inflated? How can you decide if you do not know their abilities?
A man who can lift 20 pounds is modest when he says he can lift 20 pounds. He is immodest if he says he can lift 100 pounds.
A man who can lift 100 pounds is modest when he says he can lift 100 pounds. The first man may hear the claim as bragging since it is outside his own abilities. The second man knows his abilities, is not inflating them, and may drop a 100 pound rock on the first man as proof if the first man continues to annoy him.
--- I am confident in my abilities. I have proven them repeatedly in the corporate world. I do not inflate my worth, because I often have to deliver. Therefore I am modest.
I have noticed that I work very well with other confident people. I become annoyed with people who state they can do things and cannot deliver. And people who are not happy with their own abilities often resent mine. I believe that if they can only move 20 pound rocks, they should be happy about that, and be happy the second man is around when they need a 100 pound rock moved.
Also, the first man may have abilities that the second man does not. - I currently work with MSAccess programmers. I have little ability with that product. I rely on them, and I do not resent their abilities. I even learn from them. - I just had new windows installed. (The physical kind, not the MS software.) The installer did a great job. I do not resent his abilities. I watched what he did, and learned that I never want to install windows. - My car needs maintenance. While I rebuilt an engine many years ago, I barely recognize that the thing under the hood of my current car has any relation to what I know as an engine. I am very happy that the dealership has people with the ability to care for it. I do not resent them.
When it comes to my specialty, I am much better than them. The MSAccess programmers are happy I am available to handle the integration with the front-end systems. The others do not care that I know how to boot a computer. None of them resent me for my abilities.
Be happy with who you are. If you find someonne whose states their abilities exceed yours, do not try to deflate them; try to learn from them. If they are immodest, you will know not to give them responsibilities they cannot handle. If their opinion was accurate, then you will improve yourself.
WARNING: This is a response to a troll and should be ignored.
You are welcome. Even posts that you have difficulty understanding can bring joy.
On relevancy: Vocal slashdotters claim to have no TV, but many slashdotters like those shows. I watch those shows with friends; I do not watch them at home. The point was to include myself in the group known as slashdotters.
On conclusions: Starting a task does not imply completing it. This was especially obvious since the point of the post was that the task was interrupted.
On responding on-topic: "had sex by this time" referred to "before his balls dropped".
On learning disabilities: I GAVE you the definition for modesty; why are you still using it wrong?
On attractiveness: Having had sex at least once is only considered bragging when you are in an age group where this accomplishment is rare. Wait until you are older, take a shower, wear some good clothes, and ask nicely: maybe you may join the group known as adults. (Dear teenagers and virgins, I am not implying that sex can confer or deny adulthood. But the importance of having sex at least once diminishes greatly when your peers are over 20.)
On assumptions: Improving the world could mean many things from charity to inventions. In my case, I hope to advance business technology. Check back in 20 years and see if I was successful.
On flattery: You really think my recent writing has improved the world! Thank you.
On history: Newton (in England) and Leibniz (in France) were inventing Calculus at the same time. Read the other posts about whether it should be called French Calculus.
On calendars: Calculus was developed in the late 1600s. That was the 17th century, not the 16th. Did you notice that 2001 started the 21st century, or weren't you alive yet?
On personalization: I did not realize at the time of my response that calling it "French Calculus" would start a discussion. I was contrasting the two systems rather than debating history. But this is Slashdot, where any possible inconsistency must be answered.
On mistyping: I use English well, but I am not a perfect typer. Slashdot has neither a spell checker nor a grammar checker, and the posts cannot be fixed after submittal. If you want perfect spelling and grammar, you are reading the wrong site.
This is my first flame war, and will be the last one with an anonymous opponent. It has been fun, but it would be better if there was a person on the other side. Slashdot is available internationally, so I cannot expect you to understand English. I wish my writing was more humorous; I am sorry you could not make it funny by taking my statements out of context.
I wish there was a way to start this post at Score:0 so the readers who browse at Score:1 would not see it. I do not post anonymously, but I would prefer not to attract attention to this thread.
I will not be adding to this thread unless another real person does.
Don't leave! Another Domino programmer on Slashdot? I need you.
Nevermind. If business is not happening for you, then this is a good time to go back to school. OTOH, I have so many clients that I have to carefully schedule my time. Business really increased around February, and it has not slowed down yet.
I have tried to convert my clients to use OpenSource. I have a good chance to get Tomcat into one client. I tried unsuccessfully for a client to consider upgrading from MSAccess to PostgreSQL, but they are insisting on converting to MSSQL. Ouch. At least I can read Slashdot while waiting for them to reboot or rebuild the database. I will not switch specialties because: - I already have the reputation and contacts. - Java/C/Perl/PHP... developers are paid less than Domino developers. AFAIK.
Good luck with the education thing. Make the next generation a little wiser than this one.
I had always heard people refer to them as Newtonian Calulus and French Calculus, so I checked. See History of Calculus.
Pierre Fermat and Gilles Roberval were French.
Gottfried Leibniz was born a German, but his early contributions to Calculus happened while he was living in Paris. He returned to Germany in 1676, and did not publish until later. You are correct that I was thinking of his work.
I do not know why I believed it was referred to as French Calculus. Today it is called "Integral Calculus", or just "Calculus". Does someone know the correct name that distinguishes Leibniz's work from Newton's?
I expect your post to disappear as a troll, and since you are a Coward, you will not receive notification about this post, but I would like to know how you arrived at your conclusions.
I seem to be a typical Slashdotter. Programming is both my career and my hobby. I have no television by choice, although I like "Buffy" and "The Sopranos". I read Slashdot because it is the best site to discover news that interests me; most techie sites tend to be too focused. OTOH, women like me.
I mentioned the math contest to demonstrate that someone in the system knew I had ability. I could have mentioned my 7th grade SAT scores. I do not even know what the contest was; my mother probably has the certificate. The school pulled me from classes to take the test because they expected me to win. I had no warning: just "Here are the questions. Fill in the answerse." It could have been one of those IQ tests they kept giving me. I did not know that it was a contest or the scope of it until they told me I was beaten by a Canadian.
I did not reinvent Newtonian Calculus. That was the point. I PROBABLY would have made the leap within the next year, but the math teacher discouraged me. If he had said anything but "It has been proven impossible," I would have continued trying. (And I had already had sex by this time. As I said, women like me.)
I am modest, but I have never claimed to be humble. Modesty is about knowing one's abilities. I do.
I am trying to improve the world. That would not be possible if "everything had been discovered."
Factual errors in his posts (particularly on historical topics) come only second to a mediocre grasp of English. The SAT vocabulary combined with mediocre sentence structure and atrocious punctuation form the True American Nerd.
The only history I mentioned is my own, and I did not provide enough information to check it, so you cannot claim to have found any "factual errors."
I do not expect everybody to like my writing style. None of the words I used should be unfamiliar to programmers interested in mathematics; if there were any you did not understand, look them up. Much of my recent writing is targeted at business people, so it may have been "dumbed down" from how I wrote in college, but you understood me. Right? So it was successful.
The punctuation was a little poor. The comma should be removed after "One day". And I tend to start sentences with a conjunction. That is how I talk. I would fix that for a professional report, but it is not worth the time for posts.
I was unlucky. The education system blocked me at every opportunity.
The article was about math, so I tried to stay on-topic. I fell in love with the computers (an Apple II?) at my uncle's house, but I was rarely there, and spent the time playing games. The Academically Talented program for my school system received a computer about the same time. After a very short (several minutes) introduction by the teacher, I never saw anybody touch it. I begged to use it, but was told "You have to be in at least 4th grade to use it." I read the manuals, and was probably the only person who could make it do anything, but I was not allowed to touch it myself, and could not find anybody else who wanted to play with it.
In 6th grade, I took all the tests in the first 2 weeks so I could be excused from class and work with a computer. The school had just received 3 Commodore PETs. The principal kept one in his office; one was for the students; and I used the third all year to program with BASIC. The "problem" was that within 2 months the issues I encountered were beyond the understanding of the adults I knew.
If my family could have afforded to have a computer at home, I would have had a great start on my career. I did finally save up for a VIC20, but with only 4K it could not run the programs (games) I had written at school. The next year my school received Commodore64s, and their ability to use "sprites" made most of my graphic routines unnecessary. It did teach me that the newer platforms can make older code unnecessary, which is why I picked Lotus Notes as my specialty, since the fantastic built-in security and the ability to work in a ditributed setting greatly reduce the amount of programming needed for most business projects.
I would have loved to go to a school where: - There were people to teach me. - I could have learned C. (C++ was not popular yet.) - The teachers did not lie to me. I believe the US education system is about creating employees. Helping the better students achieve their potential does not advance that primary task. But that is heading completely off-topic.
Yes, we can learn the already discovered algorithms by the time we have a Math BS, but by then we are around 22. Our current system does not allow the best to advance at their own pace.
I was reinventing Calculus by 8th grade. I was about to win second place in an international math contest. (I was beaten by a 9th grade Canadian.) I usually ignored whatever was being taught in Math class, since I could literally get an A without waking up.
I was attempting to find the area under a curve defined by a formula. It seemed appropriate to do the work in math class. One day, my eight grade math teacher asked what I was doing. I showed him my current theory. He told me that there was already a proof that it was impossible, so I moved it from active work to the "known impossible, but cannot stop trying" category that includes a simple formula for discovering factorials.
If he had mentioned the word "calculus", I would have researched what was already done and continued with new discoveries. Or he could have encouraged me to repeat the discovery. Instead, he told me it was PROVEN IMPOSSIBLE.
Personal note: This was an important event in my life, because a few years later they tried to teach Pre-Calculus. I immediately absorbed the entire book, and then taught myself Calculus. But I could have done that a few years earlier. And it was the first time that I had proof an authority figure lied to me. The realization that adults have no clue even in their specialty was a major part of my maturing. Now I question facts even when the person giving them is the "top authority".
If our education system helped students that showed an aptitude for math to advance at their own rate, they would probably be finding better algorithms for known problems, with the possibility of discovering something new, as a teenager. Tiger Woods specialized in golf starting at age 3. Most Ice skaters, gymnasts, and dancers start before they are 6. Why should mathematicians need to wait until college before specializing?
--- Off-topic details: I was reinventing Newtonian Calculus. Newton invented a system about the same time the current system was discovered by the French. Both systems were used for a time, but further advances (Differentials) were only possible using the French version, so Newtonian Calculus was dropped. So it was unlikely my redicovery would help advance today's knowledge, since it was on a dead branch.
Your code works. I tested it both stand-alone and using a Tomcat servlet called by Domino, and it works both ways. The latter is how our product is implemented, so that was what was important to us.
I have no idea why this was a problem last Summer. We probably had a misspelling in the property name or some other simple error, but I remember we had spent quite some time on it. We finally marked the programming issue in the bug log as "Wait until we have a clue." The business managers consider this essential because a demo failed because of it. We HAD 3 issues left before we implement the product at a client that is waiting for it; now we'll have 4 if I mention that it can be fixed.
Can I (or should I) keep my mouth shut? I know the managers will insist it is added. The code would be simple to implement, but QA will probably want to add a few weeks if that code is moved from "frozen".
I always had the manual open while I was programming until the mid-90s. We could not have the documentation on the screen at the same time as the code, so it was easier to have the physical copy nearby. But "pasting" an example into the code requires much typing.
By the late 90s, I had a 20" monitor and would program at 1024x768 or highter resolution. I had one project where I usually ran at 1920x1440 so I could fit several files on the screen at the same time.
Most online technical documentation is still poor since you can only read one page at a time.
The Java documentation changed that. Since it is HTML, you can always choose "Open in a new window". And in IE, you can choose "Edit source" and move/annotate the files. I often move the classes I am currently using to the top of the index files, and add notes and examples to the top of the class files.
I wish Sun could afford to put examples in the code. Even the usually non-working examples from MS and IBM give a little insight into how they planned a function to work. Then you just have to troubleshoot the poor code, rather than writing it from scratch. But I still have to remember how it works. With Sun I have a central repository to keep the code that does work. I can easily put it on my web server so I have my notes while at a client.
--- Online documentation is also easier for the eyes. No, I am not saying that monitors are better for reading than paper. But when the documentation is on the screen, your eyes shift a very small amount. Paper documentation usually involves turning your head, which means moments are lost every time you switch between the screen and the book because you have to refocus.
And while backlighting from monitors is bad compared to reflected light from books, constantly switching between them will tire your eyes quickly. It is better to use one or the other.
Of course you can decide to stick with reflected lighting and write your program on paper. Programs designed on paper tend to be better designed, because more effort is required to record them. And there is a review phase as they are being typed.
I have not noticed other programmers persuing that path. They seem to "design" while typing and expect the compiler to find any issues. I use "design" loosely, since they are usually focused more on getting it working than on getting it to work well.
--- If you really need to bookmark many different "pages", then you need a larger monitor, or maybe several. Check out Matrox video boards. They can do 2048 x 1536 on 4 monitors. That should be enough documentation for anybody, and still leave room to code. BONUS: They support Linux!
As for scribbling, see above. Get all your documentation in HTML. Use a browser that allows you to edit it locally and save it back in place.
(I use Mozilla 1.1 for browsing; I use MSIE 5.5 for my local documentation. Mozilla 1.1 is very old, so maybe they have a decent editor now. Mozilla 1.4 is supposed to have fixed issues with graphics, so I will probably upgrade soon.)
Invest in technology. If you are a professional programmer, you should have a VERY large monitor. Tell your boss to get you one. It takes me 3 times as long to program something using a 17" monitor than it does on a 21" monitor, mostly due to tabbing between windows rather than seeing everything at once. Good 21" monitors are under $600 and last at least 3 years. If you make $20,000 and the monitor doubles your productivity, that is a 9900% ROI. It goes up if you earn more.
--- Electronic documentation just isn't natural, isn't intuitive, isn't human.
Yes, it is not natural. Very little of computers can be considered natural. If that is a concern, you are in the wrong field.
No, it may not be intuitive to you, but it will be to your neighbor's grandchildren. How is: 1. Checking the index i
ZIP+4 defines a very small area, usually one block, sometimes one building. It provides a method for identifying a geographical location in the US without requiring a mail address. It can be discovered easily by the clueless masses.
Your GPS coordinates would also provide an anonymous location, but most people would find them much more difficult to discover.
I was complaining that these service providers require my full name, phone numbers, physical address, email address, and a variety of other information before they will give a possible customer any information about their service. They could make more money selling the information they collect than from providing connectivity services.
Why do websites list anything buyable without pricing? On this site, BUY NOW asks the user to email Paul. Don't they know how much they want for it? Even if the price changes daily, they can update the website. And they can have that "plus shipping" that could double the price. A little effort and they can allow the chair to be customized online.
Or they can do the random price thing like Amazon.com. Check a product from multiple browsers and you get multiple prices. This is great for finding the price point that maximizes profit.
And why didn't the slashdot editor request the price? Write a post that will be seen by thousands about a product, realize the price is unknown, and not take the time to write an email before approving the story. Aargh!
Did everybody send Paul an email? A million emails from slashdot users saying "So how much is it?" should make him happy. Maybe you should send the request a few times in case the first one gets lost in the crowd.
--- I am currently researching T1 and Fractional T1 prices. Everybody except MegaPath requires a form be filled out. I do not want to give my email address to 20+ providers. I definitely do not want to give my name and physical address. Ask for my ZIP+4 if location is very important to the price, then give me the price on the web page before I lose interest and check the next website. Add a short-term Cookie so when I return to buy, you already know my city and state. (Why do they ask for City, State, and Zip, and then complain when my City does not match the spelling in their database? I really like the sites that make you guess that their City field is truncated to 12 characters.)
These are companies that are building the internet. I assume they want to make money. I assume that more customers means more money. Don't they know that most customers will expect to make their decision quickly without waiting for an email response? Another company may provide better service and better pricing, but we will probably go with the company that has a clue.
Our product is almost gold, so there is no chance of changing the platform in the near future. We hope to move to a much newer Java release for the next version. We integrate with Domino, so the options are limited unless we want to include a WebSphere license. But there should be better options when we move the product to Domino 6.
We will test the library to see if we can set the HTTP USER CLIENT header. The Sun and IBM libraries from their JREs insist that it reverts to "Java 1.3". Since our servlet can act as a proxy, we want to pass the real clients' header, but we did not want to write our own HTTP classes for just this one feature.
Our development team is too small. We knew adding this feature would not be difficult, but we cannot delay the release for any reason. Most servers return valid HTML regardless of the client used, but MS IIS 4 is awful. So it will be on the bug list unless we find a better library. We stopped looking for one about a year ago. May this one will work. Again, thank you.
Java 1.5 finally fixes the casting issues. I agree that the need to cast everything has made code less readable.
String stringvar = (String) vector.nextElement();
Since all variables are strongly typed, the Object returned by nextElement() should be automatically casted by the compiler. The Java 1.5 workarounds should greatly improve readability, but they still require unnecessary work from the programmers.
--- The inconsistencies between what the language allows and what the standard library actually does bother me. If operator overloading is so bad, why does the String class do it? He picked the one case where not having the overloaded operator would have killed interest. Almost every language allows Strings to be concatenated with a '+'. Personally, I'd prefer they did not since this can cause problems with casting numbers.
Interfaces get around part of the lack of multiple inheritance, but I'd like to be able to reuse common code in ways besides inheritance. Mixins that don't require inheritance would be a nice touch. I use static functions to get around this. For a current project, the main servlet has a public static void respond(HttpServletResponse response, String htmlString) throws IOException function to set the length and create the ServletOutputStream. The function is used by all our other servlets. The only difference between this algorithm and having a parent servlet class is the need to pass response as a parameter.
The libraries and the interpreter aren't cleanly separated. There are ways (involving decompilers), for example, to get regex support in 1.3, but I'd prefer to upgrade the standard library and the interpreter separately sometimes, rather than in one big chunk. Good idea. I am forced to use 1.3 for a project, and would love to be able to steal classes from later versions. We moved to 1.3 to get HTTP 1.1 support, but our production environment would have been greatly simplified if we had stayed with 1.2.
Also, why does the HttpURLConnection provide a method to set the user-client when it has no effect? (It always sends "Java1.3", which receives errors from MS IIS 4 servers that parse based on the semi-colons in the user-client.)
I like the idea of checked exceptions in some situations, but forcing every method to catch all exceptions that its child calls or may call can be tedious. I'd rather be able to ignore an exception and let it propagate upwards. Sometimes, I'd rather not worry about exceptions at all. You can pass Exceptions to the parent function using the throws option in the function declaration. How did he manage to use the language without encountering this? I learned it on day one when I first learned the syntax for writing a function. I usually handle Exceptions as they occur, but the ability to pass them up the function stack has been critical a few times. (Otherwise we would need to catch the Exception and throw our own, which seems wasteful of our programming time.)
-- Slashcode: Why does Submit come before Preview?
News is one area where the extra screen area could be used well. The screen can be divided so there are areas for the reporter, the news clip, and much text information. The last time I saw CNN, there were 2 stock tickers, a news broadcast, sports scores, and random news text. A little space would have reduced the nausea.
The widescreen means that regular shows can put the station identification off the main image. They can also keep the schedule of new shows on the screen. And advertisments, one for the coming news show and one for a product. The art of silent movies would return, since the ads would need to be attractive without sound. They could also use more still shots, and be much longer, since the sidebar ads would be running continously and should be much cheaper.
Once the format dominates, we can remove having ad breaks from the shows. A few ads that require sound can appear betweeen shows, and would demand a higher price. With shows running without commercial breaks, the times will be odd and shows might not start exactly on the hour, but this is good since it gives channel lock-in. And people would not flip channels during the breaks. Or short films (commercial or not) could be inserted to fill the tims.
Advertisements could also be queued into the show, so the Pontiac ad displays when the teenager is entering his TransAm. [They killed my car!] This has been the dream of the entertainment industry ever since the "media center" was envisioned.
Should advertisements belong to the channel, or to the show/movie maker? There should be standards so both are happy, but luckily this battle can be fought inside the industry, since the viewers will not care.
Widescreen gives the ability to put more on the screen. (You can say "Duh!") It is up to the television industry to take advantage of the opportunity.
If you use thin clients, you do not need to worry about installing an application on thousands of PCs.
Getting users to give up their full function PCs is almost impossible. You also run the risk of losing all productivity when the central servers are unavailable.
Thin clients allow all functionality to be controlled by the servers. This makes changes to business logic and application design very easy to manage.
The two popular thin clients in use today are: 1. Browsers. 2. Lotus Notes.
Browsers allow all data and application design to remain on the servers. Their disadvantage is that when the servers are unavailable, so are the applications.
Lotus Notes allows all data and application design to remain on the servers. It also allows the application design and relevant data to be stored locally so it can be used when the server is unavailable (such as on a disconnected laptop during a sales trip.)
If you do not need disconnected use, then browsers are enough. If you need disconnected use, then use Lotus Notes. Or build a thick client and enter the maintenance nightmare.
--- Free software is honestly the ONLY place where innovation occurs.
I disagree. My company is attempting to make great changes in how business software is designed. We are not contributing it to the "Free software" world because we expect to make much money from our ideas. We provide the source to paying customers, because we believe there is too much potential for evil in closed source software, but it is not FREE for any use. And it allows our user community to review the code, make changes, and even submit them back to us. Since our product is still rather new, and upgrades are released often, this allows their desired changes to become part of the main tree, which eases their upgrade chores, while making a better product for all of our customers.
Our developers usually assist to the point of writing the entire change anyway. We hope this changes once more people are trained on our product. But... 1. we are not willing to go "free" just to get more people trained. 2. Anything that improves the product improves our business. One of the great advantages of buying from a young company is their willingness to adapt the products to match your business. So this is a selling point for us.
OTOH, we would like to give the software away because it will cause a revoluton in software design, but that is unlikely to happen until the company has other sources of revenue.
Business software is not just about what language to use. The more abilities built into the platform, the less code needs to be written in any language.
Apache allows programmers to ignore building a multi-user networking environment for each project. Tomcat allows programmers to write Java servlets with easy configuration. Other modules allow other languages. The base functionality in each platform allows more business logic to be written in less time and with fewer bugs.
The Pascal/VB type languages were easier to understand than the C/C++/Java languages, so they were used by more people. Now that Java provides a better foundation (automatic garbage collection, secure memory usage), the masses are switching.
The best platform today is Lotus Notes/Domino. It provides great security, networking, offline usage, no buffer overruns or other coding issues, and integration with email and all backends. Applications that require years on other platforms can be built "from scratch" and into production in weeks because so much functionality is inherent in the platform. (Insert my usual rant that LN appears weak because it was so easy to build enterprise applications that business people develop aplications rather than hiring programmers. While the business people are very productive, they do not have the background to build high-performance applications.) But unless you work for a large company, it is unlikely you will bother to learn anything about Lotus Notes.
As a consultant, I usually recommend Lotus Notes since it provides two critical functions that are barely available on other platforms: 1. Security: Centralized, robust, managable by business people, can handle any security model. No other system today comes close. 2. Offline work: LN uses a thin client that can maintain the business logic and all data relevant to a business user for use offline, and transfers the data (for ALL applications) back to the servers (either on a schedule or by clicking one button.)
Modern devleopers can be divided into these categories:
Non-programmers use Lotus Notes. And they can outproduce the following categories because they are using the best platform.
I-can-make-money-programming programmers use VB. Since many business have been brain-washed by Redmond, this guarantees work until MS crashes.
Effective progammers use scripting languages. Little knowledge required to be productive, but limited business functionality is built into the platforms.
Good programmers use the most modern high-level language and whatever else is needed to get a job done. Java is the language of choice today, since the platform allows servlets (easy netowrking) and EJBs (good integration.)
Platforms allow us to do more with much less work. Languages exist to allow us to program the tricky bits that are not inherent in the platform. Eventually we will have a platform that allows applications to be built by "knocking the blocks together." In the meantime, choose the best platform for an application, not your favorite language.
The security model for Mozilla assumes everything is good until you block it.
A MUCH better security model is to block everything, then allow certain formats for certain servers OR DOMAINS.
I want graphics turned off unless I turn them on. - Unless I use the "Allow graphics from the same server" option. - Unless I use the "Allow graphics from the same domain" option. (Many large public sites have dedicated graphics servers. But I want to allow all Yahoo servers to show graphics except ads.yahoo.com.) - Unless I choose "Allow graphics from this server" option while looking at the placeholder graphic that lets me know I am missing something. It would be nice to see the ALT text, since it's entire purpose is to be there when the graphic is not shown.
And Mozilla should not automatically load the first graphic when I look at the Media tab.
Everything that applies to graphics can be applied to other formats. The "graphics" settings can apply to GIF, JPEG, and PNGs. Flash and Acrobat and any other formats should have their own settings.
What version of Windows are you using? What version of MSIE?
I have stuck with Win98SE, and will keep using it until I need more than 512MB of RAM, which is unlikely since I don't want the latest bloat from MS. (I am not including my 'servers', which run RH7.1 and often have much more RAM than 512 MB.)
I currently use Mozilla 1.1 for most of my browsing, but I occasionally load MSIE 5.5.
[Off-topic: I need to upgrade Mozilla, since it has memory leaks, especially when moderating Slashdot. Mozilla 1.2 had features I did not want. Mozilla 1.3 seems better. I have converted many acquaintances and almost all of my friends, and they always get the latest version, so I have experimented with them.]
So my usual software is definitely out of date, but I work with PCs running just about anything, including a brand new Windows XP box that arrived 2 weeks ago from Dell. I thought I used the following commands on that PC yesterday.
ALT-SPACE has always been the keyboard command to open the "window" menu. [You can also right-click the taskbar entry, but this is about not using the mouse.]
ALT-SPACE R(estore) changes from full screen to a window.
ALT-SPACE X maximizes the window, which turns off the ability to move and resize. (Why? What if the window is too small or positioned weird? What if the window is completely off the screen? I want to maximize it and then shrink it a little. No can do. I have to "restore" it first to its off-screen position and tiny size. And then I can attempt to make it usable.)
ALT-SPACE N minimizes to the taskbar.
ALT-SPACE M(ove) allows the cursor keys to move the window.
ALT-SPACE S(ize) allows the cursor keys to change the size of a window that MSWindows has not decided shouldn't be changed. (Why aren't all windows resizable? I often want to expand a file browser dialog box so I can see the Details view without horizontal scrolling.)
These keyboard commands are very helpful when you change screen sizes and the window title bar is off the screen. They also help when MSWindows decides to use dialog boxes that do not fit in the current resolution so the OK and Cancel buttons are off the bottom of the screen.
Enjoy.
--- The Preview button adds random spelling errors. So does Submit.
Auto industry: I know that in 1999 automotive plant floor workers might share one computer. Hundreds of them using a single email account which contained the latest news. I believe the foreman would just print and post the news on the bulletin board (the corkboard type, no modems involved.)
There are still top executives in automotive and even information technology companies who have their secretaries print all their email.
One IT executive in the auto industry returned his laptop (which docked at the office to be his desk computer) for an upgrade after 10 months without turning it on. He did take it home every day. I was there when IT booted it to the script that runs only the first time. IT was wondering if they would be better off if they gave him an empty case: less weight for the executive to carry, cheaper for the company, but decided against it because he was a VP of IT, and there was always a chance that a vendor might ask to demo software on his laptop.
--- Since 10 years ago was 1993: Yes, the computer using world has changed dramatically.
Before 1995, computers were definitely in the work place, but few outside IT used computers at home, not counting game machines. Commodore and Apple sold productivity software, but almost all of the uptime was used to play games. (Off-topic: I do not remember one crash from those days.)
The Internet changed that. Between 1995 and 1997, most people were buying their first computer. The PC sales crash was because everybody had one that did everything they wanted, so nobody was buying more. US PC sales are in maintenance mode. The only way to increase sales in the US is to send surges along the power lines. Watch out if Intel or HP start buying power companies.
1996 marked the change in my family from "Oh no, he's talking about computers" to "Windows is slow. Can you fix it?" That's how you decide when computers were everywhere.
Is there a turn-based version of Linux? I have not read about that distro. Must be a rather extensive mod, since I thought the Linux kernel was real-time.
I prefer turn-based strategy games over real-time strategy games, because I play for the thinking not the clicking. But I prefer my OS to keep working when I'm not watching. I thought all non-MS operating systems were real-time. The last turn-based OS I used was MS-DOS. Even Windows simulates real-time as long as you keep the number of tasks small and avoid programs that eat memory like MSIE or Office.
I got cable for the internet the day after Verizon turned off the phone service.
I have been using a cell phone almost exclusively for a few years. After Verizon upset me last Summer, I started telling everybody to only call me on the cell phone. Since August, half of the calls on the landline were from Verizon.
The biggest problem I encountered was that Earthlink's instructions for sending mail through their servers from outside their network are wrong. The instructions say to use a different server and your email address as the username, but you need to put another @ and the servername to get it to work: username@emaildomain.com@smtpauth.earthlink .net
I will probably keep Earthlink for a while because: 1. I am a consultant and the ability to use dial-up from anywhere in the US is important to me. 2. I have had that address for 7 years. (I used a corporate address before that.) Everybody knows this address. And it still averages less than 1 spam per day. (Almost all for Resume Rabbit, which I have auto-deleted.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry about insulting or correcting me. I am one of the rare people who assume criticism is meant to be constructive.
I am prideful. I have great pride in my abilities. I am rarely called modest (except as a joke.)
We both used the first definitions for modesty and modest. Other definitions are about not calling attention to oneself, conforming, and being inoffensive. The usual connotations for "modest" imply an element of humbleness. Being humble and being a top freelance consultant is very difficult.
For a project last year, I played the confident consultant very well during the interview process. When I arrived at the client, I toned it down, since I needed to be part of the team to accomplish the goals I was set. While I was obviously hired to be the expert that would resolve all of the difficult problems, I did not feel I needed to shove it down their throats that my presence indicated they were lacking.
On the second day, the manager called the consulting company with doubts about my abilities. They said that I did not demonstrate the same confidence on-site that I had demonstrated on the phone. In the two days it took for the phone calls to resolve, I had already resolved all of the major issues. The client was satisfied, but the consulting company ORDERED me to return to the extremely confident persona I use for sales.
I do not know if there is a good way to resolve the conflict between needing to impress clients with my abilities and showing the modesty necessary to integrate well into an existing team. It helps when I am hired without the expectation of arrogance. Consulting companies sometimes build me up enough that I do not feel the need to enhance my reputation. But many clients insist on talking to me before they hire me, and they get the sales persona. It is much easier when a client asks for me to return for another engagement, since my abilities are already proven and I can just do the job.
Appearances are everything. Is there a way to demonstrate extreme confidence without giving an impression of arrogance? This might be a good AskSlashdot question.
I cannot envision how it could work without unbalancing the Segway, but the concept of having someone strapped in and at the mercy of the driver in such an unstable vehicle is quite humorous.
---
Could they find some way to add a tow hitch that does not interfere with the Segway's operation? Since the base rotates forward and back, maybe they could make the tow truck have an open channel so the hitch could move up and down.
The Segway has a top speed of 12 mph. Do they have the power to pull anything? If the speed is being limited by the controls, which seems possible since the top speed is determined by which key is used, then maybe the power is already there. But that leaves the possibility of mods that allow much faster movement. There are some people who would be zipping around at 40 mph until they damaged themselves, bystanders, or property.
I cannot imagine to would be a comfortable ride for anybody being pulled on a stretcher on the tow truck. And if it slows the Segway, then having four people run with the stretcher would be both faster and more comfortable.
---
I did think of one use for Segways: parking enforcement. Zip around putting parking tickets on cars. It is unlikely that anyone would steal one with police markings.
$40 per hour is definitely closer to renting a jetski for amusement than a car for travel. Do these things have a purpose?
I did see one used recently. A security guard at Epcot at Disneyworld was using it between the Innovations buildings, never moving more than 30 feet at a time. He was asked to take a photo, and took the picture without getting off of it. He was probably under orders to stay on it.
I thought it was a great idea for security to be able to move fast. But they already have golf carts, which have the additional ability of transporting unwell customers and emergency equipment.
Segways only weigh 83 pounds, and are small enough to store in the trunk of a midsize sedan, so theft would be a major concern.
Again, where is the use in the real world?
I just submitted and then noticed the Slashdot quote is perfectly appropriate to my post:
Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know. -- J. Winter Smith
Did you read what you wrote?
...)
the meaning of modesty is not "knowing one's abilities" but is in fact "freedom from conceit or vanity". Conceit is "excessive appreciation of one's own worth or virtue" and vanity is "inflated pride in oneself or one's appearance".
Equate "abilities", "worth", "virtues", and "appearance" since we are using them to mean "qualities" of a person. "Oneself" is referring to those qualities directly.
So "modesty" is:
freedom from
excessive OR inflated
appreciation OR pride
of/in
one's (your own)
qualities (abilities, worth,
Am I stretching anything yet?
To decide if someone has modesty, you need to compare their opinion of themself with their qualities. Is their opinion excessive or inflated? How can you decide if you do not know their abilities?
A man who can lift 20 pounds is modest when he says he can lift 20 pounds. He is immodest if he says he can lift 100 pounds.
A man who can lift 100 pounds is modest when he says he can lift 100 pounds. The first man may hear the claim as bragging since it is outside his own abilities. The second man knows his abilities, is not inflating them, and may drop a 100 pound rock on the first man as proof if the first man continues to annoy him.
---
I am confident in my abilities. I have proven them repeatedly in the corporate world. I do not inflate my worth, because I often have to deliver. Therefore I am modest.
I have noticed that I work very well with other confident people. I become annoyed with people who state they can do things and cannot deliver. And people who are not happy with their own abilities often resent mine. I believe that if they can only move 20 pound rocks, they should be happy about that, and be happy the second man is around when they need a 100 pound rock moved.
Also, the first man may have abilities that the second man does not.
- I currently work with MSAccess programmers. I have little ability with that product. I rely on them, and I do not resent their abilities. I even learn from them.
- I just had new windows installed. (The physical kind, not the MS software.) The installer did a great job. I do not resent his abilities. I watched what he did, and learned that I never want to install windows.
- My car needs maintenance. While I rebuilt an engine many years ago, I barely recognize that the thing under the hood of my current car has any relation to what I know as an engine. I am very happy that the dealership has people with the ability to care for it. I do not resent them.
When it comes to my specialty, I am much better than them. The MSAccess programmers are happy I am available to handle the integration with the front-end systems. The others do not care that I know how to boot a computer. None of them resent me for my abilities.
Be happy with who you are. If you find someonne whose states their abilities exceed yours, do not try to deflate them; try to learn from them. If they are immodest, you will know not to give them responsibilities they cannot handle. If their opinion was accurate, then you will improve yourself.
You are welcome. Even posts that you have difficulty understanding can bring joy.
This is my first flame war, and will be the last one with an anonymous opponent. It has been fun, but it would be better if there was a person on the other side. Slashdot is available internationally, so I cannot expect you to understand English. I wish my writing was more humorous; I am sorry you could not make it funny by taking my statements out of context.
I wish there was a way to start this post at Score:0 so the readers who browse at Score:1 would not see it. I do not post anonymously, but I would prefer not to attract attention to this thread.
I will not be adding to this thread unless another real person does.
Don't leave! Another Domino programmer on Slashdot? I need you.
Nevermind. If business is not happening for you, then this is a good time to go back to school. OTOH, I have so many clients that I have to carefully schedule my time. Business really increased around February, and it has not slowed down yet.
I have tried to convert my clients to use OpenSource. I have a good chance to get Tomcat into one client. I tried unsuccessfully for a client to consider upgrading from MSAccess to PostgreSQL, but they are insisting on converting to MSSQL. Ouch. At least I can read Slashdot while waiting for them to reboot or rebuild the database. I will not switch specialties because:
- I already have the reputation and contacts.
- Java/C/Perl/PHP... developers are paid less than Domino developers. AFAIK.
Good luck with the education thing. Make the next generation a little wiser than this one.
I had always heard people refer to them as Newtonian Calulus and French Calculus, so I checked. See History of Calculus.
Pierre Fermat and Gilles Roberval were French.
Gottfried Leibniz was born a German, but his early contributions to Calculus happened while he was living in Paris. He returned to Germany in 1676, and did not publish until later. You are correct that I was thinking of his work.
I do not know why I believed it was referred to as French Calculus. Today it is called "Integral Calculus", or just "Calculus". Does someone know the correct name that distinguishes Leibniz's work from Newton's?
I expect your post to disappear as a troll, and since you are a Coward, you will not receive notification about this post, but I would like to know how you arrived at your conclusions.
I seem to be a typical Slashdotter. Programming is both my career and my hobby. I have no television by choice, although I like "Buffy" and "The Sopranos". I read Slashdot because it is the best site to discover news that interests me; most techie sites tend to be too focused. OTOH, women like me.
I mentioned the math contest to demonstrate that someone in the system knew I had ability. I could have mentioned my 7th grade SAT scores. I do not even know what the contest was; my mother probably has the certificate. The school pulled me from classes to take the test because they expected me to win. I had no warning: just "Here are the questions. Fill in the answerse." It could have been one of those IQ tests they kept giving me. I did not know that it was a contest or the scope of it until they told me I was beaten by a Canadian.
I did not reinvent Newtonian Calculus. That was the point. I PROBABLY would have made the leap within the next year, but the math teacher discouraged me. If he had said anything but "It has been proven impossible," I would have continued trying. (And I had already had sex by this time. As I said, women like me.)
I am modest, but I have never claimed to be humble. Modesty is about knowing one's abilities. I do.
I am trying to improve the world. That would not be possible if "everything had been discovered."
Factual errors in his posts (particularly on historical topics) come only second to a mediocre grasp of English. The SAT vocabulary combined with mediocre sentence structure and atrocious punctuation form the True American Nerd.
The only history I mentioned is my own, and I did not provide enough information to check it, so you cannot claim to have found any "factual errors."
I do not expect everybody to like my writing style. None of the words I used should be unfamiliar to programmers interested in mathematics; if there were any you did not understand, look them up. Much of my recent writing is targeted at business people, so it may have been "dumbed down" from how I wrote in college, but you understood me. Right? So it was successful.
The punctuation was a little poor. The comma should be removed after "One day". And I tend to start sentences with a conjunction. That is how I talk. I would fix that for a professional report, but it is not worth the time for posts.
I was unlucky. The education system blocked me at every opportunity.
The article was about math, so I tried to stay on-topic. I fell in love with the computers (an Apple II?) at my uncle's house, but I was rarely there, and spent the time playing games. The Academically Talented program for my school system received a computer about the same time. After a very short (several minutes) introduction by the teacher, I never saw anybody touch it. I begged to use it, but was told "You have to be in at least 4th grade to use it." I read the manuals, and was probably the only person who could make it do anything, but I was not allowed to touch it myself, and could not find anybody else who wanted to play with it.
In 6th grade, I took all the tests in the first 2 weeks so I could be excused from class and work with a computer. The school had just received 3 Commodore PETs. The principal kept one in his office; one was for the students; and I used the third all year to program with BASIC. The "problem" was that within 2 months the issues I encountered were beyond the understanding of the adults I knew.
If my family could have afforded to have a computer at home, I would have had a great start on my career. I did finally save up for a VIC20, but with only 4K it could not run the programs (games) I had written at school. The next year my school received Commodore64s, and their ability to use "sprites" made most of my graphic routines unnecessary. It did teach me that the newer platforms can make older code unnecessary, which is why I picked Lotus Notes as my specialty, since the fantastic built-in security and the ability to work in a ditributed setting greatly reduce the amount of programming needed for most business projects.
I would have loved to go to a school where:
- There were people to teach me.
- I could have learned C. (C++ was not popular yet.)
- The teachers did not lie to me.
I believe the US education system is about creating employees. Helping the better students achieve their potential does not advance that primary task. But that is heading completely off-topic.
Yes, we can learn the already discovered algorithms by the time we have a Math BS, but by then we are around 22. Our current system does not allow the best to advance at their own pace.
I was reinventing Calculus by 8th grade. I was about to win second place in an international math contest. (I was beaten by a 9th grade Canadian.) I usually ignored whatever was being taught in Math class, since I could literally get an A without waking up.
I was attempting to find the area under a curve defined by a formula. It seemed appropriate to do the work in math class. One day, my eight grade math teacher asked what I was doing. I showed him my current theory. He told me that there was already a proof that it was impossible, so I moved it from active work to the "known impossible, but cannot stop trying" category that includes a simple formula for discovering factorials.
If he had mentioned the word "calculus", I would have researched what was already done and continued with new discoveries. Or he could have encouraged me to repeat the discovery. Instead, he told me it was PROVEN IMPOSSIBLE.
Personal note: This was an important event in my life, because a few years later they tried to teach Pre-Calculus. I immediately absorbed the entire book, and then taught myself Calculus. But I could have done that a few years earlier. And it was the first time that I had proof an authority figure lied to me. The realization that adults have no clue even in their specialty was a major part of my maturing. Now I question facts even when the person giving them is the "top authority".
If our education system helped students that showed an aptitude for math to advance at their own rate, they would probably be finding better algorithms for known problems, with the possibility of discovering something new, as a teenager. Tiger Woods specialized in golf starting at age 3. Most Ice skaters, gymnasts, and dancers start before they are 6. Why should mathematicians need to wait until college before specializing?
---
Off-topic details: I was reinventing Newtonian Calculus. Newton invented a system about the same time the current system was discovered by the French. Both systems were used for a time, but further advances (Differentials) were only possible using the French version, so Newtonian Calculus was dropped. So it was unlikely my redicovery would help advance today's knowledge, since it was on a dead branch.
Your code works. I tested it both stand-alone and using a Tomcat servlet called by Domino, and it works both ways. The latter is how our product is implemented, so that was what was important to us.
I have no idea why this was a problem last Summer. We probably had a misspelling in the property name or some other simple error, but I remember we had spent quite some time on it. We finally marked the programming issue in the bug log as "Wait until we have a clue." The business managers consider this essential because a demo failed because of it. We HAD 3 issues left before we implement the product at a client that is waiting for it; now we'll have 4 if I mention that it can be fixed.
Can I (or should I) keep my mouth shut? I know the managers will insist it is added. The code would be simple to implement, but QA will probably want to add a few weeks if that code is moved from "frozen".
I always had the manual open while I was programming until the mid-90s. We could not have the documentation on the screen at the same time as the code, so it was easier to have the physical copy nearby. But "pasting" an example into the code requires much typing.
By the late 90s, I had a 20" monitor and would program at 1024x768 or highter resolution. I had one project where I usually ran at 1920x1440 so I could fit several files on the screen at the same time.
Most online technical documentation is still poor since you can only read one page at a time.
The Java documentation changed that. Since it is HTML, you can always choose "Open in a new window". And in IE, you can choose "Edit source" and move/annotate the files. I often move the classes I am currently using to the top of the index files, and add notes and examples to the top of the class files.
I wish Sun could afford to put examples in the code. Even the usually non-working examples from MS and IBM give a little insight into how they planned a function to work. Then you just have to troubleshoot the poor code, rather than writing it from scratch. But I still have to remember how it works. With Sun I have a central repository to keep the code that does work. I can easily put it on my web server so I have my notes while at a client.
---
Online documentation is also easier for the eyes. No, I am not saying that monitors are better for reading than paper. But when the documentation is on the screen, your eyes shift a very small amount. Paper documentation usually involves turning your head, which means moments are lost every time you switch between the screen and the book because you have to refocus.
And while backlighting from monitors is bad compared to reflected light from books, constantly switching between them will tire your eyes quickly. It is better to use one or the other.
Of course you can decide to stick with reflected lighting and write your program on paper. Programs designed on paper tend to be better designed, because more effort is required to record them. And there is a review phase as they are being typed.
I have not noticed other programmers persuing that path. They seem to "design" while typing and expect the compiler to find any issues. I use "design" loosely, since they are usually focused more on getting it working than on getting it to work well.
---
If you really need to bookmark many different "pages", then you need a larger monitor, or maybe several. Check out Matrox video boards. They can do 2048 x 1536 on 4 monitors. That should be enough documentation for anybody, and still leave room to code. BONUS: They support Linux!
As for scribbling, see above. Get all your documentation in HTML. Use a browser that allows you to edit it locally and save it back in place.
(I use Mozilla 1.1 for browsing; I use MSIE 5.5 for my local documentation. Mozilla 1.1 is very old, so maybe they have a decent editor now. Mozilla 1.4 is supposed to have fixed issues with graphics, so I will probably upgrade soon.)
Invest in technology. If you are a professional programmer, you should have a VERY large monitor. Tell your boss to get you one. It takes me 3 times as long to program something using a 17" monitor than it does on a 21" monitor, mostly due to tabbing between windows rather than seeing everything at once. Good 21" monitors are under $600 and last at least 3 years. If you make $20,000 and the monitor doubles your productivity, that is a 9900% ROI. It goes up if you earn more.
---
Electronic documentation just isn't natural, isn't intuitive, isn't human.
Yes, it is not natural. Very little of computers can be considered natural. If that is a concern, you are in the wrong field.
No, it may not be intuitive to you, but it will be to your neighbor's grandchildren. How is:
1. Checking the index i
ZIP+4 defines a very small area, usually one block, sometimes one building. It provides a method for identifying a geographical location in the US without requiring a mail address. It can be discovered easily by the clueless masses.
Your GPS coordinates would also provide an anonymous location, but most people would find them much more difficult to discover.
I was complaining that these service providers require my full name, phone numbers, physical address, email address, and a variety of other information before they will give a possible customer any information about their service. They could make more money selling the information they collect than from providing connectivity services.
No idea on pricing
Why do websites list anything buyable without pricing? On this site, BUY NOW asks the user to email Paul. Don't they know how much they want for it? Even if the price changes daily, they can update the website. And they can have that "plus shipping" that could double the price. A little effort and they can allow the chair to be customized online.
Or they can do the random price thing like Amazon.com. Check a product from multiple browsers and you get multiple prices. This is great for finding the price point that maximizes profit.
And why didn't the slashdot editor request the price? Write a post that will be seen by thousands about a product, realize the price is unknown, and not take the time to write an email before approving the story. Aargh!
Did everybody send Paul an email? A million emails from slashdot users saying "So how much is it?" should make him happy. Maybe you should send the request a few times in case the first one gets lost in the crowd.
---
I am currently researching T1 and Fractional T1 prices. Everybody except MegaPath requires a form be filled out. I do not want to give my email address to 20+ providers. I definitely do not want to give my name and physical address. Ask for my ZIP+4 if location is very important to the price, then give me the price on the web page before I lose interest and check the next website. Add a short-term Cookie so when I return to buy, you already know my city and state. (Why do they ask for City, State, and Zip, and then complain when my City does not match the spelling in their database? I really like the sites that make you guess that their City field is truncated to 12 characters.)
These are companies that are building the internet. I assume they want to make money. I assume that more customers means more money. Don't they know that most customers will expect to make their decision quickly without waiting for an email response? Another company may provide better service and better pricing, but we will probably go with the company that has a clue.
Thank you.
Our product is almost gold, so there is no chance of changing the platform in the near future. We hope to move to a much newer Java release for the next version. We integrate with Domino, so the options are limited unless we want to include a WebSphere license. But there should be better options when we move the product to Domino 6.
We will test the library to see if we can set the HTTP USER CLIENT header. The Sun and IBM libraries from their JREs insist that it reverts to "Java 1.3". Since our servlet can act as a proxy, we want to pass the real clients' header, but we did not want to write our own HTTP classes for just this one feature.
Our development team is too small. We knew adding this feature would not be difficult, but we cannot delay the release for any reason. Most servers return valid HTML regardless of the client used, but MS IIS 4 is awful. So it will be on the bug list unless we find a better library. We stopped looking for one about a year ago. May this one will work. Again, thank you.
Java 1.5 finally fixes the casting issues. I agree that the need to cast everything has made code less readable.
String stringvar = (String) vector.nextElement();
Since all variables are strongly typed, the Object returned by nextElement() should be automatically casted by the compiler. The Java 1.5 workarounds should greatly improve readability, but they still require unnecessary work from the programmers.
---
The inconsistencies between what the language allows and what the standard library actually does bother me. If operator overloading is so bad, why does the String class do it?
He picked the one case where not having the overloaded operator would have killed interest. Almost every language allows Strings to be concatenated with a '+'. Personally, I'd prefer they did not since this can cause problems with casting numbers.
Interfaces get around part of the lack of multiple inheritance, but I'd like to be able to reuse common code in ways besides inheritance. Mixins that don't require inheritance would be a nice touch.
I use static functions to get around this. For a current project, the main servlet has a
public static void respond(HttpServletResponse response, String htmlString) throws IOException
function to set the length and create the ServletOutputStream. The function is used by all our other servlets. The only difference between this algorithm and having a parent servlet class is the need to pass response as a parameter.
The libraries and the interpreter aren't cleanly separated. There are ways (involving decompilers), for example, to get regex support in 1.3, but I'd prefer to upgrade the standard library and the interpreter separately sometimes, rather than in one big chunk.
Good idea. I am forced to use 1.3 for a project, and would love to be able to steal classes from later versions. We moved to 1.3 to get HTTP 1.1 support, but our production environment would have been greatly simplified if we had stayed with 1.2.
Also, why does the HttpURLConnection provide a method to set the user-client when it has no effect? (It always sends "Java1.3", which receives errors from MS IIS 4 servers that parse based on the semi-colons in the user-client.)
I like the idea of checked exceptions in some situations, but forcing every method to catch all exceptions that its child calls or may call can be tedious. I'd rather be able to ignore an exception and let it propagate upwards. Sometimes, I'd rather not worry about exceptions at all.
You can pass Exceptions to the parent function using the throws option in the function declaration. How did he manage to use the language without encountering this? I learned it on day one when I first learned the syntax for writing a function. I usually handle Exceptions as they occur, but the ability to pass them up the function stack has been critical a few times. (Otherwise we would need to catch the Exception and throw our own, which seems wasteful of our programming time.)
--
Slashcode: Why does Submit come before Preview?
News is one area where the extra screen area could be used well. The screen can be divided so there are areas for the reporter, the news clip, and much text information. The last time I saw CNN, there were 2 stock tickers, a news broadcast, sports scores, and random news text. A little space would have reduced the nausea.
The widescreen means that regular shows can put the station identification off the main image. They can also keep the schedule of new shows on the screen. And advertisments, one for the coming news show and one for a product. The art of silent movies would return, since the ads would need to be attractive without sound. They could also use more still shots, and be much longer, since the sidebar ads would be running continously and should be much cheaper.
Once the format dominates, we can remove having ad breaks from the shows. A few ads that require sound can appear betweeen shows, and would demand a higher price. With shows running without commercial breaks, the times will be odd and shows might not start exactly on the hour, but this is good since it gives channel lock-in. And people would not flip channels during the breaks. Or short films (commercial or not) could be inserted to fill the tims.
Advertisements could also be queued into the show, so the Pontiac ad displays when the teenager is entering his TransAm. [They killed my car!] This has been the dream of the entertainment industry ever since the "media center" was envisioned.
Should advertisements belong to the channel, or to the show/movie maker? There should be standards so both are happy, but luckily this battle can be fought inside the industry, since the viewers will not care.
Widescreen gives the ability to put more on the screen. (You can say "Duh!") It is up to the television industry to take advantage of the opportunity.
If you use thin clients, you do not need to worry about installing an application on thousands of PCs.
Getting users to give up their full function PCs is almost impossible. You also run the risk of losing all productivity when the central servers are unavailable.
Thin clients allow all functionality to be controlled by the servers. This makes changes to business logic and application design very easy to manage.
The two popular thin clients in use today are:
1. Browsers.
2. Lotus Notes.
Browsers allow all data and application design to remain on the servers. Their disadvantage is that when the servers are unavailable, so are the applications.
Lotus Notes allows all data and application design to remain on the servers. It also allows the application design and relevant data to be stored locally so it can be used when the server is unavailable (such as on a disconnected laptop during a sales trip.)
If you do not need disconnected use, then browsers are enough. If you need disconnected use, then use Lotus Notes. Or build a thick client and enter the maintenance nightmare.
---
Free software is honestly the ONLY place where innovation occurs.
I disagree. My company is attempting to make great changes in how business software is designed. We are not contributing it to the "Free software" world because we expect to make much money from our ideas. We provide the source to paying customers, because we believe there is too much potential for evil in closed source software, but it is not FREE for any use. And it allows our user community to review the code, make changes, and even submit them back to us. Since our product is still rather new, and upgrades are released often, this allows their desired changes to become part of the main tree, which eases their upgrade chores, while making a better product for all of our customers.
Our developers usually assist to the point of writing the entire change anyway. We hope this changes once more people are trained on our product. But... 1. we are not willing to go "free" just to get more people trained. 2. Anything that improves the product improves our business. One of the great advantages of buying from a young company is their willingness to adapt the products to match your business. So this is a selling point for us.
OTOH, we would like to give the software away because it will cause a revoluton in software design, but that is unlikely to happen until the company has other sources of revenue.
Apache allows programmers to ignore building a multi-user networking environment for each project. Tomcat allows programmers to write Java servlets with easy configuration. Other modules allow other languages. The base functionality in each platform allows more business logic to be written in less time and with fewer bugs.
The Pascal/VB type languages were easier to understand than the C/C++/Java languages, so they were used by more people. Now that Java provides a better foundation (automatic garbage collection, secure memory usage), the masses are switching.
The best platform today is Lotus Notes/Domino. It provides great security, networking, offline usage, no buffer overruns or other coding issues, and integration with email and all backends. Applications that require years on other platforms can be built "from scratch" and into production in weeks because so much functionality is inherent in the platform. (Insert my usual rant that LN appears weak because it was so easy to build enterprise applications that business people develop aplications rather than hiring programmers. While the business people are very productive, they do not have the background to build high-performance applications.) But unless you work for a large company, it is unlikely you will bother to learn anything about Lotus Notes.
As a consultant, I usually recommend Lotus Notes since it provides two critical functions that are barely available on other platforms:
1. Security: Centralized, robust, managable by business people, can handle any security model. No other system today comes close.
2. Offline work: LN uses a thin client that can maintain the business logic and all data relevant to a business user for use offline, and transfers the data (for ALL applications) back to the servers (either on a schedule or by clicking one button.)
Modern devleopers can be divided into these categories:
Platforms allow us to do more with much less work. Languages exist to allow us to program the tricky bits that are not inherent in the platform. Eventually we will have a platform that allows applications to be built by "knocking the blocks together." In the meantime, choose the best platform for an application, not your favorite language.
The security model for Mozilla assumes everything is good until you block it.
A MUCH better security model is to block everything, then allow certain formats for certain servers OR DOMAINS.
I want graphics turned off unless I turn them on.
- Unless I use the "Allow graphics from the same server" option.
- Unless I use the "Allow graphics from the same domain" option. (Many large public sites have dedicated graphics servers. But I want to allow all Yahoo servers to show graphics except ads.yahoo.com.)
- Unless I choose "Allow graphics from this server" option while looking at the placeholder graphic that lets me know I am missing something. It would be nice to see the ALT text, since it's entire purpose is to be there when the graphic is not shown.
And Mozilla should not automatically load the first graphic when I look at the Media tab.
Everything that applies to graphics can be applied to other formats. The "graphics" settings can apply to GIF, JPEG, and PNGs. Flash and Acrobat and any other formats should have their own settings.
---
Why does "Submit" appear before "Preview"?
What version of Windows are you using?
What version of MSIE?
I have stuck with Win98SE, and will keep using it until I need more than 512MB of RAM, which is unlikely since I don't want the latest bloat from MS. (I am not including my 'servers', which run RH7.1 and often have much more RAM than 512 MB.)
I currently use Mozilla 1.1 for most of my browsing, but I occasionally load MSIE 5.5.
[Off-topic: I need to upgrade Mozilla, since it has memory leaks, especially when moderating Slashdot. Mozilla 1.2 had features I did not want. Mozilla 1.3 seems better. I have converted many acquaintances and almost all of my friends, and they always get the latest version, so I have experimented with them.]
So my usual software is definitely out of date, but I work with PCs running just about anything, including a brand new Windows XP box that arrived 2 weeks ago from Dell. I thought I used the following commands on that PC yesterday.
ALT-SPACE has always been the keyboard command to open the "window" menu. [You can also right-click the taskbar entry, but this is about not using the mouse.]
ALT-SPACE R(estore) changes from full screen to a window.
ALT-SPACE X maximizes the window, which turns off the ability to move and resize. (Why? What if the window is too small or positioned weird? What if the window is completely off the screen? I want to maximize it and then shrink it a little. No can do. I have to "restore" it first to its off-screen position and tiny size. And then I can attempt to make it usable.)
ALT-SPACE N minimizes to the taskbar.
ALT-SPACE M(ove) allows the cursor keys to move the window.
ALT-SPACE S(ize) allows the cursor keys to change the size of a window that MSWindows has not decided shouldn't be changed. (Why aren't all windows resizable? I often want to expand a file browser dialog box so I can see the Details view without horizontal scrolling.)
These keyboard commands are very helpful when you change screen sizes and the window title bar is off the screen. They also help when MSWindows decides to use dialog boxes that do not fit in the current resolution so the OK and Cancel buttons are off the bottom of the screen.
Enjoy.
---
The Preview button adds random spelling errors. So does Submit.
Auto industry:
I know that in 1999 automotive plant floor workers might share one computer. Hundreds of them using a single email account which contained the latest news. I believe the foreman would just print and post the news on the bulletin board (the corkboard type, no modems involved.)
There are still top executives in automotive and even information technology companies who have their secretaries print all their email.
One IT executive in the auto industry returned his laptop (which docked at the office to be his desk computer) for an upgrade after 10 months without turning it on. He did take it home every day. I was there when IT booted it to the script that runs only the first time. IT was wondering if they would be better off if they gave him an empty case: less weight for the executive to carry, cheaper for the company, but decided against it because he was a VP of IT, and there was always a chance that a vendor might ask to demo software on his laptop.
---
Since 10 years ago was 1993: Yes, the computer using world has changed dramatically.
Before 1995, computers were definitely in the work place, but few outside IT used computers at home, not counting game machines. Commodore and Apple sold productivity software, but almost all of the uptime was used to play games. (Off-topic: I do not remember one crash from those days.)
The Internet changed that. Between 1995 and 1997, most people were buying their first computer. The PC sales crash was because everybody had one that did everything they wanted, so nobody was buying more. US PC sales are in maintenance mode. The only way to increase sales in the US is to send surges along the power lines. Watch out if Intel or HP start buying power companies.
1996 marked the change in my family from "Oh no, he's talking about computers" to "Windows is slow. Can you fix it?" That's how you decide when computers were everywhere.
The robot runs Real-time Linux!
Is there a turn-based version of Linux? I have not read about that distro. Must be a rather extensive mod, since I thought the Linux kernel was real-time.
I prefer turn-based strategy games over real-time strategy games, because I play for the thinking not the clicking. But I prefer my OS to keep working when I'm not watching. I thought all non-MS operating systems were real-time. The last turn-based OS I used was MS-DOS. Even Windows simulates real-time as long as you keep the number of tasks small and avoid programs that eat memory like MSIE or Office.
So what is Real-time Linux?
I got cable for the internet the day after Verizon turned off the phone service.
k .net
I have been using a cell phone almost exclusively for a few years. After Verizon upset me last Summer, I started telling everybody to only call me on the cell phone. Since August, half of the calls on the landline were from Verizon.
The biggest problem I encountered was that Earthlink's instructions for sending mail through their servers from outside their network are wrong. The instructions say to use a different server and your email address as the username, but you need to put another @ and the servername to get it to work:
username@emaildomain.com@smtpauth.earthlin
I will probably keep Earthlink for a while because:
1. I am a consultant and the ability to use dial-up from anywhere in the US is important to me.
2. I have had that address for 7 years. (I used a corporate address before that.) Everybody knows this address. And it still averages less than 1 spam per day. (Almost all for Resume Rabbit, which I have auto-deleted.)