This study should come as quite a surprise to the educators I dealt with growing up...in my day all the scary/loner/mistfits problems were caused by playing Dungeons and Dragons!. Except for those few of us who took it to the next level, and played Paranoia! The computer was out to get us! Really!
I inherited a product with a code base of a few hundred thousands lines of code when I was a fairly new software engineer. To make it worse, it was cross platform (AIX/Windows/Linkux/HUX) with something like 20 nested make files.
The code was essentially a business service application. My solution was to talk to the consumers of the product and learn what each service call was supposed to do. I then wrote a set of test suites for the application. I had to continually update the suite as a I went along, but it definitely exposed unexpected couplings or other strange behaviors in the code. I also ended up converted the project over to an ant based build script (ant was brand new at the time).
It defintely taught me what the code was doing and how it was doing.
I take notes with a Tablet PC...often course handouts for the lecture are in (horrors!) Microsoft office. I can take notes using One note or AutoDesk Sketbook to capture those pesky diagrams. Erasing is certainly a lot less messy than pen/paper.
And I can still type notes too. It's a win-win for me....
If only the iPad was a real tablet pc....sigh....
If you think a true software developer should spend most of his time in front of a computer writing code, then it is you who has no idea what is involved in developing great software.
Amen! A software engineer should be spending less than half their time coding! Much more should be spent in design, planning, and analysis!
As an aside, I found the hang gliding comment particularly funny as I was once hang gliding when my pager went off (it was stowed in a pocket in my harness) on a weekend to help troubleshoot a production issue! Too funny!
If the person was a software engineer, or even a coder, he isn't in "IT". There is a reason why companies have an IT department, and then a completely seperate department called software engineeing.
It is not strictly true that a software engineer or coder is not in IT, although I agree that SHOULD be the case. IT and Engineering/Development SHOULD be distinct.
For example, in a large company like Disney, enterprise application engineers (i.e. the development teams that write the enterprise applications that run the parks (such as reservation systems, payment systems, or even fast pass ticket systems) are actually lumped in as part of the larger IT department that includes the people who provide typical help desk service to office works..
Not how it SHOULD be, but often how it is, particularly since they often have radically different cultures when it comes to work ethics, resource management, etc.
Let's you update multiple social networking and bookmarking sites all at once or based on groupings (i.e. business / social ). Of course it doesn't support 120 sites, but I think the count is up to around 40 now...
You've got to be kidding... I'm a woman, and I migrate towards things, not people. That's probably why there are more robots in my household on any give day that show up at my house all year.
The reason why many women don't migrate towards hard science is purely cultural. Not all of them can stomach the weird looks and attitude that those of us women who ARE in the geek fields put up with on almost a daily basis. I've been told so on numerous ocassions by female colleagues on the "business" side vs. the "tech" side.
Even the men I work with think of me as "one of the guys" because culturally I don't fit the standard of pink-girlie-softness, lol.
NQC is great, but for those Java enthusiasts out there, take a peek at a micro implementation of Java called LeJOS (http://lejos.sourceforge.net./ It's got a great set of APIs, including some nice implemenations of classic Robotics design patterns such as Behaviors, BehaviorListeners, Arbitrators, etc... Very versatile.
Lol. Do you KNOW how many Mindstorms RIS kits are sold annually? 40,000+ a year with NO advertising at a price of $199. The original version sold 80,000 units in the first 3 months following its release. Hard to find Mindstorms kits and Robolab sets often sell for many times their original retail price (just skim around on ebay a bit.) Over a million Mindstorms kits have been sold to date.
One thing that made Mindstorms so popular in the past were the 3rd party development tools and sensors that have been created. Today, you can program an RCX brick in Java, multiple versions of C, Forth, and probably other languages, too. Whole business have croppsed up selling 3rd pary ultrasonic sensors, magnetic sensors, etc etc. The new kit is planned to be deliberately open to third party develops. Lego wants, and is encouraging, 3rd party development environments, tools, sensors etc.
Given all these factors, it's a safe bet that Lego will make a lot of money off of the next generation of Mindstorms. I'll be buying a few kits myself the second they hit the shelves if I'm not one of the lucky 100 chosen for the pre-release development program.
Now that I've got out all the analytical talk of why the next-gen Mindstorms will be a sucess I have one more thing to say: WOOT! WHOOPEE! HURRAY! I WANT A KIT NOW!!! Hee hee.
I just made the jump from a Treo 650 to a Blackberry 8700. I've been a die hard palm user for years, and had one of the first "brick" palm phones (and old Qualcom almost as big as a Newton). I never did like the smaller screen size on the Treos... When the Treos came out, I moved from a Palm V to a Treo 600. I found I stopped using a lot of the "palm" features of the Treo they way I once had. Still, I liked the device. When I made the jump to the 650 (had to have bluetooth!) I was PISSED. So unstable it would crash every time a call came in when I was calling out. It would lock up for no reason and require a hard reset. And the screen was STILL too @$@#$ small. I've had the Blackberry for a day now, and I really like it. The scroll wheel has grown on me. And while I'll never be as lightning fast on the thumbboard as I was with palm graffiti, I can deal with it.
I will miss the ability to set a custom ring tone & image for every number in my contact list... And I'll miss the treo "favorites" buttons... Still, at least my Java programs mostly work since I've moved them over (the UIs will need a little tweaking).
I doubt I'll go back to Palm. The 700W is just the nail in the coffin for me. I LOATHE WinCE/Pocket PC/Window Mobile/whatever the latest branding is. As a former PPC developer I know up close and personal what a #$@$@# OS it is. Too bad Palm has gotten just as bad. Sigh.
You're confusing smugness with irritation about people who refuse to accept the consequences of their own stupidity.
And you're wrong. I DO understand that the 911 service provided by Vonage is not the same as traditional 911 service, and that my calls are not routed to a traditional 911 center, but rather a regional center.
Why do I understand this? Because it is not "hidden" in small print, it is prominently displayed in all the FAQs tha their service is not the same as a traditional 911 service, at the top of web pages, etc. I don't have a problem with it.
Again, you'd have to be damn stupid not to realize it... On par with folks who use a blow dryer while sitting in a bath tub.
If I do something just as dumb, then I DESERVE to be a blip in the news about some stupid dumb ass. I won't be around to get mad about it anyway.;p
Vonage makes it abundantly clear that you must activate 911 Service by providing address information. You'd have to be an absolute idiot to miss this. It's prominently displayed in red at the top of your account dashboard when you log into the site. A glaring red insert is in the box with your phone adapter right on top. It's all over their website for new customers, and everywhere in their FAQs.
I activated my 911 service as soon as I signed up, 'cause it was made imminently clear to me that I needed to do so. By the time my adapter arrived, my 911 service was in place.
If you're too damn stupid to activat the service, I just see it as evolution in action. Hopefully you were too damn dumb to breed yet too.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to bring back the flying sergeants program...
This study should come as quite a surprise to the educators I dealt with growing up...in my day all the scary/loner/mistfits problems were caused by playing Dungeons and Dragons!. Except for those few of us who took it to the next level, and played Paranoia! The computer was out to get us! Really!
Lol...yes sadly I have seen that happen all too often...
I inherited a product with a code base of a few hundred thousands lines of code when I was a fairly new software engineer. To make it worse, it was cross platform (AIX/Windows/Linkux/HUX) with something like 20 nested make files. The code was essentially a business service application. My solution was to talk to the consumers of the product and learn what each service call was supposed to do. I then wrote a set of test suites for the application. I had to continually update the suite as a I went along, but it definitely exposed unexpected couplings or other strange behaviors in the code. I also ended up converted the project over to an ant based build script (ant was brand new at the time). It defintely taught me what the code was doing and how it was doing.
I take notes with a Tablet PC...often course handouts for the lecture are in (horrors!) Microsoft office. I can take notes using One note or AutoDesk Sketbook to capture those pesky diagrams. Erasing is certainly a lot less messy than pen/paper. And I can still type notes too. It's a win-win for me.... If only the iPad was a real tablet pc....sigh....
If you think a true software developer should spend most of his time in front of a computer writing code, then it is you who has no idea what is involved in developing great software.
Amen! A software engineer should be spending less than half their time coding! Much more should be spent in design, planning, and analysis! As an aside, I found the hang gliding comment particularly funny as I was once hang gliding when my pager went off (it was stowed in a pocket in my harness) on a weekend to help troubleshoot a production issue! Too funny!
If the person was a software engineer, or even a coder, he isn't in "IT". There is a reason why companies have an IT department, and then a completely seperate department called software engineeing.
It is not strictly true that a software engineer or coder is not in IT, although I agree that SHOULD be the case. IT and Engineering/Development SHOULD be distinct. For example, in a large company like Disney, enterprise application engineers (i.e. the development teams that write the enterprise applications that run the parks (such as reservation systems, payment systems, or even fast pass ticket systems) are actually lumped in as part of the larger IT department that includes the people who provide typical help desk service to office works.. Not how it SHOULD be, but often how it is, particularly since they often have radically different cultures when it comes to work ethics, resource management, etc.
Linus is certainly a better choice than a terrorist, like in 1994.
Let's you update multiple social networking and bookmarking sites all at once or based on groupings (i.e. business / social ). Of course it doesn't support 120 sites, but I think the count is up to around 40 now...
You've got to be kidding... I'm a woman, and I migrate towards things, not people. That's probably why there are more robots in my household on any give day that show up at my house all year. The reason why many women don't migrate towards hard science is purely cultural. Not all of them can stomach the weird looks and attitude that those of us women who ARE in the geek fields put up with on almost a daily basis. I've been told so on numerous ocassions by female colleagues on the "business" side vs. the "tech" side. Even the men I work with think of me as "one of the guys" because culturally I don't fit the standard of pink-girlie-softness, lol.
I can't even GET to the preferences menu... Safari freezes on startup and I have to kill the process.... oh well, it is still a Beta after all...
NQC is great, but for those Java enthusiasts out there, take a peek at a micro implementation of Java called LeJOS (http://lejos.sourceforge.net./ It's got a great set of APIs, including some nice implemenations of classic Robotics design patterns such as Behaviors, BehaviorListeners, Arbitrators, etc... Very versatile.
Lol. Do you KNOW how many Mindstorms RIS kits are sold annually? 40,000+ a year with NO advertising at a price of $199. The original version sold 80,000 units in the first 3 months following its release. Hard to find Mindstorms kits and Robolab sets often sell for many times their original retail price (just skim around on ebay a bit.) Over a million Mindstorms kits have been sold to date.
One thing that made Mindstorms so popular in the past were the 3rd party development tools and sensors that have been created. Today, you can program an RCX brick in Java, multiple versions of C, Forth, and probably other languages, too. Whole business have croppsed up selling 3rd pary ultrasonic sensors, magnetic sensors, etc etc. The new kit is planned to be deliberately open to third party develops. Lego wants, and is encouraging, 3rd party development environments, tools, sensors etc.
Given all these factors, it's a safe bet that Lego will make a lot of money off of the next generation of Mindstorms. I'll be buying a few kits myself the second they hit the shelves if I'm not one of the lucky 100 chosen for the pre-release development program.
Now that I've got out all the analytical talk of why the next-gen Mindstorms will be a sucess I have one more thing to say: WOOT! WHOOPEE! HURRAY! I WANT A KIT NOW!!! Hee hee.
I just made the jump from a Treo 650 to a Blackberry 8700. I've been a die hard palm user for years, and had one of the first "brick" palm phones (and old Qualcom almost as big as a Newton). I never did like the smaller screen size on the Treos... When the Treos came out, I moved from a Palm V to a Treo 600. I found I stopped using a lot of the "palm" features of the Treo they way I once had. Still, I liked the device. When I made the jump to the 650 (had to have bluetooth!) I was PISSED. So unstable it would crash every time a call came in when I was calling out. It would lock up for no reason and require a hard reset. And the screen was STILL too @$@#$ small. I've had the Blackberry for a day now, and I really like it. The scroll wheel has grown on me. And while I'll never be as lightning fast on the thumbboard as I was with palm graffiti, I can deal with it. I will miss the ability to set a custom ring tone & image for every number in my contact list... And I'll miss the treo "favorites" buttons... Still, at least my Java programs mostly work since I've moved them over (the UIs will need a little tweaking). I doubt I'll go back to Palm. The 700W is just the nail in the coffin for me. I LOATHE WinCE/Pocket PC/Window Mobile/whatever the latest branding is. As a former PPC developer I know up close and personal what a #$@$@# OS it is. Too bad Palm has gotten just as bad. Sigh.
You're confusing smugness with irritation about people who refuse to accept the consequences of their own stupidity.
;p
And you're wrong. I DO understand that the 911 service provided by Vonage is not the same as traditional 911 service, and that my calls are not routed to a traditional 911 center, but rather a regional center.
Why do I understand this? Because it is not "hidden" in small print, it is prominently displayed in all the FAQs tha their service is not the same as a traditional 911 service, at the top of web pages, etc. I don't have a problem with it.
Again, you'd have to be damn stupid not to realize it... On par with folks who use a blow dryer while sitting in a bath tub.
If I do something just as dumb, then I DESERVE to be a blip in the news about some stupid dumb ass. I won't be around to get mad about it anyway.
I have Vonage VOIP.
Vonage makes it abundantly clear that you must activate 911 Service by providing address information. You'd have to be an absolute idiot to miss this. It's prominently displayed in red at the top of your account dashboard when you log into the site. A glaring red insert is in the box with your phone adapter right on top. It's all over their website for new customers, and everywhere in their FAQs.
I activated my 911 service as soon as I signed up, 'cause it was made imminently clear to me that I needed to do so. By the time my adapter arrived, my 911 service was in place.
If you're too damn stupid to activat the service, I just see it as evolution in action. Hopefully you were too damn dumb to breed yet too.
I wouldn't reinstall at alll... I'd use Ghost. :p