The only ways around this would be to make all screens flat against the desk (like a piece of paper) That would be hell on your neck, staring down at the desk surface all day.
I'm a keen photographer, and any processing of digital photographs that I do is done using PaintShop Pro (actually quite an elderly version now...something like 7.2).
I'm a member of a local camera and photography club, and just about everyone there who uses digital phot editing software uses some version or another of Adobe Photoshop. It's very good, very capable and is the de facto standard.
I've sat with people and watched them do manipulations using Photoshop and I have to say that so far I have seen little if anything done in Photoshop that I couldn't replicate in PaintShopPro (for general editing - Photoshop can do some pretty way out things with filters, but that's not really my thing)
I beg to differ. Granted, Windows may have some security holes which malware/spyware can exploit (and has a big user base, so its worth the while of malware authors to target that platform).
Spyware might get there because there are loopholes to be exploited, or because its preinstalled IN ADDITION TO the Windows OS as part of a prebuilt system. However, I would disagree that it includes Spyware as part of the out-of-the box installation of just the operating system
Is it wrong for me to feel used and abused at the idea that Microsoft wants to charge for this service?
Staying away from the "Don't use Windows, use Linux/Mac/whatever" arguments for a minute, can MS actually win on this one? Charge for it, get flamed for asking for money. Give it away for free, get flamed for bundling software with the O/S (c.f. the Windows MediaPlayer episode).
Agreed. A log file analysis tool like Analog can get you the necessary information easily.
Also, if you're interested in what platforms to support for application (rather than web) development, then there should be info in your log files which tell syou which versions of which operating systems site visitors are using. You can use this as a yardstick for what the general pattern is for O/S use. Indeed, it was when logfiles for my website showed that Win9x users had dwindled to a certain threshold that I made the decision not to worry about any software which I developed having to be compatible with Win9x
At a conservative estimate, I've pissed away half of my lifetime development effort dealing with instances where the documentation of an OS, APIs or SDKs doesn't match the actual behaviour. Every time I get sandbagged with that, I wish I could just read the damn source and see what's really going on.
Even if you had access to the source code, you'd still need the documentation for anything more than a trivial component.
I can think of projects Ive worked on with >1 million lines of code. There's no way I could have homed in on which functions to call (and how) from those big components without some documentation to provide some general guidance. Sure, at times when the documentation was flawed, looking at source = useful, but you need something to point in the right general direction.
It's all too easy to forget to keep API, etc. specs up-to-date whenever modifications are made to code. That's where the rot starts. Keep the 2 in synch, and it keep the documentation relevant and useful.
I've seen systems get slow on Windows machines over and over because of memory leaks
Hmmmm....so where does the problem actually lie - the operating system or the apps? I was having a conversation with a non-very-technically-minded friend a while ago who was saying how often "Windows crashed" when what he actually meant was that he was running a piece of badly written shareware which was throwing an exception which was being caught and reported by Windows.
Try telling Micrsoft to fix the memory leak in IIS
Valid point - there may be a memory leak in IIS, but that's not a "Windows" problem, although it does come from the same vendor. If you replaced IIS with Apache would that make Windows itself more stable.
I'm pretty sure the books will have a copyright statement that says that copying/storage in any sort of info retrieval system is not allowed without permission from the copyright holder(s).
Just because there's a lot of free (as in beer) stuff out there on the web, it's all too easy to forget that we don;t just have a right to get anything that we want for free.
Sure, FF on linux might be safe, but any application running under windows with Administrator rights has the potential to take over the entire machine.
Would it not be truer to say..."application running under any OS with Administrator rights has the potential to take over the entire machine"???
This hardly ever happens, if at all, in the UK. Most police cars on motorways travel at a significant amount (>5mph) below the speed limit.
Great idea, except how many times have you seen a tail back of slow-moving traffic caused by people driving at 65mph, too paranoid to overtake a cop car?
I dont think he's going to be actually retiring. There's an interview with him in Wired magazine and it sounds more like he's wanting to get back to doing non-Starwars stuff.
I use this CSS item in the stylesheet for my own site. When I view this in IE I get a background image, when I view it in FireFox I don't. One small item, but it makes a big difference to the look of the site.
This *isn't* flame-baiting - just an honest observation. I've only recently got into usng FireFox, and I have been a bit disappointed with the way it fails to support some stuff which works fine in IE. Here I'm not talking about stuff like ActiveX - I'm talking about some basic HTML/CSS stuff which is in the W3C spec, but FF seems to have a problem with. Certainly not the sort of thing which I'd consider to be branded as "IE-only" content. I do genuinely want to use this more as a browser, but I'm a bit worried that I might be missing some stuff on websites, because of the inconsistencies.
For me it's not necessarily the ringtone itself (although many are sooooo annoying) but its the volume. I always keep my cellphone at the quietest setting to be audible in a given environment. If I need to be available, then I have the phone on me so I can hear it with minimal risk of disturbing those around me, and if I do take a call I'll try to step away so as not to inflict my one-sided conversation on others.
This reminds me of a story I read back last month, where a programming error meant that 911 calls actually got routed to some guy's home.
Fortunately he used to work as a police dispatcher, so he set about relaying the emergency calls by cellphone to the police.
First time I hit any snags with coding, Google groups (although I still keep calling it Deja) is my first port of call.
The net gives better access to information, but I think that I absorb information better from paper. If it's a big/thorny subject then I'll print something out and read about it from dead tree rather than CRT.
Also, whereas Google/MSDN/whatever will provide me with a more immediate solution to a problem, I still get a lot out books but on a longer timeline. I usually have something lying around on the sofa which I flick through during ad breaks, etc. and it's amazing how effective this is for absorbing knowledge.
That reminds me of something that happened in my office a while back.
We had a room set aside with about 2 dozen PC's in it, all logged in. One day somebody left the room unattended for a while with window open (well it did get kind of hot with all that kit in there).
A pigeon got in through the open window and spent ages just flying/hopping around at random, occaisonally landing on a keyboard or nudgign a mouse (as well as leaving the world's supply of guano behind).
In the aftermath, all the PCs had various different apps running, with various bits of data entered, depending on what the pigeon had hit on the keyboard...an interesting and smaller scale variation on the 'infinite number of monkeys' thing I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a keen photographer, and any processing of digital photographs that I do is done using PaintShop Pro (actually quite an elderly version now...something like 7.2).
I'm a member of a local camera and photography club, and just about everyone there who uses digital phot editing software uses some version or another of Adobe Photoshop. It's very good, very capable and is the de facto standard.
I've sat with people and watched them do manipulations using Photoshop and I have to say that so far I have seen little if anything done in Photoshop that I couldn't replicate in PaintShopPro (for general editing - Photoshop can do some pretty way out things with filters, but that's not really my thing)
Microsoft Firefox http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/14/ms_firefox /
We've seen Windows bundled with spyware
I beg to differ. Granted, Windows may have some security holes which malware/spyware can exploit (and has a big user base, so its worth the while of malware authors to target that platform).
Spyware might get there because there are loopholes to be exploited, or because its preinstalled IN ADDITION TO the Windows OS as part of a prebuilt system. However, I would disagree that it includes Spyware as part of the out-of-the box installation of just the operating system
Is it wrong for me to feel used and abused at the idea that Microsoft wants to charge for this service?
Staying away from the "Don't use Windows, use Linux/Mac/whatever" arguments for a minute, can MS actually win on this one? Charge for it, get flamed for asking for money. Give it away for free, get flamed for bundling software with the O/S (c.f. the Windows MediaPlayer episode).
Agreed. A log file analysis tool like Analog can get you the necessary information easily. Also, if you're interested in what platforms to support for application (rather than web) development, then there should be info in your log files which tell syou which versions of which operating systems site visitors are using. You can use this as a yardstick for what the general pattern is for O/S use. Indeed, it was when logfiles for my website showed that Win9x users had dwindled to a certain threshold that I made the decision not to worry about any software which I developed having to be compatible with Win9x
I think you might be talking about Shazam
At a conservative estimate, I've pissed away half of my lifetime development effort dealing with instances where the documentation of an OS, APIs or SDKs doesn't match the actual behaviour. Every time I get sandbagged with that, I wish I could just read the damn source and see what's really going on.
Even if you had access to the source code, you'd still need the documentation for anything more than a trivial component.
I can think of projects Ive worked on with >1 million lines of code. There's no way I could have homed in on which functions to call (and how) from those big components without some documentation to provide some general guidance. Sure, at times when the documentation was flawed, looking at source = useful, but you need something to point in the right general direction.
It's all too easy to forget to keep API, etc. specs up-to-date whenever modifications are made to code. That's where the rot starts. Keep the 2 in synch, and it keep the documentation relevant and useful.
I've seen systems get slow on Windows machines over and over because of memory leaks
Hmmmm....so where does the problem actually lie - the operating system or the apps? I was having a conversation with a non-very-technically-minded friend a while ago who was saying how often "Windows crashed" when what he actually meant was that he was running a piece of badly written shareware which was throwing an exception which was being caught and reported by Windows.
Try telling Micrsoft to fix the memory leak in IIS
Valid point - there may be a memory leak in IIS, but that's not a "Windows" problem, although it does come from the same vendor. If you replaced IIS with Apache would that make Windows itself more stable.
Agreed.
I'm pretty sure the books will have a copyright statement that says that copying/storage in any sort of info retrieval system is not allowed without permission from the copyright holder(s).
Just because there's a lot of free (as in beer) stuff out there on the web, it's all too easy to forget that we don;t just have a right to get anything that we want for free.
Sure, FF on linux might be safe, but any application running under windows with Administrator rights has the potential to take over the entire machine.
Would it not be truer to say..."application running under any OS with Administrator rights has the potential to take over the entire machine"???
Install something around the edges to create a raised lip to stop screws and other small bits'n'bobs rolling off the bench and onto the floor
the person stopping by your cubicle *in person* to ask a question.
The question usually being, "have you read that email that I sent you 10 seconds ago?
This hardly ever happens, if at all, in the UK. Most police cars on motorways travel at a significant amount (>5mph) below the speed limit.
Great idea, except how many times have you seen a tail back of slow-moving traffic caused by people driving at 65mph, too paranoid to overtake a cop car?
I dont think he's going to be actually retiring. There's an interview with him in Wired magazine and it sounds more like he's wanting to get back to doing non-Starwars stuff.
Here's an example of what I mean...
Section 5.3.3 of the W3 spec for CSS1 includes:
BODY { background-image: url(marble.gif) }
I use this CSS item in the stylesheet for my own site. When I view this in IE I get a background image, when I view it in FireFox I don't. One small item, but it makes a big difference to the look of the site.
This *isn't* flame-baiting - just an honest observation.
I've only recently got into usng FireFox, and I have been a bit disappointed with the way it fails to support some stuff which works fine in IE. Here I'm not talking about stuff like ActiveX - I'm talking about some basic HTML/CSS stuff which is in the W3C spec, but FF seems to have a problem with. Certainly not the sort of thing which I'd consider to be branded as "IE-only" content.
I do genuinely want to use this more as a browser, but I'm a bit worried that I might be missing some stuff on websites, because of the inconsistencies.
How are those damn ring tones NOT annoying?
For me it's not necessarily the ringtone itself (although many are sooooo annoying) but its the volume. I always keep my cellphone at the quietest setting to be audible in a given environment. If I need to be available, then I have the phone on me so I can hear it with minimal risk of disturbing those around me, and if I do take a call I'll try to step away so as not to inflict my one-sided conversation on others.
This reminds me of a story I read back last month, where a programming error meant that 911 calls actually got routed to some guy's home. Fortunately he used to work as a police dispatcher, so he set about relaying the emergency calls by cellphone to the police.
I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it
First time I hit any snags with coding, Google groups (although I still keep calling it Deja) is my first port of call.
The net gives better access to information, but I think that I absorb information better from paper. If it's a big/thorny subject then I'll print something out and read about it from dead tree rather than CRT.
Also, whereas Google/MSDN/whatever will provide me with a more immediate solution to a problem, I still get a lot out books but on a longer timeline. I usually have something lying around on the sofa which I flick through during ad breaks, etc. and it's amazing how effective this is for absorbing knowledge.
That reminds me of something that happened in my office a while back.
We had a room set aside with about 2 dozen PC's in it, all logged in. One day somebody left the room unattended for a while with window open (well it did get kind of hot with all that kit in there).
A pigeon got in through the open window and spent ages just flying/hopping around at random, occaisonally landing on a keyboard or nudgign a mouse (as well as leaving the world's supply of guano behind).
In the aftermath, all the PCs had various different apps running, with various bits of data entered, depending on what the pigeon had hit on the keyboard...an interesting and smaller scale variation on the 'infinite number of monkeys' thing I guess.
If you don't believe that they're using anti-piracy measure to combat piracy, then just what do you think they're using them for?
The web server at humanclock.
in binary
You had ones and zeros? You were spoiled rotten. We had to make do with capital I's and capital O's