I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1980s and I flunked out of college in part because of spending too much time playing games on PLATO, particularly a MMO dungeon game called Avatar. The way things worked, the "free" (i.e. not connected to coursework) account I had could only be used at night. As a result, I and similar Avatar addicts would gather in the basement computer lab on Friday night and play until around 5AM or so, when the system went offline for maintenance. At that point we would go to IHOP for breakfast, then return at 6AM to play another couple of hours, until our accounts were booted off at 8AM.
Strangely enough, this was not conducive to good study habits! Luckily, after I flunked out, I managed to get accepted into another university which did NOT use PLATO!:-)
You can install software that emulates a PLATO terminal, allowing you to connect to a PLATO host (Cyber1.org).
The answers to my secret questions are always lies. I don't want to have to keep my mother's maiden name a secret, and if a friend asks the name of my first pet, I want to be able to answer honestly.
re: "they are programmed by whoever they could grab to throw at IT in the 90s."
The 90s? I think your concept of "old software" is a little off. We've got mainframe software written in the 80s, as well as some written in the 70s.
As for why they need to reprogram stuff at all, I'm guessing the problem is taking monthly salaries and replacing them with hourly wages. I work a different number of hours each month, depending on how many work days there are. But I get paid the same monthly salary regardless.
The software changes would probably be required to figure out how many work days there are in the month (don't forget holidays, as well as any unpaid time), as well as figure out the taxes, FICA, insurance premiums, etc.
Plus you need a bit of time to test it, because if it messes up just 1% of the employees' paychecks, that's thousands of angry people. (People get touchy when you don't give them what they were expected, or if you tell them they have to give some of it back because you screwed up.)
It's not uncommon for a boss to be unable to grant a request for time off if the employee will be unreachable. It's also not uncommon for the EMPLOYEE to be unwilling to take time off if they will be unreachable.
Given such a situation, this attempt to encourage family togetherness could just result in LESS family togetherness.
Is it true that CFLs contain mercury? Why and how much?
CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing - an average of
5 milligrams (roughly equivalent to the tip of a ball-point pen). Mercury is an essential,
irreplaceable element in CFLs and is what allows the bulb to be an efficient light source. By
comparison, older home thermometers contain 500 milligrams of mercury and many manual
thermostats contain up to 3000 milligrams. It would take between 100 and 600 CFLs to
equal those amounts.
[...]
What should I do if a CFL breaks?
Because there is such a small amount of mercury in CFLs, your greatest risk if a bulb breaks
is getting cut from glass shards. Research indicates that there is no immediate health risk to
you or your family should a bulb break and it's cleaned up properly. You can minimize any
risks by following these proper clean-up and disposal guidelines:
Sweep up--don't vacuum--all of the glass fragments and fine particles.
Place broken pieces in a sealed plastic bag and wipe the area with a damp paper towel to pick up any stray shards of glass or fine particles. Put the used towel in the
plastic bag as well.
If weather permits, open windows to allow the room to ventilate.
One problem I've noticed with every implementation of "Undo" that I've ever seen is that there is never any indication of what it is that you are about to "Undo". You hit Ctrl-Z and the cursor jumps to some unexpected part of the page -- what did it undo? No way to know, 'cuz it's not there, so now you have to "Redo" to compare, then "Undo" again.
I'm not sure what the best way of implementing an improved "Undo" function would be. Perhaps "Undo" would just use strikeout and redlining to show what it is about to do, then you would hit "Undo" again to get it to actually do it.
we must have really high tech phones here because of this funny button called "do not disturb" I use it all the time.
Yep, I'd say your phone is pretty high-tech. Allow me describe to you the features of my phone. My phone sports a 12-key user-interface, stylishly arranged in a rectangular shape. Ten of the keys have a numeral on them, allowing me to quickly and easily enter a phone number. There is also a * key and a # key, which excitingly serve pretty much no purpose whatsoever, for maximum flexibility. This allows me to press them pretty much anytime I want to and pretend they are doing whatever I want.
Sorry, I don't recall where the following came from. Please save it and show it to the next person who compares software unfavorably to houses.
If Architects Had To Work Like Programmers
Dear Mr. Architect:
Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.
Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them).
As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)
Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that the kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.
To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.
Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet.
However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.
Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.
While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers. Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.
Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.
You must be thrilled to be working on as interesting a project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.
PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.
PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.
The Necronomicon (for example) is no longer covered by copyright. If I take a photograph of a page of the Necronomicon, my photograph is covered by copyright. Therefore, I can put restrictions on what you do with my photograph, even though the page that I photographed is copyright-free.
users simply cannot grasp the concept that skimming through headers and comments in sources is the best documentation there is.
Did you really say that?! "Hmm... I can't figure out how to do generate a table of contents in OpenOffice. No problem, I'll just read the programmer's comments in the source." What kind of fantasy land do you live in? Give me a manual! Give my father a manual! Don't tell us that we'd be better off reading the source code's comments.
If I claim that I saw a mouse in your bedroom, you wouldn't require much evidence to believe me.
If I claim that I saw a fully-grown African elephant in your bedroom, you would require significantly more evidence before you would believe me.
If both claims would require the same amount of proof before they would be accepted, we would either be accepting virtually nothing or virtually everything.
The reason science works is that the proof is never 100% final.
FTC hits claims for mosquito repellent device. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has charged Lentek International, Inc, and its principals, Joseph Durek and Lou Lentine, with making false and unsubstantiated claims that (a) their MosquitoContro devices repel mosquitoes from the user and provide an effective alternative to using chemical pesticides in the prevention of the West Nile Virus; (b) their pest-control products drive away mice, rats, bats, cockroaches, and other household pests by means of ultrasound and electromagnetic technology; and (c) their air-cleaning products remove various pollutants from indoor air through ozone and ionization. The company, located in Orlando, Florida, markets air cleaners, pest-control devices, housewares, pet products, personal care products, and flashlights through the Internet, retail stores, catalogs, and individual home distributors. [FTC alleges electronic mosquito repellent claims are false; sellers also lack evidence for ultrasonic pest-control and air cleaning product claims. FTC news release, Aug 28, 2002]
I guess this is what happens when software moves from a not-for-profit organization to a for-profit company. I guess this is also what happens when the software isn't Open Source.
Sounds like it's time for someone to start another Open Source project on SourceForge. (Alas, it won't be me, but I'm hoping others will step up to the challenge.)
Not just Reviews - Information and Trivia
on
An IMDb for Books
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The nice thing about the IMDB is that it carries more than just reviews of the movies. It also has detailed information and trivia about each movie - the stars, the producer, the director, bloopers and goofs, plot holes, trivia, etc.
If the IBList does the same thing, they'll be filling a niche that Amazon's book reviews don't fill.
In another review of this book, the main criticism I remember is that the book's author admitted up front that he had never really participated in a full XP project. It seems a bit odd to criticize a methodology that you've never actually tried yourself.
Re: "While they are wasting time coordinating with each other, they could be separately making large programming progress."
Perhaps you've misunderstood the concept. They don't do any coordinating with each other because they are both working at the same machine, side-by-side. There's no need to coordinate with someone who saw every keystroke you typed (and vice versa).
The theory is that the two programmers discuss what they are doing as they are doing it, taking (hopefully) the best idea that the two of them came up with for each step of the process. Two sets of eyes should catch stupid errors more easily, and two brains keep them from spending time wandering down entirely the wrong blind alley.
That's the theory anyway. I've never been involved in an XP project, so I've no idea how well it works.
(From the article)
"Jessica, an art therapist and professional harpist, has $50,000 in student loans."
WTF?!! An art therapist and professional harpist?! Good grief! If you're going to take on $50 grand in student loans, don't go whining to a journalist when you find out you can't make oodles of money painting and playing a harp.
Wow. Nearly every reply in this thread is an example of how techies are not like normal people -- and yet don't realize it. Despite your wishes, the non-techie world is not going to accept that "Letter.txt" and "LETTER.TXT" don't refer to the same file. If I received a check made out to "WALLY HARTSHORN", would you say that I cannot cash that check because my name is "Wally Hartshorn"? Would you say that "Ford" is a different company than "FORD"?
Like the original poster, I am a former Amiga user, so I am quite familiar with the experience of a file system that allows mixed-case filenames, but recognizes that they are equivalent. It was far, Far, FAR nice than having to remember whether I named the file "Letter.txt", "LETTER.txt", "LETTER.TXT", or "letter.txt". Like nearly everyone else, I remember words much more readily than I do specific capitalizations.
I've always presumed that SourceForge is primarily (or exclusively) oriented towards software project management (thus the word "source" in the name). Perhaps that is actually what this person needs, but they didn't state that in their original message. For more general project management tasks, which might very well involve little or no programming, how useful would SourceForge be?
By the way, I run a skeptic-oriented search engine called Skeptic Planet that indexes 40 of the topic skeptic sites. That makes it easy to find skeptical examinations of this type of thing. (Entering "crop circles" came up with 427 matches, every one with a skeptical viewpoint.)
I also run a Slash-based news site called Skeptic News, which is another good source.
Once upon a time, I read a fictional letter from someone to the architect designing their house. It was written to show the way users request features from software developers (e.g. "I'm not sure how many floors I want the house to have, so come up with a design that will work just as well for a one-story house as for a four-story mansion. I do not expect to be charged extra for this.") I thought it was hysterical and dead-on accurate. Does anyone know where I can find it? (No, I'm not talking about the woodpecker analogy.)
Perhaps I'm in the minority (probably), but I'd much prefer them to release it without the extra 30-40 minutes of footage. The pacing of the original was perfect. Adding another half-hour will, in all likelihood, just slow it down.
Why is it that, whenever a movie comes out that everyone likes, the director is visited by a little gnome that says, "They all liked it the way it was in the theaters, so make sure that you don't release it like that on DVD."
Slashdot Mirror
I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1980s and I flunked out of college in part because of spending too much time playing games on PLATO, particularly a MMO dungeon game called Avatar. The way things worked, the "free" (i.e. not connected to coursework) account I had could only be used at night. As a result, I and similar Avatar addicts would gather in the basement computer lab on Friday night and play until around 5AM or so, when the system went offline for maintenance. At that point we would go to IHOP for breakfast, then return at 6AM to play another couple of hours, until our accounts were booted off at 8AM.
Strangely enough, this was not conducive to good study habits! Luckily, after I flunked out, I managed to get accepted into another university which did NOT use PLATO! :-)
You can install software that emulates a PLATO terminal, allowing you to connect to a PLATO host (Cyber1.org).
Here's a video introduction to cyber1.org: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgMG9NCWoaU
And here's a video showing a battle in Empire (a Star Trek space battle game): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMPC1eG5cko
You'll need to view these videos large to really see what's happening.
The answers to my secret questions are always lies. I don't want to have to keep my mother's maiden name a secret, and if a friend asks the name of my first pet, I want to be able to answer honestly.
re: "they are programmed by whoever they could grab to throw at IT in the 90s."
The 90s? I think your concept of "old software" is a little off. We've got mainframe software written in the 80s, as well as some written in the 70s.
As for why they need to reprogram stuff at all, I'm guessing the problem is taking monthly salaries and replacing them with hourly wages. I work a different number of hours each month, depending on how many work days there are. But I get paid the same monthly salary regardless.
The software changes would probably be required to figure out how many work days there are in the month (don't forget holidays, as well as any unpaid time), as well as figure out the taxes, FICA, insurance premiums, etc.
Plus you need a bit of time to test it, because if it messes up just 1% of the employees' paychecks, that's thousands of angry people. (People get touchy when you don't give them what they were expected, or if you tell them they have to give some of it back because you screwed up.)
It's not uncommon for a boss to be unable to grant a request for time off if the employee will be unreachable. It's also not uncommon for the EMPLOYEE to be unwilling to take time off if they will be unreachable.
Given such a situation, this attempt to encourage family togetherness could just result in LESS family togetherness.
Lord knows they couldn't just write down this information.
(*sheesh*)One problem I've noticed with every implementation of "Undo" that I've ever seen is that there is never any indication of what it is that you are about to "Undo". You hit Ctrl-Z and the cursor jumps to some unexpected part of the page -- what did it undo? No way to know, 'cuz it's not there, so now you have to "Redo" to compare, then "Undo" again.
I'm not sure what the best way of implementing an improved "Undo" function would be. Perhaps "Undo" would just use strikeout and redlining to show what it is about to do, then you would hit "Undo" again to get it to actually do it.
1. Announce alliance with Sun.
2. ?
3. Profit!
Yep, I'd say your phone is pretty high-tech. Allow me describe to you the features of my phone. My phone sports a 12-key user-interface, stylishly arranged in a rectangular shape. Ten of the keys have a numeral on them, allowing me to quickly and easily enter a phone number. There is also a * key and a # key, which excitingly serve pretty much no purpose whatsoever, for maximum flexibility. This allows me to press them pretty much anytime I want to and pretend they are doing whatever I want.
The Necronomicon (for example) is no longer covered by copyright. If I take a photograph of a page of the Necronomicon, my photograph is covered by copyright. Therefore, I can put restrictions on what you do with my photograph, even though the page that I photographed is copyright-free.
Did you really say that?! "Hmm... I can't figure out how to do generate a table of contents in OpenOffice. No problem, I'll just read the programmer's comments in the source." What kind of fantasy land do you live in? Give me a manual! Give my father a manual! Don't tell us that we'd be better off reading the source code's comments.
If I claim that I saw a mouse in your bedroom, you wouldn't require much evidence to believe me.
If I claim that I saw a fully-grown African elephant in your bedroom, you would require significantly more evidence before you would believe me.
If both claims would require the same amount of proof before they would be accepted, we would either be accepting virtually nothing or virtually everything.
The reason science works is that the proof is never 100% final.
I guess this is what happens when software moves from a not-for-profit organization to a for-profit company. I guess this is also what happens when the software isn't Open Source.
Sounds like it's time for someone to start another Open Source project on SourceForge. (Alas, it won't be me, but I'm hoping others will step up to the challenge.)
The nice thing about the IMDB is that it carries more than just reviews of the movies. It also has detailed information and trivia about each movie - the stars, the producer, the director, bloopers and goofs, plot holes, trivia, etc.
If the IBList does the same thing, they'll be filling a niche that Amazon's book reviews don't fill.
Read the article. They chose "Steves" as a tribute to Stephen Jay Gould, who recently passed away.
In another review of this book, the main criticism I remember is that the book's author admitted up front that he had never really participated in a full XP project. It seems a bit odd to criticize a methodology that you've never actually tried yourself.
Re: "While they are wasting time coordinating with each other, they could be separately making large programming progress."
Perhaps you've misunderstood the concept. They don't do any coordinating with each other because they are both working at the same machine, side-by-side. There's no need to coordinate with someone who saw every keystroke you typed (and vice versa).
The theory is that the two programmers discuss what they are doing as they are doing it, taking (hopefully) the best idea that the two of them came up with for each step of the process. Two sets of eyes should catch stupid errors more easily, and two brains keep them from spending time wandering down entirely the wrong blind alley.
That's the theory anyway. I've never been involved in an XP project, so I've no idea how well it works.
Wow. Nearly every reply in this thread is an example of how techies are not like normal people -- and yet don't realize it. Despite your wishes, the non-techie world is not going to accept that "Letter.txt" and "LETTER.TXT" don't refer to the same file. If I received a check made out to "WALLY HARTSHORN", would you say that I cannot cash that check because my name is "Wally Hartshorn"? Would you say that "Ford" is a different company than "FORD"?
Like the original poster, I am a former Amiga user, so I am quite familiar with the experience of a file system that allows mixed-case filenames, but recognizes that they are equivalent. It was far, Far, FAR nice than having to remember whether I named the file "Letter.txt", "LETTER.txt", "LETTER.TXT", or "letter.txt". Like nearly everyone else, I remember words much more readily than I do specific capitalizations.
I've always presumed that SourceForge is primarily (or exclusively) oriented towards software project management (thus the word "source" in the name). Perhaps that is actually what this person needs, but they didn't state that in their original message. For more general project management tasks, which might very well involve little or no programming, how useful would SourceForge be?
[begin pimping]
By the way, I run a skeptic-oriented search engine called Skeptic Planet that indexes 40 of the topic skeptic sites. That makes it easy to find skeptical examinations of this type of thing. (Entering "crop circles" came up with 427 matches, every one with a skeptical viewpoint.)
I also run a Slash-based news site called Skeptic News, which is another good source.
[end pimping]
Once upon a time, I read a fictional letter from someone to the architect designing their house. It was written to show the way users request features from software developers (e.g. "I'm not sure how many floors I want the house to have, so come up with a design that will work just as well for a one-story house as for a four-story mansion. I do not expect to be charged extra for this.") I thought it was hysterical and dead-on accurate. Does anyone know where I can find it? (No, I'm not talking about the woodpecker analogy.)
Perhaps I'm in the minority (probably), but I'd much prefer them to release it without the extra 30-40 minutes of footage. The pacing of the original was perfect. Adding another half-hour will, in all likelihood, just slow it down.
Why is it that, whenever a movie comes out that everyone likes, the director is visited by a little gnome that says, "They all liked it the way it was in the theaters, so make sure that you don't release it like that on DVD."