Tastes vary of course but I thought Tennant was superb. The "Girl in the fireplace" episode is very very good. I don't see hoiw you can complain of a lack of emotional range once you've watched that episode
There are a number of technolgies where stuff seems verbose and error prone. Configuring stuff around Tomcat being another example in addition to the Web Services example you site.
The trick is to script things properly. The whole agile framework approach can work quite well in many environments. Make the whole develop and the submit to CVS or Subversion or whatever mandatory, automate the nightly smoke and burn build out of version control automated.
Make the only way that stuff can get into production be via a version controlled script.
It does involve work up front but it sure as hell gets rid of any verbose, repeatative, error prone xml configuration concerns. Plus it's sort of self documenting.
Wikipedia reckons that Galois's last words were "Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty." I'm sure that I read some where they were "What a wast to die over some stupid bint"
First off, I'm not in the US. I'm English and working in New Zealand
But is it really true that real IT jobs are moving overseas
I can imagine how call centres (UK-Spelling) and first level support could be outsourced but I find it hard to imagine how most it jobs could be.
What sort of IT organisation are we talking about here?
I suspect that most IT workers are in-house corporate workers doing things like - talking to end user stakeholders to habilitate ideas or working on linking third party applications to work in the specific context of their organisation.
Most good IT people are interacting very closely with end users.
There are what we might call the "pure application developers" who are largely still doing what they do based on a deep understanding of end user needs.
I find it hard to understand how these roles can effectively be out-sourced to India or indeed to somewhere there isn't frequent contact or at least a strong shared culture.
If we are talking about these sorts of roles then I think you just have to weather the storm because the pendulum will swing back when the bean counters realise that it doesn't work.
If you aren't in a true IT role, one that requires an understanding of the tech and the people who use the tech then maybe you do have a problem.
Google Search must be just about the only technology that is a household name and accepted by this community as "A Good Thing"
Their approach to advertising is something I tried to sell to clients around the time of the dot com boom and bust in 2000 but no-one seemed to able to "get it"
To date, we've got to give Google the credit that they do, if in fact, "get it".
I think that we should watch this space and hope for the best - it just might happen
You may be talking of Alan Cooper.
He talks a lot of sense about usability.
He can be found at www.cooper.com
His stuff is well worth a read and if you ever get a chance to see him speak - Take It.
Asberger's syndrome and "Building Social Skills in Gifted Youths" are different subjects.
Both are interesting and important but let's not confuse the two.
I read Maths at Trinity Cambridge and my IQ is around the 4SD level so I may or may not be "gifted" and my son probably has Asperger's ( diagnoses differ )
I had some social skill problems as a teenager and so does my son. The strategies I learnt and used aren't really help to him - I wish they were.
Some points that helped me were
- Wake up and realise that this is normal, 99.995 % of the population scores lower than you, you have to learn to adapt to their world - the opposite ain't going to happen
- You want sex then.. wake up and..
- Going to Cambridge and being "normal" for the first time. Seeing people who were as far beyond me as I was beyond the norm. Watching them struggle and seeing how weird they looked to me. Trying to help these people interact with the merely smart.
- Learning to spell and use good grammer - b*gg*r skipped this one
The parent posts description of Apserger's Syndrome fit's pretty well with my son.
Sig: This sig is currently under construction
Re:Good for distributed computing, I bet.
on
The Disposable Computer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The first machine, an Elliot 900, I was ever paid to work on had 8K. Not too bad tho as the bottom 4K retained it's contents when you switch off the m/c for the night
Now that machine used paper tape and the next machine I used punched card - so what are we going to do with paper tape and punched cards that have embedded processors. Feed them to themselves?
One machine at Uni was an 8K PDP 7(?), unfortunately some the graphite rings were broken so not all 8K actually worked. Code around broken bits was a bit tedious
I downloaded FireFox the other week. I uninstalled it yesterday.
I loved it. The tabs concept is great. Many features are excellent. Except...
Roughly once an hour clicking back would simply take my machine (windows XP portable) out. Not even the blue screen of death but a black screen.
If someone can tell me how to rectify the problem then I'd be very happy.
I'm a senior IT manager for a corporate. Over the last year I've become more and more impressed by some open source initiatives. In particular uPortal from ja-sig.org. V good product for it's problem domain. This led me onto JUnit and MockObjects.
The major selling point to me is not the price. In my experience, the support is better with uPortal than with the equivalent commercial software. I can get an answer off the listserv in an hour when it might take a week or more from a commercial equivalent.
I looked at FireFox in the hope that it would prove to me that a broader look at OSS would be a good idea. But really, a product that kills my machine every hour or so it not really a starter.
Actualy, I thought that this question, modded down to 0 was a good one,"How will that help anyone?! "
IMAM ( I am a mathematician, well ok I got a Maths degree from Trinity Cambridge ( and I di..dn't like Quicksilver (though I did love Cryptonomicon (and I can write Lisp )))).
But should I run the Seti screen saver, the Climate predication model or this one?
My current vote is the CP model but somehow it feels less sexy
(lastStatement.getSounds()==Statements.SOUNDS_GEEK Y ? statement.replace(lastStatement.text(),lastStateme nt.geekFactor()-1),lastStatement.text())
No, I think that there is some point to this small time scale.
Internet eMail providers have taken at least some steps to prevent their service being used as a spam source. One is that, somewhat strange, request that you see to "type in the letters and numbers you see above"
The idea is that only people, not bots, can read the letters etc. So at least you know it's a person applying for the account.
This doesn't help too much if you then wait for a long period before you check if the user is acting strangely. Hey, I can sign up, read and type the letters and then let my bot use the address to send 10,000 spam mails in the next hour before they check - wickid.
I thought both books were wonderful and bought and read King Rat ( his first book ) as soon as I saw it in the shop.
King Rat is not IMHO in the same league as The Scar or PSS but still worth a read.
I am not surprised that some posters couldn't get on with these novels though.
Mieville's style is really quite unusual and extreme.
In a way his writing reminds me of Jack Vance. The books are worth reading simply for the language and the bizarre plots, characters and ideas are a bonus.
I thought it was The Man Who Sold The Moon by Heinlein
But really this guy does raise an interesing question. How does one establish ownership of an asteroid.
I'm sure that most/.ers would be happy if someone put up the space elevator and went and dragged back and asteroid and mined it for profit
So if you do the elevator thing and the dragging thing - but I start mining it - are you going to be happy - I think not.
So exactly how does one establish ownership. I'll be honest, I can't tell, from reading the website if this guy is serious about owning Eros or serious about pushing the envelope on the legals.
Walt Disney Feature Animation is in the process of halting all work on traditionally-animated features and going completely CG.
Article says-
Stainton, who took over as animation chief earlier this year, insists the press obituaries for 2-D are premature. "It is a bit of a media creation to say 2-D is dead.
Supposedly, all of their animators-- even staunch traditionalists such as Glenn Keane-- are being trained on 3D computer animation techniques.
Article says -
"We will always do whatever fits the story best," Cook assures. "We've gone on a concerted effort to train and re-train artists. But we will keep our great sensibility."
The last hand-drawn high-budget Disney feature scheduled for release is Home on the Range, which is due out next April.
Article says -
continues with the computer/hand-drawn hybrid A Few Good Ghosts in '06 as well as the spoof Rapunzel Unbraided in '07.
I thought about this one for quite a while and I really can find very little merit in the article.
The boolean logic etc post at least says something valid about the subject area.
I wonder if there is something that makes sense that is a little less abstract than the liberal arts post.
One thing that constantly amazes me is how quite well educated people fail to understand what current software can do.
Customers will do a little bit of hand waving and come up with something that better belongs in a Star Trek movie. Then they get upset when you tell them "Look, if I actually manage to do that I'll give you your money back. There's some guys in Stockholm who'll give me a medal and a whole bunch of money if I can figure out how to do that"
I really wonder if some course, such as MBA's or Business degrees, should include a small review of the complete lack of progress that's been made in AI.
Even experienced IT professionals seem to become gullible about the capabilities of software when faced with a smooth salesman.
I wish people would remember that software does very very simple things very very quickly.
So, one day in '78?, we're all sitting in the pub chatting.
Being Maths undergrads we're talking about this amazing new toy - Rubik's cube.
I say 'Do you think it would be possible to do this thing in your head'
Toby, later a Post-doc quantum mechanics researcher was certain it couldn't be done.
I wasn't so sure - I thought that using some clever representation technique like mnemonics could make it doable with a lot of practice.
The next day we're all back in the same pub and John, saying nothing, put a solved cube in front of Toby. Toby shuffles it and hands it back. John studies each faces, shuts his eyes and about a minute later puts the cube down, solved.
Later another friend said that they'd seen him going into the toy shop about about 3pm. He'd learned how to solve the cube from scratch, in his head in under 4 hours!
Depending on my mood I may swap games. I'm not sure that it's reasonable to expect one game to guess what mood you're in and somehow magically swap modes a la screen saver at the correct time.
That being said there's a class of game that I don't see too often.
Of all the games I've played, one that I enjoyed the most was Dungeon Master 25 years ago.
The various scenarios you went through gradually taught you what the physics engine did etc.
You'd often solve problems by suddenly realising that 'maybe this game is deeper than I think' and then trying something.
I'm not sure that I've some across another game that had the same fun/learning curve. Maybe command and conquer, maybe.
Certainly not Half Life, Total War or any of the Age of Empire type games.
Some games seem to try and sim this by giving you poor documentation - I mean - if I'm supposed to be a 50 yr old Japanese general I think I know how to stop my archers moving around when the enemy comes into sight.
The fish/mine/tech up games nearly all succumb to a build wall/build towers and wait for him to die of attrition approach and this does lead to very lengthly and click/click/click type playing. Though I did enjoy scavenging the wreaked bots in front of my various attack towers in Total Annihilation.
So, a game that succumbs to experimenting and thinking is my cup of tea. When I want a cup of tea that is when I want something else I play something else.
What I find amazing is that we don't need any more types of numbers. This is a complete list of all of the types of numbers and there are no more types to be discovered.
Though your list doesn't differentiate between positive natural numbers and the natural numbers including zero which I believe was a big hurdle overcome by the Arabs.
I remember asking my school teacher this when we got to complex numbers - do we know how many more types are there or are there an infinite number of types to be discovered?
Nope he told me that's it, you've learnt them all.
I guess what he meant was "these suffice as solutions of all polynomial equations"
Even though I did maths at university - I never saw a proof of this - then again number theory was a post-grad course.
Slashdot Mirror
Tastes vary of course but I thought Tennant was superb. The "Girl in the fireplace" episode is very very good. I don't see hoiw you can complain of a lack of emotional range once you've watched that episode
There are a number of technolgies where stuff seems verbose and error prone. Configuring stuff around Tomcat being another example in addition to the Web Services example you site.
The trick is to script things properly. The whole agile framework approach can work quite well in many environments. Make the whole develop and the submit to CVS or Subversion or whatever mandatory, automate the nightly smoke and burn build out of version control automated.
Make the only way that stuff can get into production be via a version controlled script.
It does involve work up front but it sure as hell gets rid of any verbose, repeatative, error prone xml configuration concerns. Plus it's sort of self documenting.
Wikipedia reckons that Galois's last words were "Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty." I'm sure that I read some where they were "What a wast to die over some stupid bint"
First off, I'm not in the US. I'm English and working in New Zealand But is it really true that real IT jobs are moving overseas
I can imagine how call centres (UK-Spelling) and first level support could be outsourced but I find it hard to imagine how most it jobs could be.
What sort of IT organisation are we talking about here?
I suspect that most IT workers are in-house corporate workers doing things like - talking to end user stakeholders to habilitate ideas or working on linking third party applications to work in the specific context of their organisation.
Most good IT people are interacting very closely with end users.
There are what we might call the "pure application developers" who are largely still doing what they do based on a deep understanding of end user needs.
I find it hard to understand how these roles can effectively be out-sourced to India or indeed to somewhere there isn't frequent contact or at least a strong shared culture.
If we are talking about these sorts of roles then I think you just have to weather the storm because the pendulum will swing back when the bean counters realise that it doesn't work.
If you aren't in a true IT role, one that requires an understanding of the tech and the people who use the tech then maybe you do have a problem.
Their approach to advertising is something I tried to sell to clients around the time of the dot com boom and bust in 2000 but no-one seemed to able to "get it"
To date, we've got to give Google the credit that they do, if in fact, "get it".
I think that we should watch this space and hope for the best - it just might happen
You may be talking of Alan Cooper. He talks a lot of sense about usability. He can be found at www.cooper.com His stuff is well worth a read and if you ever get a chance to see him speak - Take It.
Both are interesting and important but let's not confuse the two.
I read Maths at Trinity Cambridge and my IQ is around the 4SD level so I may or may not be "gifted" and my son probably has Asperger's ( diagnoses differ )
I had some social skill problems as a teenager and so does my son. The strategies I learnt and used aren't really help to him - I wish they were.
Some points that helped me were
- Wake up and realise that this is normal, 99.995 % of the population scores lower than you, you have to learn to adapt to their world - the opposite ain't going to happen
- You want sex then .. wake up and ..
- Going to Cambridge and being "normal" for the first time. Seeing people who were as far beyond me as I was beyond the norm. Watching them struggle and seeing how weird they looked to me. Trying to help these people interact with the merely smart.
- Learning to spell and use good grammer - b*gg*r skipped this one
The parent posts description of Apserger's Syndrome fit's pretty well with my son. Sig: This sig is currently under construction
It's not as though I live in New Zealan.........
Oh shit
Now that machine used paper tape and the next machine I used punched card - so what are we going to do with paper tape and punched cards that have embedded processors. Feed them to themselves?
One machine at Uni was an 8K PDP 7(?), unfortunately some the graphite rings were broken so not all 8K actually worked. Code around broken bits was a bit tedious
Sun's JVM and my ATI video driver (which is a forcefit as Compaq never put out an XP driver for the model laptop I have).
The fix was a laugher... I switched video mode to 24 bit color.
mmm - my laptop is also a compaq.
I'll check the JVM and try the 24bit hack as I really do prefer Firefox over IE
Thanks
I loved it. The tabs concept is great. Many features are excellent. Except...
Roughly once an hour clicking back would simply take my machine (windows XP portable) out. Not even the blue screen of death but a black screen.
If someone can tell me how to rectify the problem then I'd be very happy.
I'm a senior IT manager for a corporate. Over the last year I've become more and more impressed by some open source initiatives. In particular uPortal from ja-sig.org. V good product for it's problem domain. This led me onto JUnit and MockObjects.
The major selling point to me is not the price. In my experience, the support is better with uPortal than with the equivalent commercial software. I can get an answer off the listserv in an hour when it might take a week or more from a commercial equivalent.
I looked at FireFox in the hope that it would prove to me that a broader look at OSS would be a good idea. But really, a product that kills my machine every hour or so it not really a starter.
Prove me wrong - please, please prove me wrong
If you get a chance then do read his book "About Face" or his later book "About Face 2.0".
It has great examples in it, e.g. most dialog boxes are seen as users like your hammer saying "Striking force out of bounds - nail bent. OK?"
His talk and books changed my understanding of what is and is not an acceptable UI.
IMAM ( I am a mathematician, well ok I got a Maths degree from Trinity Cambridge ( and I di..dn't like Quicksilver (though I did love Cryptonomicon (and I can write Lisp )))).
But should I run the Seti screen saver, the Climate predication model or this one?
My current vote is the CP model but somehow it feels less sexy
(lastStatement.getSounds()==Statements.SOUNDS_GEEK Y ? statement.replace(lastStatement.text(),lastStateme nt.geekFactor()-1),lastStatement.text())
Ant deploy
I guess it's time to go home
Once they went away, there was a very different interface, including a "report this as spam" button.
I can only conclude that they've included a baysian (sp?) filter into hotmail.
I've seen a few press releases about upgrades in NZ but no major discussion in places like /.
Was I sleeping the day hotmail did this in the US or is this a pilot trial.
FYI: US corporates often use NZ as a trial location as we
a. Speak English after a fashion
b. Don't matter as there are only 3 people here and 10 million sheep.
Internet eMail providers have taken at least some steps to prevent their service being used as a spam source. One is that, somewhat strange, request that you see to "type in the letters and numbers you see above"
The idea is that only people, not bots, can read the letters etc. So at least you know it's a person applying for the account.
This doesn't help too much if you then wait for a long period before you check if the user is acting strangely. Hey, I can sign up, read and type the letters and then let my bot use the address to send 10,000 spam mails in the next hour before they check - wickid.
So, yes, there is some logic behind their move.
King Rat is not IMHO in the same league as The Scar or PSS but still worth a read.
I am not surprised that some posters couldn't get on with these novels though.
Mieville's style is really quite unusual and extreme.
In a way his writing reminds me of Jack Vance. The books are worth reading simply for the language and the bizarre plots, characters and ideas are a bonus.
But really this guy does raise an interesing question. How does one establish ownership of an asteroid.
I'm sure that most /.ers would be happy if someone put up the space elevator and went and dragged back and asteroid and mined it for profit
So if you do the elevator thing and the dragging thing - but I start mining it - are you going to be happy - I think not.
So exactly how does one establish ownership. I'll be honest, I can't tell, from reading the website if this guy is serious about owning Eros or serious about pushing the envelope on the legals.
But it is a question worth investgating.
Walt Disney Feature Animation is in the process of halting all work on traditionally-animated features and going completely CG.
Article says-
Stainton, who took over as animation chief earlier this year, insists the press obituaries for 2-D are premature. "It is a bit of a media creation to say 2-D is dead.
Supposedly, all of their animators-- even staunch traditionalists such as Glenn Keane-- are being trained on 3D computer animation techniques.
Article says -
"We will always do whatever fits the story best," Cook assures. "We've gone on a concerted effort to train and re-train artists. But we will keep our great sensibility."
The last hand-drawn high-budget Disney feature scheduled for release is Home on the Range, which is due out next April.
Article says -
continues with the computer/hand-drawn hybrid A Few Good Ghosts in '06 as well as the spoof Rapunzel Unbraided in '07.
The boolean logic etc post at least says something valid about the subject area.
I wonder if there is something that makes sense that is a little less abstract than the liberal arts post.
One thing that constantly amazes me is how quite well educated people fail to understand what current software can do.
Customers will do a little bit of hand waving and come up with something that better belongs in a Star Trek movie. Then they get upset when you tell them "Look, if I actually manage to do that I'll give you your money back. There's some guys in Stockholm who'll give me a medal and a whole bunch of money if I can figure out how to do that"
I really wonder if some course, such as MBA's or Business degrees, should include a small review of the complete lack of progress that's been made in AI.
Even experienced IT professionals seem to become gullible about the capabilities of software when faced with a smooth salesman.
I wish people would remember that software does very very simple things very very quickly.
Being Maths undergrads we're talking about this amazing new toy - Rubik's cube.
I say 'Do you think it would be possible to do this thing in your head'
Toby, later a Post-doc quantum mechanics researcher was certain it couldn't be done.
I wasn't so sure - I thought that using some clever representation technique like mnemonics could make it doable with a lot of practice.
The next day we're all back in the same pub and John, saying nothing, put a solved cube in front of Toby. Toby shuffles it and hands it back. John studies each faces, shuts his eyes and about a minute later puts the cube down, solved.
Later another friend said that they'd seen him going into the toy shop about about 3pm. He'd learned how to solve the cube from scratch, in his head in under 4 hours!
Scary
Some of my friends went to see a 'final' dress rehearsal and it overran by a couple of hours. They were serious hardcore fans and even they hated it.
So yes, you can the the material and deliver it badly. I hope they do well this time.
And yeh, Peter Jones - you don't want to be late, as in the late Arthur Dent, it's a threat you know, I'm told they can be quite effective.
Completely deadpan delivery.
That being said there's a class of game that I don't see too often.
Of all the games I've played, one that I enjoyed the most was Dungeon Master 25 years ago.
The various scenarios you went through gradually taught you what the physics engine did etc.
You'd often solve problems by suddenly realising that 'maybe this game is deeper than I think' and then trying something.
I'm not sure that I've some across another game that had the same fun/learning curve. Maybe command and conquer, maybe.
Certainly not Half Life, Total War or any of the Age of Empire type games.
Some games seem to try and sim this by giving you poor documentation - I mean - if I'm supposed to be a 50 yr old Japanese general I think I know how to stop my archers moving around when the enemy comes into sight.
The fish/mine/tech up games nearly all succumb to a build wall/build towers and wait for him to die of attrition approach and this does lead to very lengthly and click/click/click type playing. Though I did enjoy scavenging the wreaked bots in front of my various attack towers in Total Annihilation.
So, a game that succumbs to experimenting and thinking is my cup of tea. When I want a cup of tea that is when I want something else I play something else.
What I find amazing is that we don't need any more types of numbers. This is a complete list of all of the types of numbers and there are no more types to be discovered. Though your list doesn't differentiate between positive natural numbers and the natural numbers including zero which I believe was a big hurdle overcome by the Arabs. I remember asking my school teacher this when we got to complex numbers - do we know how many more types are there or are there an infinite number of types to be discovered? Nope he told me that's it, you've learnt them all. I guess what he meant was "these suffice as solutions of all polynomial equations" Even though I did maths at university - I never saw a proof of this - then again number theory was a post-grad course.