Gosh I actually logged in to comment on this...
Yes I went out to Stirling today and supported one of my local shops there; they had bands on out front and back and even the Scottish weather managed to stay mostly sunny. Never seen the place so busy before!
Long live the analogue hole:)
And now the real-kicker (at least for me), where's the compensation for the artist? Nope, I'll stick with buying cd's at concerts, it's not a good option, but it's the smallest evil option
Not really, because a lot of bands have to actually buy their CDs from the record company to sell at concerts. And they don't get them wholesale price either...
Because the clock offsets change, and change at different times for different timezones... I presume you want to avoid going through a list of timezones once a week and adjusting the jobs:(
Made his own movie. Called Godsend II. Oh, he also made a film called "Godsend" first...
The main ingredients are ingenuity, time and dedication. Oh, and you have to find actors who'll work for nothing. Naturally, under these circumstances acting quality can vary. Nevertheless, the film turned out OK.
One big problem he stumbled across was the cost of getting your film rated. Here (UK), you have to submit it to the British Board of Film Censors (oops, "Classification":) who then watch it and decide on its rating. They charge about 100 UKP a minute for this "service":)
note: Mainly posting to undo a bad moderation, but I thought I ought to contribute something relevant.
Ah, the good old clickety-clack IBM keyboard! I still have one of them on my IBM XT. Haven't powered it up for two years, mind you...
At the moment, I'm typing on a lovely black IBM Trackpoint keyboard. I got two cheap on eBay (Only problem is they're US layout and I'm in the UK:). Same good old build quality as the Model M. And, remember, if you don't fancy the Trackpoint, just don't connect it up!
Apart from the trackpoint (which means I don't need a mouse anymore), one of the reasons I bought it was because I do not take good care of my keyboards. A good quality IBM keyboard will last for years. God, I remember when ALL keyboards cost over £100...! Now I can get them for NOTHING, because they just get thrown away at my work.
Oh, and it doesn't have any stupid Internet or Windows keys, which is another plus:).
I'm still wondering why the MPAA doesn't just go back to vinyl for everything. Much harder to rip an LP than a CD. They could bill it as the latest new technology. I mean most folks under 25 haven't even seen an LP...
Hint: use the tape recorder output connections on your amp (consult you manual or figure it out). Already set at the correct levels. Few (good) turntables can be plugged direct into your soundcard. RIAA equalisation and pre-amplification are required for the best sound.
Yeah, I did find it quite amusing that the article had to explain what an LP was:)
That's a nice idea, but remember we're talking BUSINESS here. If you can't deliver the goods, the customer goes elsewhere. They won't hang around waiting for you to port it - unless the application in question has a very small niche market.
Certainly, if I was selling commercial software, I'd try to avoid giving an answer like that. Best thing to do in that situation is to say "I'll have an answer for you by tommorow/next week/in half an hour" (depending on how desperate you are for the sale and how competitive your market is:). Then you go and verify your software runs on their platform, probably through an arrangement with the computer manufacturer. As software helps sell systems, most manufacturers should be willing to help.
Of course, it's all dependant on your relationship with your customers and the nature of the software you are selling. The more "mission-critical" an application is, the more the customer will want a firm answer. The more competitors you have in your market, the quicker your customers or potential customers will want an answer - or they go elsewhere. Niche markets - well, as long as they're not desparate for it, they will wait.
And just how will they stop people smuggling in or downloading pirated copies of these games?
Good luck to them...
Despite never being released in the UK (well, not until lately) films like A Clockwork Orange and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre were available if you asked around people. Maybe not very good quality copies - but, with digital data there is no generation-to-generation loss of information...
IBM have a similar (but more formalised) system for developers.See details here. However, I have no idea how much it costs - the costs might be prohibitive.
Yeah, I knew that, and that they used '#' because it signifies the (default) superuser prompt (in most shells). I am a (part-time) Unix sysadmin after all...
But nobody saw the funny side... Does humour belong in computing?;)
Does an operating system need to come with a 'use this having just climbed down from the trees'-level help system built in?
No. Just centralise it. See VMS, and its HELP command.
Not only is everything centralised in one place, but the first two pages of help describe how help works, how to navigate through HELP, and even suggests some starting points if you are a TOTAL newbie!
Man pages are TERRIBLE for newbies (IMHO) because of two factors:
The information is presented serially - one screen at a time. Ever tried doing some shell scripts? Let's do a man if... ah, of course it's a shell command (you eventually realise). So, let's do man sh... OK, I'm reading... Jeez, how many pages have I gone through... ah, there's if... oh damn, I just went past it and I don't know how to make this thing go back a page.
Where are the examples? I have seen VERY few man pages that actually demonstrate examples of the command you want to run. This is a worse deficiency than the first one. So you're expected to use your brains and work it out in your head, or create your own testbed to see if it does what you THINK it does? Come on! This is the 21st century!
The first big computer system I used (and I'm not trolling against Unix here - I'm a Unix admin these days part-time) ran VMS. So, I learned to log on (not hard) and then, what do you do when you get stuck? Type help (Contrary to popular belief, VMS can handle commands entered in small letters;). Stuck with the directory command? Try help, then directory, then examples!
Unix is a nice system, but it sucks for 'online learnability'. (Yes, I have found systems that are more terse and virtually impossible to learn 'online'. Try Nortel telephone exhanges:)
Debido a la gran cantidad de visitantes que ha recibido la web sobre las 18:00 horas, el servidor se ha venido abajo sin permitirnos tan siquiera, dar un enlace de descarga del reproductor. Hasta hace escasos minutos no hemos podido volver a acceder a la web, lo que nos ha obligado a empezar a distribuir el reproductor por otros canales
No, I think it was a machine with a 36-bit word length. Now, 36 bits gives you a few different options for encoding text (note, I do not say ASCII:):
SIXBIT. CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY (sorry;), numbers and some punctuation characters. Greatest data density, but of course it can't handle the full ASCII
character set.
7-bit bytes. 5 bytes of 7 bits, giving 35 bits in total. The extra bit is either unused or can be used for a parity check. Allows full 7-bit ASCII.
8-bit bytes, using one of two methods:
4 bytes per word, 4 parity (or wasted, depending on implementation) bits.
4 and a half bytes per word. Or, rather, 9 bytes per double-word. This is more space-efficient.
9-bit bytes, 4 per word. Which is probably what the Honeywell did. The 9th bit is usually unused; I believe the Honeywell might have used it to support various functions.
36 bits used to be quite common in larger systems. See 36bit.org for more information on 36-bit computers.
The only ones I really know much about are the PDP-10s.
I've still got a VAX version of it, and play it occasionally on the unused but still running MicroVAX at work.;-)
Problem is, the thing depends on the hard-coded speed limits of a genuine VT100. It's just playable on a VT300, and completely unplayable over TELNET:(.
C:\>cd tmp
C:\tmp>md longnamedir
C:\tmp>for %%i in (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11) do md longnamedir%i
C:\tmp>dir
Volume in drive C has no label
Volume Serial Number is 0428-17EA
Directory of C:\tmp
Oops, silly me. Err, I forgot to mention that I assumed you lost one for failing to answer a hard question, but gained two for answering it. Similarly, you lose two for failing to answer a simple question, but gain one for answering it correctly. Which means your max. score is actually 130 (80 +30*1 +10*2), not 150 as I said.
... at my first job interview, I was asked in advance to prepare a short (15 minute) presentation on a technical (computer-related) subject of my choice.
Although this seemed hard when I first looked at it, I had had teaching in preparing a presentation as part of my CS course. In the end, I just picked a subject I knew fairly well (interprocess communication - I'd only done it a few months before), read over my old notes, prepared the outline of my presentation, and went for it. (I had about a week to prepare)
It must have worked, because they MADE a job for me:) [I didn't get the job I was going for, but they gave me a short-term contract to see how I panned out. Unfortunately, I became a victim of corporate shrinkage ten months later - LIFO:( ]
I am eternally grateful to them though, because they are a very big name in the computer business, and even having had only a lowly position there increased my marketability enormously.
Back to the topic, though... I don't see anything wrong with testing a person's competence. However, as someone pointed out previously, you're not in a real-life situation where you can't get hold of Google, &c. But... a true craftsman doesn't rely on others; you should be able to solve a basic problem on your own. I think it is unfair to insert incredibly difficuly and obscure questions into such a test unless you have access to the documentation.
Not all computer people have immense memory skills, which is what you are testing in such a situation.
If I composed such a test, I would "weight" the questions so that the incredibly-difficult questions (which you would be hard-pressed to answer without a manual) had a LOWER weighting that the ordinary questions when answered incorrectly, but a HIGHER weighting when asked correctly. Say you have 40 questions, and a wrong answer on a normal question loses you two points, but a wrong answer on a difficult question is a loss of 1 point. Start with a baseline score of 80. With 10 difficult questions in there, this gives you a minimum score of 10 (all wrong) and a maximum score of 150 (all correct).
The idea being that, you are not penalised for failing to answer so heavily, but you are rewarded if you put the effort into the difficult questions and get them correct. Explain the scoring to the applicant in advance, and you also get an idea of how they prioritise problems (do they go for the hard, high-scoring questions first, or do they complete the easy questions, then move on to the difficult ones if time permits?). Of course, you could have questions which score higher than 2 as well, depending on the complexity of the answer...
No, I was just making the point that these scammers will work from jurisdictions which are not as heavily regulated (or where there are no anti-spam laws at all) rather than from the US.
Perhaps one solution would be for some nice people who can write Chinese and Korean providing some web sites where you provide the details, paste in the e-mail, and it sends a form letter in Chinese/Korean, pointing out the problem, to the person involved. This would be quite a nice tool for one of the anti-spam sites to implement...
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh I actually logged in to comment on this... Yes I went out to Stirling today and supported one of my local shops there; they had bands on out front and back and even the Scottish weather managed to stay mostly sunny. Never seen the place so busy before! Long live the analogue hole :)
Dang, there goes my chance to moderate :(
Because the clock offsets change, and change at different times for different timezones... I presume you want to avoid going through a list of timezones once a week and adjusting the jobs :(
VMS... single line recall is built into the terminal device driver.
Anything more than a single line, that's up to the application to handle :)
Development Status
- Planning (10899 projects) [28%]
- Pre-Alpha (7314 projects) [18%]
- Alpha (6611 projects) [17%]
- Beta (7936 projects) [20%]
- Production/Stable (6062 projects) [15%]
- Mature (641 projects) [2%]
- Inactive (80 projects) [0.2%]
Percentages rounded up to nearest whole percentage (apart from the lastI'd say those stats weren't too bad...
(VMS in-joke:
$ set default sys$manager
$ show default
SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSMGR] =
The main ingredients are ingenuity, time and dedication. Oh, and you have to find actors who'll work for nothing. Naturally, under these circumstances acting quality can vary. Nevertheless, the film turned out OK.
One big problem he stumbled across was the cost of getting your film rated. Here (UK), you have to submit it to the British Board of Film Censors (oops, "Classification" :) who then watch it and decide on its rating. They charge about 100 UKP a minute for this "service" :)
note: Mainly posting to undo a bad moderation, but I thought I ought to contribute something relevant.
At the moment, I'm typing on a lovely black IBM Trackpoint keyboard. I got two cheap on eBay (Only problem is they're US layout and I'm in the UK :). Same good old build quality as the Model M. And, remember, if you don't fancy the Trackpoint, just don't connect it up!
Apart from the trackpoint (which means I don't need a mouse anymore), one of the reasons I bought it was because I do not take good care of my keyboards. A good quality IBM keyboard will last for years. God, I remember when ALL keyboards cost over £100...! Now I can get them for NOTHING, because they just get thrown away at my work.
Oh, and it doesn't have any stupid Internet or Windows keys, which is another plus :).
Hint: use the tape recorder output connections on your amp (consult you manual or figure it out). Already set at the correct levels. Few (good) turntables can be plugged direct into your soundcard. RIAA equalisation and pre-amplification are required for the best sound.
Yeah, I did find it quite amusing that the article had to explain what an LP was :)
you'll still be able to cut your own vinyl. A snip at only $10,000 and $7 a blank :)
Certainly, if I was selling commercial software, I'd try to avoid giving an answer like that. Best thing to do in that situation is to say "I'll have an answer for you by tommorow/next week/in half an hour" (depending on how desperate you are for the sale and how competitive your market is :). Then you go and verify your software runs on their platform, probably through an arrangement with the computer manufacturer. As software helps sell systems, most manufacturers should be willing to help.
Of course, it's all dependant on your relationship with your customers and the nature of the software you are selling. The more "mission-critical" an application is, the more the customer will want a firm answer. The more competitors you have in your market, the quicker your customers or potential customers will want an answer - or they go elsewhere. Niche markets - well, as long as they're not desparate for it, they will wait.
Despite never being released in the UK (well, not until lately) films like A Clockwork Orange and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre were available if you asked around people. Maybe not very good quality copies - but, with digital data there is no generation-to-generation loss of information...
IBM have a similar (but more formalised) system for developers.See details here. However, I have no idea how much it costs - the costs might be prohibitive.
But nobody saw the funny side... Does humour belong in computing? ;)
-M.
No. Just centralise it. See VMS, and its HELP command.
Not only is everything centralised in one place, but the first two pages of help describe how help works, how to navigate through HELP, and even suggests some starting points if you are a TOTAL newbie!
I said it before: man pages suck.
The first big computer system I used (and I'm not trolling against Unix here - I'm a Unix admin these days part-time) ran VMS. So, I learned to log on (not hard) and then, what do you do when you get stuck? Type help (Contrary to popular belief, VMS can handle commands entered in small letters ;). Stuck with the directory command? Try help, then directory, then examples!
Unix is a nice system, but it sucks for 'online learnability'. (Yes, I have found systems that are more terse and virtually impossible to learn 'online'. Try Nortel telephone exhanges :)
# ./install.sh
and nothing happened. There seems to be some problem with that command.
I guessed I ought to comment on that :-)
-M.
Oy! Raya-punteado!!
(P.S. No habla espanol ;)
36 bits used to be quite common in larger systems. See 36bit.org for more information on 36-bit computers.
The only ones I really know much about are the PDP-10s.
Problem is, the thing depends on the hard-coded speed limits of a genuine VT100. It's just playable on a VT300, and completely unplayable over TELNET :(.
C:\>cd tmp
C:\tmp>md longnamedir
C:\tmp>for %%i in (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11) do md longnamedir%i
C:\tmp>dir
Volume in drive C has no label
Volume Serial Number is 0428-17EA
Directory of C:\tmp
.<DIR>21/11/0218:36 .
.. <DIR>21/11/0218:36
LONGNA~1 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir
LONGNA~2 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir1
LONGNA~3 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir2
LONGNA~4 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir3
LONGNA~5 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir4
LONGNA~6 <DIR>21/11/0218:36 longnamedir5
LONGNA~7 <DIR>21/11/0218:37 longnamedir6
LONGNA~8 <DIR>21/11/0218:37 longnamedir7
LONGNA~9 <DIR>21/11/0218:37 longnamedir8
LONGN~10 <DIR>21/11/0218:37 longnamedir9
LONGN~11 <DIR>21/11/0218:37 longnamedir10
LONGN~12 <DIR>21/11/0218:38 longnamedir11
0 file(s)0 bytes
12 dir(s)92,536,832 bytes free
C:\tmp>for %%i in (17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 3 7 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45) do md longnamedir%i
C:\tmp>for %%i in (46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 6 6 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75) do md longnamedir%i
C:\tmp>for %%i in (76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100) do md longnamedir%i
C:\tmp>dir [...]
LONGN~97 <DIR>21/11/0218:46 longnamedir97
LONGN~98 <DIR>21/11/0218:46 longnamedir98
LONGN~99 <DIR>21/11/0218:46 longnamedir99
LONG~100 <DIR>21/11/0218:46 longnamedir100
0 file(s)0 bytes
102 dir(s)89,817,088 bytes free
So, now you know :-)
Oh well, I was never very good at math(s) :).
Although this seemed hard when I first looked at it, I had had teaching in preparing a presentation as part of my CS course. In the end, I just picked a subject I knew fairly well (interprocess communication - I'd only done it a few months before), read over my old notes, prepared the outline of my presentation, and went for it. (I had about a week to prepare)
It must have worked, because they MADE a job for me :) [I didn't get the job I was going for, but they gave me a short-term contract to see how I panned out. Unfortunately, I became a victim of corporate shrinkage ten months later - LIFO :( ]
I am eternally grateful to them though, because they are a very big name in the computer business, and even having had only a lowly position there increased my marketability enormously.
Back to the topic, though... I don't see anything wrong with testing a person's competence. However, as someone pointed out previously, you're not in a real-life situation where you can't get hold of Google, &c. But... a true craftsman doesn't rely on others; you should be able to solve a basic problem on your own. I think it is unfair to insert incredibly difficuly and obscure questions into such a test unless you have access to the documentation. Not all computer people have immense memory skills, which is what you are testing in such a situation.
If I composed such a test, I would "weight" the questions so that the incredibly-difficult questions (which you would be hard-pressed to answer without a manual) had a LOWER weighting that the ordinary questions when answered incorrectly, but a HIGHER weighting when asked correctly. Say you have 40 questions, and a wrong answer on a normal question loses you two points, but a wrong answer on a difficult question is a loss of 1 point. Start with a baseline score of 80. With 10 difficult questions in there, this gives you a minimum score of 10 (all wrong) and a maximum score of 150 (all correct).
The idea being that, you are not penalised for failing to answer so heavily, but you are rewarded if you put the effort into the difficult questions and get them correct. Explain the scoring to the applicant in advance, and you also get an idea of how they prioritise problems (do they go for the hard, high-scoring questions first, or do they complete the easy questions, then move on to the difficult ones if time permits?). Of course, you could have questions which score higher than 2 as well, depending on the complexity of the answer...
Perhaps one solution would be for some nice people who can write Chinese and Korean providing some web sites where you provide the details, paste in the e-mail, and it sends a form letter in Chinese/Korean, pointing out the problem, to the person involved. This would be quite a nice tool for one of the anti-spam sites to implement...
How much would it cost to extradite Koreans and Chinese for spamming - thousands of them a year??