Heck, 3 months down the line in my experience. And it always pays off. Even the first time. Try going back over your last project to fix those bugs. Yep - much easier usually with "elegant" code.
The only problem is speed and latency... not a huge issue for some of what I'm doing. I'm also not sure whether the crappy home connection is partly to blame though.
by forcing all traffic through a proxy server. It's amazingly effective.
Also, the entire system can be locked down and made relatively safe by limiting the disk to read/execute access only for user accounts except for a dedicated user directory, shutting down the server service, and placing the whole class network behind a router than prohibits inbound and outbound requests. Set up an http(s) proxy server that is allowed external access if you need it, and for ease of administration of files, setup a fileserver/webserver with those files that all students need access to.
This activity removes file-sharing, and all non-http(s) services. If you configure the proxy server to limit access only to those sites you wish (whitelist). It also gives you a central repository for files, and limits what students can do on "their" local machines.
Lastly - use ghost or something like it for disk images.
Don't patch - if your system is working, why patch?
New features in a well designed system are either minor enhancements or new modules
browsers at this point (provided it's a web app) should maintain backwards compatibility
"code being slapped together" - this is a contradiction to the initial stated case.
If the interacting applications change - it should be their problem. If you doubt this, try to get someone like PaymenTech to change their app because you changed yours... It's not going to happen.
Seriously, though, I know of at least 3 major applications in commercial use that have changed little over the last 15 years, with at least 3 major versions of currently in use. They won't be upgraded either, because they work and were relatively well-designed, or met their design and scaling criteria.
The largest problem with much of today's development that I've seen is that people that think they're software architects "design" what amount to ad-hoc systems with woefully inadequate attention paid to details like reliability, availability, scalability and, perhaps most importantly, maintainability. Why maintainability? If it's maintainable, it's usually been well-thought out, meaning it has some cohesive design that can be followed.
You gotta love those. I wonder how they're pitched?
"See, I've got this idea to create this product that will guarantee delivery of your message to your intended deliveree using the internet by the mere click of a button and you'll see that confirmation of said delivery 'immediately'. It will cost $20M to produce and $2M/year on enhancements (maintenance), and it will be rock solid."
Current costs of sending a memo to secretary? $20/year.
I've lived there, both as a child through grade 1 and as a working adult. I do speak and read the language fluently, writing is another story. Living and working there as an average professional was an eye-opening experience (prior to that stint, I had delusions of wanting to move back).
Why do I say that? Well, suffer through 8 weeks of 32C+ (90F+) degree summer (highly unusual, guess I was lucky) without air conditioning and without screens on your windows, and you'll figure out very quickly that Dutch mosquitoes are every bit as large as those in Texas and with a mean streak to make a serial killer squirm. Not to mention they also seem to have evolved their toxins to maximize welt potential and itchiness.
Try shopping while you have a job. During the week, most stores close by 6, except for 1 night a week, and are only open 1/2 days on Saturday. Fortunately the mega-box Walmart phenomenom hadn't hit there yet when I lived there, so you didn't wind up shopping on Sat with a few thousand of your fellow workers in the same store at the same time. (This may have changed, there was a move underfoot to allow extended hours, but then I recall something about gas stations which are open long hours being prohibited from selling anything other than gas outside "approved" shopping hours)
Appliances... you want appliances? They're small, expensive, and in the case of those front-loading washers, just plain horrible. (Yeah, we're going to be graced when them as a requirement soon here in the US too... joy awaits as washing clothes turns from a 20 min task to a 60 min task) Dishwashers? You gotta be kidding! (Yes, they have them, in 1/3 size and 3 times the cost)
Now for the good - traveling is relatively easy, with or without car. It's relatively safe, the population density is high enough in most places that help is only feet away. Life is definitely slower than, say, in the US. Oh, and on your way home from work you can usually easily and inexpensively pick up some flowers for your spouse, to make up for moving them there.;)
I've been using 2.0 b3 since it came out. Very few problems, other than the normal GTK issues (I happen to be used to some of the CUA conventions that GAIM's GTK implementation does not).
Regarding real estate, my usage patterns have changed very little between 1.x and 2.0, so little, in fact, that I've been using them both daily with no attention paid to which version I was using. (Although 2.0 does have some improvements regarding plugins...)
As for the tree vs tabbed thing - I didn't even really notice, because my buddy window is almost never open. Ctrl-M for sending a new message and auto-suggest as you type in your buddy's name was the reason I loved GAIM in the first place. I believe 2.0 allows you to finally type aliases instead of user ids, but I'm not 100% positive.
Ooooo, the purple Indigo2. That was a nice box at the time, and stayed a nice box for years. The $25K 24bit Z-buffer graphics card ours had in them damped wide-spread interest though. (bought circa 91) We won't even talk about the other hardware prices we paid.
Considering that in about 5 billion years time it's projected that earth will be inside the sun (a red giant by that time) I think you'll have other things to panic over...
Take Madden football, your job is to test that the coin flip works in every city, between every team pair.
Have FUN!!!!(Got this from a guy who's job with the game industry started and ended with that. He never wants to see another football game again - can't imagine why...)
Game testers have to be the uber abused QA folk that ever existed.
With any system with Windows cohabitating, create 'x' primary partitions where x equal the number of base type OSes you're going to install (Windows, DOS, anything else). Use the fact that MS products can only see a single primary partition to your advantage to prevent windows from screwing up your system.
I used to use OS/2's Bootmanager, which was probably the premiere boot loader for years, and still may be for what it does. It was the initial PartitionMagic bootloader, until the swapped it out with their current piece of junk.
If you run into issues with too many primary partitions, or partition sizes being too large (the 1024 cylinder limit) you can always make your windows partitions smaller, but not smaller than 50MB, and use a logical drive/partition as the installation drive, with the 50MB partition being the boot partition. (Why 50MB when a boot drive only needs 5MB? Because MS required a min of 25MB on your boot drive to install a service pack, although XP SP2 finally did away with the boot drive limitation. There's no guarantee that some future SP from MS or updates from others won't try to use C: as their default tmp location.)
lastly, boot.ini can be edited manually to boot systems from other partitions pretty easily, once you figure out the esoteric drive/partition identification schema.
There's another option, besides the already mentioned Ctrl-Tab and Shift-Ctrl-Tab options in Firefox.
For Macs, if you have multiple windows for a single app, Cmd-` through the windows for a single app. (that's the reverse slanting apostrophe/tilde key just above the tab key)
Between those suggestions, all your keyboard tabbing needs should be covered. Mouse not required.
Missed out on Windows NT? You're still living in that world, with a relatively functional but extremely slow version of NDS bolted on top of it. (I'm assuming you're working with 2003 & XP) In many ways, NT was a lot simpler, since you just couldn't do large monolithic installations with it.
1) Gerry Studds & consenting adult page 2) Barney Frank - was he going around spouting off about how he was religiously & morally upstanding and everyone should live like him? 3) The Democrats are merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republicans, since the Republicans entire platform was supposedly how the Democrats were doing all these bad things.
Oh, and last and not least, let's remember to "think of the children" for real this time, since it was an underage youth that was being harassed by a perverted pedophile, who was being protected by that morally superior group. (sick sick sick)
I don't like either party, I just like Republicans a whole lot less at the moment.
Quite a few teams have beaten the Cinematch engine, but not by the required 10% for the prize. The submission is in error. They also haven't won the 1% Progress prize yet, but they're very very close.
Well, I didn't mention it, but this basically applies to every car CD player I've tested, including aftermarket systems from Pioneer, Sony, and Clarion. Every car CD player I've seen has a clock feature.
Here's another simple algorithm that will at least provide more randomness than the current methodology, use the song in play to seed the system. For a new disk, use the last song played as the seed.
Slashdot Mirror
So when google started, they had all these other people?
It's "vrouw", and means woman or wife, depending upon context.
Heck, 3 months down the line in my experience. And it always pays off. Even the first time. Try going back over your last project to fix those bugs. Yep - much easier usually with "elegant" code.
The only problem is speed and latency... not a huge issue for some of what I'm doing. I'm also not sure whether the crappy home connection is partly to blame though.
Well, look at that. Thanks for the prod to look a little harder.
by forcing all traffic through a proxy server. It's amazingly effective.
Also, the entire system can be locked down and made relatively safe by limiting the disk to read/execute access only for user accounts except for a dedicated user directory, shutting down the server service, and placing the whole class network behind a router than prohibits inbound and outbound requests. Set up an http(s) proxy server that is allowed external access if you need it, and for ease of administration of files, setup a fileserver/webserver with those files that all students need access to.
This activity removes file-sharing, and all non-http(s) services. If you configure the proxy server to limit access only to those sites you wish (whitelist). It also gives you a central repository for files, and limits what students can do on "their" local machines.
Lastly - use ghost or something like it for disk images.
Seriously, though, I know of at least 3 major applications in commercial use that have changed little over the last 15 years, with at least 3 major versions of currently in use. They won't be upgraded either, because they work and were relatively well-designed, or met their design and scaling criteria.
The largest problem with much of today's development that I've seen is that people that think they're software architects "design" what amount to ad-hoc systems with woefully inadequate attention paid to details like reliability, availability, scalability and, perhaps most importantly, maintainability. Why maintainability? If it's maintainable, it's usually been well-thought out, meaning it has some cohesive design that can be followed.
You gotta love those. I wonder how they're pitched?
"See, I've got this idea to create this product that will guarantee delivery of your message to your intended deliveree using the internet by the mere click of a button and you'll see that confirmation of said delivery 'immediately'. It will cost $20M to produce and $2M/year on enhancements (maintenance), and it will be rock solid."
Current costs of sending a memo to secretary? $20/year.
I've lived there, both as a child through grade 1 and as a working adult. I do speak and read the language fluently, writing is another story. Living and working there as an average professional was an eye-opening experience (prior to that stint, I had delusions of wanting to move back).
;)
Why do I say that? Well, suffer through 8 weeks of 32C+ (90F+) degree summer (highly unusual, guess I was lucky) without air conditioning and without screens on your windows, and you'll figure out very quickly that Dutch mosquitoes are every bit as large as those in Texas and with a mean streak to make a serial killer squirm. Not to mention they also seem to have evolved their toxins to maximize welt potential and itchiness.
Try shopping while you have a job. During the week, most stores close by 6, except for 1 night a week, and are only open 1/2 days on Saturday. Fortunately the mega-box Walmart phenomenom hadn't hit there yet when I lived there, so you didn't wind up shopping on Sat with a few thousand of your fellow workers in the same store at the same time. (This may have changed, there was a move underfoot to allow extended hours, but then I recall something about gas stations which are open long hours being prohibited from selling anything other than gas outside "approved" shopping hours)
Appliances... you want appliances? They're small, expensive, and in the case of those front-loading washers, just plain horrible. (Yeah, we're going to be graced when them as a requirement soon here in the US too... joy awaits as washing clothes turns from a 20 min task to a 60 min task) Dishwashers? You gotta be kidding! (Yes, they have them, in 1/3 size and 3 times the cost)
Now for the good - traveling is relatively easy, with or without car. It's relatively safe, the population density is high enough in most places that help is only feet away. Life is definitely slower than, say, in the US. Oh, and on your way home from work you can usually easily and inexpensively pick up some flowers for your spouse, to make up for moving them there.
I've been using 2.0 b3 since it came out. Very few problems, other than the normal GTK issues (I happen to be used to some of the CUA conventions that GAIM's GTK implementation does not).
Regarding real estate, my usage patterns have changed very little between 1.x and 2.0, so little, in fact, that I've been using them both daily with no attention paid to which version I was using. (Although 2.0 does have some improvements regarding plugins...)
As for the tree vs tabbed thing - I didn't even really notice, because my buddy window is almost never open. Ctrl-M for sending a new message and auto-suggest as you type in your buddy's name was the reason I loved GAIM in the first place. I believe 2.0 allows you to finally type aliases instead of user ids, but I'm not 100% positive.
You need to upgrade to a Core 2 Duo - it will give you back 5ms so you wouldn't have hit the submit button in the first place! ;)
Ooooo, the purple Indigo2. That was a nice box at the time, and stayed a nice box for years. The $25K 24bit Z-buffer graphics card ours had in them damped wide-spread interest though. (bought circa 91) We won't even talk about the other hardware prices we paid.
Considering that in about 5 billion years time it's projected that earth will be inside the sun (a red giant by that time) I think you'll have other things to panic over...
It was a jet. You missed the point of the GPs post entirely.
His point was that the GGP shouldn't be so quick to throw innocent people in jail.
As for your other point, there should be a difference between a predator and an offender.
Take Madden football, your job is to test that the coin flip works in every city, between every team pair.
Have FUN!!!!(Got this from a guy who's job with the game industry started and ended with that. He never wants to see another football game again - can't imagine why...)
Game testers have to be the uber abused QA folk that ever existed.
or, just point boot.ini to the linux boot loader. (Unless grub installs in the MBR only - don't know, been a while, lilo is working just fine ;)
With any system with Windows cohabitating, create 'x' primary partitions where x equal the number of base type OSes you're going to install (Windows, DOS, anything else). Use the fact that MS products can only see a single primary partition to your advantage to prevent windows from screwing up your system.
I used to use OS/2's Bootmanager, which was probably the premiere boot loader for years, and still may be for what it does. It was the initial PartitionMagic bootloader, until the swapped it out with their current piece of junk.
If you run into issues with too many primary partitions, or partition sizes being too large (the 1024 cylinder limit) you can always make your windows partitions smaller, but not smaller than 50MB, and use a logical drive/partition as the installation drive, with the 50MB partition being the boot partition. (Why 50MB when a boot drive only needs 5MB? Because MS required a min of 25MB on your boot drive to install a service pack, although XP SP2 finally did away with the boot drive limitation. There's no guarantee that some future SP from MS or updates from others won't try to use C: as their default tmp location.)
lastly, boot.ini can be edited manually to boot systems from other partitions pretty easily, once you figure out the esoteric drive/partition identification schema.
To remove the snags, check (Shift) Ctrl-Tab options.
There's another option, besides the already mentioned Ctrl-Tab and Shift-Ctrl-Tab options in Firefox.
For Macs, if you have multiple windows for a single app, Cmd-` through the windows for a single app. (that's the reverse slanting apostrophe/tilde key just above the tab key)
Between those suggestions, all your keyboard tabbing needs should be covered. Mouse not required.
Maybe some of us don't want the phone home advantage of "Windows Genuine Advantage" and other nifty user-friendly and bug-free code?
Maybe I like my SP1 system just the way it is - working.
Missed out on Windows NT? You're still living in that world, with a relatively functional but extremely slow version of NDS bolted on top of it. (I'm assuming you're working with 2003 & XP) In many ways, NT was a lot simpler, since you just couldn't do large monolithic installations with it.
1) Gerry Studds & consenting adult page
2) Barney Frank - was he going around spouting off about how he was religiously & morally upstanding and everyone should live like him?
3) The Democrats are merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republicans, since the Republicans entire platform was supposedly how the Democrats were doing all these bad things.
Oh, and last and not least, let's remember to "think of the children" for real this time, since it was an underage youth that was being harassed by a perverted pedophile, who was being protected by that morally superior group. (sick sick sick)
I don't like either party, I just like Republicans a whole lot less at the moment.
At least 2 teams have beaten the Cinematch score. Only one has gone past the Probe point.
Quite a few teams have beaten the Cinematch engine, but not by the required 10% for the prize. The submission is in error. They also haven't won the 1% Progress prize yet, but they're very very close.
Well, I didn't mention it, but this basically applies to every car CD player I've tested, including aftermarket systems from Pioneer, Sony, and Clarion. Every car CD player I've seen has a clock feature.
Here's another simple algorithm that will at least provide more randomness than the current methodology, use the song in play to seed the system. For a new disk, use the last song played as the seed.