As a software developer, I don't see that a potentially more efficient keyboard layout will help me much. If I was a writer, or perhaps a data entry clerk I'd probably get a lot of benefit because most of my time would be spent typing. For developing software though, I've never felt that the amount of time it takes to type things in was slowing me down. Most of my time is spent on reading existing code and on thinking and planning. Improving my keying time is a local optimisation that will make little to no difference to the total time taken to produce working software. If you really want to improve developer efficiency, try focussing on things like:
Ensuring that code is as clean, simple, and easy to understand as possible;
Having very fast and high quality feedback cycles (i.e. fast running tests, continuous integration, frequent client involvement, etc.)
One of my work colleagues uses a Dvorak layout, and having seen the code he produces I wonder if he'd be better off with a data entry system that slows him down long enough so that he can think a little more. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but I remember being very careful about my coding back in the days of paper cards.
There are plans to build your own version of this aircraft here, along with quite a few videos of it in flight. I'm amazed by how stable and under control it looks in the video of it flying outdoors in a wind.
An Optical Scan System certainly sounds like the way to go for all sorts of reasons. Around here, we call our Optical Scan System "eyeballs", but that's probably just one of those odd Australian language quirks.
The decision to buy IBM's product is being spinned by this article as if it's some kind of win for open standards, but there isn't anything significantly open going on here. As far as I can tell, they've adopted Rational Rose for diagramming/design and Clearcase for version control. Both of these products are closed source applications, and both store their data in closed, priority formats. There's nothing open about either of them. The best you could say is that NASA is using an open modelling language (UML), but of course that exists entirely independantly of the IBM product - I can use UML with a pencil and the back of an envelope.
If NASA really wanted to do something for openness (and delivering American taxpayers value for money), they'd be using Subversion, not ClearCase.
Both Rational and ClearCase are examples of the worst in their category of software. I've used many types of version control software, but ClearCase was the worst of all by far. This software was not purchased because NASA was particularly interested in open standards. Rational and ClearCase usually only get purchased because some manager had a very successful golf game with an IBM rep or still reasons that "nobody ever got fired for purchasing IBM".
In the Victorian Alps (south eastern Australia) the ski season was a dismal flop due to lack of snow. Due to the drought there wasn't enough water for snow making either. But on Christmas day (which is summer here of course), there was a large snow storm up in the mountains: more snow than there was during winter. My entirely unscientific impression of the recent weather is not just that it's getting hotter - it's getting weirder.
I've never seen one either. I had heard of them only through the US media but didn't really know what they were. I guess when the author of the article said
achieved somewhat of a "cult" status all over the world
the author's world didn't include Europe or Australia. I wonder if Asia is part of the world?
FPGAs are far cheaper than custom silicon for anything other than a massive production run, so the replies elsewhere are very sound advice. However, a small microcontroller (an eight bit device like an AVR or perhaps one of those new 32 bit ARM7 micros) will be significantly cheaper again. Not knowing anything about your requirements or design I can't say whether a microcontroller will enable you to achieve the desired results, but the cost advantages would make this well worth investigating.
The newest microcontrollers are incredibly capable devices, and have great peripherals. Even if you have to make a design compromise or two, or use some extra (non-custom) chips, software on a standard micro might be the cheapest option.
what does this mean to those that have already been convicted?
Hardly anyone (or maybe no-one?) has been convicted. They've just settled and paid damages because they can't compete with the RIAA's legal budget. If things never get tried in court, justice is not really done - it's just bullying. Punishing someone that has obviously done no wrong doesn't seem much worse than punishing someone who has never been shown to be guilty, as they should both be considered innocent.
There's been a very impressive Nixie wristwatch at http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/watch.html for quite a while now - he made it in 2001. The fact that it doesn't even use a microcontroller makes it that much cooler. Less flexible because you can't re-program it, but far more in keeping with the theme of the project.
Zigbee was motivated largely by a need for simplicity and low power in comparison to Bluetooth. But it still looks like a fair bit of work to implement the software stack - not likely to fit comfortably in a tiny micro with only a KB or two of flash. The module linked to from the summary looks like it would take away this problem, but it's huge compared to the hardware I'd want to use it with. I'm hoping this will shrink down to chip size soon, like some of the hardware USB bridge chips that are available now.
There's another interesting new protocol around that is even simpler called ANT. It's proprietary and the only implementation I know of at the moment is the Nordic nRF24AP1 chip, but there's full data available on the thisisant web site. It's so simple that I was able to read and understand the protocol document in one sitting. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some of these because they look perfect for home made hardware - they're tiny (5mm x 5mm), will work with cheap 8 bit micro's, and the software won't be too complicated.
I'm glad to see on their web site that the program is open for 'any Free Software'. If it ever turned into an arrangement where you had to work on the projects they suggested, I'd have a real problem with it. If you were an Aussie company and wanted some software developed on the cheap, you'd just fire all of your developers. They'd be forced by Centrelink onto the work for the dole scheme, and end up doing your software development for you at $4/hour or whatever the effective rate is for the 'mutual obligation' scheme.
The work for the dole system has lots of potential to be misused. It's a good thing we can trust our government to only ever do good things...
There are quite a few do it yourself MP3 players around. A particularly nice series of players can be found at the YAMPP (Yet Another MP3 Player) site. The site includes both hard drive and flash based players, and even a colour screen version. They have a web shop that sells PC boards, kits, and components.
It seems surprising that the music distribution industry would really want jail sentences for copiers. I would have thought that they'd prefer to continue using file sharing as a way to extract money from their victims by suing (or just by threatening to sue), and to excuse themselves from any competitive pressure that might require them to provide value for money.
Maybe their very cunning plan is to get this law passed, and invest heavily in the private prison business.
This is crap. Why bother? Why not push Sibelius or Finale to be ported to Linux??
Because this is the Unix way. It does one useful thing, and does it well. The problem of recording (e.g. from MIDI input) and creating nice printed output can be broken down quite naturally into at least two parts. Separating out the typography part makes it simpler to implement and more reliable, and offers flexibility by not binding it tightly to particular solutions to other problems. The apparent convenience of one big monolithic software package can often be outweighed by its disadvantages.
Maybe this is a reflection of society's attitude in general. I sense that a new level of apathy has developed over the last decade or so. Our politicians have stooped to such lows that they have no credibility left at all, and by association neither does the whole political system. We assume that politicians are lying and impotent, but we don't react with horror any more, because we just take it for granted. We assume that the election system is hopelessly broken and probably blatantly rigged, but we don't care anymore. What's the good of worrying about it if we feel there's nothing we can do?
Politicians know this about us too. They know they can rack up a rediculous deficit without getting thrown out of office, because we don't care. They know they can get away with starting a war on false pretenses if they feel like, because we don't care. I sometimes wonder what an elected official would have to do in order to get thrown out in protest. Is there any limit to what they can just shrug off?
Somewhere along the line, whatever systems we used to have in place that gave some power to individual citizens have failed us or disappeared. There used to be checks and balances in the system to stop governments doing rediculous things. Voters used to think they had some power through the ballot box. Individuals used to be able to run for public office and make a difference.
It's a sad thing indeed when a whole society loses faith in an important part of what makes it a functional community.
Slashdot Mirror
- Ensuring that code is as clean, simple, and easy to understand as possible;
- Having very fast and high quality feedback cycles (i.e. fast running tests, continuous integration, frequent client involvement, etc.)
One of my work colleagues uses a Dvorak layout, and having seen the code he produces I wonder if he'd be better off with a data entry system that slows him down long enough so that he can think a little more. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic, but I remember being very careful about my coding back in the days of paper cards.There are plans to build your own version of this aircraft here, along with quite a few videos of it in flight. I'm amazed by how stable and under control it looks in the video of it flying outdoors in a wind.
An Optical Scan System certainly sounds like the way to go for all sorts of reasons. Around here, we call our Optical Scan System "eyeballs", but that's probably just one of those odd Australian language quirks.
Oops. Obviously I meant to say "proprietary", not "priority". Now we see just how much brain damage I have suffered from using ClearCase for a while.
The decision to buy IBM's product is being spinned by this article as if it's some kind of win for open standards, but there isn't anything significantly open going on here. As far as I can tell, they've adopted Rational Rose for diagramming/design and Clearcase for version control. Both of these products are closed source applications, and both store their data in closed, priority formats. There's nothing open about either of them. The best you could say is that NASA is using an open modelling language (UML), but of course that exists entirely independantly of the IBM product - I can use UML with a pencil and the back of an envelope.
If NASA really wanted to do something for openness (and delivering American taxpayers value for money), they'd be using Subversion, not ClearCase.
Both Rational and ClearCase are examples of the worst in their category of software. I've used many types of version control software, but ClearCase was the worst of all by far. This software was not purchased because NASA was particularly interested in open standards. Rational and ClearCase usually only get purchased because some manager had a very successful golf game with an IBM rep or still reasons that "nobody ever got fired for purchasing IBM".
In the Victorian Alps (south eastern Australia) the ski season was a dismal flop due to lack of snow. Due to the drought there wasn't enough water for snow making either. But on Christmas day (which is summer here of course), there was a large snow storm up in the mountains: more snow than there was during winter. My entirely unscientific impression of the recent weather is not just that it's getting hotter - it's getting weirder.
I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. They don't blame terrorism every time - sometimes they blame child porn instead.
Web 3.0 is what the cool kids are doing now: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web3point0
FPGAs are far cheaper than custom silicon for anything other than a massive production run, so the replies elsewhere are very sound advice. However, a small microcontroller (an eight bit device like an AVR or perhaps one of those new 32 bit ARM7 micros) will be significantly cheaper again. Not knowing anything about your requirements or design I can't say whether a microcontroller will enable you to achieve the desired results, but the cost advantages would make this well worth investigating.
The newest microcontrollers are incredibly capable devices, and have great peripherals. Even if you have to make a design compromise or two, or use some extra (non-custom) chips, software on a standard micro might be the cheapest option.
Hardly anyone (or maybe no-one?) has been convicted. They've just settled and paid damages because they can't compete with the RIAA's legal budget. If things never get tried in court, justice is not really done - it's just bullying. Punishing someone that has obviously done no wrong doesn't seem much worse than punishing someone who has never been shown to be guilty, as they should both be considered innocent.
There's been a very impressive Nixie wristwatch at http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/watch.html for quite a while now - he made it in 2001. The fact that it doesn't even use a microcontroller makes it that much cooler. Less flexible because you can't re-program it, but far more in keeping with the theme of the project.
Australia seems to move around OK - http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/australia.sht ml
If I was asked to build a device that could catch balls moving at high speed, I would want to call it Annette.
Zigbee was motivated largely by a need for simplicity and low power in comparison to Bluetooth. But it still looks like a fair bit of work to implement the software stack - not likely to fit comfortably in a tiny micro with only a KB or two of flash. The module linked to from the summary looks like it would take away this problem, but it's huge compared to the hardware I'd want to use it with. I'm hoping this will shrink down to chip size soon, like some of the hardware USB bridge chips that are available now.
There's another interesting new protocol around that is even simpler called ANT. It's proprietary and the only implementation I know of at the moment is the Nordic nRF24AP1 chip, but there's full data available on the thisisant web site. It's so simple that I was able to read and understand the protocol document in one sitting. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some of these because they look perfect for home made hardware - they're tiny (5mm x 5mm), will work with cheap 8 bit micro's, and the software won't be too complicated.
What makes this slightly interesting is the IBM connection:
Geir Magnusson Jr. is a lead in the proposed Har mony Project
Geir Magnusson Jr. is from Gluecode, which IBM has acquired.
If it weren't for that, I'd just say "yeah, whatever - it's just another JVM implementation."
Geir Magnusson Jr. is from Gluecode, which IBM has acquired.
What is IBM really trying to buy here? I always thought that when IBM wanted Java they'd just buy Sun.
I'm glad to see on their web site that the program is open for 'any Free Software'. If it ever turned into an arrangement where you had to work on the projects they suggested, I'd have a real problem with it. If you were an Aussie company and wanted some software developed on the cheap, you'd just fire all of your developers. They'd be forced by Centrelink onto the work for the dole scheme, and end up doing your software development for you at $4/hour or whatever the effective rate is for the 'mutual obligation' scheme.
The work for the dole system has lots of potential to be misused. It's a good thing we can trust our government to only ever do good things...
There are quite a few do it yourself MP3 players around. A particularly nice series of players can be found at the YAMPP (Yet Another MP3 Player) site. The site includes both hard drive and flash based players, and even a colour screen version. They have a web shop that sells PC boards, kits, and components.
There is also list of mp3 projects at http://ee.cleversoul.com/mp3_projects.html
It seems surprising that the music distribution industry would really want jail sentences for copiers. I would have thought that they'd prefer to continue using file sharing as a way to extract money from their victims by suing (or just by threatening to sue), and to excuse themselves from any competitive pressure that might require them to provide value for money.
Maybe their very cunning plan is to get this law passed, and invest heavily in the private prison business.
Because this is the Unix way. It does one useful thing, and does it well. The problem of recording (e.g. from MIDI input) and creating nice printed output can be broken down quite naturally into at least two parts. Separating out the typography part makes it simpler to implement and more reliable, and offers flexibility by not binding it tightly to particular solutions to other problems. The apparent convenience of one big monolithic software package can often be outweighed by its disadvantages.
Maybe this is a reflection of society's attitude in general. I sense that a new level of apathy has developed over the last decade or so. Our politicians have stooped to such lows that they have no credibility left at all, and by association neither does the whole political system. We assume that politicians are lying and impotent, but we don't react with horror any more, because we just take it for granted. We assume that the election system is hopelessly broken and probably blatantly rigged, but we don't care anymore. What's the good of worrying about it if we feel there's nothing we can do?
Politicians know this about us too. They know they can rack up a rediculous deficit without getting thrown out of office, because we don't care. They know they can get away with starting a war on false pretenses if they feel like, because we don't care. I sometimes wonder what an elected official would have to do in order to get thrown out in protest. Is there any limit to what they can just shrug off?
Somewhere along the line, whatever systems we used to have in place that gave some power to individual citizens have failed us or disappeared. There used to be checks and balances in the system to stop governments doing rediculous things. Voters used to think they had some power through the ballot box. Individuals used to be able to run for public office and make a difference.
It's a sad thing indeed when a whole society loses faith in an important part of what makes it a functional community.
Robotic pants! What are they thinking? When will these scientists learn from history?
Very handy for when the SCO cops show up. Quick, everybody, flush the computers down the toilet!
There is Sodipodi for editing SVG.