Easily the best prof. I have ever had came up with this. From the National Post:
"The problem was created by Wolfgang Holzmann, a Lethbridge computer science professor, using a computer code called Base4 to substitute numbers for letters of the alphabet."
Let's hear it former ulethians, give it up for Wolf!!
>First of all, where I work, we are still >discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. >We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would >guess.
Ha! Me too. I'm still NT and *nix on my desktop...
I agree on the laziness factor, but I think that
spending time on design is often overlooked. If you can't get a project done with a good design that can be verified by your peers in the time allotted, you're doing the wrong project.
Secondly, document, document, document. I have adopted a saying that I heard long ago: "Not everything doing is worth doing well." Now that may appear to fly in the face of what I have been espousing, but a hack that works and is documented is much better than something brilliant that isn't easily maintainable.
I just wish the developers in the early '80s who wrote this legacy app that I'm supporting had learned to plan, design and document. <grumble> Remember that what you write today may stick around for a long time. At least make it maintainable. You'll make junior coder's life a lot easier in the future. : ) _______________________________________________ __
$which weed
Neither really have anything for ripping directly from vinyl per se, but they are both really solid turntables. The Rega will give you the most bang for the buck and are pretty cutting edge. If you have more to spend, an Oracle would be cool. For my budget, a Rega Planar 3 does nicely.
they *have* to say alleged because people (and corporations - under the law corporations are considered people) are assumed innocent until proven guilty. if they don't "allege", but outright acuse, then they get nailed with a defamation/slander/et al suit.
just the way the legal system accuses people.
in business terms, alleging is really serious stuff.
it's like saying: you stole^H^H^H^H^H may have taken my bike
Bose were pretty good a few years ago - some of the '70s bass reflex speakers are really sweet. Now they are a "lifestyles" company and they have really focussed on neato looking gear. The sound that they produce is pretty good, but *way* overpriced for what you're getting. The focus of their equipment seems to be more form follows function. If you want neato stuff that sounds really good, Bang & Olufsen is cool. However, they are expensive and not the greatest sound quality compared with other companies.
Bose may sound better than your radio shack stereo or a lower end Sony or Kenwood, but not enough to justify the price.
People that tend to rave about Bose often haven't compared it to hi-fi components that are out on the market. just my $0.02 ___________________________________________ ______
$which weed
I second the 'Stay Away From', list most of the mainstream stuff is weak.
For speakers, Royd are incredible for the price. Kef are awesome, and the higher end Celestions are good. Mission makes a not too bad entry level speaker as well. B&W are way overpriced IMHO. Yes they sound wonderful, but does a *slightly* better sound justify the $$$$??
On the amp end, Creek makes some great sounding amps that are quite reasonably priced.
Beware of wattage claims of manufacturers. A 40watt Creek or Arcam will crush a 100watt Sony or Kenwood. The British hi fi companies tend to underrate wattage and they measure it differently than in N.America.
Most of all, use your ears and stay away from hard sell salesmen! Good hi-fi people are great to get to know. They'd rather convert you to great sound than make a sale in the short run. ____________________________________________ _____
$which weed
It is developed and runs on Windows using ColdFusion. They may sell the entire concept to you to rebrand for your own. I believe Allaire has a ColdFusion server that runs on Unix now.
The NoMatterWare template has a very Windows look and feel, and I've found that ColdFusion doesn't always look as good in Unix environments (especially text), but I'm sure with a little effort you could remedy that. If your customers are Windows users, they'll love it. _____________________________________________ ____ $which weed
I'm having similar difficulties in Calgary. A recruiter told me that there is a glut of qualified I.T. people that have been laid off due to the Y2K bust. Therefore, this spring is a buyer's market in Calgary since most companies have an I.T. department that let Y2K people go. There are lots of positions open for people with tons of experience, but they seem to want an ideal candidate. Some of them are ridiculous: I've seen companies wanting five++ years experience in Java, C++, Perl, CGI, ASP, ColdFusion, LDAP etc. as well as every platform under the sun.
Headhunters are good at finding me work in Vancouver, Ottawa and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, I need to stay in Calgary for at least a year. I've been at it for three months and have applied for over 100 positions. It does get disheartening, but I got an offer yesterday with an I.T. Consulting firm.
This is what I did to get exposure:
-most people doing the hiring are clueless about I.T. They are looking for buzzwords in your resume. Research and ask people who have turned you down. It's hard, but you learn a lot. I added that I had worked on testing platforms using TCP/IP, APPC, NetBIOS, IPX, SPX, and suddenly recruiters were interested. It's ridiculous, but inject the buzz words into your resume, it helps.
- Check out Nortel's site and mirror their resume format with skills and time spent utilising those skills. It's an extremely effective format.
- Bug everyone you know that works in I.T.. Most of my leads came from referrals. Try old teacher's, professor's and contact your old University. They often have employment programs for grads. Case in point, I sent my resume to a company two months ago and didn't hear a thing. My old Co-op coordinator sent the same resume to the company two weeks ago, and I instantly got a phone call for an interview.
-If you get turned down for a position, ask why. It hurts the ego at an already fragile time, but it gives you something to work on. If you're like me, you spend your time on the computer anyway. If Company Y wants you to know such and such, find an Open Source equivalent and hack away for a few weeks. If they haven't filled the position, follow up and tell them that you've learned it in the interim.
- To take the sting out of the job search, my friends and I had a PFO letter contest. We tried to see who could get a PFO letter from the coolest company. I applied everywhere just to get a letter. I actually got a couple of leads this way that I wasn't expecting. It was a good morale booster.
- Finally, listen in interviews and get feedback. HR people can be totally clueless. I think that the skill set that I have has actually hindered my job search. Case in point: I do a lot of freelance web work and applied to a web company. They asked if I could use "such and such" proprietary web design software. I said I wasn't familiar with it, but would learn it. They asked what I used for my own development. I replied vi and emacs. They didn't know what I was talking about. So, the candidate that can use an automatic HTML generator probably got the position, and since I hard code all of my HTML, SQL and programming code with a text editor, I'm not attractive to them. Go figure.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of this you are already doing, but hang in there and keep pounding the pavement. There are always start ups that need to throw bodies on a project who are willing to take a risk. The trick is to find them. Bug everyone you know and let them all know that you're looking for a job. It's humbling, but I've had great leads from the weirdest sources.
Who's this Cher person that we are bandying about so liberally in these generalizations? I thought she died in a plane crash with the BBBopper. She was then repaired and recompiled in Silicon Valley. _________________________________________ ________ $which weed
Rather than rant about the finer points of the differences of the *.BSD family, I'll just congratulate Theo on some well deserved publicity. OpenBSD is by far the most secure OS available. Just ask the folks at DefCon... ________________________________________________ _ $which weed
Doesn't this fly in the face of the basic principles of Open Source?
Let's finance our non - proprietary endeavours and fight the evil proprietary software companies by using another source of proprietary income? It doesn't make sense. Having worked for a credit card company, I would hazard a guess that many software companies that we dissaprove of operate with more scruple than the credit card industry.
To modernize an old euphemism, this looks like a case of the fridge calling the stove "almond". _______________________________________ __________ $which weed
i reside in a windowless, poorly ventilated office - and i'm one of the lucky ones. how about cubicles, sick building syndrome, no ergonomic thought to the techies work environs....
rant...rant...rant...
sure i feel sorry for animals, but there are a ton of us techies that have to work in deplorable lab conditions. where is our voice?? _________________________________________ ________ $which weed
These storage monsters aren't terribly exciting. I've used the Hitachi 5700, 7700 and 7700E. These are only exciting if throughput is the name of your game. I think some engineers around here had a cluster of workstations talking to a 7700 and a smokin' mainframe. They got approx. 300Gigs/hr in throughput.
As for anything exciting...
I guess you can back up your MP3's rather quickly... ______________________________________ ___________ $which weed
"Rejoice. Th' Onion is back wif a noo edishun, af'er a month's hiatus. Durin' th' bust they haf done a li'l redesign of th' main page. I've got some readin' to does. " As allus, th' Onion brin's a smile t'mah face, along wif some belly laughs, an' some so't of problem wif mah digestive system, dawgone it."
for even greater fun, try various combinations of babelfish and the dialectizer...
ok ok - give me a break - i'm doing db2 admin on aix... : ( can you blame me for finding distractions? ___________________________________ ______________ $which weed
Slashdot Mirror
Easily the best prof. I have ever had came up with this. From the National Post:
"The problem was created by Wolfgang Holzmann, a Lethbridge computer science professor, using a computer code called Base4 to substitute numbers for letters of the alphabet."
Let's hear it former ulethians, give it up for Wolf!!
>First of all, where I work, we are still >discussing when/how to upgrade from NT to 2K. >We'll probably upgrade to XP around 2005 I would >guess.
Ha! Me too. I'm still NT and *nix on my desktop...
Agreed. The LGPL is used for embedding is it not? It doesn't get much friendlier that that.
just my $0.02
Amen._ ______
__________________________________________
$which weed
I agree on the laziness factor, but I think that
_ __
spending time on design is often overlooked. If you can't get a project done with a good design that can be verified by your peers in the time allotted, you're doing the wrong project.
Secondly, document, document, document. I have adopted a saying that I heard long ago: "Not everything doing is worth doing well." Now that may appear to fly in the face of what I have been espousing, but a hack that works and is documented is much better than something brilliant that isn't easily maintainable.
I just wish the developers in the early '80s who wrote this legacy app that I'm supporting had learned to plan, design and document. <grumble> Remember that what you write today may stick around for a long time. At least make it maintainable. You'll make junior coder's life a lot easier in the future. : )
______________________________________________
$which weed
Neither really have anything for ripping directly from vinyl per se, but they are both really solid turntables. The Rega will give you the most bang for the buck and are pretty cutting edge. If you have more to spend, an Oracle would be cool. For my budget, a Rega Planar 3 does nicely.
_ _
_______________________________________________
$which weed
>Simplifying things (this is entirely *alleged*):
_ _
they *have* to say alleged because people (and corporations - under the law corporations are considered people) are assumed innocent until proven guilty. if they don't "allege", but outright acuse, then they get nailed with a defamation/slander/et al suit.
just the way the legal system accuses people.
in business terms, alleging is really serious stuff.
it's like saying: you stole^H^H^H^H^H may have taken my bike
_______________________________________________
$which weed
amen._ ______
__________________________________________
$which weed
Bose were pretty good a few years ago - some of the '70s bass reflex speakers are really sweet.
_ ______
Now they are a "lifestyles" company and they have really focussed on neato looking gear. The sound that they produce is pretty good, but *way* overpriced for what you're getting.
The focus of their equipment seems to be more form follows function.
If you want neato stuff that sounds really good, Bang & Olufsen is cool. However, they are expensive and not the greatest sound quality compared with other companies.
Bose may sound better than your radio shack stereo or a lower end Sony or Kenwood, but not enough to justify the price.
People that tend to rave about Bose often haven't compared it to hi-fi components that are out on the market.
just my $0.02
__________________________________________
$which weed
I second the 'Stay Away From', list most of the mainstream stuff is weak.
_ _____
For speakers, Royd are incredible for the price.
Kef are awesome, and the higher end Celestions are good. Mission makes a not too bad entry level speaker as well. B&W are way overpriced IMHO. Yes they sound wonderful, but does a *slightly* better sound justify the $$$$??
On the amp end, Creek makes some great sounding amps that are quite reasonably priced.
Beware of wattage claims of manufacturers. A 40watt Creek or Arcam will crush a 100watt Sony or Kenwood. The British hi fi companies tend to underrate wattage and they measure it differently than in N.America.
Most of all, use your ears and stay away from hard sell salesmen! Good hi-fi people are great to get to know. They'd rather convert you to great sound than make a sale in the short run.
___________________________________________
$which weed
Check out : http://www.nomatterware.com .
_ ____
It is developed and runs on Windows using ColdFusion. They may sell the entire concept to you to rebrand for your own. I believe Allaire has a ColdFusion server that runs on Unix now.
The NoMatterWare template has a very Windows look and feel, and I've found that ColdFusion doesn't always look as good in Unix environments (especially text), but I'm sure with a little effort you could remedy that. If your customers are Windows users, they'll love it.
____________________________________________
$which weed
I'm having similar difficulties in Calgary. A recruiter told me that there is a glut of qualified I.T. people that have been laid off due to the Y2K bust. Therefore, this spring is a buyer's market in Calgary since most companies have an I.T. department that let Y2K people go. There are lots of positions open for people with tons of experience, but they seem to want an ideal candidate. Some of them are ridiculous: I've seen companies wanting five++ years experience in Java, C++, Perl, CGI, ASP, ColdFusion, LDAP etc. as well as every platform under the sun.
_ _
Headhunters are good at finding me work in Vancouver, Ottawa and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, I need to stay in Calgary for at least a year. I've been at it for three months and have applied for over 100 positions. It does get disheartening, but I got an offer yesterday with an I.T. Consulting firm.
This is what I did to get exposure:
-most people doing the hiring are clueless about I.T. They are looking for buzzwords in your resume. Research and ask people who have turned you down. It's hard, but you learn a lot. I added that I had worked on testing platforms using TCP/IP, APPC, NetBIOS, IPX, SPX, and suddenly recruiters were interested. It's ridiculous, but inject the buzz words into your resume, it helps.
- Check out Nortel's site and mirror their resume format with skills and time spent utilising those skills. It's an extremely effective format.
- Bug everyone you know that works in I.T.. Most of my leads came from referrals. Try old teacher's, professor's and contact your old University. They often have employment programs for grads. Case in point, I sent my resume to a company two months ago and didn't hear a thing. My old Co-op coordinator sent the same resume to the company two weeks ago, and I instantly got a phone call for an interview.
-If you get turned down for a position, ask why. It hurts the ego at an already fragile time, but it gives you something to work on. If you're like me, you spend your time on the computer anyway. If Company Y wants you to know such and such, find an Open Source equivalent and hack away for a few weeks. If they haven't filled the position, follow up and tell them that you've learned it in the interim.
- To take the sting out of the job search, my friends and I had a PFO letter contest. We tried to see who could get a PFO letter from the coolest company. I applied everywhere just to get a letter. I actually got a couple of leads this way that I wasn't expecting. It was a good morale booster.
- Finally, listen in interviews and get feedback. HR people can be totally clueless. I think that the skill set that I have has actually hindered my job search. Case in point: I do a lot of freelance web work and applied to a web company. They asked if I could use "such and such" proprietary web design software. I said I wasn't familiar with it, but would learn it. They asked what I used for my own development. I replied vi and emacs. They didn't know what I was talking about. So, the candidate that can use an automatic HTML generator probably got the position, and since I hard code all of my HTML, SQL and programming code with a text editor, I'm not attractive to them. Go figure.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of this you are already doing, but hang in there and keep pounding the pavement. There are always start ups that need to throw bodies on a project who are willing to take a risk. The trick is to find them. Bug everyone you know and let them all know that you're looking for a job. It's humbling, but I've had great leads from the weirdest sources.
Best of luck. You're definitely not alone.
_______________________________________________
$which weed
hey - a fellow u of l 'er!_ _____
___________________________________________
$which weed
Who's this Cher person that we are bandying about so liberally in these generalizations? I thought she died in a plane crash with the BBBopper._ ________
She was then repaired and recompiled in Silicon Valley.
________________________________________
$which weed
hmmmm...
/._ __
what exchange are they taking it on? it seems odd that Canajuns would be shut out. i'm working on an ipo for Nasdaq small caps and i'm in Alberta.
good to see a uvicker on
: )
______________________________________________
$which weed
Rather than rant about the finer points of the differences of the *.BSD family, I'll just congratulate Theo on some well deserved publicity. OpenBSD is by far the most secure OS available. Just ask the folks at DefCon..._ _
_______________________________________________
$which weed
Doesn't this fly in the face of the basic principles of Open Source?
_ __________
Let's finance our non - proprietary endeavours and fight the evil proprietary software companies by using another source of proprietary income? It doesn't make sense. Having worked for a credit card company, I would hazard a guess that many software companies that we dissaprove of operate with more scruple than the credit card industry.
To modernize an old euphemism, this looks like a case of the fridge calling the stove "almond".
______________________________________
$which weed
i reside in a windowless, poorly ventilated office - and i'm one of the lucky ones. how about cubicles, sick building syndrome, no ergonomic thought to the techies work environs....
_ ________
rant...rant...rant...
sure i feel sorry for animals, but there are a ton of us techies that have to work in deplorable lab conditions. where is our voice??
________________________________________
$which weed
i concur. i thought that i'd had a little *too*
_ _
much vitamin c (caffiene) this morning....
8^ )
_______________________________________________
$which weed
LOFL!!!_ ________
________________________________________
$which weed
"and my mother ordered me a Montreal Canadians sweater from Mr. Eaton's catalog."_ __________
______________________________________
$which weed
These storage monsters aren't terribly exciting.
_ ___________
I've used the Hitachi 5700, 7700 and 7700E. These are only exciting if throughput is the name of your game. I think some engineers around here had a cluster of workstations talking to a 7700 and a smokin' mainframe. They got approx. 300Gigs/hr in throughput.
As for anything exciting...
I guess you can back up your MP3's rather quickly...
_____________________________________
$which weed
rotffl!!!
_ ______________
"Rejoice. Th' Onion is back wif a noo edishun, af'er a month's hiatus. Durin' th' bust they haf done a li'l redesign of th' main page. I've got some readin' to does. " As allus, th' Onion brin's a smile t'mah face, along wif some belly laughs, an' some so't of problem wif mah digestive system, dawgone it."
for even greater fun, try various combinations of babelfish and the dialectizer...
ok ok - give me a break - i'm doing db2 admin on aix... : ( can you blame me for finding distractions?
__________________________________
$which weed