The one project I remember the most from high school calculus was writing fictional stories that included mathematical elements. The assignment was to write whatever you wanted, using certain ideas (such as approaching a limit) in your story.
This assignment was great. It forced the student to think about these ideas and really understand them so that they could be used correctly in the story. Depending on how it was used, you could tell if the student truly understood the concepts. It was such a great assignment that I was surprised when it didn't happen again. I got a lot out of it AND it was fun.
Newspapers deciding not to carry an article or comic is not censorship. Those are private businesses and they have the right to decide what does and what does not appear in their materials. Censorship would be if the government stepped in and said it couldn't be published. I know it's easy to want to use strong words to get your point across, but in this case, it is simply wrong.
Hours Worked Fixing Problems divided by Hours Worked Doing Routine Work
The lower the number, the more efficient the sys admin is. A good sys admin doesn't have to do anything, because everything is already set up and working. If the admin is constantly fixing servers, bringing them up, restoring data from backups, etc., etc., etc., then he isn't doing his job. If the majority of his day is spent sleeping in his chair and responding to the occasional email and things are running smoothly, then you can't ask for anything more.
I work for a large portal company that hosts websites for several big name cable providers. Our sites load up all advertisement data inside of iframes, so that the rest of the page doesn't suffer from a slowdown if an ad server is bogged down. At first it seemed like a big PITA to implement, but in retrospect it was a wise decision.
This certainly isn't something you would learn in school. It's one of those "learn from experience" type of things.
I love GameTap. It is easy to use and the game selection isn't just old titles. They have some games from 2005/2006, and they're not all no-name games either. I believe the site has an up to date list. It is nice that they have networked multi-player games, so you can play some of the classic arcade games with someone else across the country. Works well if you have a good connection.
There are a few things that I don't like, though: 1. I cannot get any game pad to work correctly; it seems to confuse the buttons for some reason. 2. You cannot modify the game files at all, so forget installing custom mods/maps/skins/etc. 3. The non-game content, especially the video. I see no benefit, at all, to the video content. I don't want to pay for someone to sit around and create content I have no interest in seeing! 4. The interface is pretty intensive. On an older machine the games themselves run fine, but the GameTap program itself crawls.
For the price and the variety of games available, these things are pretty minor. I think it's a great value. I believe they have a $1 first month offer going on, and even if not, you can cancel your account at any time.
I believe that I saw an article on Slashdot several months ago where this kind of idea was implemented in Britain, but it was on the roads. Cars getting onto the highways would drive over large plates; the plates would move and generate enough electricity to run street lights. Not a bad idea, but I wonder if the energy return in this case would be enough to justify the cost of installation.
I remember back in my script kiddie days I was able to download programs that would put together a trojan or virus together from the various options the user selected. Press a button and viola! It generated an executable. This was ten years ago.
What's so new here? That fact that someone is commercializing it?
Well, good. If you have to shell out cash at least it will keep my 16 year old self from downloading it and causing annoyances.
I work for a company that hosts several major, big name websites; millions of hits a day. There has been a massive resistance to move from PHP4 to PHP5 for several reasons, one of them being that nobody in management wants to spend the time necessary to test ALL of the code under PHP5 and those in charge of the servers don't want to spend the time upgrading the machines. It would not surprise me if we were still on PHP4 a year from now. After all, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Hopefully, this announcement will move things forward a little bit. Writing code for PHP4 is an excruciating, painful experience, especially after having written code in PHP5 prior. The addition of exception handling alone is a big time saver, not to mention destructors, a faster object model, PDO, SPL, and a bunch of other things.
Among those whom Mr. Clinton pardoned or had sentences commuted: Melvin J. Reynolds - Democratic Congressman from Illinois - bank fraud and obstruction of justice
Dorothy Rivers - lead official in Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, plead guilty to theft of 1.2 million dollars in federal grant money
Carlos Anibal Vignali - convicted of cocaine trafficking
John H. Bustamante - wire fraud
Not saying that commuting Libby's sentence is OK, even though Plame was no longer a covert agent (her cover had been blown much earlier), but even so. This crap happens all the time. I wonder if it is a good idea to have presidential pardons at all - perhaps it should require a majority vote by congress, or perhaps something similar from the Supreme Court.
Of course, that would only make it more political. Blah. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.
Re:Shell replacements?
on
Pimp Your XP
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Indeed. I used to change my shell every other week or so for a few months, just to try something new and tinker.
I found that LiteStep was a PITA to use. Too much playing with config files.
SharpE was a decent and simple to use. Same with geOShell.
AstonShell is a nice shell with lots of features, but it costs money and it can't do anything that LiteStep can't.
I tired BlackBox for windows when it was first released and liked it quite a bit. Very minimalistic.
There is quite a lot of shells to choose from, though, sadly, not as many as there used to be. DarkStep was a stripped down LiteStep shell that I REALLY liked, but the maintainer abandoned the project many, many years ago. Seranade looked promising, but the site doesn't even exist anymore.
There is little doubt that the climate has warmed up a tad lately. Even the article up above mentions this. However, the change has been tiny and again, as mentioned in the article above, the climate has been much warmer than it is now. It has also been much colder.
There is more to the whole global warming fiasco than CO2, though. In fact, it is kind of minor compared to some of these other things.
My concern is with the storage of waste. For example, this article talks about a Russian dump of spent fuel rods from their nuclear submarines. They are leaking and if not taken care of soon, could cause a nasty disaster. FTA:
A new report from Rosatom, the Russian government's highest nuclear authority, shows that there is a grave danger that the stockpile can explode. For Norway the consequences could exceed the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and no one knows how imminent the danger is - if it is a question of years - or hours.
Nuclear energy is great. It is pretty cheap and we can use it for a long, long time. The waste is just so dangerous - and it has to be managed properly for 10,000 year and longer. The USA hasn't had any major waste incidents (that I know of), but it is only a matter of time. I live near the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, and there has never been a problem, but it only takes one...
The USA using nuclear power makes me uneasy, but countries like Russia or Iran just scare the hell out of me.
Unfortunately, this is turning out to be more and more true as time goes on. The Republican party is really losing touch with traditional conservatism: Small government, low taxes, state rights. That's why I'm leaning more towards the (weirdo-filled but well meaning) Libertarian party these days.
You're right; his writing style is juvenile. I've seen his letters in more than one place. Every time I have read one I wonder how on earth he managed to get a license to practice law in the first place. Then, I feel as if my own personal IQ has dropped a few notches.
Something I found to be insightful when trying to understand Jack Thompson is the whole situation with Penny Arcade. Start with the Wed, October 12 2005 - 10:49 AM entry and keep reading. Not only is it amusing, it is very eye opening.
I hope that nobody is surprised by this. It is simple supply and demand. Since the ethanol craze is creating a huge demand the price is going to go up. Corn farmers can demand a much higher price in return and they are getting it.
This was predicted years ago on the basis of simple economics. It is going to put a larger gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots', as those without money are going to have a much harder time finding food.
This isn't going to affect just tortillas. Corn is used to feed livestock as well; expect a jump in meat prices. Also, corn syrup, which is found in almost every carbonated beverage and candy, is going to be more expensive, driving those prices up as well.
Aside from food being more expensive, what about over-farming soil?
Whoever decided that corn-based ethanol - especially government mandated amounts thereof - was the Best Idea Ever didn't think it through very much. I think it is going to do much more harm than good in the long term.
We do need alternative energy sources, but this is not one that we should pursue in its current state.
If you're reading a doc, don't bother validating it. You're probably going to have handle "invalid" XML anyway.
I did work developing a large XML-based integration with the mortgage lender AmeriQuest. Boy, did they have interesting ideas on what valid XML is! I had to deal with fun things like:
<tag/>data</tag> - An empty tag being used for an opening tag </tag>data</tag> - A closing tag being used for an opening tag <tag>data<tag> - The opposite problem - two opening tags! <tag attribute="data" attribute="data2" attribute="data3"> - The same attribute appearing multiple times because they wanted to send multiple values. God forbid they create child nodes!
and other fun things. Imagine my frustration when I was told, "The customer is always right, if that is what they are sending then find a way to handle it..." Different xml events had special processing to turn the invalid xml into a well-formed document so that they could be parsed. Ugh.
AmeriQuest had farmed all the work out to an Indian outsourcing firm. You get what you pay for...
Meetings, for good or ill, are indeed necessary. Managers like meetings. I suppose it gives them a sense of purpose. (o;
Seriously though, meetings can be helpful if there is an agenda and people stick to it. "We are meeting to discuss X and Y." So talk about X and Y. Keep the extra chatter out. I really don't want to waste my time hearing about what happened on The Simpsons this week. I also don't want to watch someone change a diaper (yes, that actually happened, it was gross and it really pissed me off). I have found that I tend to get much more done in a 30 minute meeting than a 2 hour one.
I suppose that with the right conferencing software that face to face meetings are a lot less necessary, but unfortunately where I work we don't have that available. I would imagine that it would be helpful, though!
Written (typed) communication is certainly great. There is a record of what occurred and you can take your time formulating questions and responses so that they are very clear and concise. However, you miss out on the spontaneity and interaction that a face to face meeting can bring.
And sometimes, not having a paper trail can be beneficial. (o:
I am able to telecommute two days a week right now. I enjoy this for several reasons:
1. I don't have someone stopping by my cube every 30 minutes interrupting my concentration for casual conversation. That is very annoying. At home I don't have this distraction and I'm able to get more work done.
2. Since I started working from home two days a week, I have save myself 2 hours of driving time a week. Less gas, less wear and tear on the car, and a lot less frustration dealing with traffic! That means a happier employee.
3. I can curse and scream as loudly as I please when somebody does something stupid. It's a great stress reliever. In the office, well. The HR department would have issues if they heard what I wanted to say half the time!
4. Comfort! Cube farms suck. If I'm comfortable you know I'll be more productive. I can sit out on my porch in the warm weather and enjoy FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT while I work with my laptop. It is a huge, HUGE plus over florescent lights and stale office air.
5. I save money on laundry. (o:
Overall, I'm a lot happier and more productive when I'm at home working.
On the flip side, it is useful to be in the office once in a while too. Meetings in face to face can be more productive and it can be easier to get things done. Other than meetings though, I really don't see the point. Offices are just too depressing and distracting.
I also found the reformatted version to be more difficult to read. For me, one of the worst changes is the coloration of the words. Some words were black, some were this... odd color (I'm red/green colorblind, so that might be one of the problems), and it seemed to change at random. Very distracting.
Yeah, I'm a far out one. Instead of working in IT - it's only been a few years and I'm already burnt out - I would love to raise bears. There is a small niche market for trained bears; movies and commercials.
I should have studied zoology or something when I was in college. This IT stuff sucks. do: Sure, it pays the bills, but damn am I bored!
Slashdot Mirror
The one project I remember the most from high school calculus was writing fictional stories that included mathematical elements. The assignment was to write whatever you wanted, using certain ideas (such as approaching a limit) in your story.
This assignment was great. It forced the student to think about these ideas and really understand them so that they could be used correctly in the story. Depending on how it was used, you could tell if the student truly understood the concepts. It was such a great assignment that I was surprised when it didn't happen again. I got a lot out of it AND it was fun.
Newspapers deciding not to carry an article or comic is not censorship. Those are private businesses and they have the right to decide what does and what does not appear in their materials. Censorship would be if the government stepped in and said it couldn't be published. I know it's easy to want to use strong words to get your point across, but in this case, it is simply wrong.
Hours Worked Fixing Problems divided by Hours Worked Doing Routine Work
The lower the number, the more efficient the sys admin is. A good sys admin doesn't have to do anything, because everything is already set up and working. If the admin is constantly fixing servers, bringing them up, restoring data from backups, etc., etc., etc., then he isn't doing his job. If the majority of his day is spent sleeping in his chair and responding to the occasional email and things are running smoothly, then you can't ask for anything more.
I work for a large portal company that hosts websites for several big name cable providers. Our sites load up all advertisement data inside of iframes, so that the rest of the page doesn't suffer from a slowdown if an ad server is bogged down. At first it seemed like a big PITA to implement, but in retrospect it was a wise decision.
This certainly isn't something you would learn in school. It's one of those "learn from experience" type of things.
I love GameTap. It is easy to use and the game selection isn't just old titles. They have some games from 2005/2006, and they're not all no-name games either. I believe the site has an up to date list. It is nice that they have networked multi-player games, so you can play some of the classic arcade games with someone else across the country. Works well if you have a good connection.
There are a few things that I don't like, though:
1. I cannot get any game pad to work correctly; it seems to confuse the buttons for some reason.
2. You cannot modify the game files at all, so forget installing custom mods/maps/skins/etc.
3. The non-game content, especially the video. I see no benefit, at all, to the video content. I don't want to pay for someone to sit around and create content I have no interest in seeing!
4. The interface is pretty intensive. On an older machine the games themselves run fine, but the GameTap program itself crawls.
For the price and the variety of games available, these things are pretty minor. I think it's a great value. I believe they have a $1 first month offer going on, and even if not, you can cancel your account at any time.
I believe that I saw an article on Slashdot several months ago where this kind of idea was implemented in Britain, but it was on the roads. Cars getting onto the highways would drive over large plates; the plates would move and generate enough electricity to run street lights. Not a bad idea, but I wonder if the energy return in this case would be enough to justify the cost of installation.
There is nothing new here.
I remember back in my script kiddie days I was able to download programs that would put together a trojan or virus together from the various options the user selected. Press a button and viola! It generated an executable. This was ten years ago.
What's so new here? That fact that someone is commercializing it?
Well, good. If you have to shell out cash at least it will keep my 16 year old self from downloading it and causing annoyances.
Sour beer? It's quite delicious!
You would think.
I work for a company that hosts several major, big name websites; millions of hits a day. There has been a massive resistance to move from PHP4 to PHP5 for several reasons, one of them being that nobody in management wants to spend the time necessary to test ALL of the code under PHP5 and those in charge of the servers don't want to spend the time upgrading the machines. It would not surprise me if we were still on PHP4 a year from now. After all, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Hopefully, this announcement will move things forward a little bit. Writing code for PHP4 is an excruciating, painful experience, especially after having written code in PHP5 prior. The addition of exception handling alone is a big time saver, not to mention destructors, a faster object model, PDO, SPL, and a bunch of other things.
For additional information that puts this into perspective: List o _people pardoned by Bill Clinton. This thing happens all the time.
Among those whom Mr. Clinton pardoned or had sentences commuted:
Melvin J. Reynolds - Democratic Congressman from Illinois - bank fraud and obstruction of justice
Dorothy Rivers - lead official in Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, plead guilty to theft of 1.2 million dollars in federal grant money
Carlos Anibal Vignali - convicted of cocaine trafficking
John H. Bustamante - wire fraud
Not saying that commuting Libby's sentence is OK, even though Plame was no longer a covert agent (her cover had been blown much earlier), but even so. This crap happens all the time. I wonder if it is a good idea to have presidential pardons at all - perhaps it should require a majority vote by congress, or perhaps something similar from the Supreme Court.
Of course, that would only make it more political. Blah. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I suppose.
Indeed. I used to change my shell every other week or so for a few months, just to try something new and tinker.
I found that LiteStep was a PITA to use. Too much playing with config files.
SharpE was a decent and simple to use. Same with geOShell.
AstonShell is a nice shell with lots of features, but it costs money and it can't do anything that LiteStep can't.
I tired BlackBox for windows when it was first released and liked it quite a bit. Very minimalistic.
There is quite a lot of shells to choose from, though, sadly, not as many as there used to be. DarkStep was a stripped down LiteStep shell that I REALLY liked, but the maintainer abandoned the project many, many years ago. Seranade looked promising, but the site doesn't even exist anymore.
There is little doubt that the climate has warmed up a tad lately. Even the article up above mentions this. However, the change has been tiny and again, as mentioned in the article above, the climate has been much warmer than it is now. It has also been much colder.
...nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2...
There is more to the whole global warming fiasco than CO2, though. In fact, it is kind of minor compared to some of these other things.
I would just like to point out a few things:
An Erupting Solar Prominence from SOHO
Plants revealed as methane source
The USA using nuclear power makes me uneasy, but countries like Russia or Iran just scare the hell out of me.
What are you using that turns the power off when the case is opened? Is this a home brew solution, or something off the shelf?
Thanks!
Not allow women to make up their own minds?
What about making up their own mind to spread their legs in the first place?
Sorry to be crude, but people need to take more responsibility for what they do around here.
Unfortunately, this is turning out to be more and more true as time goes on. The Republican party is really losing touch with traditional conservatism: Small government, low taxes, state rights. That's why I'm leaning more towards the (weirdo-filled but well meaning) Libertarian party these days.
You're right; his writing style is juvenile. I've seen his letters in more than one place. Every time I have read one I wonder how on earth he managed to get a license to practice law in the first place. Then, I feel as if my own personal IQ has dropped a few notches.
Something I found to be insightful when trying to understand Jack Thompson is the whole situation with Penny Arcade. Start with the Wed, October 12 2005 - 10:49 AM entry and keep reading. Not only is it amusing, it is very eye opening.
There is at least one alternative to AllOfMP3.com.
I hope that nobody is surprised by this. It is simple supply and demand. Since the ethanol craze is creating a huge demand the price is going to go up. Corn farmers can demand a much higher price in return and they are getting it.
This was predicted years ago on the basis of simple economics. It is going to put a larger gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots', as those without money are going to have a much harder time finding food.
This isn't going to affect just tortillas. Corn is used to feed livestock as well; expect a jump in meat prices. Also, corn syrup, which is found in almost every carbonated beverage and candy, is going to be more expensive, driving those prices up as well.
Aside from food being more expensive, what about over-farming soil?
Whoever decided that corn-based ethanol - especially government mandated amounts thereof - was the Best Idea Ever didn't think it through very much. I think it is going to do much more harm than good in the long term.
We do need alternative energy sources, but this is not one that we should pursue in its current state.
Funny you should mention that... Writing Perl using Vista's voice recognition.
<tag
</tag>data</tag> - A closing tag being used for an opening tag
<tag>data<tag> - The opposite problem - two opening tags!
<tag attribute="data" attribute="data2" attribute="data3"> - The same attribute appearing multiple times because they wanted to send multiple values. God forbid they create child nodes!
and other fun things. Imagine my frustration when I was told, "The customer is always right, if that is what they are sending then find a way to handle it..." Different xml events had special processing to turn the invalid xml into a well-formed document so that they could be parsed. Ugh.
AmeriQuest had farmed all the work out to an Indian outsourcing firm. You get what you pay for...
Meetings, for good or ill, are indeed necessary. Managers like meetings. I suppose it gives them a sense of purpose. (o;
Seriously though, meetings can be helpful if there is an agenda and people stick to it. "We are meeting to discuss X and Y." So talk about X and Y. Keep the extra chatter out. I really don't want to waste my time hearing about what happened on The Simpsons this week. I also don't want to watch someone change a diaper (yes, that actually happened, it was gross and it really pissed me off). I have found that I tend to get much more done in a 30 minute meeting than a 2 hour one.
I suppose that with the right conferencing software that face to face meetings are a lot less necessary, but unfortunately where I work we don't have that available. I would imagine that it would be helpful, though!
Written (typed) communication is certainly great. There is a record of what occurred and you can take your time formulating questions and responses so that they are very clear and concise. However, you miss out on the spontaneity and interaction that a face to face meeting can bring.
And sometimes, not having a paper trail can be beneficial. (o:
I am able to telecommute two days a week right now. I enjoy this for several reasons:
1. I don't have someone stopping by my cube every 30 minutes interrupting my concentration for casual conversation. That is very annoying. At home I don't have this distraction and I'm able to get more work done.
2. Since I started working from home two days a week, I have save myself 2 hours of driving time a week. Less gas, less wear and tear on the car, and a lot less frustration dealing with traffic! That means a happier employee.
3. I can curse and scream as loudly as I please when somebody does something stupid. It's a great stress reliever. In the office, well. The HR department would have issues if they heard what I wanted to say half the time!
4. Comfort! Cube farms suck. If I'm comfortable you know I'll be more productive. I can sit out on my porch in the warm weather and enjoy FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT while I work with my laptop. It is a huge, HUGE plus over florescent lights and stale office air.
5. I save money on laundry. (o:
Overall, I'm a lot happier and more productive when I'm at home working.
On the flip side, it is useful to be in the office once in a while too. Meetings in face to face can be more productive and it can be easier to get things done. Other than meetings though, I really don't see the point. Offices are just too depressing and distracting.
I also found the reformatted version to be more difficult to read. For me, one of the worst changes is the coloration of the words. Some words were black, some were this... odd color (I'm red/green colorblind, so that might be one of the problems), and it seemed to change at random. Very distracting.
Yeah, I'm a far out one. Instead of working in IT - it's only been a few years and I'm already burnt out - I would love to raise bears. There is a small niche market for trained bears; movies and commercials.
I should have studied zoology or something when I was in college. This IT stuff sucks. do: Sure, it pays the bills, but damn am I bored!