Rpath have a wiki VMWare appliance, that was also available as a bootable image. (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/vehera-base/ ) Built and customised a wiki while waiting in a departure lounge. About an hour. (Getting the vsftpd running took a little longer)
As I tracked every config change, moving from VMWare to a stand-alone box was completely painless, including moving all the images and data.
As a bonus you get a full LAMP stack - adding Mantis to the mix was seamless.
Ignore claims that is is now deprecated by a new (but unfinised) project.
I have also spent two decades in various forms of IP development. Depending on the customer (defined as the person with the cheque book) we have had a variety of contracts in place.
We usually have boiler plate for the following situations a) we keep tools, code and IP developed and license, in perpetuity, the right to use and create derivitive works b) we keep tools and techniques; client gets newly developed code + license as above for boilerplate. Plus IP rights in their area of expertese
There's a few more variations, but as we're not a bodyshop we're usually hanging onto all rights for tools and techniques
On the whole, though, I don't see the point of the complaint. Yes, UIs do change sometimes as they evolve. In this case, the change had been, on the whole, a positive one
This is de-volution, not evolution.
Office 2007 :
Sets a new record for pixels wasted on stupid shiny menu icons.
Has less commonality between products than the previous version.
Has, apparently, removed features.
Has alienated most of the existing user base - particularily the power users
Not suprisingly Big Corporate(tm) accounts are still buying Office 03 along with their XP licences.
Another whiney "but my software is art" diatribe which tries to use the strawman of The Ossified Bureaucracy to deprecate all process and procedure.
As usual, the answer is more complicated and has to do with the size of your team, the maturity of your product, and the acceptable risk profile of your market.
Are you writing a proof-of-concept prototype?
Are you putting together a demo user interface?
Are you writing flight control software?
Most importantly
Is your product mature or still a twinkle in your eye?
It's stupidly dangerous to mess with the code at this point
It's bloat
It means you defrauded your customer (you are being paid, aren't you)
It means you are not reviewing or testing the product.
By now you've probably guessed that I also think it's seriously stupid and childish thing to do. On par with spraying graffitti on a building you've just help construct.
If you've really got a few days left, use them to double and triple check everything you've done. Particularly the code constructs that can't easily be tested. The sorts of things that lead to embarassing crashes and hacker exploits.
The problem is not your memory. It is the huge amount of crap you're trying to remember. And a less c*cksure attitude to life.
I deal with a lot of postgraduates and undergraduates. Most of them would forget their head if it wasn't screwed on. But they _think_ their memory is perfect. And that their life is _incredibly_ complicated. And that they know _all_ that there is to know.
Now, to give them their due, the 20 somethings are more lateral than I am these days. And less set in their ways.
But the problem isn't your memory*. You've just started to get a dose of humility. Work out what is important, use lists and get the important things done.
Thog * presuming you're 40; your diet is OK and you're getting enough exercise and sleep. Your hair, eyes and joints go long before your memory. PS I'm not as fast as I used to be. But I'm a hell of a lot more devious:-)
If branching is increasing your workload instead of making things easier you are most likely not using a source control system that is good at branching and merging.
If you are constantly branching and merging then your Engineering Change Management Process is out of control. Oh, but software is art and you're too creative to be constrained by other people's processes. Sigh!
If it's a prototype (aka risk reduction excercise), then 'fess up and stop pretending you're doing implementation.
"low latency lossless". Geez, like in ATM or SONET??? (or add your favorite GBW fieldbus). Once again, 802.3 is stealing all the good ideas from 802.6 and POTS
Mind you, there's an interesting challenge - implementing distributed queueing over a tree. Hmm, time to look at Dr. Robert M. Newman's papers and patents again.
Then we get to go through VLAN vs RSTP hell again while everyone interprets the standard differently.
Actually a real problem with Wintel based TCP is that you can't set the TCP parameters to values suitable for low latency networks. F'example, if I'm doing transactions several times a second and timing them out in 1/10th, TCP never gets a look in on a windows box. So Windows TCP/IP over ethernet "doesn't work reliably"
Volvo discovered that the vast number of rearenders were caused by "distracted" drivers. So they've added laser rangefinders to detect cars IN FRONT OF YOU. Thus, you can pay _even_less_ attention to the road.
Shame that small children probably won't be detected effectively. Neither bicyclists nor full sized pedestrians, most likely.
This is the sort of thing Ralph Nader should have had banned long ago
Don't use your personal details on line. The nom-de-plume is a long and honourable tradition. As a consultant it also gives me the freedom to be a little more, ah, technically honest than if I put my business name at the bottom of every email.
My friends and associates know who I am and how to find me (and I'm sure the appropriate three-letter-agencies do too).
But I certainly am not going to make it easy for every {insert-malfeasant-here} on the planet to get info on me. That's for my credit card and insurance companies to do:-(
nearly all of the perl code I've seen has been virtually indecipherable to anybody not a perl veteran
Of course this is the reason that Lisp has died as a web-app tool. It requires a clue.:-)
Add:
Shiny New Languages
Shiny New Buzzwords
Clueless universities teaching Java or VBasic (instead of Lisp)
A decade of poorly designed, poorly written, poorly tested and generally evolved code. And did I mention we outsourced it for a while a few years back?
Yup, it's the language's fault that our boring, me-too web application sucks:-)
Seriously, the whole Perl 6 thing has been a bigger problem: the brighest and best have been playing "Perl the Game" rather than making the language more useful. Consider XML/Xpath processing: the existing CPAN modules are "somewhat behind the cutting edge". To put it kindly! And comparisons between the web frameworks for Perl vs The Others is even less flattering.
Crippled by copy limitations and providing a level of quality that requires source material; reproduction equipment and level-of-attention much better than the average person has.
As every other poster has noted, you need lots of aerobic, some resistance (which you're already doing) and some flexibility/core strength (think pilates/yoga)
The key is to keep doing it for the rest of your life. So find stuff you like. And change every few years.
I do the basic run/ride/swim. Run for the local annual fun-run (and keep the knee ligements working). Ride because it's more fun than driving in traffic. And swim because I love being in the ocean. The pool bores me, but there's a local squad whose coach make's it interesting (not _quite_ torture).
But I've also been doing fencing for a while. Before that, snowboarding. There's been a rockwall installed near home and
the little'uns love it. And someone at work is making noises about a soccer team.
If you're obsessive, then a single sport might do it. But for most of us, the fun part is working to get to the level of a "competent amateur".
Try stuff out; make sure you get the basics and use it as an excuse to enjoy life.
Now, its certainly true that every webdeveloper has done their own date pattern. Which proably gets leap years _almost_ right. And I can't see a problem with adding a w3c supported common form.
Ask someone what 'project management' is and you're liable to get a few blank stares it's one of those fields people have heard of
Followed by: "Yeh, I dropped of school/college because there was nothing they could teach me about programming".
Yup, the software world is special - Big Yellow Bus Special.
Yes I realise this is a broad brush and some pax have read Brooks etc. But then we still get fundemental project management and systems engineering niches reinvented every few years as "Xtreme" or "Agile" or some other crap.
That is, do you believe that intellectual property is a valid construct equivalent to physical property, or do you think it's illusory? I
Great way to frame a debate - rule out all of the options other yours and a strawman.
The correct answer is going to be legal recognition of intellectual creativeness is nothing like physical property. Using the property word immediately heads you off into the wilderness.
The customer is always the person with the checkbook. For free-to-air TV, that's the advertisers and sponsors. (And yes, Virginia, I do have an "insiders perspective"). Digital TV will be no different - even if you get scalped $$$pm for the "service".
Firstly, what are you trying to do? If it is "discussion between a group of people" then email is the wrong solution. That's what nttp was invented for - threaded discussions. Even a modern blog/bbs will do a better job.
Secondly, part the secretary's job is summarise and communicate the businesss and decisions of the board. And _sometimes_ the reasons for the decisions. If you can't write minutes, have a dedicated blog. With a printed hardcopy filed with your departmental/faculty secretary.
On that front, trusting Google with your records is like trusting Microsoft with your DRM' music.
Copyright... is essential to the healthy functioning of a free society.
Pig's Arse.
I'd put it that the framers of the constitution recognised that copyright was a scam much more often than a benefit (like most Royal Warrants, Concessions and Commissions) and expressly limited it to cases where it would actually further the general public good.
The article is not about "letting users run anything they like, anyway they like". It's actually about IT departments discovering that a) one size does not fit all and b) the end user might actually be able to do some of our work for us.
Unfortunately, this IS news to a large number of IT czars around the world, who spend too much time at lunch with large vendors' salesfolk.
I'm 20 minutes west of the time line and now our idiot guberment have added DST. It also gets to 110F here in the summer - anyone with half a brain was up a dawn exercising in the cool (or sleeping in the cool if last night was #$%@$ng hot). Then one hides in the air conditioned office until the worst of the day is over.
DST means there is no pre-work time - it's sun up at 07:45 by the end of DST. And you get to commute home in the hottest time of the day. Then you need to get the kids to sleep at what is really 18:30. And still bright daylight.
Give me DST in winter, and winter time in summer. DST sucks if you're less than 30 degrees from the equator and 20 minutes west of the time line.
an analyst who says the LAN may be nearing its demise and predicts that all machines will be individually connected to one huge WAN at gigabit speeds.
Well, when someone works out how to make a physical layer that can fairly arbitrate between all the devices on the planet then you might be right.
But, as usual, the analyst/reporter combination ends up with a statement that includes a profound misuse of terminology. The statement might be correct if you replace "LAN" with "ethernet over copper for the PC".
Practically, one will always have "LANs" because there will always be a localisation of the physical layer and there will always be a need to seperate serial numbers from subscriber numbers and application identfiers. What the analyst actually proposed was automated loadbalancing over multiple, local, wireless LANs owned and operated by ISPs/telcos, rather than using a single, owner/operated LAN.
Trouble is, if you phrase it like that, there's no headline. So move along folks, ain't nothing happening here.
That has nothing to do with DRM - at least as understood in "the real world". It does have everything to do with configuration management and data management. Which is not a new problem - and the solutions are known.
As far as I know there are no OS solutions for CM/DM, although some of the "Content Management" website tools come close to solving the DM problem. I could snipe that the sort of people who write OS code are too 3733t to be "constrained" by CM/DM. I think the real answer is that a full blown CM/DM system is bloody lot of work. And any instance requires a lot of ongoing support work - work that remains very much out of fashion.
The best tools (Eagle, Ematrix) remain $$$ and closed source, just like the best revision control tool.
My education has not been particularly difficult or time consuming to get good grades,
That's a worrying sign. Another "modern university" concentrating on "marketable skills" no doubt. No wonder the IEEE considering making a MEng the "entry level degree". Sigh!
To summarise some other people the options include
Practice saying "would you like fries with that" OR
Get all the maths you can
Learn Lisp
Read Knuth
Play with other "interesting" languages - particularly things like closures and regexs in Perl
Slashdot Mirror
Rpath have a wiki VMWare appliance, that was also available as a bootable image. (http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/project/vehera-base/ ) Built and customised a wiki while waiting in a departure lounge. About an hour.
(Getting the vsftpd running took a little longer)
As I tracked every config change, moving from VMWare to a stand-alone box was completely painless, including moving all the images and data.
As a bonus you get a full LAMP stack - adding Mantis to the mix was seamless.
Ignore claims that is is now deprecated by a new (but unfinised) project.
I have also spent two decades in various forms of IP development. Depending on the customer (defined as the person with the cheque book) we have had a variety of contracts in place.
We usually have boiler plate for the following situations
a) we keep tools, code and IP developed and license, in perpetuity, the right to use and create derivitive works
b) we keep tools and techniques; client gets newly developed code + license as above for boilerplate. Plus IP rights in their area of expertese
There's a few more variations, but as we're not a bodyshop we're usually hanging onto all rights for tools and techniques
This is de-volution, not evolution.
Office 2007 :
Not suprisingly Big Corporate(tm) accounts are still buying Office 03 along with their XP licences.
As usual, the answer is more complicated and has to do with the size of your team, the maturity of your product, and the acceptable risk profile of your market.
Most importantly
Erik Sink gave a wonderful talk on the maturity of software. As he put it - shipping too early is one of the worst mistakes you can make to your teenaged software.
Fundementally, Paul Graham is being a troll. Or he needs to get out in the real world a bit more.
Don't shake the jelly
Reasons to not do it:
By now you've probably guessed that I also think it's seriously stupid and childish thing to do. On par with spraying graffitti on a building you've just help construct.
If you've really got a few days left, use them to double and triple check everything you've done. Particularly the code constructs that can't easily be tested. The sorts of things that lead to embarassing crashes and hacker exploits.
Take some god'dam pride in your work.
A List Apart has discussed this at length.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessibledatavisualization/
Generating overlapping squiggly lines is a small variation on the spark charts (you're just placing 1px high objects)
Personally I'm using Tiny webserver and a dozen lines of Perl (yes, I'm old) to provide similar functionality.
For display, play with your IE/Opera/Ffox window toolbar settings to get rid of everything bar the screen and job's done.
In my case, the fun part is getting the data out of Wireshark (http://www.wireshark.org/) automatically :-)
The problem is not your memory. It is the huge amount of crap you're trying to remember. And a less c*cksure attitude to life.
I deal with a lot of postgraduates and undergraduates. Most of them would forget their head if it wasn't screwed on. But they _think_ their memory is perfect. And that their life is _incredibly_ complicated. And that they know _all_ that there is to know.
Now, to give them their due, the 20 somethings are more lateral than I am these days. And less set in their ways.
But the problem isn't your memory*. You've just started to get a dose of humility. Work out what is important, use lists and get the important things done.
Thog :-)
* presuming you're 40; your diet is OK and you're getting enough exercise and sleep. Your hair, eyes and joints go long before your memory.
PS I'm not as fast as I used to be. But I'm a hell of a lot more devious
If you are constantly branching and merging then your Engineering Change Management Process is out of control. Oh, but software is art and you're too creative to be constrained by other people's processes. Sigh!
If it's a prototype (aka risk reduction excercise), then 'fess up and stop pretending you're doing implementation.
"low latency lossless". Geez, like in ATM or SONET??? (or add your favorite GBW fieldbus). Once again, 802.3 is stealing all the good ideas from 802.6 and POTS
Mind you, there's an interesting challenge - implementing distributed queueing over a tree. Hmm, time to look at Dr. Robert M. Newman's papers and patents again.
Then we get to go through VLAN vs RSTP hell again while everyone interprets the standard differently.
Actually a real problem with Wintel based TCP is that you can't set the TCP parameters to values suitable for low latency networks. F'example, if I'm doing transactions several times a second and timing them out in 1/10th, TCP never gets a look in on a windows box. So Windows TCP/IP over ethernet "doesn't work reliably"
Volvo discovered that the vast number of rearenders were caused by "distracted" drivers. So they've added laser rangefinders to detect cars IN FRONT OF YOU. Thus, you can pay _even_less_ attention to the road.
Shame that small children probably won't be detected effectively. Neither bicyclists nor full sized pedestrians, most likely.
This is the sort of thing Ralph Nader should have had banned long ago
Don't use your personal details on line. The nom-de-plume is a long and honourable tradition. As a consultant it also gives me the freedom to be a little more, ah, technically honest than if I put my business name at the bottom of every email.
My friends and associates know who I am and how to find me (and I'm sure the appropriate three-letter-agencies do too).
But I certainly am not going to make it easy for every {insert-malfeasant-here} on the planet to get info on me. That's for my credit card and insurance companies to do :-(
Of course this is the reason that Lisp has died as a web-app tool. It requires a clue. :-)
Add:
Yup, it's the language's fault that our boring, me-too web application sucks:-)
Seriously, the whole Perl 6 thing has been a bigger problem: the brighest and best have been playing "Perl the Game" rather than making the language more useful. Consider XML/Xpath processing: the existing CPAN modules are "somewhat behind the cutting edge". To put it kindly! And comparisons between the web frameworks for Perl vs The Others is even less flattering.
BluRay is likely to go the way of DAT
Crippled by copy limitations and providing a level of quality that requires source material; reproduction equipment and level-of-attention much better than the average person has.
The key is to keep doing it for the rest of your life. So find stuff you like. And change every few years.
I do the basic run/ride/swim. Run for the local annual fun-run (and keep the knee ligements working). Ride because it's more fun than driving in traffic. And swim because I love being in the ocean. The pool bores me, but there's a local squad whose coach make's it interesting (not _quite_ torture). But I've also been doing fencing for a while. Before that, snowboarding. There's been a rockwall installed near home and the little'uns love it. And someone at work is making noises about a soccer team.
If you're obsessive, then a single sport might do it. But for most of us, the fun part is working to get to the level of a "competent amateur". Try stuff out; make sure you get the basics and use it as an excuse to enjoy life.
....For people to use the @$#%#$^ing international standard for date.
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
Now, its certainly true that every webdeveloper has done their own date pattern. Which proably gets leap years _almost_ right. And I can't see a problem with adding a w3c supported common form.
But I'd rather have SVG support.
Followed by: "Yeh, I dropped of school/college because there was nothing they could teach me about programming".
Yup, the software world is special - Big Yellow Bus Special.
Yes I realise this is a broad brush and some pax have read Brooks etc. But then we still get fundemental project management and systems engineering niches reinvented every few years as "Xtreme" or "Agile" or some other crap.
Great way to frame a debate - rule out all of the options other yours and a strawman.
The correct answer is going to be legal recognition of intellectual creativeness is nothing like physical property. Using the property word immediately heads you off into the wilderness.
"LOL" as much as you like.
The customer is always the person with the checkbook. For free-to-air TV, that's the advertisers and sponsors. (And yes, Virginia, I do have an "insiders perspective"). Digital TV will be no different - even if you get scalped $$$pm for the "service".
Firstly, what are you trying to do?
If it is "discussion between a group of people" then email is the wrong solution. That's what nttp was invented for - threaded discussions. Even a modern blog/bbs will do a better job.
Secondly, part the secretary's job is summarise and communicate the businesss and decisions of the board. And _sometimes_ the reasons for the decisions. If you can't write minutes, have a dedicated blog. With a printed hardcopy filed with your departmental/faculty secretary.
On that front, trusting Google with your records is like trusting Microsoft with your DRM' music.
Pig's Arse.
I'd put it that the framers of the constitution recognised that copyright was a scam much more often than a benefit (like most Royal Warrants, Concessions and Commissions) and expressly limited it to cases where it would actually further the general public good.
The article is not about "letting users run anything they like, anyway they like". It's actually about IT departments discovering that
a) one size does not fit all and
b) the end user might actually be able to do some of our work for us.
Unfortunately, this IS news to a large number of IT czars around the world, who spend too much time at lunch with large vendors' salesfolk.
I'm 20 minutes west of the time line and now our idiot guberment have added DST. It also gets to 110F here in the summer - anyone with half a brain was up a dawn exercising in the cool
(or sleeping in the cool if last night was #$%@$ng hot). Then one hides in the air conditioned office until the worst of the day is over.
DST means there is no pre-work time - it's sun up at 07:45 by the end of DST. And you get to commute home in the hottest time of the day. Then you need to get the kids to sleep at what is really 18:30. And still bright daylight.
Give me DST in winter, and winter time in summer. DST sucks if you're less than 30 degrees from the equator and 20 minutes west of the time line.
Well, when someone works out how to make a physical layer that can fairly arbitrate between all the devices on the planet then you might be right.
But, as usual, the analyst/reporter combination ends up with a statement that includes a profound misuse of terminology. The statement might be correct if you replace "LAN" with "ethernet over copper for the PC".
Practically, one will always have "LANs" because there will always be a localisation of the physical layer and there will always be a need to seperate serial numbers from subscriber numbers and application identfiers. What the analyst actually proposed was automated loadbalancing over multiple, local, wireless LANs owned and operated by ISPs/telcos, rather than using a single, owner/operated LAN.
Trouble is, if you phrase it like that, there's no headline. So move along folks, ain't nothing happening here.
That has nothing to do with DRM - at least as understood in "the real world". It does have everything to do with configuration management and data management. Which is not a new problem - and the solutions are known.
As far as I know there are no OS solutions for CM/DM, although some of the "Content Management" website tools come close to solving the DM problem. I could snipe that the sort of people who write OS code are too 3733t to be "constrained" by CM/DM. I think the real answer is that a full blown CM/DM system is bloody lot of work. And any instance requires a lot of ongoing support work - work that remains very much out of fashion.
The best tools (Eagle, Ematrix) remain $$$ and closed source, just like the best revision control tool.