One way to decrease users tendencies to download crap might be to publish a web page harvested from the firewall logs (you do have a firewall, right ?) and allow general access to see what users have been downloading.
This would favorably impact the following:
o Porn searching o Cosmetic surgery searching o Perv searching o Joke searching o Browsing slashdot at -1;-)
The Slashdot model of moderating/censoring web page accesses would also be driven by the curiosity to see what your dodgy co-workers have been downloading.
One thing that one of my previous companies also emphasized was ensuring that machines have a password protected screensaver whenever a user is away from his/her desk. Another co-worker being able to hit porn from an open desktop would be a great motivation to lock up your desktop on restroom trips, coffee etc.
Most companies have policies on non-business use of machines, though these are seldom enforced with any vigor. Enforcing them through a peer mechanism like that described above might help to keep users and company networks safe from themselves.
Yeah, I'd totally back this poster up.
The old Compaq Deskpros with SCSI drives were great machines for building software on because of the fast harddrive.
The one I had was a Pentium Pro, with Matrox graphics card and it was a top FlightSim machine too.
Really fast machines that are fun to use have high quality components right across the machine, instead of just a fast processor and the lowest common denominator set of peripherals.
It's a shame about SCSI being so damned expensive, but $150 for >20gigs sounds bearable. I'm definitely thinking about adding a couple of scsi drives to my new Compaq Athlon 2800 based machine.
Well, WinXP is deadly slow already. Every machine I've run that's had XP on it has run like crap basically.
The response time to almost anything OS related in XP is like treacle compared to my home machine with runs (fanfare of trumpets) Win ME. Who would have thunk it ?
Note that this is on decent > 1 GHz machines, whereas my home machine is a lowly Pentium III 550.
If I ever get round to getting a new machine, I guess I may have to keep a windows partition around, but my main OS will be one of the Linux distribs.
Well, the design goals that support these idea include:
- must be assembled in situ. So transporation dictates that the components must be fairly lightweight. Starting out lightweight also means that additional highly effective insulation materials can be added to minimise heat loss to the environment. - must withstand cold. Space proven materials can already stand up to the extremes of cold. - aerodynamic design. Carbon reinforced plastic is great for forming into non-flat shapes. Note that all the pictures in the article show structures that look like they are designed to have low wind resistance when compared to traditional cabin shapes. - non-polluting at end of life. Lightweight structures that may be dissassembled and released from their ground tethers are better than traditional buildings that may have to use concrete foundations.
I wonder if this style of building is something that will spread to normal life. If it could be made low cost, then it would sure beat having a mobile home !!
Come to think of it, the Texas coast, just south of Galveston has some houses that look a bit similar to this, though the ones I've seen look more like they are made of sheet metal.
One thing occurs to me about Microsoft blogging: Will people be able to criticise Microsoft, and/or endorse open source etc ?
I'm not sure if it apochraphal (?spelling) but didn't Microsoft write a clause into the Frontpage license that forbade licensees from using it to publish any material that was anti-Microsoft ?
I suppose the flipside of this is that if Microsoft implement filtering and censorship, then they may be able to create a 'clean' blogging area and appeal to a more family audience, much as AOL does.
I love the article. I switched to Firefox. Here's what I hope will come in the future:
- Efficient drag and drop of applets to the desktop. This will give us the 'sticky' gmail window. Gmail is fabulous, as good as using Eudora, but search is even faster, because it uses the server end, not the sad crappy old PIII-550 I am running.
- Slick applets. CSS etc, properly implemented. This MUST be seamlessly cross-platform, cross-browser on Windows/Linux/Mac.
- Secure. The M$ security problems WILL drive me to Linux or Apple. My current workaround for all the problems with Win 2000 / XP is sticking with the diabolical Win ME. It sucks, but it works... kinda. Gmail is already one killer app for me. I need decent printing, the crappy printer handling was what drove me back from Linux to Win ME.
I think I could probably be happy moving to Mac now, but I would rather run Linux on PC if I can get all the stuff I need.
Lots of people probably have the same problems. Windows will die once there is a viable alternative that is virus resistant, is convenient to use, supports printing properly, runs cool web apps that people actually NEED.
The Senate Judiciary Committee today announced that due to their '... contined non-cooperation and intransigence...' the bank accounts of Microsoft Corporation would be frozen pending removal of the P2P application from Microsoft Windows XP.
A spokesman for Microsoft repeated Bill Gates assertion that '... NetMeeting was a key part of Windows.', and that it could not be removed without causing loss of functionality for installed systems.
This book is appropriate for beginning programmers, though they should probably stay in the shallow waters of this book.
Once you have some programming under your belt, this book will give you many best practices and, as another poster comments, will give you the reasons for those best practices. Programming lore is all very well, but this book gives solid evidence for why. Example, the sections on code structuring and indentation backup the recommendations with solid evidence and examples of how readability of the code can be improved. If you follow the book, the programmers that read your code and attempt to modify it in the future will love you.
One of my favorite aspects of this book is that it also emphasizes simplicity.
SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC: If I could do one thing to help the programming profession (apart from making everyone read this book), it would be to emphasize simplicity, unit testing and remove some of the BS about the 3 and 4 level tiered architectures that are emphasized by people with a vested interest in large expensive projects. Any system that needs more than one set of metadata and/or generates more than one layer of code from any one set of metadata is too damn complex.
One layer of abstraction should be enough for anyone.
This book is the best programming book I have ever read.
I believe that my own productivity increased by about 50% at least after reading it.
Code Complete answers many of the questions that nag the working programmer, and busts through much of the BS that people spout about programming.
The book covers a huge range of material, from code formatting and style, to how to build teams. Clue: don't put all the programmers no one else wants in a team to build an important project;-)
The writing style is friendly and peppered with hilarious case studies such as 'Escape from Gilligan's Island', where the same mistakes happen over and over again.
Everyone who has worked on large programming projects will recognise some of these anecdotes. In one case I watched from start to finish as an 'experienced consultant' ruined a perfectly good project with secrecy over his bad and undocumented code. All the warning signs were there. If the manager had read this book, a programming catastrophe might have been averted.
I have bought this book a few times, and given it to management in-duh-viduals to read. Sometimes it helped.
If you are a programmer or a manager, or just interested in software, buy this book and read it. I guarantee you will learn something.
My worst accident was breaking the motherboard of a BBC Micro Model B in half whilst attempting to insert a ROM chip.
The worst software accident was typing 'halt' at the wrong prompt, and shutting down a roomful of drilling engineers who were designing oil wells at the time. They were pretty mad.
As human beings we are short-term creatures and rely on elected government (or unelected-gooberment in the case of the US) to look after the interests of future generations.
However, the US goobers have refused to be any part of the Kyoto Accord to reduce global warming, even though most reasonable people would feel that it is a step in the right direction.
They have also stirred up the hornets' nest in Iraq, the effects of which may last for decades until some kind of stability can be achieved between Christian and Muslim religions.
Against this background, if the climate does change radically over a span of a decade or so, our children are probably stuck relying on the tenacious ability that our species has to survive in the face of almost any adversity.
As mentioned in the article, the poor and weak will more than likely fare worst.
Being British, the main problem with Beagle was that those UK scientists, instead of using heavy-duty airbags like the US landers, simply wrapped the Beagle lander in whoopee cushions... allowing it to bounce and fart its way across the martian landscape. However a crucial layer of sound insulating bubble wrap was left off in error, and too avoid total humiliation of the British people from this awful Monty Python-style soundtrack, the lander was destroyed on its first landing fart.
I think what the US stores are really waiting for is those RFID tags. Then you will be able to walk into a store and just walk out with what you need. They already understaff the checkout lines to encourage people to use those annoying self checkouts.
Once we get the RFID tags, hopefully our cupboards and fridges will become smart and maybe my fridge will become autonomous.
As long as my kitchen magically fills with beer and ding-dongs, I'll be happy !!!!
I don't believe they will, Indians can be just as enterprising as anyone - they will have a ready work force of skilled workers, trained by OUR companies, it won't be hard to motivate them to set up on competition with US companies (stock options, maybe?)
It seems that we're underestimating the skills and drive of the Indian people, this is a fundamental mistake.
Sadly, the distortions are not purely a result of the wealth of the US. Look at the state of government and infrastructure in India. Look at the sheer number of people. Look at the poverty and culture.
One of Paul Theroux' books describes what happens when any Indian venture is successful. The gist is that it collapses under its own weight. A newspaper cannot obtain enough ink to print the required copies, and flounders, for example.
My own experience of outsourcing is that the US companies are aiming primarily at flexibility in hiring. The Indian 'replacements' for my job still cost $120k a year from InfoSys, but can be hired/fired at will, with minimal disturbance.
My new job.... "Welcome to *** ***** Toyota... What can I show you today ?"
If they have some kind of algorithm for selecting whether to show text or graphics ads (as the summary implies)... maybe clicking a few text ads once in a while will let the system know that you aren't interested in the graphic ads.
Lets hope they don't correlate this with search history. (X10 ads aplenty, here I come:-( )
Slashdot Mirror
In Redmond, WA, ... the Internet reboots you !!!!
One way to decrease users tendencies to download crap might be to publish a web page harvested from the firewall logs (you do have a firewall, right ?) and allow general access to see what users have been downloading.
:
;-)
This would favorably impact the following
o Porn searching
o Cosmetic surgery searching
o Perv searching
o Joke searching
o Browsing slashdot at -1
The Slashdot model of moderating/censoring web page accesses would also be driven by the curiosity to see what your dodgy co-workers have been downloading.
One thing that one of my previous companies also emphasized was ensuring that machines have a password protected screensaver whenever a user is away from his/her desk. Another co-worker being able to hit porn from an open desktop would be a great motivation to lock up your desktop on restroom trips, coffee etc.
Most companies have policies on non-business use of machines, though these are seldom enforced with any vigor. Enforcing them through a peer mechanism like that described above might help to keep users and company networks safe from themselves.
--
Yeah, I'd totally back this poster up. The old Compaq Deskpros with SCSI drives were great machines for building software on because of the fast harddrive. The one I had was a Pentium Pro, with Matrox graphics card and it was a top FlightSim machine too. Really fast machines that are fun to use have high quality components right across the machine, instead of just a fast processor and the lowest common denominator set of peripherals. It's a shame about SCSI being so damned expensive, but $150 for >20gigs sounds bearable. I'm definitely thinking about adding a couple of scsi drives to my new Compaq Athlon 2800 based machine.
Well, WinXP is deadly slow already. Every machine I've run that's had XP on it has run like crap basically.
The response time to almost anything OS related in XP is like treacle compared to my home machine with runs (fanfare of trumpets) Win ME. Who would have thunk it ?
Note that this is on decent > 1 GHz machines, whereas my home machine is a lowly Pentium III 550.
If I ever get round to getting a new machine, I guess I may have to keep a windows partition around, but my main OS will be one of the Linux distribs.
One cool thing that did happen on Top of the Pops was that when Roger Daltrey of The Who was presenting it ...
He introduced the Village People with the line
"Backs to the wall !! It's the Village People !!"
Hilarious
Well, the design goals that support these idea include :
- must be assembled in situ. So transporation dictates that the components must be fairly lightweight. Starting out lightweight also means that additional highly effective insulation materials can be added to minimise heat loss to the environment.
- must withstand cold. Space proven materials can already stand up to the extremes of cold.
- aerodynamic design. Carbon reinforced plastic is great for forming into non-flat shapes. Note that all the pictures in the article show structures that look like they are designed to have low wind resistance when compared to traditional cabin shapes.
- non-polluting at end of life. Lightweight structures that may be dissassembled and released from their ground tethers are better than traditional buildings that may have to use concrete foundations.
I wonder if this style of building is something that will spread to normal life. If it could be made low cost, then it would sure beat having a mobile home !!
Come to think of it, the Texas coast, just south of Galveston has some houses that look a bit similar to this, though the ones I've seen look more like they are made of sheet metal.
Tom Baker also did a hilarious appearance as the Sea Captain in Blackadder.
"You have a woman's hands, mi'lord !!"
Man, I laughed til I cried, that was so over the top. Well worth tracking down. I think the episode is called Potato.
One thing occurs to me about Microsoft blogging: Will people be able to criticise Microsoft, and/or endorse open source etc ?
I'm not sure if it apochraphal (?spelling) but didn't Microsoft write a clause into the Frontpage license that forbade licensees from using it to publish any material that was anti-Microsoft ?
I suppose the flipside of this is that if Microsoft implement filtering and censorship, then they may be able to create a 'clean' blogging area and appeal to a more family audience, much as AOL does.
You have a girlfriend ?!?!?
Get off slashdot you insensitive clod !
Let's hope Microsoft haven't patented naming database software after clouds !!
(MS Access' project name was originally Cirrus)
I love the article. I switched to Firefox. Here's what I hope will come in the future :
... kinda. Gmail is already one killer app for me. I need decent printing, the crappy printer handling was what drove me back from Linux to Win ME.
- Efficient drag and drop of applets to the desktop. This will give us the 'sticky' gmail window. Gmail is fabulous, as good as using Eudora, but search is even faster, because it uses the server end, not the sad crappy old PIII-550 I am running.
- Slick applets. CSS etc, properly implemented. This MUST be seamlessly cross-platform, cross-browser on Windows/Linux/Mac.
- Secure. The M$ security problems WILL drive me to Linux or Apple. My current workaround for all the problems with Win 2000 / XP is sticking with the diabolical Win ME. It sucks, but it works
I think I could probably be happy moving to Mac now, but I would rather run Linux on PC if I can get all the stuff I need.
Lots of people probably have the same problems. Windows will die once there is a viable alternative that is virus resistant, is convenient to use, supports printing properly, runs cool web apps that people actually NEED.
Can you imagine the confusion ? Almost as good as taping up a mouse ball.
A spokesman for Microsoft repeated Bill Gates assertion that '... NetMeeting was a key part of Windows.', and that it could not be removed without causing loss of functionality for installed systems.
Once you have some programming under your belt, this book will give you many best practices and, as another poster comments, will give you the reasons for those best practices. Programming lore is all very well, but this book gives solid evidence for why. Example, the sections on code structuring and indentation backup the recommendations with solid evidence and examples of how readability of the code can be improved. If you follow the book, the programmers that read your code and attempt to modify it in the future will love you.
One of my favorite aspects of this book is that it also emphasizes simplicity.
SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC: If I could do one thing to help the programming profession (apart from making everyone read this book), it would be to emphasize simplicity, unit testing and remove some of the BS about the 3 and 4 level tiered architectures that are emphasized by people with a vested interest in large expensive projects. Any system that needs more than one set of metadata and/or generates more than one layer of code from any one set of metadata is too damn complex.
One layer of abstraction should be enough for anyone.
This book is the best programming book I have ever read.
;-)
I believe that my own productivity increased by about 50% at least after reading it.
Code Complete answers many of the questions that nag the working programmer, and busts through much of the BS that people spout about programming.
The book covers a huge range of material, from code formatting and style, to how to build teams. Clue: don't put all the programmers no one else wants in a team to build an important project
The writing style is friendly and peppered with hilarious case studies such as 'Escape from Gilligan's Island', where the same mistakes happen over and over again.
Everyone who has worked on large programming projects will recognise some of these anecdotes. In one case I watched from start to finish as an 'experienced consultant' ruined a perfectly good project with secrecy over his bad and undocumented code. All the warning signs were there. If the manager had read this book, a programming catastrophe might have been averted.
I have bought this book a few times, and given it to management in-duh-viduals to read. Sometimes it helped.
If you are a programmer or a manager, or just interested in software, buy this book and read it. I guarantee you will learn something.
Very very glad to see people are still listening to the Fingers !!
My worst accident was breaking the motherboard of a BBC Micro Model B in half whilst attempting to insert a ROM chip. The worst software accident was typing 'halt' at the wrong prompt, and shutting down a roomful of drilling engineers who were designing oil wells at the time. They were pretty mad.
Wasn't the first programming language invented by Al Gore ?
One of the British TVs most beautiful and schoolboy, errr, fantasy-inspiring women.
As human beings we are short-term creatures and rely on elected government (or unelected-gooberment in the case of the US) to look after the interests of future generations.
However, the US goobers have refused to be any part of the Kyoto Accord to reduce global warming, even though most reasonable people would feel that it is a step in the right direction.
They have also stirred up the hornets' nest in Iraq, the effects of which may last for decades until some kind of stability can be achieved between Christian and Muslim religions.
Against this background, if the climate does change radically over a span of a decade or so, our children are probably stuck relying on the tenacious ability that our species has to survive in the face of almost any adversity.
As mentioned in the article, the poor and weak will more than likely fare worst.
Being British, the main problem with Beagle was that those UK scientists, instead of using heavy-duty airbags like the US landers, simply wrapped the Beagle lander in whoopee cushions ... allowing it to bounce and fart its way across the martian landscape. However a crucial layer of sound insulating bubble wrap was left off in error, and too avoid total humiliation of the British people from this awful Monty Python-style soundtrack, the lander was destroyed on its first landing fart.
I think what the US stores are really waiting for is those RFID tags. Then you will be able to walk into a store and just walk out with what you need. They already understaff the checkout lines to encourage people to use those annoying self checkouts.
Once we get the RFID tags, hopefully our cupboards and fridges will become smart and maybe my fridge will become autonomous.
As long as my kitchen magically fills with beer and ding-dongs, I'll be happy !!!!
Sadly, the distortions are not purely a result of the wealth of the US. Look at the state of government and infrastructure in India. Look at the sheer number of people. Look at the poverty and culture.
One of Paul Theroux' books describes what happens when any Indian venture is successful. The gist is that it collapses under its own weight. A newspaper cannot obtain enough ink to print the required copies, and flounders, for example.
My own experience of outsourcing is that the US companies are aiming primarily at flexibility in hiring. The Indian 'replacements' for my job still cost $120k a year from InfoSys, but can be hired/fired at will, with minimal disturbance.
My new job .... "Welcome to *** ***** Toyota ... What can I show you today ?"
If they have some kind of algorithm for selecting whether to show text or graphics ads (as the summary implies) ... maybe clicking a few text ads once in a while will let the system know that you aren't interested in the graphic ads.
:-( )
Lets hope they don't correlate this with search history. (X10 ads aplenty, here I come
Hmmm, of course they will use it ... how do you think RealNetworks will scare people into not swapping their downloaded for and paid content ?
As soon as Real add this into their next compulsory/automatically downloaded player, we'll probably see all kinds of scary warnings.
I bet Real will get all kinds of juicy goodies from the music industry for this.
Keep music errrr free !