I haven't tried that many tabs but I have also been using FF on 64 bit Ubuntu: it starts virtually instantly and is a lot faster and leaner than previous versions.
I used to think that too, my boss would ask me to re-schedule holidays, be contactable etc. and of course I would regularly get at least one phone call when I was away on holidays. Then one day, I told them that I was going away for 2 weeks and that I would be on a ship in the middle of the North Sea with no access to email or phone or any communication medium of any sort (well, the ship could be contacted by radio for life threatening emergencies but that was only given to my next of kin). Guess what? They gave me the time (a couple of hours) to properly hand over to some of my colleagues so that they would ensure that there would be no need to contact me for two weeks. Issues did arise while I was away but because the hand-over had been done as it should have been, all of them were dealt with properly, the ones that really needed my attention were dealt with adequately in such a way that it could wait for my return.
The best thing out of that experience is that the colleagues who filled in for me learnt stuff in the process and proved that they could handle more responsibilities. The consequence was that management became a lot more relaxed about people taking leave and also used it as a way to get people to work on areas they had little knowledge about and increase their skills and overall knowledge of the business in the process.
Generally speaking, if people have an easy cop out that consists in calling you when they don't know an answer, they will do it. If they find themselves in a situation where they can't call you, they will usually work out the answer themselves. It is less efficient short term but more efficient long term because it helps share the knowledge and skills. If the gap in knowledge between you and your colleagues is so great that you can't be away for a couple of weeks without drastic consequences, then your management should do everything they can to narrow that gap because it means that losing you (because you resign, have an accident or any other reason) is a massive risk.
You can look at geothermal all you want but when it comes to France, you may find a distinct lack of volcanic activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanoes_in_France. So although you could use geothermal heat pumps, that's not practical to do on a large scale.
At the end of the day, a sensible energy policy has to be based on local conditions. For France, you're probably better off using a combination of wind (near the coast) and solar (in the South) with possibly a small geothermal capacity in the Massif Central (which wouldn't necessarily help as it's one of the least populated part of the country).
You're never too old to learn. I'm in a similar situation to you: I learned a number of computer language and now, being almost 40, I don't do any programming at work anymore, I just do fancy diagrams. That doesn't prevent me from maintaining my programming skills in my spare time and learning new stuff. In the past couple of years, I've dabbled in Vala http://live.gnome.org/Vala, Python (to create scripts and desktop apps rather than web apps), re-acquainted myself with ANTLR and played with a number of other languages. If you want to have a go at an interesting variety, get yourself a copy of "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" by Bruce Tate: http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks.
Yes and no. The best way to do it I reckon is to start by building a standard compliant CSS and test it with standard compliant browsers (Firefox, Safari, etc).
Then when it completely works on those, test on IE and for the parts that don't work on IE, use one of the many well known hacks that will provide IE with different values. The best hacks make use of tag selectors that either only IE understands (because IE has embraced and extended the specs) or only IE doesn't understand (because IE doesn't implement the specs fully). Then you can isolate IE specific code.
Doing it this way, you promote the use of standard compliant browsers because you design primarily for them and it will work in all of them. but at the same time, you cater for the vast majority of IE users.
For more information on suck hacks, go and see sites like A List Apart.
You might argue that it is a pain to have to add IE specific hacks but don't forget that HTML/CSS is not meant to provide exact layout. So if something looks slightly different in different browsers but is usable, don't bother with a hack, just leave it as is. If your layout is flexible enough, this should be what happens most of the time.
Or indeed any sharp implement such as a kitchen knife that could result in you having to wear a plaster around your finger and not be able to log in:-)
I currently have a T42 on my desk running Windows XP and I set up the fingerprint authentication. It took about 5 minutes. Here's how it works:
When configuring the system, you provide original prints from any number of your fingers. It suggests you provide 2 of them. Then, you just have to slowly pass any of the fingers on the sensor for it to authenticate you. So for instance, you could make sure you have an electronic print of your right index finger and of your left ring finger. I suppose the redundancy is meant to make sure you have a back-up the day you nicked you finger doing DIY during the week-end.
If you want to change the print (the same way as you would change password), you just remove some existing prints from the authentication DB and replace them with new ones. Then you just have to remember what finger to use this week.
Finally, there is always the solution to press CTRL-ATL-DEL to get a normal password prompt.
So, all in all, the way it is implemented in Windows is not as a substitute to the standard password authentication but as an extension that makes it easier for you, the owner of the machine, to log in but not more difficult for a third party to do so.
I quite like the way it's implemented on Windows but it would be nice if its use could be extended to provide digital signatures and authentication to other systems, such as a Firefox plug-in.
I forgot to mention: the Windows XP implementation doesn't come out of the box. It's an IBM extension that is provided with the T42.
Because.sex could also be used for sites on sex related matters such as STD, councelling, etc. but have nothing to do with pr0n. On the other hand,.xxx clearly says what it's for.
Not quite. You get the content from the Internet rather than recording it through your TiVo when it is run. It means you can access the content from any location, not just your living room. Useful if you're travelling or if, like me, you don't have a TV because I generally don't watch it but still want to see programs that have run during the last week. Another aspect of this is your TiVo needs to be programmed before hand to record what you want to see later. The BBC's service allow you to see it after it is broadcast, even if you failed to record it on your TiVo. Last but not least, TiVo doesn't have the level of penetration in the UK that it has in the US. So for someone wanting to replace an old VCR, it might be easier to just install this than fork out the money for a TiVo.
RTFA. The introduction to the poll says they want to understand why "there are far fewer women in FLOSS development than in software development as a whole" (emphasis mine). So it's got nothing to do with being good at certain things or not. It suggests that there is something specific about FLOSS development which means that women get less involved than men, compared to generic development. And that's what they want to find out.
Fair enough, POP and IMAP are not essential to Exchange, contrary to SMTP. My point was that, when MS are given a chance, they go the proprietary route. On groupware, they can do what they want because there is no alternative based on open protocols. So they can lock customers into using Exchange + Outlook with the groupware functionality of both. When we have an open protocol like GroupDAV and applications from other vendors than MS that support it, we will have the choice to get away from Exchange + Outlook. In a company like mine, IT would only be too happy to do so, if they could. At the moment they can't because we need the groupware functionality that only Exchange + Outlook provide.
If only open source could support MS Exchange! But for this to happen, it would be necessary for MS Exchange to actually use an open protocol. MS Exchange is probably one of the most closed products from Microsoft. To the point that, when you connect Outlook and Exchange together, they use their proprietary protocols for everything, even email. Exchange only supports SMTP, POP and IMAP because they have to, in order to interact with the rest of the world. But because there is no standard open protocol for groupware, they don't have to support anything else than their own proprietary protocol, which obviously they are never going to disclose to other vendors, let alone open source project. GroupDAV can become this standard open protocol that we're missing and it can only be a good thing.
Once we have something like GroupDAV, then a company like mine can ditch Exchange and Outlook without losing important functionality. And then we can move yet another of our servers to Linux or Solaris. And then, we can realistically consider moving desktops to Linux. Until this is done, there is no chance of having Linux on our desktops, even though some of us would love to see this happen.
RTFA. It says that the people managing the site would comb through the dozens of alerts a days you can receive from multiple anti-virus vendors and only send alerts, in plain English, about the ones that can do real damage, ie, about 6 to 10 a year rather than 3 to 5 a day. It also says that it would include alerts about deficiencies in other products, such as mobile phones. This is valuable in a number of ways:
You usually need to be a techy to understand virus alerts from vendors. If it is in plain English, Joe User will be able to do something about it.
If Joe User gets alerts every day, he will not act on them, the important ones will get lost and he will eventually unsubscribe from the service. If he gets 6 to 10 a year, he will know it is important and will act on them.
An alert from an independant agency, rather than a software vendor, will be better perceived.
Having alerts about computer viruses, mobile phone deficiencies etc in one place means you don't have to subscribe to lots of alert services: one is enough.
Indeed, none of them develop web browsers. However, they all develop large-scale applications that need to interact with a number of external systems including, but not exclusively so, web browsers. For instance, a lot of them need to be able to interact through web services, MQ messages, etc. In order to build an application for which a web browser is one channel amongst many, a fully declarative approach like XForms is more simple and scalable. In particular you can ensure that you use the same declarative validation across all channel.
Web Forms, on the other hand, AFAIK derive from XUL, which depends heavily on scripting, which is not necessarilly enabled by the client application, if it is available at all. It also means that the validation rules need to be designed differently: scripting is dynamic and can potentially change the structure of the form while you have no control over it; you also need to be careful one script does't interfere with another. Using a script-based technology, you can have a more dynamic front-end but the cost is that it is difficult to integrate with other channels in a multi-channel application.
Another aspect is that a declarative approach like XForms works better on less powerful hardware because the client software has more control over how it is executed. A script based approach can potentially get ou of hand if written badly (or intentionally so). Ever had Javascript bring your browser to a standstill? So a declarative approach will scale better for very, very big forms (and that's exactly what IBM, Sun, Xerox and co deal with).
Last but not least, a fully declarative approach is by nature easy to make compliant with accessibility guidelines. A script based approach is a nightmare to make accessible.
As a conclusion, I'd say WebForms are good for dynamic web sites whose audience doesn't need accessibility and have up to date hardware. XForms is better for large enterprise solutions where you need to integrate multiple technologies, provide for people with disabilities and scale to very large forms. Both have a role to play I think but whether the W3C wants to let 2 standards live side by side and how they could support both is another question.
Funny you should say that. The front page article in the February issue of ConsciousChoice is about nuclear energy and whether it is actually greener than other traditional alternatives. And here is the main article.
I know! I was in Amsterdam on the 30th of April last year, the day they celebrate the Queen's birthday by having a huge street party. You needed sunglasses in order not to be blinded by all the bright orange.
You can't prevent isomorphic characters in typefaces without completely dropping support for entire alphabets. #1072 is a perfectly valid character in the Cyrillic alphabet that happens to have the same shape as the Latin "a". So if you want a Unicode typeface that supports Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, characters #97 ('a') and #1072 will have similar or completely identical shapes. What you could restrict though is the use of characters from different Unicode subranges in the same address part. E.g., all characters are part of the Latin sub-range or the Cyrillic sub-range but not a mix of both. But even then, you could come up with some combinations in one alphabet that are isomorphic to combinations in another.
At my university, we learnt languages using Eiffel and it worked extremely well because Eiffel is a pure OO language with programmation by contract concepts, genericity, etc. Hence it has concepts that are more complex than Java but it is excellent as a teaching language to learn complex OO features and how to use them.
However, I agree with your point about the Java API: it complicates things because you've got to learn how to use the API in addition to learn how to create new classes.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't tried that many tabs but I have also been using FF on 64 bit Ubuntu: it starts virtually instantly and is a lot faster and leaner than previous versions.
I used to think that too, my boss would ask me to re-schedule holidays, be contactable etc. and of course I would regularly get at least one phone call when I was away on holidays. Then one day, I told them that I was going away for 2 weeks and that I would be on a ship in the middle of the North Sea with no access to email or phone or any communication medium of any sort (well, the ship could be contacted by radio for life threatening emergencies but that was only given to my next of kin). Guess what? They gave me the time (a couple of hours) to properly hand over to some of my colleagues so that they would ensure that there would be no need to contact me for two weeks. Issues did arise while I was away but because the hand-over had been done as it should have been, all of them were dealt with properly, the ones that really needed my attention were dealt with adequately in such a way that it could wait for my return.
The best thing out of that experience is that the colleagues who filled in for me learnt stuff in the process and proved that they could handle more responsibilities. The consequence was that management became a lot more relaxed about people taking leave and also used it as a way to get people to work on areas they had little knowledge about and increase their skills and overall knowledge of the business in the process.
Generally speaking, if people have an easy cop out that consists in calling you when they don't know an answer, they will do it. If they find themselves in a situation where they can't call you, they will usually work out the answer themselves. It is less efficient short term but more efficient long term because it helps share the knowledge and skills. If the gap in knowledge between you and your colleagues is so great that you can't be away for a couple of weeks without drastic consequences, then your management should do everything they can to narrow that gap because it means that losing you (because you resign, have an accident or any other reason) is a massive risk.
No because if it's really sensitive, I don't communicate it via email.
You can look at geothermal all you want but when it comes to France, you may find a distinct lack of volcanic activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanoes_in_France. So although you could use geothermal heat pumps, that's not practical to do on a large scale.
At the end of the day, a sensible energy policy has to be based on local conditions. For France, you're probably better off using a combination of wind (near the coast) and solar (in the South) with possibly a small geothermal capacity in the Massif Central (which wouldn't necessarily help as it's one of the least populated part of the country).
You're never too old to learn. I'm in a similar situation to you: I learned a number of computer language and now, being almost 40, I don't do any programming at work anymore, I just do fancy diagrams. That doesn't prevent me from maintaining my programming skills in my spare time and learning new stuff. In the past couple of years, I've dabbled in Vala http://live.gnome.org/Vala, Python (to create scripts and desktop apps rather than web apps), re-acquainted myself with ANTLR and played with a number of other languages. If you want to have a go at an interesting variety, get yourself a copy of "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" by Bruce Tate: http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks.
Indeed! For the record, Vala was actually inspired by C# so any Java / C# / C++ developer should need very little time to pick it up.
Oh and if you have any issues when importing your F-Spot database to Shotwell, please file a ticket so that I can fix it.
Then when it completely works on those, test on IE and for the parts that don't work on IE, use one of the many well known hacks that will provide IE with different values. The best hacks make use of tag selectors that either only IE understands (because IE has embraced and extended the specs) or only IE doesn't understand (because IE doesn't implement the specs fully). Then you can isolate IE specific code.
Doing it this way, you promote the use of standard compliant browsers because you design primarily for them and it will work in all of them. but at the same time, you cater for the vast majority of IE users.
For more information on suck hacks, go and see sites like A List Apart.
You might argue that it is a pain to have to add IE specific hacks but don't forget that HTML/CSS is not meant to provide exact layout. So if something looks slightly different in different browsers but is usable, don't bother with a hack, just leave it as is. If your layout is flexible enough, this should be what happens most of the time.
Or indeed any sharp implement such as a kitchen knife that could result in you having to wear a plaster around your finger and not be able to log in :-)
When configuring the system, you provide original prints from any number of your fingers. It suggests you provide 2 of them. Then, you just have to slowly pass any of the fingers on the sensor for it to authenticate you. So for instance, you could make sure you have an electronic print of your right index finger and of your left ring finger. I suppose the redundancy is meant to make sure you have a back-up the day you nicked you finger doing DIY during the week-end.
If you want to change the print (the same way as you would change password), you just remove some existing prints from the authentication DB and replace them with new ones. Then you just have to remember what finger to use this week.
Finally, there is always the solution to press CTRL-ATL-DEL to get a normal password prompt.
So, all in all, the way it is implemented in Windows is not as a substitute to the standard password authentication but as an extension that makes it easier for you, the owner of the machine, to log in but not more difficult for a third party to do so.
I quite like the way it's implemented on Windows but it would be nice if its use could be extended to provide digital signatures and authentication to other systems, such as a Firefox plug-in.
I forgot to mention: the Windows XP implementation doesn't come out of the box. It's an IBM extension that is provided with the T42.
Because .sex could also be used for sites on sex related matters such as STD, councelling, etc. but have nothing to do with pr0n. On the other hand, .xxx clearly says what it's for.
Sounds nice until you get to screen a plane load of pensioners going on holidays to the carribean.
Not quite. You get the content from the Internet rather than recording it through your TiVo when it is run. It means you can access the content from any location, not just your living room. Useful if you're travelling or if, like me, you don't have a TV because I generally don't watch it but still want to see programs that have run during the last week. Another aspect of this is your TiVo needs to be programmed before hand to record what you want to see later. The BBC's service allow you to see it after it is broadcast, even if you failed to record it on your TiVo. Last but not least, TiVo doesn't have the level of penetration in the UK that it has in the US. So for someone wanting to replace an old VCR, it might be easier to just install this than fork out the money for a TiVo.
Streetmap has aerial photos as well. This is where I live.
RTFA. The introduction to the poll says they want to understand why "there are far fewer women in FLOSS development than in software development as a whole" (emphasis mine). So it's got nothing to do with being good at certain things or not. It suggests that there is something specific about FLOSS development which means that women get less involved than men, compared to generic development. And that's what they want to find out.
Then it goes into manual mode and you have to sign the receipt as you do in the US.
Fair enough, POP and IMAP are not essential to Exchange, contrary to SMTP. My point was that, when MS are given a chance, they go the proprietary route. On groupware, they can do what they want because there is no alternative based on open protocols. So they can lock customers into using Exchange + Outlook with the groupware functionality of both. When we have an open protocol like GroupDAV and applications from other vendors than MS that support it, we will have the choice to get away from Exchange + Outlook. In a company like mine, IT would only be too happy to do so, if they could. At the moment they can't because we need the groupware functionality that only Exchange + Outlook provide.
Once we have something like GroupDAV, then a company like mine can ditch Exchange and Outlook without losing important functionality. And then we can move yet another of our servers to Linux or Solaris. And then, we can realistically consider moving desktops to Linux. Until this is done, there is no chance of having Linux on our desktops, even though some of us would love to see this happen.
Web Forms, on the other hand, AFAIK derive from XUL, which depends heavily on scripting, which is not necessarilly enabled by the client application, if it is available at all. It also means that the validation rules need to be designed differently: scripting is dynamic and can potentially change the structure of the form while you have no control over it; you also need to be careful one script does't interfere with another. Using a script-based technology, you can have a more dynamic front-end but the cost is that it is difficult to integrate with other channels in a multi-channel application.
Another aspect is that a declarative approach like XForms works better on less powerful hardware because the client software has more control over how it is executed. A script based approach can potentially get ou of hand if written badly (or intentionally so). Ever had Javascript bring your browser to a standstill? So a declarative approach will scale better for very, very big forms (and that's exactly what IBM, Sun, Xerox and co deal with).
Last but not least, a fully declarative approach is by nature easy to make compliant with accessibility guidelines. A script based approach is a nightmare to make accessible.
As a conclusion, I'd say WebForms are good for dynamic web sites whose audience doesn't need accessibility and have up to date hardware. XForms is better for large enterprise solutions where you need to integrate multiple technologies, provide for people with disabilities and scale to very large forms. Both have a role to play I think but whether the W3C wants to let 2 standards live side by side and how they could support both is another question.
I use Firefox 1.0, with Adblock and I can see the trailer fine.
Funny you should say that. The front page article in the February issue of ConsciousChoice is about nuclear energy and whether it is actually greener than other traditional alternatives. And here is the main article.
I know! I was in Amsterdam on the 30th of April last year, the day they celebrate the Queen's birthday by having a huge street party. You needed sunglasses in order not to be blinded by all the bright orange.
And wear a bright orange t-shirt.
You can't prevent isomorphic characters in typefaces without completely dropping support for entire alphabets. #1072 is a perfectly valid character in the Cyrillic alphabet that happens to have the same shape as the Latin "a". So if you want a Unicode typeface that supports Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, characters #97 ('a') and #1072 will have similar or completely identical shapes. What you could restrict though is the use of characters from different Unicode subranges in the same address part. E.g., all characters are part of the Latin sub-range or the Cyrillic sub-range but not a mix of both. But even then, you could come up with some combinations in one alphabet that are isomorphic to combinations in another.
However, I agree with your point about the Java API: it complicates things because you've got to learn how to use the API in addition to learn how to create new classes.