Ok I'm going to start this off easy 1: Gender Identity is a SELF identity. People should not have a gender identity forced on them that is not the one they use. 2: There is more than just Male and Female. Other identities might include: Intersex, bi-gender, and a-gender. Transgender is not a gender identity in and of itself.
And on to the more technical points
3: When designing systems do not consider gender to be a fixed field for a person. And for that matter remember that names are not fixed either. Also keep in mind that a persons REAL name and their legal name might not be the same 4: In the parts of the system that allow for the update of other personal information, allow for name and gender to be changed.
and on the business process side
5: don't make the requirements for changing a gender marker too restrictive. And especially do NOT require proof of surgery before making a change.
And now I will state for the record that I AM transgender. Documentation changes are one of the biggest hurdles that we face. BTW slashdot will not allow for changing user names, i would like to keep my 5 digit it, but move away from my old masculine sounding username.
When I was looking at photo management software, one of the primary features I wanted was that the original image NEVER be modified. From my point of view it is extremely important that no matter what I do, I should always be able to go back to the original jpeg or raw image captured by the camera. probably the best solution is to store the original image, store in a database all the metadata and modification data and an image file made by taking the original and applying all the changes.
I use 4 AA NiMH batteries in my camera (a Canon S1). I have some 2500 mAh energizer batteries that I will not use in it and I have some 1800 mAh sanyo ones that I use regularly. Why? because of variances in the batteries and their self discharge rate.
When my wife wants to take a picture of the kids doing something cute we need the either the batteries in the camera to not be discharged, or for there to be a charged set of batteries ready to go.
So I bought a bunch of 2500mAh batteries thinking these would be a good thing. but they didn't seem to last as long when shooting and they were often discharged after sitting for a while. I found out a couple of things, the first is that after using these batteries for a while I would end up with one cell that was discharged more than the others. This was enough for the camera to say that I had low batteries. The other thing was that if I charged up a set of these batteries, a week later the wouldn't have enough charge to run the camera. These batteries had a very high self discharge rate.
So at the end of it, its no good to have high advertised capacity if its not going to be there you
I have had good luck with sanyo batteries. The new sanyo eneloops have a low enough self discharge rate that out of the package they have a usable charge
One hting I noticed about the photoshop style menus was that htye moved all the color/level adjustments from the layers menu to the image menu. The GIMP lets you adjust these values on a per layer basis. Does this mean that photoshop only allows those to be done on the whole image? As a GIMP user who has never used photoshop, I would find the photoshop interface confusing and backwards on this point
Just remember, that just because the dominant player does something a certan way, it does not mean that it was the best way. If the GIMP developers were to slavishly follow photoshop, then they would be doing thier users a great dis-service. Because in thring to be exacly like something else, you prevent yourself from becoming BETTER than what you imitate.
Firstly GGIAITCCI (golly Gee I AM in the credit card industry)
To those posters who thing that "thousands of dollars per hour" is large enough to justify processing credit cards yourself, that is really not a large number. $1000/hr is only 8.7mil a year. Your local MegaLoMart probably does more than that. They are probably paying around 100,000 for processing. Doing your own processing would require an investment over a million dollars and sponsorship from a bank.
Having a second credit card processor would be a mild pain. it would probably require having two merchant accounts with two different banks (since a processor can only process merchants that are with banks they have arangments with). Not to mention that you would have support two different interfaces.
Your best bet would be to switch to a processor who takes downtime seriously.
I own a celestron 8" dob. The big thing you need to consider it potability. You aren't going to be leaving it out in the middle of your yard, so every time you want to use it you are going to have to move it around. Consider adding some locking caster wheels. Handles are another nice thing. Think about how it is going to fit in your car
for the last 12 years off and on (currently on) I have been fencing. And over the years I have noticed that among fencers there is a high percentage of techies. personally it the only sport that I have ever been good at. And not only do you get to hit other people with metal rods, if you use the electric scoring equiptment, you get to mess with wires, cables, electricity, and such. If any of yall/.ers in the dallas area are interested in trying fencing, send me an email to gradbert at gradbert dot org
Out here in the real world of programming I find that I have spent as much time reading other peoples code as i have writing my own. And I have run into two different levels of documentation. At the low end of the scale have been comments in the source code itself, at the other end have been the design documents. The problem with these is that there is a big gap between the two. The comments in the code tend to be rather myopic. They only tell you about a few lines of code or at best a function. (good comments by the way , should focus on what is not obvious from reading the code). At the other end are the design documents. These are almost useless for understanding the code. They are usually written before the code is written, and sometime by a differnet person. I saw one once that described a program as being a tcl extention, but the actuall program what a c++ monster.
What is needed is a document that bridges this gap. you need to have something that shows how all the parts fit together, and how the data flows through the program. Now while you might have this in your design document, it needs to be referenced back to the code, tell what the real filenames, data types, functions are. Some detailed examples of how the program runs are very helpful.
I sure could have used this stuff when I was taking sailing, we had to learn how to tie all sorts of knots. Here i was using my brains like an idiot, doing all of that hard memorization, when all i needed was a smarter rope
I recently got a ring from them , but I went for the hammered look one. Besides the inhernet coolness of Ti, I really liked the lightness, especially since I was not used to wearing a ring. Also they were quite affordable mine only cost US$95, which is about what we would have had to pay for a gold band
One thing I noticed while looking for titanium ring was that most people tended to use 6-4 alloy, with 8-1-1 being an extra cost option. Only one or two people acutally would use pure titanium
The other thing i noticed was that all the jewelry store would carry at most 3 style of titanium rings and they were always the same 3. The companies on the internet offered a much wider variety of styles
the object database had many more disadvantages when compared to the relational model than listed in the article above.
Lack of a standard query language. With pretty much any relational database I know that there is a way I can sit at my computer, type SQL and get results. This is VITAL for any real world application as it provides a way to work with the database without having to write a custom application .
no mathematical foundation of the data model. The relational data model has very strong mathmatical foundations. This gives me very powerful tools for looking at the diesign of the database and for optimizing queries.
blurring the line between normal varible/object access and database access is probably a bad thing. where I work we had to be very consious of how much load we put on the database. we nned to know what will actually touch the database and what won't
the real impedance mismatch is not between tuples and object. I have always flet that with the relational database that the real impedance mismatch came from the fact that a query against a relational database gives as its result a TABLE. unfortuanatly none of our programming interfaces to relational database will work that way. they all make you use a stupid cursor. in the java exaples above, notice the use of the iterator, the cursors younger brother
right now they only have one person looking at each crater. This can and will lead to some errors in clasification. Now im gussing that right now they have more than enough craters to keep every one busy, but if they had enough ppl , they what they should do is have a system where every crater gets look at by several people. Craters that get unanimos votes by the first 3 veiwers wont be resent, but those that don't will keep getting sent to new people until there is enough certainy in the classification. also if you do things this way, you can start rating the classifiers by how often they agree or disagree with the majority opinion. this will also protect against malicious classifiers who intentionally do things wrong
the new plastic boxes from AOL are GREAT. Look at it way, AOL used to be such a great company because they would send you perfectly good floopy disks for free. But with the popularity of the CD they stopped sending me usefull things for free. But these plasit boxes are usefull. I often send CD's to people (as they are bandwidth poor) and I need a nice lightwieght box to mail them in.
The guy who came up with this isn't a lame-o he's a philantropist who uses the company dollar
with respect to learing about things I think that there are 3 basic categories
The first is that you don't care how it works, you just want to know how to use it. This is just the surface understanding. "I turn the switch and the lights come on."
The second is that you wonder how it works, but only for personal enlightenment. This is an intelectual understanding. "When I turn the switch that closes the circuit to allow eletricity to flow through the bulbs, which heats up the filament causing it to glow"
The third category is that not only do you want to know how it works but also how to modify it. This is an understanding at a practical level. "Hey I could replace the normal switch with a dimmer switch, that would be better"
the point is that not every one is interested in the details of some things (computers being one of them, cars are another good one). and when you _are_ interested in some thing, it is sometimes hard to understand how someone could _not_ be interested in it.
For once I'm ahead of the/. crowd. I have had the new version of Tux-racer for three days now.
It is quite slick (especially when compared to the 0.12 release). I have ran into some problems with it, however. The most noticeable one is that it segfaults alot. Some tracks just won't work.
The other is that it requires very up to date Open GL. On my machine at home I had to download the latest Mesa to get the right header files (the nvidia xf86-4.0 drivers had the right routines) on my machine at work, which is still running the nvidia hacked xf86-3.3.5 server, it won't link.
I have actually seen these disclamers in a real catalog for real products. One year the Tripplette fencing equiptment catalog had most of these disclaimers. This catalog also had a bag that was described as being as tough as Dean Martin's liver.
One thing that one one had brought up yet is that many of these unix vendors are also converging their architechtures by saying that they will be moving to intel's IA64 in the future. What converging on Linux will bring to them is a larger binary compatable user base with which to attract third party software vendors. Right now the large number of combinations of unix versions and architechtures is an impediment to getting popular software ported.
the other IA64 factor is that the unix system vendors who are moving to that architechture are probably realizing that it is cheaper for them to help in port of an operating system than to have to do one on their own
Slashdot Mirror
Just wear skirts, or a dress, which ever you feel like wearing that day. Just make sure your shoes match the outfit.
Ok I'm going to start this off easy
1: Gender Identity is a SELF identity. People should not have a gender identity forced on them that is not the one they use.
2: There is more than just Male and Female. Other identities might include: Intersex, bi-gender, and a-gender. Transgender is not a gender identity in and of itself.
And on to the more technical points
3: When designing systems do not consider gender to be a fixed field for a person. And for that matter remember that names are not fixed either. Also keep in mind that a persons REAL name and their legal name might not be the same
4: In the parts of the system that allow for the update of other personal information, allow for name and gender to be changed.
and on the business process side
5: don't make the requirements for changing a gender marker too restrictive. And especially do NOT require proof of surgery before making a change.
And now I will state for the record that I AM transgender. Documentation changes are one of the biggest hurdles that we face. BTW slashdot will not allow for changing user names, i would like to keep my 5 digit it, but move away from my old masculine sounding username.
When I was looking at photo management software, one of the primary features I wanted was that the original image NEVER be modified. From my point of view it is extremely important that no matter what I do, I should always be able to go back to the original jpeg or raw image captured by the camera. probably the best solution is to store the original image, store in a database all the metadata and modification data and an image file made by taking the original and applying all the changes.
I use 4 AA NiMH batteries in my camera (a Canon S1). I have some 2500 mAh energizer batteries that I will not use in it and I have some 1800 mAh sanyo ones that I use regularly. Why? because of variances in the batteries and their self discharge rate.
When my wife wants to take a picture of the kids doing something cute we need the either the batteries in the camera to not be discharged, or for there to be a charged set of batteries ready to go.
So I bought a bunch of 2500mAh batteries thinking these would be a good thing. but they didn't seem to last as long when shooting and they were often discharged after sitting for a while. I found out a couple of things, the first is that after using these batteries for a while I would end up with one cell that was discharged more than the others. This was enough for the camera to say that I had low batteries. The other thing was that if I charged up a set of these batteries, a week later the wouldn't have enough charge to run the camera. These batteries had a very high self discharge rate.
So at the end of it, its no good to have high advertised capacity if its not going to be there you
I have had good luck with sanyo batteries. The new sanyo eneloops have a low enough self discharge rate that out of the package they have a usable charge
so what part of the financial industry do you work in?
EBCDIC is alive and well moving money around. All the credit card companies use it for the real-time and the settlement side.
fixed width stuff is easy. I have code that does variable format record with binary data too in EBCDIC. and its written in tcl (-:
One hting I noticed about the photoshop style menus was that htye moved all the color/level adjustments from the layers menu to the image menu. The GIMP lets you adjust these values on a per layer basis. Does this mean that photoshop only allows those to be done on the whole image? As a GIMP user who has never used photoshop, I would find the photoshop interface confusing and backwards on this point
Just remember, that just because the dominant player does something a certan way, it does not mean that it was the best way. If the GIMP developers were to slavishly follow photoshop, then they would be doing thier users a great dis-service. Because in thring to be exacly like something else, you prevent yourself from becoming BETTER than what you imitate.
Firstly GGIAITCCI (golly Gee I AM in the credit card industry)
/hr is only 8.7mil a year. Your local MegaLoMart probably does more than that. They are probably paying around 100,000 for processing. Doing your own processing would require an investment over a million dollars and sponsorship from a bank.
To those posters who thing that "thousands of dollars per hour" is large enough to justify processing credit cards yourself, that is really not a large number. $1000
Having a second credit card processor would be a mild pain. it would probably require having two merchant accounts with two different banks (since a processor can only process merchants that are with banks they have arangments with). Not to mention that you would have support two different interfaces.
Your best bet would be to switch to a processor who takes downtime seriously.
Well here are some of things things that get me out of the house:
1) walk around the block, its good exercise, which i need because my wife cooks good food
2) take the Labs to the dog park. Not only do dogs get to play, you can talk with other people who understand about having a 70lb lap dog
3) you have to go outside to go to first saturday in downtown Dallas. Where else can you buy a SGI server off a flat bed trailer?
4) I fly R/C gliders. It combines electronic gadgets with learning how to read the wind and air currents
And that is just off the top of my head!
I own a celestron 8" dob. The big thing you need to consider it potability. You aren't going to be leaving it out in the middle of your yard, so every time you want to use it you are going to have to move it around. Consider adding some locking caster wheels. Handles are another nice thing. Think about how it is going to fit in your car
for the last 12 years off and on (currently on) I have been fencing. And over the years I have noticed that among fencers there is a high percentage of techies. personally it the only sport that I have ever been good at. And not only do you get to hit other people with metal rods, if you use the electric scoring equiptment, you get to mess with wires, cables, electricity, and such. If any of yall /.ers in the dallas area are interested in trying fencing, send me an email to gradbert at gradbert dot org
What is needed is a document that bridges this gap. you need to have something that shows how all the parts fit together, and how the data flows through the program. Now while you might have this in your design document, it needs to be referenced back to the code, tell what the real filenames, data types, functions are. Some detailed examples of how the program runs are very helpful.
I sure could have used this stuff when I was taking sailing, we had to learn how to tie all sorts of knots. Here i was using my brains like an idiot, doing all of that hard memorization, when all i needed was a smarter rope
One thing I noticed while looking for titanium ring was that most people tended to use 6-4 alloy, with 8-1-1 being an extra cost option. Only one or two people acutally would use pure titanium
The other thing i noticed was that all the jewelry store would carry at most 3 style of titanium rings and they were always the same 3. The companies on the internet offered a much wider variety of styles
right now they only have one person looking at each crater. This can and will lead to some errors in clasification. Now im gussing that right now they have more than enough craters to keep every one busy, but if they had enough ppl , they what they should do is have a system where every crater gets look at by several people. Craters that get unanimos votes by the first 3 veiwers wont be resent, but those that don't will keep getting sent to new people until there is enough certainy in the classification. also if you do things this way, you can start rating the classifiers by how often they agree or disagree with the majority opinion. this will also protect against malicious classifiers who intentionally do things wrong
the new plastic boxes from AOL are GREAT. Look at it way, AOL used to be such a great company because they would send you perfectly good floopy disks for free. But with the popularity of the CD they stopped sending me usefull things for free. But these plasit boxes are usefull. I often send CD's to people (as they are bandwidth poor) and I need a nice lightwieght box to mail them in.
The guy who came up with this isn't a lame-o he's a philantropist who uses the company dollar
The real reason they are recalling the pentium 4 is that they can't find another idiot to paint himself blue for the advertising campaign
with respect to learing about things I think that there are 3 basic categories
The first is that you don't care how it works, you just want to know how to use it. This is just the surface understanding. "I turn the switch and the lights come on."
The second is that you wonder how it works, but only for personal enlightenment. This is an intelectual understanding. "When I turn the switch that closes the circuit to allow eletricity to flow through the bulbs, which heats up the filament causing it to glow"
The third category is that not only do you want to know how it works but also how to modify it. This is an understanding at a practical level. "Hey I could replace the normal switch with a dimmer switch, that would be better"
the point is that not every one is interested in the details of some things (computers being one of them, cars are another good one). and when you _are_ interested in some thing, it is sometimes hard to understand how someone could _not_ be interested in it.
For once I'm ahead of the /. crowd. I have had the new version of Tux-racer for three days now.
It is quite slick (especially when compared to the 0.12 release). I have ran into some problems with it, however. The most noticeable one is that it segfaults alot. Some tracks just won't work.
The other is that it requires very up to date Open GL. On my machine at home I had to download the latest Mesa to get the right header files (the nvidia xf86-4.0 drivers had the right routines) on my machine at work, which is still running the nvidia hacked xf86-3.3.5 server, it won't link.
I have actually seen these disclamers in a real
catalog for real products. One year the Tripplette fencing equiptment catalog had most of these disclaimers. This catalog also had a bag that was described as being as tough as Dean Martin's liver.
One thing that one one had brought up yet is that
many of these unix vendors are also converging their architechtures by saying that they will be moving to intel's IA64 in the future. What converging on Linux will bring to them is a larger binary compatable user base with which to attract third party software vendors. Right now the large number of combinations of unix versions and architechtures is an impediment to getting popular software ported.
the other IA64 factor is that the unix system vendors who are moving to that architechture are probably realizing that it is cheaper for them to help in port of an operating system than to have to do one on their own