I've always characterised software engineering as "the only engineering that doesn't do physics" (true at my university).
I think us programmer types are drawn to the appeal of being able to create our own virtual worlds, within which we define the laws of "physics" based on elegance and usefulness in the problem/game domain. The real world is too arbitrary and chaotic to be able to understand all the interactions in any given system properly. Programs and RPG worlds don't have that problem.
Why not tell your filter to mark the message as read?
Because I might actually want to read it. I just don't want to be interrupted to be told it's there. But if later I want to go and look at my email, I still want to know which ones I haven't seen yet.
There's an obvious feature that Thunderbird's been missing for a while that would mitigate some of this. You can reply and say that this feature is already available using mutt/Eudora/Outlook/some obscure hack, but please realise if you do so that that isn't my point.
Email filters, at time of writing, have no say over whether you get a notification for the email in question. A large proportion of my work email is minutes from other projects' meetings, people saying they'll be in late or are going home sick, and other irrelevant stuff of that ilk. People tend to put enough clues in the subject or header that it's easy to write filters for them, but it's still a context switch (that I've refined to be as thin and non-distracting an art as possible) to flip it open and see whether it's been filtered. It'd be massively useful if filters had an option to disable notification for matching messages.
I did submit this to... some... message board... somewhere... related to Mozilla... that I haven't checked on since. A while ago. I think.
Cubicles are likely to exacerbate a problem that's already there - if your coworkers are more of a hindrance than a help by just being around you, then having an office solves that specific problem, but doesn't actually put you in a more helpful environment. On the other hand, if you respect and work well with the people around you, having a more open office can help creativity, at little (although probably still some) hindrance when you're in Deep Hack Mode. I find that I'm only distracted by people who are frustrating to work with anyway, for whatever reason.
I realise bits of the above sound like a whinge, but my current job is actually towards the respecting-and-working-well-with end. All I'm saying is that getting an office doesn't change the fact that you have to work with people, and if they're hard to work near then they'll be just as hard to work with.
In other news, car salesmen and politicians are dishonest, computer geeks have a below average chance of finding a girlfriend, and the Pope and Donald Trump wear equally silly headpieces.
...and when things get hairy there is always 'renumber'.
That's just what we need.
"Okay, the first, second and third movies I made - the ones that say Episodes IV, V and VI - are now Episodes VII, VIII and IX. And to make it easier, for you, the fourth, fifth and sixth movies are now Episodes IV, V and VI - don't worry that they used to be I, II and III, those will be the seventh, eighth and ninth movies now."
In the new DVDs, the episodes are all renumbered in binary, and Greedo shoots two prequels after Han.
One of the biggest drains on any IT department has to be keeping track of licenses - how many people are using what (the whole "license pool" idea is a waste of otherwise useful time and resources), having to ask Bill every time you need to add a new server to a cluster, having a piece of software in a state of suspended animation because the vendor hasn't returned any of your calls... The financial cost does enter into this, but the real issue is just that you can't do what you want when you want to.
...did this about 5-6 years ago. When I started in '99, I think basically all the computing departments' labs were 100% Solaris. Towards the end of that year (or at the start of the next, I forget), many of them were replaced by Debian. By the time I left, there were only a couple Solaris machines in an obscure corner of one restricted lab.
In related news, the Slashdot community have dismissed the post's title - "Washington Finds Computer Simulation Unreliable" - as being inconsistent with the article, or indeed even the summary of the article directly beneath the title.
At issue was the word "Unreliable", which implies some comment on the accuracy of the software in question. The article, however, consistently states that the software "had not been validated for the purpose for which the evidence was offered", a far more sensible claim.
"Titles of Slashdot posts have not been validated for the purpose for which this one was offered, simulation and prediction of the content of the article itself," a Slashdot representative stated. "There is no general acceptance in the relevant online community of the use of article titles as a substitute for R-ing TFA."
Mod parent up (well, already on 4, but do it anyway).
On an average random wander around my workplace, I can spot half a dozen sets of Knuth, mostly the cream-coloured hardcover ones in the navy blue box, in absolute pristine condition. Beginning with the set on my own desk.
Can someone confirm this maths... it seems that the 13th root of a hundred-digit number must be between 41246264 and 49238826 - a range of about 8 million. So it's actually narrowed down for him.
Why have the last two headlines' from-the-X-dept taglines both featured Hopkins/Lecter? Neither of them are particularly obvious links to the story. Is timothy contemplating cannibalism?
Slashdot Mirror
The only force in nature more powerful than a slashdotting.
1217 and counting...
I've always characterised software engineering as "the only engineering that doesn't do physics" (true at my university).
I think us programmer types are drawn to the appeal of being able to create our own virtual worlds, within which we define the laws of "physics" based on elegance and usefulness in the problem/game domain. The real world is too arbitrary and chaotic to be able to understand all the interactions in any given system properly. Programs and RPG worlds don't have that problem.
Well spotted. Everyone knows it's "truely changeing the way we read our information."
Because I might actually want to read it. I just don't want to be interrupted to be told it's there. But if later I want to go and look at my email, I still want to know which ones I haven't seen yet.
There's an obvious feature that Thunderbird's been missing for a while that would mitigate some of this. You can reply and say that this feature is already available using mutt/Eudora/Outlook/some obscure hack, but please realise if you do so that that isn't my point.
Email filters, at time of writing, have no say over whether you get a notification for the email in question. A large proportion of my work email is minutes from other projects' meetings, people saying they'll be in late or are going home sick, and other irrelevant stuff of that ilk. People tend to put enough clues in the subject or header that it's easy to write filters for them, but it's still a context switch (that I've refined to be as thin and non-distracting an art as possible) to flip it open and see whether it's been filtered. It'd be massively useful if filters had an option to disable notification for matching messages.
I did submit this to... some... message board... somewhere... related to Mozilla... that I haven't checked on since. A while ago. I think.
Cubicles are likely to exacerbate a problem that's already there - if your coworkers are more of a hindrance than a help by just being around you, then having an office solves that specific problem, but doesn't actually put you in a more helpful environment. On the other hand, if you respect and work well with the people around you, having a more open office can help creativity, at little (although probably still some) hindrance when you're in Deep Hack Mode. I find that I'm only distracted by people who are frustrating to work with anyway, for whatever reason.
I realise bits of the above sound like a whinge, but my current job is actually towards the respecting-and-working-well-with end. All I'm saying is that getting an office doesn't change the fact that you have to work with people, and if they're hard to work near then they'll be just as hard to work with.
Like Slashdot spelling.
Nobody expects the pedantic inquisition!
s/Google/Slashdot/ UserFriendly Mar 30 2004
You forgot hovercars.
Could this be the first sighting of "2006 will be the year of the Linux desktop?"
They could just give out free copies of Antitrust instead.
Yep.
In other news, car salesmen and politicians are dishonest, computer geeks have a below average chance of finding a girlfriend, and the Pope and Donald Trump wear equally silly headpieces.
Most Windows users are already familiar with Microsoft Numbers. It usually goes by the name "Time remaining".
That's just what we need.
"Okay, the first, second and third movies I made - the ones that say Episodes IV, V and VI - are now Episodes VII, VIII and IX. And to make it easier, for you, the fourth, fifth and sixth movies are now Episodes IV, V and VI - don't worry that they used to be I, II and III, those will be the seventh, eighth and ninth movies now."
In the new DVDs, the episodes are all renumbered in binary, and Greedo shoots two prequels after Han.
...after those pesky Rebels destroyed the headquarters at Yavin.
Mod article +5 Insightful.
One of the biggest drains on any IT department has to be keeping track of licenses - how many people are using what (the whole "license pool" idea is a waste of otherwise useful time and resources), having to ask Bill every time you need to add a new server to a cluster, having a piece of software in a state of suspended animation because the vendor hasn't returned any of your calls... The financial cost does enter into this, but the real issue is just that you can't do what you want when you want to.
...did this about 5-6 years ago. When I started in '99, I think basically all the computing departments' labs were 100% Solaris. Towards the end of that year (or at the start of the next, I forget), many of them were replaced by Debian. By the time I left, there were only a couple Solaris machines in an obscure corner of one restricted lab.
In related news, the Slashdot community have dismissed the post's title - "Washington Finds Computer Simulation Unreliable" - as being inconsistent with the article, or indeed even the summary of the article directly beneath the title.
At issue was the word "Unreliable", which implies some comment on the accuracy of the software in question. The article, however, consistently states that the software "had not been validated for the purpose for which the evidence was offered", a far more sensible claim.
"Titles of Slashdot posts have not been validated for the purpose for which this one was offered, simulation and prediction of the content of the article itself," a Slashdot representative stated. "There is no general acceptance in the relevant online community of the use of article titles as a substitute for R-ing TFA."
CowboyNeal was not available for comment.
Mod parent up (well, already on 4, but do it anyway). On an average random wander around my workplace, I can spot half a dozen sets of Knuth, mostly the cream-coloured hardcover ones in the navy blue box, in absolute pristine condition. Beginning with the set on my own desk.
Does that make sense?
And yes, this webserver is hosted on the grill.
World first - a slashdotted George Foreman grill. And it's standing up pretty well so far. Pity he didn't fare so well against Ali.
I'm sure it won't be long before we replace the grilling functionality...
I for one welcome our new intelligent traffic directing overlords.
Can someone confirm this maths... it seems that the 13th root of a hundred-digit number must be between 41246264 and 49238826 - a range of about 8 million. So it's actually narrowed down for him.
A bit.
By some definition of "narrowed down".
Okay, he's still a freak.
Why have the last two headlines' from-the-X-dept taglines both featured Hopkins/Lecter? Neither of them are particularly obvious links to the story. Is timothy contemplating cannibalism?