I can see cloud computing encompassing a particular subset of applications that thrive on web space, things that absolutely require constant connectivity to function up to their intended spec, but the concept just doesn't fit a whole hell of a lot of applications.
Client/server stuff isn't going away. Thankfully. The more you have to do everything through the browser, the more you realize that you just can't make your application as seamless and clean as you can when you can configure your own client to do whatever custom thing you want it to do.
Make them a partner in their idea. Pay them a percentage of the royalties, put them in charge of the project. Give them the feeling that since it was their idea, that their creativity is not being used and tossed aside once the money rolls in. Of course, if it fails, then it's their deal...
Nah. The only reason for this article is to trick your employees into giving you ideas that you can't come up with for yourself. You get paid all this money for being an idea person, and yet, you've got to farm your hired help for ideas. Pathetic, really. The only intention here is for you to profit tremendously on someone else's creativity.
You pretty much have to hook up anyone around the President, as well as probably 90% of the rest of Congress and probably the whole Supreme Court with ultra-secure BBs. Just recently, for example, several fool Representatives were twittering their entire flight and itinerary during a trip to the middle east. You can bet anyone who wants to send a big political message by killing a bunch of politicians knows all about that and is just waiting for someone to have the nerve to do it again. And anyone who talks with Obama is going to get his messages anyway, so anything THEY use has to be secure.
I live in an old remodeled Victorian house across the street from a restaurant, and my solution has been to:
1. Cover all holes with industrial strength plastic outlet plates with steel wool + Great Stuff (expanding foam), and silicone caulk behind the plates,
2. Place chunks of thick layered plywood with fine wire mesh nailed onto the bottom under appliances, and
3. I have a Shiba Inu (dog) that kills any rat that dares find another way into this house and come out in the open in minutes. I raised my Shiba around technical appliances, so he knows enough not to chew on cables. Much harder to teach a cat not to do that.
I'm not hating, but man. What about this extension is really making things so much better for Firefox users? Messing with the browser agent string? Preventing it from being uninstalled?
If Microsoft really wanted to help someone out, they'd offer their extension to be installed optionally, and they'd explain exactly why you should install it. The way it is, if you do any development with.NET 3.5 and you do so much as update it...even if you only use IE to test.NET code, Microsoft still sticks it right into your OTHER browser without asking.
And yeah. Most people who do.NET development have IE on their computer. You get it forced down your throat and you have to be fine with that. Microsoft can do whatever they want to their browser, but it's not acceptable for them to screw around with other browsers without asking very politely and being very clear about it. There's no rationalizing this mistake away.
(rant on)
I just love it when a web guy tries to tell me that his app renders "great" on any smartphone.
As I scroll down to get to the login/pass field, only to find that the fields don't accept grafitti characters when I use my Centro, I look at him and he says "oh, well, I only used my iPhone to test it out". Then I ask "did you at least try Android? Maybe a BlackBerry, or a WinMob phone?" Only to hear "That's a problem with the browser for your phone, we have no control over that."
Really now. The main reason people want to do web apps is really simple...they want to do it cheap up front. They don't want to hire someone to write clients that are naturalized to each platform that are easy and efficient for their users to use...they want to make something on a server and pray it works. And suddenly, if by some odd chance that their poorly rendered browser based app takes off, their datacenters are overworked and they need to hire more server guys, buy more servers, and lose more of their margin to maintenance. Or they just work their web guy to death trying to solve a nearly impossible problem. Mobile clients are special...they're simple enough that one person can knock out the code reasonably fast, provided they get a good upfront design. After that, the only time you have to push new revs is when there is some massive new direction in the market. Most phones support wireless updates these days, so it's not that hard to coordinate.
Users actually DON'T WANT to upgrade a mobile app every month because it's annoying. Phone apps are all about being simple to use and reliable. Starting up a browser is more clicks than I want to do if all I want to do is log my work hours, check some data, check a map, whatever.
And for you Java people, no. It's not as cross platform as you think it is. And it's not the phone's fault that it's not completely compatible with your favorite language. Yeah, it's hard. Making money IS hard work. Doing it easy doesn't mean you're going to get customers. Java doesn't give you enough control over most devices to do anything more than just the basics. That's the downfall with "cross-platform". Sometimes you have to put in a little work and make your app NOT SUCK for people to use. (/rant)
You all could be thankful that it isn't someone who believes the Internet is a set of tubes, which you cannot dump large objects on, as you could the bed of a flatbed truck.
I'd have to say that the engineers who keep their jobs are the ones who figured out how to make themselves the most useful to most companies. If you can't fire someone, you fire someone else. If you're a nice guy/gal and you got fired, you've got to learn to gain some skills in some areas that could be more beneficial to the next place you work. I know firsthand that it sucks a lot more to fire a nice person than a suckup/dishonest/jerk type person. You want to do everything you can for the nice person to help them stay on as long as possible because they make your job, as a manager, a lot easier.
If a company is keeping the guy who spends all his/her time backstabbing the rest of their team intentionally, I'd say either the management is really stupid to not get the picture, or they're pretty messed up people themselves. Especially if they laid off someone integral to a part of their company just because some other jerk who wasn't quite as qualified played mean. You're a lousy manager if you can't tell that one guy is screwing over his/her team for job security. As I said, the guys companies keep around are the guys who fit the plan the best. If they're firing their best people, they aren't going to be around too long anyway.
How can this be modded "insightful"?
When systems break down that run other OS's, the hardware or drivers are typically blamed. That's fair territory. But when it's Linux, the double standard kicks in and it's the OS's fault?
If the hardware manufacturers aren't supplying proper workarounds or fixes, or aren't even providing the source for their BIOS/Drivers/whatever to the folks who are apparently now expected to fix it, then how the hell are they supposed to make it all work? Magic wands? Insightful my ass. I'd mod this "ignorant".
Seriously, Barack Obama did not sit down and say, "Man, I really dig this Silverlight stuff. Maybe we should stream the whole inauguration in it."
The bottom line is that the person who made the decision to use Silverlight was probably the same person who made that decision for the Democratic National Convention. Most likely, the guy/gal was hired because he/she had Microsoft Certs and experience. I know a lot of very smart people who could very well have been tabbed for the same thing that are Microsoft people, and they probably would have made the same decision because they don't think beyond "this is a cool technology and it makes it easier for me to do what I want".
If you think it's a money thing, you don't know crap. Microsoft gives to both the Democratic AND Republican party. I know a lot of very hardcore Republicans who work for them. Yes, I know, I know a lot of people that I'm painting in a really bad light here. Apple, however, gave a lot as well. So did Google. And they tend to support Democratic and Independent causes more often than Republican.
Look, one thing you have to know is if Barack Obama had a whole lot less on his plate...after all, the economy is going down the tubes, followed by the environment, we've got wars that we're fighting and we don't really know why we're still fighting them...costly occupations...our schools are going to pot and good jobs are getting really, really scarce. If that stuff wasn't all on his plate, and he knew that Apple and Linux people wouldn't be able to stream the inauguration, he'd be upset and ask to talk to whoever made that call. As it is, it was probably some guy that was hired that was probably held over from the DNC stuff. Maybe it was one of his paid staffers.
Write a letter. Get your feelings out there and make it known. Don't just whine silently to yourself. If they get word, then some staffer might get a talking to. Really now...if you wanted this to be streamed using more open/cross platform technology, you should have started complaining about it when their tech team would have had some time to offer an alternative.
1. I'd probably lose my mind by the 8th day in a row driving to work. Now, if I lived in short walking/biking distance or had a good, quick mass transit line, then that would be sort of okay. I could write it off as a workout, I guess.
2. I'm a single guy with no kids...one big reason that I hate working 4 10s or 9/80 is that I actually have friends outside of work (yeah, I know, Slashdot...whatever, you have friends like that too, and if you don't, you probably should think about getting some of those...and if you don't want to do that, then I don't care about how you feel about that) that work standard work weeks, and it's a pain to keep in touch and hang out when you have to ask your boss if it would be okay to cut out early on a Sunday. Or when you're all fired up and ready to hit the town on a Friday, and none of your friends can get off work early. Or are tired after the long week and need a good night's sleep first.
3. I'd rather choose when I want to work overtime and have my weekends when I don't need to work on something. But the amount of commuting and time spent just doesn't make sense to me. Unless you're working in some call center and stuck punching in and out, flexibility is the best option and that's a no-brainer.
4. I'd seriously want more than just one day to get things done, because I'd spend that entire day working and would need a day to unwind. Which is why the 2 day weekend is a genius thing that noses should never be turned up at.
By MS guys at various events. And no, MS knows full well that Vista was a failure, and generating underground hype for their next rev is kinda a big deal for them. It's worked for them in the past, and they figure it'll work for them again.
Anyway, that's what I heard from one of their employees. But it's not a new thing, I've known a lot of folks who would tell me, off the record, that they know they're a little too "carefree" with their software for many years. The general thought there is that they'd rather have their stuff pirated than not used, but the business folks and shareholders wanted the WGA crap inserted to make themselves feel better. While taking a very broad shot at the pirates that were burning, repackaging, and reselling their stuff. Those are the types of pirates that pretty much anyone can agree are assholes.
But it wouldn't work worth a crap in regard to drastic climate change. So, not really that much of a silver lining, unless you can't handle warm temperatures so much.
Boy, the winters would SUCK then. I guess it's cool, if you LIKE that.
Every major corporation who would be willing to buy new volume licenses usually make it a policy to wait until the first service pack of any OS to do a full upgrade. No one is going to jump to 7 just because Microsoft says it's solid. I worked with a guy who evaluated Vista for one of their biggest partners, and he flat out told me that Vista didn't meet their basic security requirements (no matter how much the MS shills say it's secure). I can't imagine that 7 is going to be secure enough from the get go, either.
Seriously, it sounds obvious, but it's a start. Figure out what their interests are, where their passions are in regards to their work, and determine if this is a person that you can put in charge of a piece of your project, or if this is someone who is only working for a paycheck. I've had my best results (and I picked this up from working in successful teams like this) by giving those who had stronger interests a degree of responsibility over a particular section of code, and had the "paycheck" guys work on all the other tasks that needed to get done.
This approach works fine for both Agile and Waterfall, if you really "get" both methodologies. When you're working with seasoned developers, you're probably working with guys and ladies who've developed strong interests in particular niches by this point in their careers. If you can find a section of your project that jibes with those interests, you'll probably get fantastic results out of those folks. People who tell you that it's better to stay super generalized and constantly switch tasks without respecting those interests don't understand that if you're not passionate about something in your job, you'll most likely start looking for another job.
And hey, if you have some seasoned guys who don't care either way, and just like that paycheck, those guys come in handy, too. They're like handymen, you can assign all the other tasks to them and they'll probably do them well enough. Saves you some time from trying to find contractors to do the work.
Actually, what it tells me is that a whole lot of Alaskans don't follow politics too closely. After all, Ted Stevens has been in Alaskan politics since BEFORE Alaska became a state. There are people up there who vote for the guy just because they've voted for him for the last 40 years...after all, what do they have to complain about? They get a socialist-style kickback check from cash extorted from oil drilling companies every year. They probably didn't want to change things and risk that kickback check.
And still, enough of them did just that to kick the bum out.
Seriously, greedy managerial types seem to think that a person's entire job rotates around a computer. A computer is a tool that you use to do your job, not unlike a crescent wrench. You pay a mechanic to take the tool out of his toolbox, you pay a person to turn the computer on. If the systems boot slowly, that's the fault of the corporate IT policy putting slow-booting operating systems on computers. If people aren't being paid, what, does their time card automatically start when it's finally loaded by Windows? Then that's some seriously questionable software practices in regards to labor laws.
I'd have to agree...I've had far less crashes with F3 than I used to have with Oblivion...and my system config hasn't really changed that much. I haven't even had savegame corruption yet.
The only thing I'm not happy about so far is how they did some of the UI. I'd have loved to have seen more actions that could be configured to keystrokes...but it's Bethsoft, and they're all "XBOX before PC".
I'm rocking a chinese assault rifle that looks suspiciously like a cheaply-manufactured AK-47 and the only difference it makes to me is which starting letter I have to look for in my inventory when I want to equip it.
As someone who's played all three (As well as tactics), and Oblivion as well (figured I'd get familiar with the engine and modding before F3 came out), I can honestly say that the names of any weapon, item, or whatever else you want can and will be modded extensively. There are loads of overhaul mods for Oblivion, and I'm guessing whenever Bethsoft gets off their keisters and releases their mod kits like they did for Oblivion and Morrowind, you'll probably get most of what you don't like about it made right pretty easily.
I'd agree, as someone who's done quite a bit of WinMob stuff (yeah, it's not politically self-gratifying OSS, but it's quite easy to develop and maintain) as well as Symbian and RIM stuff that this project would be done the quickest and most effectively on WinMob. The restrictiveness on and below the API level (OS Hooks) is a huge deal when you're working with some of these platforms. Palm and WinMob work really well for this sort of stuff.
But I'd have to disagree with the web based assessment there...when I want to turn on the lights in my bedroom, I want to do it immediately. When I want to remote control the TV, I want it immediately. I don't want to start a web browser, wait for my control console to load, submit a form to a server, and wait for "stuff to happen". I want my bluetooth or wifi radio to send a message to the component and turn it on ASAP. It's really not that hard to maintain app code if you wrote it in the first place, and.NET stuff, and even Palm development, is awfully easy to work with. And yes, old Palm and WinMob code will probably still be quite portable and emulatable in the future, if it isn't still being used. If you're already a hobbyist doing remote control work in your house, you can handle maintaining handheld software. People use far more primitive devices to remote control stuff, and still will in 5 years.
I'm not one for making a big deal about form over function of a computer, but Sony made something a lot like this a few years back called the UX-50. Ran Palm OS, etc. Probably could have run linux quite well if someone wanted to do a little hacking. It looked 10 times better than that shrunken 1989 looking laptop.
This IMOVIO device looks really cheaply made, and that's just not acceptable in any small form-factor mobile device. Those things take 5 times the beating a normal-use laptop takes. It also offers new in the way of usability, and that's another really, really big thing with small form factor devices. This IMOVIO thing looks poorly made and it looks like it could create a whole new kind of carpal tunnel syndrome. At least with the UX-50, you had a touchscreen.
I also have a really hard time imagining it being compared it to the Palm Foleo, which had an entirely different purpose. It was a device meant mainly for hardcore business-oriented Palm users, not really targeted as a subnotebook. The idea was to create a small laptop that could be used as a base station for the handheld (that was smaller and more oriented to support seamless syncing, wifi shared networking, and the like).
Or, you can figure out why they keep wanting to blow themselves up so badly on your buildings and do something about it. Like stop building military bases in their countries, stop stealing their natural resources. Those are acts of war, and it takes a heck of a lot of mental strength to have someone doing that to your country and NOT get angry. If someone were building military bases in your town and you had no say in the matter, or someone build an oil well on your property and took it all for themselves, I'd say you'd be a bit pissed off too.
I know it's offtopic, but I really don't care. When you take political motivations out of the picture, all you're left with are the crazies, and as long as mankind exists, open societies or not, you're going to have those and that's why you have people to deal with them.
I can't believe that anyone in any "open" society would not know all that already. Unless, of course, you have a perverse dream about being a suckup footstool in a dictatorship.
12 years ago. It certainly isn't a new idea.
However, it does require either caching session data out to ROM, Flash, or hard disk (which requires energy and therefore the system isn't "off"). Therefore, I don't know how this isn't that different from their current hibernation technology they've had for years. And honestly, they really should just fix that first.
The marketing and external folks can call it "Super software 2009". The average folks have no idea how long the software has been around, but it makes them feel good that it's up to date.
Internally, for the sake of builds and quality assurance, give it a good ol' version number that most folks would never pay attention to.
Seriously, once in a blue moon Microsoft has a good idea, and that was one of their best IMHO. Of course, that idea was around before them, but it's still a good way to go about parsing the marketing folks out of product versioning.
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I can see cloud computing encompassing a particular subset of applications that thrive on web space, things that absolutely require constant connectivity to function up to their intended spec, but the concept just doesn't fit a whole hell of a lot of applications.
Client/server stuff isn't going away. Thankfully. The more you have to do everything through the browser, the more you realize that you just can't make your application as seamless and clean as you can when you can configure your own client to do whatever custom thing you want it to do.
Make them a partner in their idea. Pay them a percentage of the royalties, put them in charge of the project. Give them the feeling that since it was their idea, that their creativity is not being used and tossed aside once the money rolls in. Of course, if it fails, then it's their deal...
Nah. The only reason for this article is to trick your employees into giving you ideas that you can't come up with for yourself. You get paid all this money for being an idea person, and yet, you've got to farm your hired help for ideas. Pathetic, really. The only intention here is for you to profit tremendously on someone else's creativity.
You pretty much have to hook up anyone around the President, as well as probably 90% of the rest of Congress and probably the whole Supreme Court with ultra-secure BBs. Just recently, for example, several fool Representatives were twittering their entire flight and itinerary during a trip to the middle east. You can bet anyone who wants to send a big political message by killing a bunch of politicians knows all about that and is just waiting for someone to have the nerve to do it again. And anyone who talks with Obama is going to get his messages anyway, so anything THEY use has to be secure.
I live in an old remodeled Victorian house across the street from a restaurant, and my solution has been to:
1. Cover all holes with industrial strength plastic outlet plates with steel wool + Great Stuff (expanding foam), and silicone caulk behind the plates,
2. Place chunks of thick layered plywood with fine wire mesh nailed onto the bottom under appliances, and
3. I have a Shiba Inu (dog) that kills any rat that dares find another way into this house and come out in the open in minutes. I raised my Shiba around technical appliances, so he knows enough not to chew on cables. Much harder to teach a cat not to do that.
I'm not hating, but man. What about this extension is really making things so much better for Firefox users? Messing with the browser agent string? Preventing it from being uninstalled?
.NET 3.5 and you do so much as update it...even if you only use IE to test .NET code, Microsoft still sticks it right into your OTHER browser without asking.
.NET development have IE on their computer. You get it forced down your throat and you have to be fine with that. Microsoft can do whatever they want to their browser, but it's not acceptable for them to screw around with other browsers without asking very politely and being very clear about it. There's no rationalizing this mistake away.
If Microsoft really wanted to help someone out, they'd offer their extension to be installed optionally, and they'd explain exactly why you should install it. The way it is, if you do any development with
And yeah. Most people who do
(rant on) I just love it when a web guy tries to tell me that his app renders "great" on any smartphone.
As I scroll down to get to the login/pass field, only to find that the fields don't accept grafitti characters when I use my Centro, I look at him and he says "oh, well, I only used my iPhone to test it out". Then I ask "did you at least try Android? Maybe a BlackBerry, or a WinMob phone?" Only to hear "That's a problem with the browser for your phone, we have no control over that."
Really now. The main reason people want to do web apps is really simple...they want to do it cheap up front. They don't want to hire someone to write clients that are naturalized to each platform that are easy and efficient for their users to use...they want to make something on a server and pray it works. And suddenly, if by some odd chance that their poorly rendered browser based app takes off, their datacenters are overworked and they need to hire more server guys, buy more servers, and lose more of their margin to maintenance. Or they just work their web guy to death trying to solve a nearly impossible problem. Mobile clients are special...they're simple enough that one person can knock out the code reasonably fast, provided they get a good upfront design. After that, the only time you have to push new revs is when there is some massive new direction in the market. Most phones support wireless updates these days, so it's not that hard to coordinate.
Users actually DON'T WANT to upgrade a mobile app every month because it's annoying. Phone apps are all about being simple to use and reliable. Starting up a browser is more clicks than I want to do if all I want to do is log my work hours, check some data, check a map, whatever.
And for you Java people, no. It's not as cross platform as you think it is. And it's not the phone's fault that it's not completely compatible with your favorite language. Yeah, it's hard. Making money IS hard work. Doing it easy doesn't mean you're going to get customers. Java doesn't give you enough control over most devices to do anything more than just the basics. That's the downfall with "cross-platform". Sometimes you have to put in a little work and make your app NOT SUCK for people to use. (/rant)
You all could be thankful that it isn't someone who believes the Internet is a set of tubes, which you cannot dump large objects on, as you could the bed of a flatbed truck.
I'd have to say that the engineers who keep their jobs are the ones who figured out how to make themselves the most useful to most companies. If you can't fire someone, you fire someone else. If you're a nice guy/gal and you got fired, you've got to learn to gain some skills in some areas that could be more beneficial to the next place you work. I know firsthand that it sucks a lot more to fire a nice person than a suckup/dishonest/jerk type person. You want to do everything you can for the nice person to help them stay on as long as possible because they make your job, as a manager, a lot easier. If a company is keeping the guy who spends all his/her time backstabbing the rest of their team intentionally, I'd say either the management is really stupid to not get the picture, or they're pretty messed up people themselves. Especially if they laid off someone integral to a part of their company just because some other jerk who wasn't quite as qualified played mean. You're a lousy manager if you can't tell that one guy is screwing over his/her team for job security. As I said, the guys companies keep around are the guys who fit the plan the best. If they're firing their best people, they aren't going to be around too long anyway.
How can this be modded "insightful"? When systems break down that run other OS's, the hardware or drivers are typically blamed. That's fair territory. But when it's Linux, the double standard kicks in and it's the OS's fault? If the hardware manufacturers aren't supplying proper workarounds or fixes, or aren't even providing the source for their BIOS/Drivers/whatever to the folks who are apparently now expected to fix it, then how the hell are they supposed to make it all work? Magic wands? Insightful my ass. I'd mod this "ignorant".
Seriously, Barack Obama did not sit down and say, "Man, I really dig this Silverlight stuff. Maybe we should stream the whole inauguration in it."
The bottom line is that the person who made the decision to use Silverlight was probably the same person who made that decision for the Democratic National Convention. Most likely, the guy/gal was hired because he/she had Microsoft Certs and experience. I know a lot of very smart people who could very well have been tabbed for the same thing that are Microsoft people, and they probably would have made the same decision because they don't think beyond "this is a cool technology and it makes it easier for me to do what I want".
If you think it's a money thing, you don't know crap. Microsoft gives to both the Democratic AND Republican party. I know a lot of very hardcore Republicans who work for them. Yes, I know, I know a lot of people that I'm painting in a really bad light here. Apple, however, gave a lot as well. So did Google. And they tend to support Democratic and Independent causes more often than Republican.
Look, one thing you have to know is if Barack Obama had a whole lot less on his plate...after all, the economy is going down the tubes, followed by the environment, we've got wars that we're fighting and we don't really know why we're still fighting them...costly occupations...our schools are going to pot and good jobs are getting really, really scarce. If that stuff wasn't all on his plate, and he knew that Apple and Linux people wouldn't be able to stream the inauguration, he'd be upset and ask to talk to whoever made that call. As it is, it was probably some guy that was hired that was probably held over from the DNC stuff. Maybe it was one of his paid staffers.
Write a letter. Get your feelings out there and make it known. Don't just whine silently to yourself. If they get word, then some staffer might get a talking to. Really now...if you wanted this to be streamed using more open/cross platform technology, you should have started complaining about it when their tech team would have had some time to offer an alternative.
1. I'd probably lose my mind by the 8th day in a row driving to work. Now, if I lived in short walking/biking distance or had a good, quick mass transit line, then that would be sort of okay. I could write it off as a workout, I guess.
2. I'm a single guy with no kids...one big reason that I hate working 4 10s or 9/80 is that I actually have friends outside of work (yeah, I know, Slashdot...whatever, you have friends like that too, and if you don't, you probably should think about getting some of those...and if you don't want to do that, then I don't care about how you feel about that) that work standard work weeks, and it's a pain to keep in touch and hang out when you have to ask your boss if it would be okay to cut out early on a Sunday. Or when you're all fired up and ready to hit the town on a Friday, and none of your friends can get off work early. Or are tired after the long week and need a good night's sleep first.
3. I'd rather choose when I want to work overtime and have my weekends when I don't need to work on something. But the amount of commuting and time spent just doesn't make sense to me. Unless you're working in some call center and stuck punching in and out, flexibility is the best option and that's a no-brainer.
4. I'd seriously want more than just one day to get things done, because I'd spend that entire day working and would need a day to unwind. Which is why the 2 day weekend is a genius thing that noses should never be turned up at.
By MS guys at various events. And no, MS knows full well that Vista was a failure, and generating underground hype for their next rev is kinda a big deal for them. It's worked for them in the past, and they figure it'll work for them again.
Anyway, that's what I heard from one of their employees. But it's not a new thing, I've known a lot of folks who would tell me, off the record, that they know they're a little too "carefree" with their software for many years. The general thought there is that they'd rather have their stuff pirated than not used, but the business folks and shareholders wanted the WGA crap inserted to make themselves feel better. While taking a very broad shot at the pirates that were burning, repackaging, and reselling their stuff. Those are the types of pirates that pretty much anyone can agree are assholes.
But it wouldn't work worth a crap in regard to drastic climate change. So, not really that much of a silver lining, unless you can't handle warm temperatures so much.
Boy, the winters would SUCK then. I guess it's cool, if you LIKE that.
Every major corporation who would be willing to buy new volume licenses usually make it a policy to wait until the first service pack of any OS to do a full upgrade. No one is going to jump to 7 just because Microsoft says it's solid. I worked with a guy who evaluated Vista for one of their biggest partners, and he flat out told me that Vista didn't meet their basic security requirements (no matter how much the MS shills say it's secure). I can't imagine that 7 is going to be secure enough from the get go, either.
Seriously, it sounds obvious, but it's a start. Figure out what their interests are, where their passions are in regards to their work, and determine if this is a person that you can put in charge of a piece of your project, or if this is someone who is only working for a paycheck. I've had my best results (and I picked this up from working in successful teams like this) by giving those who had stronger interests a degree of responsibility over a particular section of code, and had the "paycheck" guys work on all the other tasks that needed to get done.
This approach works fine for both Agile and Waterfall, if you really "get" both methodologies. When you're working with seasoned developers, you're probably working with guys and ladies who've developed strong interests in particular niches by this point in their careers. If you can find a section of your project that jibes with those interests, you'll probably get fantastic results out of those folks. People who tell you that it's better to stay super generalized and constantly switch tasks without respecting those interests don't understand that if you're not passionate about something in your job, you'll most likely start looking for another job.
And hey, if you have some seasoned guys who don't care either way, and just like that paycheck, those guys come in handy, too. They're like handymen, you can assign all the other tasks to them and they'll probably do them well enough. Saves you some time from trying to find contractors to do the work.
Actually, what it tells me is that a whole lot of Alaskans don't follow politics too closely. After all, Ted Stevens has been in Alaskan politics since BEFORE Alaska became a state. There are people up there who vote for the guy just because they've voted for him for the last 40 years...after all, what do they have to complain about? They get a socialist-style kickback check from cash extorted from oil drilling companies every year. They probably didn't want to change things and risk that kickback check.
And still, enough of them did just that to kick the bum out.
Seriously, greedy managerial types seem to think that a person's entire job rotates around a computer. A computer is a tool that you use to do your job, not unlike a crescent wrench. You pay a mechanic to take the tool out of his toolbox, you pay a person to turn the computer on. If the systems boot slowly, that's the fault of the corporate IT policy putting slow-booting operating systems on computers. If people aren't being paid, what, does their time card automatically start when it's finally loaded by Windows? Then that's some seriously questionable software practices in regards to labor laws.
I'd have to agree...I've had far less crashes with F3 than I used to have with Oblivion...and my system config hasn't really changed that much. I haven't even had savegame corruption yet.
The only thing I'm not happy about so far is how they did some of the UI. I'd have loved to have seen more actions that could be configured to keystrokes...but it's Bethsoft, and they're all "XBOX before PC".
I'm rocking a chinese assault rifle that looks suspiciously like a cheaply-manufactured AK-47 and the only difference it makes to me is which starting letter I have to look for in my inventory when I want to equip it.
We call that an SKS.
As someone who's played all three (As well as tactics), and Oblivion as well (figured I'd get familiar with the engine and modding before F3 came out), I can honestly say that the names of any weapon, item, or whatever else you want can and will be modded extensively. There are loads of overhaul mods for Oblivion, and I'm guessing whenever Bethsoft gets off their keisters and releases their mod kits like they did for Oblivion and Morrowind, you'll probably get most of what you don't like about it made right pretty easily.
I'd agree, as someone who's done quite a bit of WinMob stuff (yeah, it's not politically self-gratifying OSS, but it's quite easy to develop and maintain) as well as Symbian and RIM stuff that this project would be done the quickest and most effectively on WinMob. The restrictiveness on and below the API level (OS Hooks) is a huge deal when you're working with some of these platforms. Palm and WinMob work really well for this sort of stuff.
.NET stuff, and even Palm development, is awfully easy to work with. And yes, old Palm and WinMob code will probably still be quite portable and emulatable in the future, if it isn't still being used. If you're already a hobbyist doing remote control work in your house, you can handle maintaining handheld software. People use far more primitive devices to remote control stuff, and still will in 5 years.
But I'd have to disagree with the web based assessment there...when I want to turn on the lights in my bedroom, I want to do it immediately. When I want to remote control the TV, I want it immediately. I don't want to start a web browser, wait for my control console to load, submit a form to a server, and wait for "stuff to happen". I want my bluetooth or wifi radio to send a message to the component and turn it on ASAP. It's really not that hard to maintain app code if you wrote it in the first place, and
I'm not one for making a big deal about form over function of a computer, but Sony made something a lot like this a few years back called the UX-50. Ran Palm OS, etc. Probably could have run linux quite well if someone wanted to do a little hacking. It looked 10 times better than that shrunken 1989 looking laptop.
This IMOVIO device looks really cheaply made, and that's just not acceptable in any small form-factor mobile device. Those things take 5 times the beating a normal-use laptop takes. It also offers new in the way of usability, and that's another really, really big thing with small form factor devices. This IMOVIO thing looks poorly made and it looks like it could create a whole new kind of carpal tunnel syndrome. At least with the UX-50, you had a touchscreen.
I also have a really hard time imagining it being compared it to the Palm Foleo, which had an entirely different purpose. It was a device meant mainly for hardcore business-oriented Palm users, not really targeted as a subnotebook. The idea was to create a small laptop that could be used as a base station for the handheld (that was smaller and more oriented to support seamless syncing, wifi shared networking, and the like).
Or, you can figure out why they keep wanting to blow themselves up so badly on your buildings and do something about it. Like stop building military bases in their countries, stop stealing their natural resources. Those are acts of war, and it takes a heck of a lot of mental strength to have someone doing that to your country and NOT get angry. If someone were building military bases in your town and you had no say in the matter, or someone build an oil well on your property and took it all for themselves, I'd say you'd be a bit pissed off too.
I know it's offtopic, but I really don't care. When you take political motivations out of the picture, all you're left with are the crazies, and as long as mankind exists, open societies or not, you're going to have those and that's why you have people to deal with them.
I can't believe that anyone in any "open" society would not know all that already. Unless, of course, you have a perverse dream about being a suckup footstool in a dictatorship.
12 years ago. It certainly isn't a new idea. However, it does require either caching session data out to ROM, Flash, or hard disk (which requires energy and therefore the system isn't "off"). Therefore, I don't know how this isn't that different from their current hibernation technology they've had for years. And honestly, they really should just fix that first.
The marketing and external folks can call it "Super software 2009". The average folks have no idea how long the software has been around, but it makes them feel good that it's up to date.
Internally, for the sake of builds and quality assurance, give it a good ol' version number that most folks would never pay attention to.
Seriously, once in a blue moon Microsoft has a good idea, and that was one of their best IMHO. Of course, that idea was around before them, but it's still a good way to go about parsing the marketing folks out of product versioning.