thats the joy of statistics - you just make the first category 0-19 then even if the unitary mode is zero you can claim that "most people fall into the category of buying up to 1 CDs worth of tracks"
The 22 per ipod is the mean - often the most useful and the one that is frequently implies with the more ambiguous word "average" however in this case its the most useless.
The mode usually requires wider boundries than single elements to be useful (eg 0, 1-5, 6-10, etc) but I would tend to say that the mode or perhaps the median would be the more useful average when tailoring a service to your main user base.
Despite these figures not being announced you can bet that apple have them and almost certainly use them internally - they probably just dont sound as good to the average non mathematical person
Me neither - I will only take phones that are for free on a contract renewal - and I'm not exactly on a heavy use contract. imap seems to be a pretty much standard feature on phones these days - I've just got the v3 razr (the first one) and even that has it
Access to my inbox is far more useful than sms - especially given how much of a pain entering sms messages is - even when you are quite good at it
Or 20p per minute (on an average tarrif with about 200 minutes thrown in anyway)
I don't know about you but I can say more in 30 seconds than I can write in 160 characters!!
I only find texts handy when you are not able to talk (eg in a pub and its too loud or in the office and dont want to be over heard) otherwise just call the person - its a novel use for a phone I know (maybe it should be patented...) but there you go
Edmund: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?" Baldrick: "Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron."
What I look for in using other peoples code
on
Finding New Code
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Is the code easy to find? Will a quick search of sensible key words take me to a short list of results with high accuracy? No point in spending an hour wading through results that may or may not be useful when I can implement and test it myself in 2 hours.
Is the license clear? I may eventually want to release as open source or commercially use something I write. If I include someone else's code/library I have to make a note (hopefully in the LICENSE file provided with the code or in the top of the code comments) on what the license is. Is it BSD, GPL, public domain, not stated or some commercial license that lets me look at the code but not use it myself?
Is the code self contained? This generally means does it come as a library. I dont like copying and pasting code into my code - especially if its not the same coding practice as my own. (this comes abck to licenses above - if its self contained and with an incompatable license atleast I can rip and replace later if I need to)
Is the code well known? Is if the defacto standard for doing this type of thing (STL, Perl core, glibc)? Or is it one of several well known options for the same thing (gtk, qt, kde)? Or is it an unknown? This will help you know how well this code is field tested already - I don't like signing up to be someone else's beta tester for free!
Is the code still maintained? Is this an active company with a project? Or a group on source forge? Are the developers still around and the forums active? If I need a new feature further down the line is there chance of support? I don't usually want to pick up the whole dead weight of supporting unsupported code that I didn't write if I can avoid it.
Can I use it as is? It frequently takes longer to modify an "almost there" modules to do what you need than it would have done to reimplement the wheel as it were and write it yourself first time, and writing it yourself will atleast make future debugging easier assuming you have a good memory for design and good coding practices.
Is there documentation? The old comparison about documentation and sex, when its good its very very good and when its bad its better than nothing. I dont want to have to read someone elses uncommented un documented code just to evaluate if it might work for me. I want to be able to read a good overview of the library, its functions, methods, attributes, errors and exceptions - CPAN is an excellent (in most cases) example of what I mean.
Thats a pretty hard list of requirements to meet - true it shouldn't be, but this is the real world. If those requires are not met then odds are it will be less effort in the long run for more reward for me to implement it myself.
Sounds like they were just trying to get out of paying you yoru last weeks pay....
Normally companies can tell you to stay at home during your notice period but still have to pay you (unless you mutually agree to terminate the contract early)
I certainly can't see how that would have grounds for a law suit but then IANAL...
Personally I'd counter sue for the weeks wages and if you really felt like it then also stress, loss of say 2 years wages if your new employer decides to back out, costs and legal fees.
No I've lived in the states and know the difference - I made a comment as such earlier on in this same discussion - in CA and areas with similar weather patterns this may be a good idea - but it certainly isn't a 1 size fits all solution
Think of it more in the temrs of the kenetic theory of gases.
Accurate prediction of the movement of a single molecule is not possible - the uncertainty principle at work.
The movement of a single molecule can be described as chaotic.
However the kenetic theory of gases allows us to acurately calculate the movement of larges volumes of gas without a problem.
Weather is chaotic, but moderatly predictable over small time scales this is why weather forcasts are not always acurate. Trends over long time scales are a different matter and can be calculated - its a different order of magnitude to the above analogy but the principle is the same.
Odds are any sucessful game that is original will not in fact be an original.
It will probably have been based of a game a few years before that didn't do so well due to lack of funding for the cutting edge graphics engine but still had a small cuilt following and was then either bought out or imitated to make a new game with all the slick graphics that the kids demand and a huge marketing budget which then makes this new copy a sucess.
Since cellulose is a complex sugar then making it from sugar is not a problem. You just have to have the extra step of converting cellulose into those sugars (a problem that has already been solved - ask your nearest rat)
Here if you oversleep you can miss summer entirely:)
Very very few peolpe have AC, if its warm weather for 2 or 3 weeks we do pretty well.
But then at that time of year we also have light much much later into the evening and from earlier in the morning than you do in the states since we are a much more northern latitude - hence my orignal comment - if they lights are on, odds are the heating is too, its pretty rare that the lights are on and the heating isn't for me
Using a lightbulb or a computer to heat a house is inefficient yes.
Using the "waste" heat from such items to offset what you would otherwise need to heat is not inefficient. If you were using them anyway using that heat is the best thing you can do (for example I rarely turn on the heater in my study, there is no need)
All things being equal, then yes switch over the the CFLs - but all things are not equal. That take a lot more energy to produce, contain polutants that are hard to dispose of, don't work well with dimmers and can have an annoying flicker.
The argument to switch over to them is not convincing despite how much it is hyped.
Thats brand new houses - and even new houses don't compare with the ones built in say sweden.
Where I live right now is relatively new - 1970's - by most american standards thats an old house - in the UK unless its pre 1920s it isn't really considered an old house.
Proper old houses are C17 or earlier - lots in the town where I live.
Loft insulation helps a lot, as does good double glazing.
When I do eventually get my own place I intend to have it as energy efficient as possible - right now I am renting and there isn't much I can do about it.
In this situation there is really no gain in switching light bulbs, and atleast in the UK its a fairly common situation
As stated in my post my central heating system is electric. A lot of houses do use electric for their heating.
Actually its not inefficient, electricity in, heat out is almost equal - it is however generally more expensive - but economy and efficiency are not the same.
Personally I'd prefer heat pump which is about 400% efficient - but since I rent thats not an option right now.
Ok for a state like california I can understand the reasons for this.
Its hot there and you probably dont need an extra heat source.
However the idea that incandescants are "bad" is really quite foolish.
They take less energy to produce, are cheaper to produce and easier to dispose of (no heavy metals or polutants)
The down side? atleast 80% of the energy they use goes to heat. Is this really a down side? Many people call this waste heat - but it certainly is not waste if it is doing something useful - like heating your house! I live in england - this means my central heating (electric) is on most of the year - it rarely gets warm enough for it not to be in use.
Also given our latitude in the breif summer that we have it is also lighter much longer into the evening.
This generally means that when the lights are on, the heating is also on. The heating is controlled by a thermostat - so until the room is at a certain temerature, the heaters will be on. If some of that heat is being provided by incandescant bulbs then it just means the heating comes on less.
So that means all the energy is now useful... So given efficiency is useful work out / work in then for the above usage (which is common) incandescant bulbs provide 100% efficiency. Given the cost to produce and the polutants in the so called high efficiency bulbs is it really a good idea to switch?
You might want to try it sometime as its an educational experiance.
For almost every hardware option you can include whether to build it in, build the module and have the module hooks for it built in or not to include it.
So if you know exactly what hardware you are going to be using you can build a very very small kernel (the theory being it should still be possible to boot a full OS from a floppy, though I haven't tried to do that myself for a while)
If you just want compatability you can build modules for everything, the kernel itself remains fairly small though you do end up with a lot of modules you will likely never use.
Most people go for something inbetween (as do most distros)
About the only way you would get bloat int he kernel is to build everythign built in - and I can't think of a reason anyone would want to do that - ok make that a sensible reason - with geeks the "because I can" argument will always come up:)
Slashdot Mirror
thats the joy of statistics - you just make the first category 0-19 then even if the unitary mode is zero you can claim that "most people fall into the category of buying up to 1 CDs worth of tracks"
Which average do you want? mean mode or median?
The 22 per ipod is the mean - often the most useful and the one that is frequently implies with the more ambiguous word "average" however in this case its the most useless.
The mode usually requires wider boundries than single elements to be useful (eg 0, 1-5, 6-10, etc) but I would tend to say that the mode or perhaps the median would be the more useful average when tailoring a service to your main user base.
Despite these figures not being announced you can bet that apple have them and almost certainly use them internally - they probably just dont sound as good to the average non mathematical person
Me neither - I will only take phones that are for free on a contract renewal - and I'm not exactly on a heavy use contract. imap seems to be a pretty much standard feature on phones these days - I've just got the v3 razr (the first one) and even that has it
Access to my inbox is far more useful than sms - especially given how much of a pain entering sms messages is - even when you are quite good at it
you mean you dont have imap on your phone?
10p per text, for 160 characters...
Or 20p per minute (on an average tarrif with about 200 minutes thrown in anyway)
I don't know about you but I can say more in 30 seconds than I can write in 160 characters!!
I only find texts handy when you are not able to talk (eg in a pub and its too loud or in the office and dont want to be over heard) otherwise just call the person - its a novel use for a phone I know (maybe it should be patented...) but there you go
Try ubuntu - root is disabled by default and you run everything via sudo (much like under osx)
You can re enable it, but its a proactive step rather than a passive step.
I'll admit re enabling it was one of the first things I did, but then I like to think I know full well the risks of su-ing to a root shell.
Log into an X session as root? Oh no no no no no no!!!
Edmund: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?"
Baldrick: "Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron."
Is the code easy to find? Will a quick search of sensible key words take me to a short list of results with high accuracy? No point in spending an hour wading through results that may or may not be useful when I can implement and test it myself in 2 hours.
Is the license clear? I may eventually want to release as open source or commercially use something I write. If I include someone else's code/library I have to make a note (hopefully in the LICENSE file provided with the code or in the top of the code comments) on what the license is. Is it BSD, GPL, public domain, not stated or some commercial license that lets me look at the code but not use it myself?
Is the code self contained? This generally means does it come as a library. I dont like copying and pasting code into my code - especially if its not the same coding practice as my own. (this comes abck to licenses above - if its self contained and with an incompatable license atleast I can rip and replace later if I need to)
Is the code well known? Is if the defacto standard for doing this type of thing (STL, Perl core, glibc)? Or is it one of several well known options for the same thing (gtk, qt, kde)? Or is it an unknown? This will help you know how well this code is field tested already - I don't like signing up to be someone else's beta tester for free!
Is the code still maintained? Is this an active company with a project? Or a group on source forge? Are the developers still around and the forums active? If I need a new feature further down the line is there chance of support? I don't usually want to pick up the whole dead weight of supporting unsupported code that I didn't write if I can avoid it.
Can I use it as is? It frequently takes longer to modify an "almost there" modules to do what you need than it would have done to reimplement the wheel as it were and write it yourself first time, and writing it yourself will atleast make future debugging easier assuming you have a good memory for design and good coding practices.
Is there documentation? The old comparison about documentation and sex, when its good its very very good and when its bad its better than nothing. I dont want to have to read someone elses uncommented un documented code just to evaluate if it might work for me. I want to be able to read a good overview of the library, its functions, methods, attributes, errors and exceptions - CPAN is an excellent (in most cases) example of what I mean.
Thats a pretty hard list of requirements to meet - true it shouldn't be, but this is the real world. If those requires are not met then odds are it will be less effort in the long run for more reward for me to implement it myself.
Would you be so kind as to have the contract GPL'd so it can help the rest of us if we ever end up in the same situation? :)
2 weeks is the norm for the US, much as its 30 days in the uk unless your contract says otherwise?
Sounds like they were just trying to get out of paying you yoru last weeks pay....
Normally companies can tell you to stay at home during your notice period but still have to pay you (unless you mutually agree to terminate the contract early)
I certainly can't see how that would have grounds for a law suit but then IANAL...
Personally I'd counter sue for the weeks wages and if you really felt like it then also stress, loss of say 2 years wages if your new employer decides to back out, costs and legal fees.
No I've lived in the states and know the difference - I made a comment as such earlier on in this same discussion - in CA and areas with similar weather patterns this may be a good idea - but it certainly isn't a 1 size fits all solution
Think of it more in the temrs of the kenetic theory of gases.
Accurate prediction of the movement of a single molecule is not possible - the uncertainty principle at work.
The movement of a single molecule can be described as chaotic.
However the kenetic theory of gases allows us to acurately calculate the movement of larges volumes of gas without a problem.
Weather is chaotic, but moderatly predictable over small time scales this is why weather forcasts are not always acurate. Trends over long time scales are a different matter and can be calculated - its a different order of magnitude to the above analogy but the principle is the same.
If you are against ID cards (and I am) are you really going to put your name and address on a petition stored in a database the goverment run?
I mean really?
... in the exact literal sense
Odds are any sucessful game that is original will not in fact be an original.
It will probably have been based of a game a few years before that didn't do so well due to lack of funding for the cutting edge graphics engine but still had a small cuilt following and was then either bought out or imitated to make a new game with all the slick graphics that the kids demand and a huge marketing budget which then makes this new copy a sucess.
Since cellulose is a complex sugar then making it from sugar is not a problem. You just have to have the extra step of converting cellulose into those sugars (a problem that has already been solved - ask your nearest rat)
You've obviously never lived in England...
:)
Here if you oversleep you can miss summer entirely
Very very few peolpe have AC, if its warm weather for 2 or 3 weeks we do pretty well.
But then at that time of year we also have light much much later into the evening and from earlier in the morning than you do in the states since we are a much more northern latitude - hence my orignal comment - if they lights are on, odds are the heating is too, its pretty rare that the lights are on and the heating isn't for me
Using a lightbulb or a computer to heat a house is inefficient yes.
Using the "waste" heat from such items to offset what you would otherwise need to heat is not inefficient. If you were using them anyway using that heat is the best thing you can do (for example I rarely turn on the heater in my study, there is no need)
All things being equal, then yes switch over the the CFLs - but all things are not equal. That take a lot more energy to produce, contain polutants that are hard to dispose of, don't work well with dimmers and can have an annoying flicker.
The argument to switch over to them is not convincing despite how much it is hyped.
Thats brand new houses - and even new houses don't compare with the ones built in say sweden.
Where I live right now is relatively new - 1970's - by most american standards thats an old house - in the UK unless its pre 1920s it isn't really considered an old house.
Proper old houses are C17 or earlier - lots in the town where I live.
Loft insulation helps a lot, as does good double glazing.
When I do eventually get my own place I intend to have it as energy efficient as possible - right now I am renting and there isn't much I can do about it.
In this situation there is really no gain in switching light bulbs, and atleast in the UK its a fairly common situation
As stated in my post my central heating system is electric. A lot of houses do use electric for their heating.
Actually its not inefficient, electricity in, heat out is almost equal - it is however generally more expensive - but economy and efficiency are not the same.
Personally I'd prefer heat pump which is about 400% efficient - but since I rent thats not an option right now.
Ok for a state like california I can understand the reasons for this.
Its hot there and you probably dont need an extra heat source.
However the idea that incandescants are "bad" is really quite foolish.
They take less energy to produce, are cheaper to produce and easier to dispose of (no heavy metals or polutants)
The down side? atleast 80% of the energy they use goes to heat. Is this really a down side? Many people call this waste heat - but it certainly is not waste if it is doing something useful - like heating your house! I live in england - this means my central heating (electric) is on most of the year - it rarely gets warm enough for it not to be in use.
Also given our latitude in the breif summer that we have it is also lighter much longer into the evening.
This generally means that when the lights are on, the heating is also on. The heating is controlled by a thermostat - so until the room is at a certain temerature, the heaters will be on. If some of that heat is being provided by incandescant bulbs then it just means the heating comes on less.
So that means all the energy is now useful... So given efficiency is useful work out / work in then for the above usage (which is common) incandescant bulbs provide 100% efficiency. Given the cost to produce and the polutants in the so called high efficiency bulbs is it really a good idea to switch?
Have you ever rolled your own kernel?
:)
You might want to try it sometime as its an educational experiance.
For almost every hardware option you can include whether to build it in, build the module and have the module hooks for it built in or not to include it.
So if you know exactly what hardware you are going to be using you can build a very very small kernel (the theory being it should still be possible to boot a full OS from a floppy, though I haven't tried to do that myself for a while)
If you just want compatability you can build modules for everything, the kernel itself remains fairly small though you do end up with a lot of modules you will likely never use.
Most people go for something inbetween (as do most distros)
About the only way you would get bloat int he kernel is to build everythign built in - and I can't think of a reason anyone would want to do that - ok make that a sensible reason - with geeks the "because I can" argument will always come up
you forgot to mention emacs and vi!
I see no issue with a link in your sig - its obvious, unobrusive and non deceptive.
But if you put a newsletter or marketing mail in my inbox when I haven't very explicitly and very unambiguously asked for it, then you are a spammer.
Being a little bit of a spammer is about on par with being a little bit pregnant.
I don't ever ask for marketing emails. I don't want them.
Just because I occasionally buy from a company doesn't mean I want to hear about their new offers.
Where I can opt out of mailings at sign up time I do so. Where I can't I'll tag them as spam which as far as I'm concerned is exactly what they are!