I consider The Kids in the Hall evil, but in a really good way. I love Matt Foley's innocuous-seeming, grey-suited evil. The banality ofevil has never been so hilarious.
Is subject to negotiation and specification. It's entirely up to you and your client to define it. I think the real sticky point is defining it well, and conducting the conversation in a non-confrontational way.
I think if you approach them in a friendly and open fashion, and talk about your concerns and commitments, they'll listen. You sound like an honest person, you're clearly not trying to rip them off, otherwise you wouldn't be troubled by this.
One guideline is special purpose/general purpose, which is vague. A more specific one is what gives your client a competitive advantage, versus something they wouldn't care whether their competitors had it or not. An example of the latter would be things like payroll software.
Your client probably has a pretty strong attitude on that subject. It would be important to know what it is before deciding how to proceed.
Hmmm... if you put this in an airline seat tray table, you could possibly run the actual laptop of the charge instead of charging a battery. Or switch between the two.
Interesting: this would be a much more natural use for most people, at least for laptops. Who wants to flip the tray table down, put a laptop on it, and just let it sit there?
Actually craft is a better term than art. Art is art for art's sake, craft is art for life's sake. Frank Lloyd Wright once dismissed a complaining client, saying that if the roof didn't leak, there wasn't enough art in the building. Please tell me you've never said such a thing to your customers.
Throttle based on spamminess * concurrent connections. Think about it: this is as close to absolute confirmation that this is a spammer as you're going to get.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite science fiction books, Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Similar idea, a whole lot better than Prey. Much more thoughtful and interesting. I've been thinking about doing a review of it for Slashdot.
You know what, I'll just go ahead and say what I've been wanting to say for AGES about manned space flight. It's fucking dangerous. It's one of the most dangerous operations that any human can be involved with. No amount of investigation, upgrading, efficiency, or what not is going to change that basic nature of the equation. The energy involved at certain critical points (launch, reentry) is of such a high order that it simply isn't feasibly to introduce life-saving components. When something occurs at such critical points (which of course, is when it is most likely that something WILL go wrong), everyone is going to die. Period.
The Russian and US space programs have known this for ages, but the US public just doesn't want to accept the fact that their are serious risks involved with putting human beings in orbit and getting them home safely. The complexity of the systems required to do such is of such an order of magnitude that it's just impossible to create any orbital delivery system that is completely failsafe.
This isn't entirely true. there are two things that will change the situation: engineering and time, both in large proportion.
I think the right approach is the 747 baseline. A 747 flight from, say LA to Tokyo, in 2003. Safety, reliablilty, cost, capacity... pick your criteria. Build a system that will get you to low earth orbit under those same criteria by 2040. That's doable. And you won't need an escape pod, coz you'll only have a 1 in 20 million chance of dying.
Now of course, that would require NASA to move from depth of vision ot breadth. Which itself would be quite a trick.
Check out the work of James O. Coplien. He's an extremely hard core C++ guy, but when he was doing research at Bell Labs, he descovered that organization effectiveness was far more important for software development productivity than any technological advance.
This is exactly the point the XP people are missing. All the practices they prescribe require a very sound organizational culture. Unusually sound. If you already have that in place, then XP might enhance your organization's performance. But if you already have that in place, you've already solved a long list of much harder problems.
And don't get me started on the requirements gathering end of the process: in full XP, you have to collaborate tightly with your business stakeholder folks. You have a problem with the other developers in your own department? Wait till you have to deal face to face with the idiot from marketing or the arrogant ass from finance. A lot.
Funny: a lot of scaling claims being made here. "XP doesn't scale." "Waterfall development doesn't scale."
I'm first to acknowledge there are huge problems with waterfall methodology. But a lot of the biggest, longest-lived systems out there were developed for decades using waterfall methodology. I've seen it up close: My first job out of college was working at IBM on operating-systems extensions to an OS (MVS) that was (is) older than I am.
Maybe it doesn't scale comfortably. Maybe it scales when billions of dollars are thrown at it. Maybe it scales when large chunks of the planet's economy depend on its day-to-day function.
But we know it can scale, because it did. I don't think XP has been through the same kind of proof-by-demonstration. I'm not at all sure it would pass.
The Egyptians proved you could build the Pyramids without the wheel. They did not prove you could build them out of talc.
I love all the suggestions, but no one seems to have mentioned the favorite option of all us klutzes: I have to be able to drop it. If it breaks when I drop it, it's not good enough. I went through 3 Palm IIIs that way, and it sucked.
Could a compromise solution be acheived? Perhaps the creation of a new category of intellectual property, something between a copyright and a trademark, that would cover things like Mickey Mouse? It might allow perpetual protection of companies' important symbols, and allow a horse-trading oppportunity to return the copyright protection period back to a more reasonable interval.
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
The key for me is the remote. I would so dig controlling my mp3s (actually oggs) on my pc with a remote. Although I'd probably need one of those high-powered remotes, coz my pc is in a different part of the room from the rest of my stereo.
Security is a discipline all in its own, with its own science and technologies. If you start to intermingle it with too many other things, not only is it more burdensome, but you run the risk of missing things.
I'm sorry, but this is painfully naive. Yes, security is a discipline all in its own, but that hardly separates it from other things. If your application has a buffer overrun or a poorly designed authorization scheme, you're still insecure. If you allow bad passwords, you're still insecure. Security is intermingled with every line of code you write, whether you like it or not.
Whatever port you run on, the attitude of "secure the transport and the system will be secure" is a big big problem.
That said, I agree with your point about not rolling your own secure transport--leave that to the people who do it for a living. History is full of examples of people who thought crypto was easy, and got bit on the ass.
One of the things that causes confusion is when you talk about two things (or more) as though they were one. Besides, it makes sense to talk about something as big as "globalism" in a more analytical way: it's more of a theme than an individual trend.
Personally, I find it helpful to think of "political globalism" separate from "economic globalism." Political globalism is complicated because it hasn't received as much attention or analysis as economic globalism.
And it doesn't necessarily mean advocating a global superstate. It springs from the simple notion that people around the world are like you and me, and they deserve certain things, including individual rights which have been discussed at length before.
I don't think of economic globalism as evil per se, but I do think it needs to be tempered by more of a sense of fellowship with those who are at a disadvantage in the system. Put political globalism before economic globalism.
I've been hearing lots lately about Lisp being used in mainstream software shops, and how it provides a powerful competitive advantage to good developers. Where would you recommend a curious, serious software engineer with real-world problems to solve start to study Lisp? Are there any good practical references (not necesarily for the Lisp novice, I can get that elsewhere) that focus on high-leverage software engineering techniques possible in Lisp? Things you just can't do in other kinds of languages?
I've been down this road before myself. The hard thing is deciding when to give up and move on. Ask yourself, "What would have to happen to turn this situation around? Is it ever likely to happen? Will my presence make a difference?" If not, bail. If so, ask, "Am I willing to put myself and my family through what it would take?" Again, if not, bail.
Being in a leadership position takes a particular commitment, and it can be hard to say when to give up. It constitutes an admission of failure, to some degree. Which is okay: we all fail at some point in our lives. The hard call is when.
I'd also recommend the counsel of friends and family. You freinds might see parts of the issue you can't. If your spouse is begging you to quit, it might be a strong sign.
Re:School isn't just to get a job
on
CS vs CIS
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· Score: 1
And besides, if you just want to get a job, learn to program and get a job. You don't need a degree to get a software development job. Experience running a computer lab in college might be a quicker way out into the job market.
In the longer term, though, a degree will probably help. And a CS degree, though tougher, will teach you more about the actual thinking required to do the job well.
One thought that does concern me about this stuff: human behavior and intelligence are complicated, and probably regulated by some large number of genes. People of different cultures value different traits. So different cultures are likely to take their genome in diverging directions.
Which I suppose is a concern...people have enough difficulty understanding each other, without diverging on a more fundamental level.
That's not to say we shouldn't explore this, it's just one more thing to keep our eyes open for.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if they last longer, but they have less battery "memory" issues. NiCads you have to drain all the power out to fully recharge them.
I consider The Kids in the Hall evil, but in a really good way. I love Matt Foley's innocuous-seeming, grey-suited evil. The banality ofevil has never been so hilarious.
Is subject to negotiation and specification. It's entirely up to you and your client to define it. I think the real sticky point is defining it well, and conducting the conversation in a non-confrontational way.
I think if you approach them in a friendly and open fashion, and talk about your concerns and commitments, they'll listen. You sound like an honest person, you're clearly not trying to rip them off, otherwise you wouldn't be troubled by this.
One guideline is special purpose/general purpose, which is vague. A more specific one is what gives your client a competitive advantage, versus something they wouldn't care whether their competitors had it or not. An example of the latter would be things like payroll software.
Your client probably has a pretty strong attitude on that subject. It would be important to know what it is before deciding how to proceed.
to get a virus from a PDF, it sounds like he/she has bigger problems than a lack of effort.
God, yes. Watching that guy come completely unhinged. Freaky-ass shit.
And I'm listening to the soundtrack right now.
Groovy.
Hmmm... if you put this in an airline seat tray table, you could possibly run the actual laptop of the charge instead of charging a battery. Or switch between the two.
Interesting: this would be a much more natural use for most people, at least for laptops. Who wants to flip the tray table down, put a laptop on it, and just let it sit there?
Actually craft is a better term than art. Art is art for art's sake, craft is art for life's sake. Frank Lloyd Wright once dismissed a complaining client, saying that if the roof didn't leak, there wasn't enough art in the building. Please tell me you've never said such a thing to your customers.
Throttle based on spamminess * concurrent connections. Think about it: this is as close to absolute confirmation that this is a spammer as you're going to get.
I'm reminded of one of my favorite science fiction books, Blood Music, by Greg Bear. Similar idea, a whole lot better than Prey. Much more thoughtful and interesting. I've been thinking about doing a review of it for Slashdot.
You know what, I'll just go ahead and say what I've been wanting to say for AGES about manned space flight. It's fucking dangerous. It's one of the most dangerous operations that any human can be involved with. No amount of investigation, upgrading, efficiency, or what not is going to change that basic nature of the equation. The energy involved at certain critical points (launch, reentry) is of such a high order that it simply isn't feasibly to introduce life-saving components. When something occurs at such critical points (which of course, is when it is most likely that something WILL go wrong), everyone is going to die. Period.
The Russian and US space programs have known this for ages, but the US public just doesn't want to accept the fact that their are serious risks involved with putting human beings in orbit and getting them home safely. The complexity of the systems required to do such is of such an order of magnitude that it's just impossible to create any orbital delivery system that is completely failsafe.
This isn't entirely true. there are two things that will change the situation: engineering and time, both in large proportion.
I think the right approach is the 747 baseline. A 747 flight from, say LA to Tokyo, in 2003. Safety, reliablilty, cost, capacity... pick your criteria. Build a system that will get you to low earth orbit under those same criteria by 2040. That's doable. And you won't need an escape pod, coz you'll only have a 1 in 20 million chance of dying.
Now of course, that would require NASA to move from depth of vision ot breadth. Which itself would be quite a trick.
And, yes, God rest their souls.
Check out the work of James O. Coplien. He's an extremely hard core C++ guy, but when he was doing research at Bell Labs, he descovered that organization effectiveness was far more important for software development productivity than any technological advance.
This is exactly the point the XP people are missing. All the practices they prescribe require a very sound organizational culture. Unusually sound. If you already have that in place, then XP might enhance your organization's performance. But if you already have that in place, you've already solved a long list of much harder problems.
And don't get me started on the requirements gathering end of the process: in full XP, you have to collaborate tightly with your business stakeholder folks. You have a problem with the other developers in your own department? Wait till you have to deal face to face with the idiot from marketing or the arrogant ass from finance. A lot.
Funny: a lot of scaling claims being made here. "XP doesn't scale." "Waterfall development doesn't scale."
I'm first to acknowledge there are huge problems with waterfall methodology. But a lot of the biggest, longest-lived systems out there were developed for decades using waterfall methodology. I've seen it up close: My first job out of college was working at IBM on operating-systems extensions to an OS (MVS) that was (is) older than I am.
Maybe it doesn't scale comfortably. Maybe it scales when billions of dollars are thrown at it. Maybe it scales when large chunks of the planet's economy depend on its day-to-day function.
But we know it can scale, because it did. I don't think XP has been through the same kind of proof-by-demonstration. I'm not at all sure it would pass.
The Egyptians proved you could build the Pyramids without the wheel. They did not prove you could build them out of talc.
I love all the suggestions, but no one seems to have mentioned the favorite option of all us klutzes: I have to be able to drop it. If it breaks when I drop it, it's not good enough. I went through 3 Palm IIIs that way, and it sucked.
But Oracle can run in the Astral Plane, independent of any material hardware. The trick is accessing your data from there.
Could a compromise solution be acheived? Perhaps the creation of a new category of intellectual property, something between a copyright and a trademark, that would cover things like Mickey Mouse? It might allow perpetual protection of companies' important symbols, and allow a horse-trading oppportunity to return the copyright protection period back to a more reasonable interval.
The key for me is the remote. I would so dig controlling my mp3s (actually oggs) on my pc with a remote. Although I'd probably need one of those high-powered remotes, coz my pc is in a different part of the room from the rest of my stereo.
I reserve the right to request a cheeseburger.
I reserve the right to request your rendition of Muskrat Love.
I reserve the right to request sexual favors.
I reserve the right to request we all go bowling!
I reserve the right to request your undying love.
I reserve the right to request SPIDERS! SPIDERS! AAAAGH!
I beg your pardon...
I reserve the right to request a foot massage.
I reserve the right to request a box of peat moss.
I reserve the right to request that you check if my armpits smell.
I reserve the right to request all the dirty pictures on your harddrive.
I reserve the right to request you stop poking me.
I reserve the right to request that every employee of KPMG memorize the names of the Teletubbies.
I'm sorry, but this is painfully naive. Yes, security is a discipline all in its own, but that hardly separates it from other things. If your application has a buffer overrun or a poorly designed authorization scheme, you're still insecure. If you allow bad passwords, you're still insecure. Security is intermingled with every line of code you write, whether you like it or not.
Whatever port you run on, the attitude of "secure the transport and the system will be secure" is a big big problem.
That said, I agree with your point about not rolling your own secure transport--leave that to the people who do it for a living. History is full of examples of people who thought crypto was easy, and got bit on the ass.
One of the things that causes confusion is when you talk about two things (or more) as though they were one. Besides, it makes sense to talk about something as big as "globalism" in a more analytical way: it's more of a theme than an individual trend.
Personally, I find it helpful to think of "political globalism" separate from "economic globalism." Political globalism is complicated because it hasn't received as much attention or analysis as economic globalism.
And it doesn't necessarily mean advocating a global superstate. It springs from the simple notion that people around the world are like you and me, and they deserve certain things, including individual rights which have been discussed at length before.
I don't think of economic globalism as evil per se, but I do think it needs to be tempered by more of a sense of fellowship with those who are at a disadvantage in the system. Put political globalism before economic globalism.
I've been hearing lots lately about Lisp being used in mainstream software shops, and how it provides a powerful competitive advantage to good developers. Where would you recommend a curious, serious software engineer with real-world problems to solve start to study Lisp? Are there any good practical references (not necesarily for the Lisp novice, I can get that elsewhere) that focus on high-leverage software engineering techniques possible in Lisp? Things you just can't do in other kinds of languages?
Being in a leadership position takes a particular commitment, and it can be hard to say when to give up. It constitutes an admission of failure, to some degree. Which is okay: we all fail at some point in our lives. The hard call is when.
I'd also recommend the counsel of friends and family. You freinds might see parts of the issue you can't. If your spouse is begging you to quit, it might be a strong sign.
In the longer term, though, a degree will probably help. And a CS degree, though tougher, will teach you more about the actual thinking required to do the job well.
Which I suppose is a concern...people have enough difficulty understanding each other, without diverging on a more fundamental level.
That's not to say we shouldn't explore this, it's just one more thing to keep our eyes open for.
Check out an interesting example of what I'm talking about.