Nudity, graphic violence, expensive special effects and big name actors are not necessary to make grown up films. More often they are crutches for a lack of good story line and good writing, rather than intrinsic thereto.
Star Wars and Serenity were not R rated, nor even particularly big-budget. By contrast, the special effects tour-de-force Avatar's underlying story was juvenile and T&A would not have changed that.
I'm surprised by the number of people posting who seem to have no experience working with legacy IT systems (COBOL or otherwise). Here's a quick primer:
First of all, there is generally no system architecture in legacy contexts. Rather, a set of interdependent applications will have grown into a system over time.
COBOL applications in particular are not built on RDBMS concepts and changes to back-end data must be made programatically or disaster is likely to ensue. In many cases, no living person will know all the tables that should be changed to update a particular value safely.
Here, the governor wished to cut the salaries of a broad category of employees which probably has no representation in the system. You can't just do a "update pay set rate='crap' where job_type not like '%critical%'" sort of approach. You would probably have to go through and re-classify many thousands of job types one-by-one to a new pay grade code, except that this would screw up benefits issues that weren't part of the pay cut.
To subsequently reimburse back pay, as the governor promised, you would have to keep track of the old pay grade in a system that almost certainly does not track history. Then you'd have to build in a method for accounting for back pay.
Bearing in mind there are no test suites for these changes, it's easy to believe it would take a while to implement them.
I concur, but even more so:-) What is it that consumers think they need an expensive computer for?
The only consumer applications I've found needing anything faster than a PIII 933 with a mid-range graphics card are action games and Google Earth. Using Craig's List (and a little patience waiting for the right deals) I've built several such Ubuntu machines for $50 - $60, including 512 MB RAM and 21" CRT monitor (yes, really!).
They play full screen movies and online Adobe Flash games, they do graphics and audio editing, and even work quite adequately for LAMP development, assuming you don't have really large data sets to manipulate. What's more, kids seem to find Ubuntu as intuitive as Windows.
I'd like to see some benchmarks for the VIA C-7 system Walmart is selling. If it's as least as good as a faster PIII with PC-133 RAM, then folks who can afford a television can afford a PC that does everything they need.
Now lets see if we can't get broadband down below $300 per year.
I concur, but even more so:-) What is it that consumers think they need an expensive computer for?
The only consumer applications I've found needing anything faster than a PIII 933 with a mid-range graphics card are action games and Google Earth. Using Craig's List (and a little patience waiting for the right deals) I've built several such Ubuntu machines for $50 - $60, including 512 MB RAM and 21" CRT monitor (yes, really!).
They play full screen movies and online Adobe Flash games, they do graphics and audio editing, and even work quite adequately for LAMP development, assuming you don't have really large data sets to manipulate. What's more, kids seem to find Ubuntu as intuitive as Windows.
I'd like to see some benchmarks for the VIA C-7 system Walmart is selling. If it's as least as good as a faster PIII with PC-133 RAM, then folks who can afford a television can afford a PC that does everything they need.
Now lets see if we can't get broadband down below $300 per year.
Recommend Logitech's Cordless Optical Trackman
on
Mouse or Trackball?
·
· Score: 1
Logitech's "cordless optical trackman" trackball is the only one I have found which allows the user to avoid reverse flexing the wrist at all times. The buttons are thumb-operated and on the side, scroll bar to the left of the ball.
It takes about a day to get used to, but the fact that you can rest the full weight of your hand and fingers on it without causing anything accidental on-screen makes it worth the learning curve. It's perfect for most tasks, but not great for detail work. I usually get around this by using two input devices.
You may also wish to purchase a dumbbell to use every so often throughout the day for wrist curls. This balances some of the stress from constant reverse flexing of the wrist and apparently reduces some of the swelling of associated tissues by stimulating their counterparts on the other side of the wrist. I find it gives temporary pain relief.
The prevalence of repetitive stress injuries in middle age folks makes me wonder what will become of the kids born in the 1980s and later. They all grew up using input devices constantly from an early age (school, electronic games, cell phone texting, etc.). Are we raising a nation of future cripples?
I've often wondered why no one has designed exercise equipment that works this way. Especially exercise bicycles, which don't even need to provide calibrated resistance.
Lister promises to provide advise on how to stop bad project management patterns and how to promote good ones within an organization. Presumably different patterns lend themselves to different techniques. If both the patterns and the techniques were obvious, bad project management would never occur. But alas, like democracy, good management is not an organizational pattern folks just fall into naturally absent impediments.
It would also appear from the interview snippet that the authors plan to use a patterns book to argue for agile management approaches as a way to minimize risk. Slashdot readers may be sold on this idea, but in my experience, most business managers instinctively see the waterfall method as the least risk path whether they admit it or not. A few more ideas for how to change that perception could be useful.
That said, I whole-heartedly agree with you on the bonding after work bit. The bonding and "blowing off steam" examples seem to assume no one on your project team is ever going to be over 21.
The tone and context of Mr. Taskinen's message looks uncomfortably familiar. I've seen a number of friends suffer bouts of depression -- for some reason, particularly the bright ones. A talented guy like this has many professional options and there's no reason to exit a project in this way no matter how compelling the reasons to move on.
Of course, I could be very wrong. But I would suggest that if one's friend is in such a situtation, it's definitely worth taking the time to talk with the person to see what's going on.
Whether or not the example the writer cites has been mentioned before, I think his comment should be modded up as interesting because it is a reminder that the main barrier to shrinking general purpose computing devices is I/O to the user.
Both aspects (I and O) are close to being solved of late. For example, a virtual keyboard could also take the form of a virtual tablet and combine with voice and/or handwriting recognition for a sort of hybrid application interface. Whether or not you like that particular suggestion, it would seem that potential improvements to the current (physical) thumb keyboard and tiny screen for small devices abound.
This was essentially the idea when the only software medium available was paper and ink. Ideas weren't privately owned, just the implementations. Patents for manufactured goods, copyrights for writing.
Allowing patents for software or mathematics or any other modeling medium is allowing a concept to be owned rather than a particular implementation.
Pretty soon somebody's going to patent "boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy marries girl after all" and then we won't have any more musical theater.
One might argue that a European commercial interest in open source is a necessary precursor to the political will for such protections. Without one, there isn't enough clamor for a ban on patents in software and mathematics to withstand US counterpressure.
I sure hope it happens, but I'm betting more on regions with less interest in preserving the status quo economic pecking order. Of these China, India, Russia and Brazil have a large enough educated work force to perhaps spawn a low-cost open source solutions industry (as opposed to just products).
Interestingly, Europe may have a head start in terms of consulting companies specializing in open source (try googling for it and draw your own conclusions). In the U.S., there are some product-specific companies and some (nascent) support companies, but no one who can deliver a soup-to-nuts alternative to integrated offerings from firms like Oracle, IBM and MS no matter how hungry the market gets for it.
It's a worthy exercise to put yourself in the mind of a CIO for a decent-size manufacturing or services company and ask yourself how open source stacks up *as a category* against offerings from the big commercial players. How "pure" an open source shop could such a firm realistically get to on today's date?
It's often assumed that open source adoption is inhibited more by demand problems than supply ones, but is it perhaps the other way around?
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say "pissash" rolls of the tongue easier than "urine carbon," but the metaphor is too disgusting.
Nudity, graphic violence, expensive special effects and big name actors are not necessary to make grown up films. More often they are crutches for a lack of good story line and good writing, rather than intrinsic thereto. Star Wars and Serenity were not R rated, nor even particularly big-budget. By contrast, the special effects tour-de-force Avatar's underlying story was juvenile and T&A would not have changed that.
I'm surprised by the number of people posting who seem to have no experience working with legacy IT systems (COBOL or otherwise). Here's a quick primer:
First of all, there is generally no system architecture in legacy contexts. Rather, a set of interdependent applications will have grown into a system over time.
COBOL applications in particular are not built on RDBMS concepts and changes to back-end data must be made programatically or disaster is likely to ensue. In many cases, no living person will know all the tables that should be changed to update a particular value safely.
Here, the governor wished to cut the salaries of a broad category of employees which probably has no representation in the system. You can't just do a "update pay set rate='crap' where job_type not like '%critical%'" sort of approach. You would probably have to go through and re-classify many thousands of job types one-by-one to a new pay grade code, except that this would screw up benefits issues that weren't part of the pay cut.
To subsequently reimburse back pay, as the governor promised, you would have to keep track of the old pay grade in a system that almost certainly does not track history. Then you'd have to build in a method for accounting for back pay.
Bearing in mind there are no test suites for these changes, it's easy to believe it would take a while to implement them.
I concur, but even more so :-) What is it that consumers think they need an expensive computer for?
The only consumer applications I've found needing anything faster than a PIII 933 with a mid-range graphics card are action games and Google Earth. Using Craig's List (and a little patience waiting for the right deals) I've built several such Ubuntu machines for $50 - $60, including 512 MB RAM and 21" CRT monitor (yes, really!).
They play full screen movies and online Adobe Flash games, they do graphics and audio editing, and even work quite adequately for LAMP development, assuming you don't have really large data sets to manipulate. What's more, kids seem to find Ubuntu as intuitive as Windows.
I'd like to see some benchmarks for the VIA C-7 system Walmart is selling. If it's as least as good as a faster PIII with PC-133 RAM, then folks who can afford a television can afford a PC that does everything they need.
Now lets see if we can't get broadband down below $300 per year.
I concur, but even more so :-) What is it that consumers think they need an expensive computer for?
The only consumer applications I've found needing anything faster than a PIII 933 with a mid-range graphics card are action games and Google Earth. Using Craig's List (and a little patience waiting for the right deals) I've built several such Ubuntu machines for $50 - $60, including 512 MB RAM and 21" CRT monitor (yes, really!).
They play full screen movies and online Adobe Flash games, they do graphics and audio editing, and even work quite adequately for LAMP development, assuming you don't have really large data sets to manipulate. What's more, kids seem to find Ubuntu as intuitive as Windows.
I'd like to see some benchmarks for the VIA C-7 system Walmart is selling. If it's as least as good as a faster PIII with PC-133 RAM, then folks who can afford a television can afford a PC that does everything they need.
Now lets see if we can't get broadband down below $300 per year.
Logitech's "cordless optical trackman" trackball is the only one I have found which allows the user to avoid reverse flexing the wrist at all times. The buttons are thumb-operated and on the side, scroll bar to the left of the ball.
It takes about a day to get used to, but the fact that you can rest the full weight of your hand and fingers on it without causing anything accidental on-screen makes it worth the learning curve. It's perfect for most tasks, but not great for detail work. I usually get around this by using two input devices.
You may also wish to purchase a dumbbell to use every so often throughout the day for wrist curls. This balances some of the stress from constant reverse flexing of the wrist and apparently reduces some of the swelling of associated tissues by stimulating their counterparts on the other side of the wrist. I find it gives temporary pain relief.
The prevalence of repetitive stress injuries in middle age folks makes me wonder what will become of the kids born in the 1980s and later. They all grew up using input devices constantly from an early age (school, electronic games, cell phone texting, etc.). Are we raising a nation of future cripples?
I've often wondered why no one has designed exercise equipment that works this way. Especially exercise bicycles, which don't even need to provide calibrated resistance.
Lister promises to provide advise on how to stop bad project management patterns and how to promote good ones within an organization. Presumably different patterns lend themselves to different techniques. If both the patterns and the techniques were obvious, bad project management would never occur. But alas, like democracy, good management is not an organizational pattern folks just fall into naturally absent impediments.
It would also appear from the interview snippet that the authors plan to use a patterns book to argue for agile management approaches as a way to minimize risk. Slashdot readers may be sold on this idea, but in my experience, most business managers instinctively see the waterfall method as the least risk path whether they admit it or not. A few more ideas for how to change that perception could be useful.
That said, I whole-heartedly agree with you on the bonding after work bit. The bonding and "blowing off steam" examples seem to assume no one on your project team is ever going to be over 21.
The tone and context of Mr. Taskinen's message looks uncomfortably familiar. I've seen a number of friends suffer bouts of depression -- for some reason, particularly the bright ones. A talented guy like this has many professional options and there's no reason to exit a project in this way no matter how compelling the reasons to move on. Of course, I could be very wrong. But I would suggest that if one's friend is in such a situtation, it's definitely worth taking the time to talk with the person to see what's going on.
Whether or not the example the writer cites has been mentioned before, I think his comment should be modded up as interesting because it is a reminder that the main barrier to shrinking general purpose computing devices is I/O to the user.
Both aspects (I and O) are close to being solved of late. For example, a virtual keyboard could also take the form of a virtual tablet and combine with voice and/or handwriting recognition for a sort of hybrid application interface. Whether or not you like that particular suggestion, it would seem that potential improvements to the current (physical) thumb keyboard and tiny screen for small devices abound.
This was essentially the idea when the only software medium available was paper and ink. Ideas weren't privately owned, just the implementations. Patents for manufactured goods, copyrights for writing.
Allowing patents for software or mathematics or any other modeling medium is allowing a concept to be owned rather than a particular implementation.
Pretty soon somebody's going to patent "boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy marries girl after all" and then we won't have any more musical theater.
One might argue that a European commercial interest in open source is a necessary precursor to the political will for such protections. Without one, there isn't enough clamor for a ban on patents in software and mathematics to withstand US counterpressure.
I sure hope it happens, but I'm betting more on regions with less interest in preserving the status quo economic pecking order. Of these China, India, Russia and Brazil have a large enough educated work force to perhaps spawn a low-cost open source solutions industry (as opposed to just products).
Interestingly, Europe may have a head start in terms of consulting companies specializing in open source (try googling for it and draw your own conclusions). In the U.S., there are some product-specific companies and some (nascent) support companies, but no one who can deliver a soup-to-nuts alternative to integrated offerings from firms like Oracle, IBM and MS no matter how hungry the market gets for it.
It's a worthy exercise to put yourself in the mind of a CIO for a decent-size manufacturing or services company and ask yourself how open source stacks up *as a category* against offerings from the big commercial players. How "pure" an open source shop could such a firm realistically get to on today's date?
It's often assumed that open source adoption is inhibited more by demand problems than supply ones, but is it perhaps the other way around?
I look forward to Internet radio and GPS (with "you are here" street maps) plus cell phone in one device. That would be pretty useful.