... is just to call everything beta, then you never have to bother with testing, or documenting anything (though, to be fair, you didn't ask about documentation - so I guess you'd already decided not to bother with that detail). That way you get much faster development time and keep your time to market down to the same as your competitors - who are using the same techniques.
The trick then is to move on to another outfit just before it hits the fan. Don't worry about your customers - if they are running web based businesses, chances are most of them will have gone down the tubes in a year or so. Long before they get anywhere near release 1.0.
Osama isn't in Pakistan (or Afghanistan) at all - he's disappeared, or died, or retired to Florida to drink pina-coladas all day, or -
The security forces don't actually WANT to find him, as once they do there's no reason for them to continue in the region: Job done, game over, go home. And then what will they do to keep the contracts flowing to their friends in low places?
So this is supposed to prevent crime by scanning the internet and mobile phones and other electronic stuff.
Well, I guess in that case the baddies will have to resort to the old fashioned way of doing badness without all these high-tech toys. Just like they successfully managed to do for hundreds of years. Luckily the EU is only planning on spending 15 million euros on this - over 5 years. So it won't matter very much when they discover the money's been wasted as the criminals go back to holding face-to-face meetings, writing letters and leaving handwritten notes for each other.
I find the best programmers are the ones with the maturity to complete a task when they said they would. Who can perform an exhaustive session of testing without complaining (even though it's boring, but necessary work). Who will produce the required documentation to a high standard and will play nice with the other members of the team they are in.
In that respect, neither handedness nor syndromes seems to have any relevance.
A lot of softies I know feel they have to prove something. Whether that's simply to get attention, or as an attempt to stand out from the masses, I can't say. It does seem though, that if you want to get noticed you have to be or do something that set you apart. Examples such as being a drama queen (is this classic attention seeking as you see in small children?), or claiming "special allowances" (I've just *got* to have a desk by the window - or I get SAD") or just having strange habits or superstitions: like not getting in to the office until lunchtime ("but I'm an afternoon person") - for whatever reason.
Personally I think a lot of it has to do with power and boundaries - again, just like with small children. Because any IT person who shows a modicum of talent is so sought after, that their employers will go to great lengths to retain them. If that means playing along with their emotional issues, well: so be it.
they'll still respond to "download this crap and win $100" offers on websites, and still infect themselves with trojans, worms, viruses, impossible to remove software and other nasties. Just because the website owner has a passport (and who would be empowered to revoke these?) or a forged passport, won't stop most of the malpractices we see on the internet today.
No matter how you package it, a text-based website cannot be read conveniently on a postage-stamp sized screen. You spend all your time scrolling the text sideways, and up and down. All this gets in the way of your main aim, which is to get the information on that site. This presumes (falsely) that a usable proportion of the mobile device's screen is not taken up with banner ads, or visual embellishments which simply get in the way. Mobile web is fine for sites that just have a couple of lines of information and maybe a single icon and a link, but for anything more complex you need a screen at least 1024*768 and at a physical size where the letters can actually be read at that resolution.
Since the web is still (and probably will alway be) text based - as this is the best way to achieve a reasonable density of information, mobile users just have to accept that a "massive" 3 inch display just won't hack it. For example, cut a small rectangle out of a piece of paper that covers your whole screen. Now try and do any meaningful work through that hole and you'll have ripped it away within minutes. That's the problem with mobile devices, they're just not big enough to get all the information you need to be displayed at once.
Twitter had nothing to do with this. Yes there was a lot of inconsequential twittering about this, but the reason the injunction was lifted was that reputable newspapers outside the UK were carrying the story. Since they were immune from the injunction - and their content was available in Britain, the injunction became pointless and (just like with the Spycatcher book, which was banned in Britain, but freely available in other english-speaking countries, or terrorist plots which were censored in the UK but freely reported by the NYT) were not serving the purpose of stopping british peopole from finding out the truth.
British libel laws are a travesty. To the point where half a dozen US states, including California, have had to pass laws preventing UK libel judgements from inhibiting free speech. There is even a case at present where a Ukranian website is defending statements it made in Ukranian regarding a Ukranian company, but in a British court - as the penalties handed down in British courts are so heavy, and litigation costs so high, that it's financial ruin for a defendant to attempt to defend themselves, even if they are successful.
A degree course is the first step, not the final result in a worthwhile scientific education. You don't expect to teach every student every technique they might use in every job they could get. Most of them won't even go into research - so there is a lot of waste teaching people skills that only a few will need. Far better to focus on the foundations (which could well include the basics of data analysis), rather than spending time on the ins and outs of products that are in use today - and will therefore be obsolete when they graduate and need to use that skill.
You could very well argue that it's not even a scientists job to turn petabytes of data into kilobytes of information - that's a technicians role. Scientists are there to create the knowledge, not do the lab assistant's job.
Most reviewers get their "stuff" from the suppliers. They have a vested interest in being nice to the suppliers - to get more stuff, freebies, invitations, early access, privileged information and maybe even paid work. There is no way the public should expect more from them than glowing promotion of the good and no mention of the bad. Sadly, ther reviews don't tell people this.
When I see a website that accepts no advertising, buys all it's products for cash, anonymously from retail stores and has a test suite that reflects what actual users actually do, then their reviews will have merit (although I can't see anyone anywhere paying the hue cover price for such a publication) Until then, print and online sources are far too cosy with the suppliers to get anything objective from them. It would be too much to ask for them to criticise their advertisers - the sucking sound you'd hear would be next month's full-page spreads being pulled.
An anti-piracy outfit claims nearly half of software is pirated. This sounds to me like they're saying that what they do is totally ineffective. Is this supposed to be an apology (to whom?) or a resignation letter?
Obviously, no-one outside their little clique thinks this is important or they'd be taking action. The software vendors don't seem too bothered either - or they would have developed stronger ways to protect their stock in trade. It's not as if that would be outside the bounds of possibility. So who, exactly, is this particular stir of the FUD aimed at?
It's not a backup unless you can prove it will restore. Until then it's just a waste of tape, or disk, and time
The point about backups is not to tick the box saying "taken backup?" but to provide your business / customers / whatever with a reliable last resort for restoring almost all their data. If you don't have 100% certainty that it will work, you don't have a backup.
When shipping and Amazon's other charges are taken into account. This piece of tech costs nearly $345. All you get is a single-use device. For that money you'd be better off buying a netbook. At least then you'd get a decent sized (and colour) screen.
Since it's already been out a year in this model (version 2), I have a sneaking suspicion that this ploy is merely to dump old stock (if Amazon can get anyone to buy it) before a new model is introduced.
In the UK it's usually the job of HR (the Human Remains dept.) to deal with and select the recruitment agencies used. They generally select only on price: i.e. the companies offering to provide a pre-selection service for the lowest commission. To get the lowest rate, clients have to enter into a "sole agency" deal - where only CVs / resumes submitted by THEM are considered.
This gives the agencies considerable leverage with applicants - to the point where (with some high profile, large employers such as in the City of London's financial quarter) being dropped or banned by an agency can be a big deal, especially if your skills are niche.
Do they abuse this power? yes - of course they do. From demanding references (whom they then approach to sell their services to), to manipulating your job history, to embellishments that are downright lies, to strategically using your applications to further "pet" candidates, and sending your details out just to make up the numbers - involving candidates in lots of wasted time and miles going on interviews for jobs they never stand any chance of getting.
Fortunately, with the recession a lot more employers are advertising direct: cutting out the agencies and posting job ads. themselves. Hopefully this will kill off the less scrupulous agencies, though I have a terrible feeling that the charlatans will keep trading and it will be the honest brokers who go to the wall.
All the agents[1] do here is take a list of bullet points from a company, then slavishly match them against the keywords they extract from your CV (translation: resume). Not a 100% match? Easy solution: no interview. Outlandish or impossible requirements? Simple: no match - no interview. Your CV can contain the requirements the client wants, but if the keywords don't match: e.g. you say C++, they ask for "C", again: no interview.
And they wonder why everybody, on both sides of the contract, hates them.
[1] they're paid on commission from the employers - so that's who they "work" for.
I'm thinking of putting my name forward for next years prize. After all, I'm actively engaged in 2 fewer wars than this guy, which must mean I'm more peaceful than he is.
If Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed, it wouldn't be different at all. But Apple by no means has a monopoly on PCs. This is about IBM abusing its mainframe monopoly. If Sun, etc were as big as IBM it would be ok, but it's not.
But Apple does have a monopoly on Mac hardware - just as IBM has on IBM hardware. the fact that there are other platforms that run other OS's is irrelevant
too many sweets leads to tooth decay - which would require more visits to the dentist. Maybe it's this which leads to increased levels of violence?
It seems to me there are too many uncontrolled (and probably even more unknown) variables for any meaningful conclusions to come from this. The biggest thing that's missing from all these social science studies is any sort of objective or quanitfiable units of measurement. Until they can all agree on HOW violent, in standardised units, there's nothing worth discussing here.
With halloween coming up, just try refusing to give sweets (american translation: candy) to the little beggars that come calling. See if those who don't get given sweets are more or less violent than those who do.
Well said. SF is about the tech, not the people. it doesn't stand up to literature style critique as the ideas are more important than the language or literary technique / style. if an individual is not interested in tech, they won't be interested in SF so making them read and spend time on it is a bad move.
And maybe with the same level of risk (equipment failure / no hope of rescue, medical emergencies, solar storms, meteor strikes etc.).
Although with our modern day aversion to risk, I can't see it getting a very enthusiastic welcome from todays "sailors". Not unless the rewards were very good indeed. Is there that much good stuff to be had to incentivise people to go?
Considering what an effect and what a huge fanbase the programmes have, I can't help wondering why no-one has ever tried to make any more. Although you probably couldn't get any of the original caste to take part (and would probably disappoint, if they did - 40 years on), it seems like a wasted opportunity. Especially as so much of todays TV and film output is remakes of stuff from that era.
Now that memory is so cheap and disk space even cheaper, do we still need the small process sizes that dynamic linking brings?
Would it be worth burning more RAM (although in an on-demand paged system, there's obviously no need to have your entire processl resident) to get rid of the problems associated with incompatible versions of libraries. Just go back to statically linking everything, so yo only ever need 1 binary - as all the routines it will ever call are already part of it.
Slashdot Mirror
The trick then is to move on to another outfit just before it hits the fan. Don't worry about your customers - if they are running web based businesses, chances are most of them will have gone down the tubes in a year or so. Long before they get anywhere near release 1.0.
Osama isn't in Pakistan (or Afghanistan) at all - he's disappeared, or died, or retired to Florida to drink pina-coladas all day, or -
The security forces don't actually WANT to find him, as once they do there's no reason for them to continue in the region: Job done, game over, go home. And then what will they do to keep the contracts flowing to their friends in low places?
Well, I guess in that case the baddies will have to resort to the old fashioned way of doing badness without all these high-tech toys. Just like they successfully managed to do for hundreds of years. Luckily the EU is only planning on spending 15 million euros on this - over 5 years. So it won't matter very much when they discover the money's been wasted as the criminals go back to holding face-to-face meetings, writing letters and leaving handwritten notes for each other.
In that respect, neither handedness nor syndromes seems to have any relevance.
Personally I think a lot of it has to do with power and boundaries - again, just like with small children. Because any IT person who shows a modicum of talent is so sought after, that their employers will go to great lengths to retain them. If that means playing along with their emotional issues, well: so be it.
they'll still respond to "download this crap and win $100" offers on websites, and still infect themselves with trojans, worms, viruses, impossible to remove software and other nasties. Just because the website owner has a passport (and who would be empowered to revoke these?) or a forged passport, won't stop most of the malpractices we see on the internet today.
No matter how you package it, a text-based website cannot be read conveniently on a postage-stamp sized screen. You spend all your time scrolling the text sideways, and up and down. All this gets in the way of your main aim, which is to get the information on that site. This presumes (falsely) that a usable proportion of the mobile device's screen is not taken up with banner ads, or visual embellishments which simply get in the way. Mobile web is fine for sites that just have a couple of lines of information and maybe a single icon and a link, but for anything more complex you need a screen at least 1024*768 and at a physical size where the letters can actually be read at that resolution.
Since the web is still (and probably will alway be) text based - as this is the best way to achieve a reasonable density of information, mobile users just have to accept that a "massive" 3 inch display just won't hack it. For example, cut a small rectangle out of a piece of paper that covers your whole screen. Now try and do any meaningful work through that hole and you'll have ripped it away within minutes. That's the problem with mobile devices, they're just not big enough to get all the information you need to be displayed at once.
British libel laws are a travesty. To the point where half a dozen US states, including California, have had to pass laws preventing UK libel judgements from inhibiting free speech. There is even a case at present where a Ukranian website is defending statements it made in Ukranian regarding a Ukranian company, but in a British court - as the penalties handed down in British courts are so heavy, and litigation costs so high, that it's financial ruin for a defendant to attempt to defend themselves, even if they are successful.
So much for free speech in Britain.
You could very well argue that it's not even a scientists job to turn petabytes of data into kilobytes of information - that's a technicians role. Scientists are there to create the knowledge, not do the lab assistant's job.
When I see a website that accepts no advertising, buys all it's products for cash, anonymously from retail stores and has a test suite that reflects what actual users actually do, then their reviews will have merit (although I can't see anyone anywhere paying the hue cover price for such a publication) Until then, print and online sources are far too cosy with the suppliers to get anything objective from them. It would be too much to ask for them to criticise their advertisers - the sucking sound you'd hear would be next month's full-page spreads being pulled.
Obviously, no-one outside their little clique thinks this is important or they'd be taking action. The software vendors don't seem too bothered either - or they would have developed stronger ways to protect their stock in trade. It's not as if that would be outside the bounds of possibility. So who, exactly, is this particular stir of the FUD aimed at?
The point about backups is not to tick the box saying "taken backup?" but to provide your business / customers / whatever with a reliable last resort for restoring almost all their data. If you don't have 100% certainty that it will work, you don't have a backup.
Since it's already been out a year in this model (version 2), I have a sneaking suspicion that this ploy is merely to dump old stock (if Amazon can get anyone to buy it) before a new model is introduced.
This gives the agencies considerable leverage with applicants - to the point where (with some high profile, large employers such as in the City of London's financial quarter) being dropped or banned by an agency can be a big deal, especially if your skills are niche.
Do they abuse this power? yes - of course they do. From demanding references (whom they then approach to sell their services to), to manipulating your job history, to embellishments that are downright lies, to strategically using your applications to further "pet" candidates, and sending your details out just to make up the numbers - involving candidates in lots of wasted time and miles going on interviews for jobs they never stand any chance of getting.
Fortunately, with the recession a lot more employers are advertising direct: cutting out the agencies and posting job ads. themselves. Hopefully this will kill off the less scrupulous agencies, though I have a terrible feeling that the charlatans will keep trading and it will be the honest brokers who go to the wall.
And they wonder why everybody, on both sides of the contract, hates them.
[1] they're paid on commission from the employers - so that's who they "work" for.
I'm thinking of putting my name forward for next years prize. After all, I'm actively engaged in 2 fewer wars than this guy, which must mean I'm more peaceful than he is.
If Apple's and Microsoft's market shares were reversed, it wouldn't be different at all. But Apple by no means has a monopoly on PCs. This is about IBM abusing its mainframe monopoly. If Sun, etc were as big as IBM it would be ok, but it's not.
But Apple does have a monopoly on Mac hardware - just as IBM has on IBM hardware. the fact that there are other platforms that run other OS's is irrelevant
One rule for all.
It seems to me there are too many uncontrolled (and probably even more unknown) variables for any meaningful conclusions to come from this. The biggest thing that's missing from all these social science studies is any sort of objective or quanitfiable units of measurement. Until they can all agree on HOW violent, in standardised units, there's nothing worth discussing here.
Statistically demonstrable != sensible
Games are international so must appeal to the broadest market. That leaves no room for trivia such as party politics from any one particular country.
Well said. SF is about the tech, not the people. it doesn't stand up to literature style critique as the ideas are more important than the language or literary technique / style. if an individual is not interested in tech, they won't be interested in SF so making them read and spend time on it is a bad move.
And maybe with the same level of risk (equipment failure / no hope of rescue, medical emergencies, solar storms, meteor strikes etc.). Although with our modern day aversion to risk, I can't see it getting a very enthusiastic welcome from todays "sailors". Not unless the rewards were very good indeed. Is there that much good stuff to be had to incentivise people to go?
Considering what an effect and what a huge fanbase the programmes have, I can't help wondering why no-one has ever tried to make any more. Although you probably couldn't get any of the original caste to take part (and would probably disappoint, if they did - 40 years on), it seems like a wasted opportunity. Especially as so much of todays TV and film output is remakes of stuff from that era.
hread Ulrich Drepper's piece on [at]http://developers.slashdot.org/people.redhat.com/drepper/dsohowto.pdf ...
404
Now that memory is so cheap and disk space even cheaper, do we still need the small process sizes that dynamic linking brings?
Would it be worth burning more RAM (although in an on-demand paged system, there's obviously no need to have your entire processl resident) to get rid of the problems associated with incompatible versions of libraries. Just go back to statically linking everything, so yo only ever need 1 binary - as all the routines it will ever call are already part of it.