In September 2004 my dad got a job working on-site at various national building jobs. It meant he'd be travelling around the country a lot and often had to stay away monday-friday since driving the 4+ hours back wasn't an option each day. He got promoted in around May but by that time it was becoming clear to my parents that their relationship had changed and they split in September. While there were obviously other factors that determined the split which I won't go into on/., the fact that my dad was out of the house most weekdays meant it already felt like he'd left and made it easier for my mum to decide she could make it alone (or at least, without my dad). If you do take this role, think hard about how it's gonna effect your family, because from my teenage point of view, it totally sucked.
Google's problem is one of the paradoxes of having a runaway successful brand. The bigger it gets, the more it becomes part of everyday English language and less a brand in its own right.
Just as we talk about "hoovering" instead of vacuuming, people have started to say "google" to mean search. The word has become an eponym.
I've just taken a course in "Introduction To Programming" at my university, one of the better ones in the UK (Leeds). Here they teach with an IDE, DrJava. I found it useful to take advantage of the debugging features using stuff like breakpoints and watched variables, but we were also made aware of how to use the command line to compile, although not extensively. I agree that working out code without the advantage of hitting F5 and seeing your errors highlighted leads to better programming skills, but at the same time, you could argue that people shouldn't use Word/OO/your editor here because they have spellchecking features which discourage the learning of spellings. We should all write in Notepad and check a dictionary for uncertain words. Sounds a little deconstructive, no?
On the other hand, someone posted on the University's newsgroup a message about another IDE, BlueJ. To quote some of the professors:
AJB: The main thing to watch out for with BlueJ is becoming too dependant on it. A number of students have had difficulty programming without BlueJ once they have learnt to use it.
NDE: Absolutely. Last year, a worryingly large number of our students thought that the programming language that they had learned was called BlueJ!
This response was the reason they switched us to using DrJava, since BlueJ apparently uses a visual representation of classes and objects to aid understanding. I'm in favour of IDEs for the ease of use but I think it's important to be aware of the other methods, just like anything else. I don't clean my clothes using a mangle and washboard, but I appreciate that people did (do?) and it's a useful option for learning how to clean my clothes properly when I can't get access to a washing machine (or something..). I'm hoping that, this year, we don't get a similar number thinking they've learned a language called DrJava
Hmm, this post is giving me some troubling thoughts about how I've designed my site.
I made it in this sequence:
- Made a complete HTML/CSS layout - Made individual PHP pages to grab database stuff and output it in HTML - Broke the layout into two files at the "content here" part - Included file 1 as header.php and file 2 as footer.php in the appropriate place in each PHP file.
Later I realised this didn't allow me to customise the title attribute so I had to go back and split header.php again to allow me to define this in the php files after the queries (dynamic titles).
Now I end up with a ton of php files all doing similar stuff for a database frontend (eg, add feature_x, delete feature_x, edit feature_x, list feature_x etc) all full of html and stuff. It's messy and needs some improvement - any tips?
This quote just sums up the extent to which Microsoft doesn't understand OSS:
"Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial..."
Surely 'commercial' is against the nature of open source? His use of "maturing" implies he believes open source software is an immature concept. Yeah, just wait till those hippies with ponytails wise up to the fact that they could be selling their software rather than, *gasp*, working on quality code for free !
A tad insensitive to link to these guys sites given that the vast majority of slashdotters were gonna visit them? Yeah, OK, ad revenue might be a factor, but given the choice, I'd rather my site stayed up and I earned nothing.
How hard would it have been to Coral-cache them, Taco? Or even host them?!
All you people saying you organise like/root/music/$genre/$artist/ are limiting yourself a little - I turn off the Genre browse option in iTunes because a) they're mostly labelled wrongly (in my mind) and b) I can't categorise most of my music into one label, unless I invent tons of hybrids. It'd make finding stuff a lot harder.
All I do is let iTunes manage my files (there's options in the Advanced tab). It automatically adds music to the 'Records' folder I have, in this format:/Records/$Band Name/$Album Name/$Track # $Disc # $Song Name/ which works fine for me. It used to irritate me that it truncates filenames at times but then I realised I'm not really interfacing with the files themselves that much anyway. iTunes' search function is wonderful (it is when you're used to Windows', anyway) and Smart Playlists are also cool concepts; I have one setup for songs I've yet to play which I try to shrink day-by-day. Despite being far from a mac fanboy, I tell all my friends that iTunes is just nicer than whatever they use (WMPlayer, in some cases..).
What I love in movies is that if we are to believe Hollywood, incredibly high-res webcams are dotted around every location on earth, with which we can zoom in and pan around right onto the faces of our subjects, from anywhere, in crystal-clear hi-res display. You'd think these cameras everywhere would get irritating, but I plain don't notice them.
Also, this kind of approach means everyone follows the trend. You get posts modded to +40 just because someone sees it at +39 and doesn't read but thinks "this must be awesome!" - group think mentality at its worse. The digg comment system has made me appreciate Slashdot's more, despite me never participating as a mod (yet) here.
Ahhh, you're right. I guess I didn't consider it being like that. Either way though, in an ideal world I'd rather not see the ads on LJ or on billboards..
It shows up when I comment their entries and when I read other comments to that post. I just feel that unless I chose to see the ads, I shouldn't see any just because someone I know chose to instead.
The main issue I have with this is how, well, obvious it seems. Imagine your favourite cool indie band signs to a major record label, then releases a record full of a bad, radio-friendly MTV tracks. LJ has done the internet equivalent - "signed" to a big corporation, and "sold out" with the ads. Here's my beef:
When a user decides they want some of the paid features, without paying for them, they can choose to see ads on the LJ site and their pages in return for some of those features. That's fine by me - their choice. What is NOT fine by me is that when I view that person's LJ, I see the ads too. I didn't choose to sacrifice ads for new features, so why should I have to see them too? And now it seems that if I choose to employ adblocking software, I'm actually breaking the TOS? This is really lame of LJ to do, and I'd always respected them as a pretty cool company.
Their justification for needing the ads, as posted by Brad (site creator) was laughable, it didn't explain anything really, just said they've wanted to do it for a while. I think he forgot to say the word 'money'. There can't be any other reason that they're willing to sacrifice their integrity and ruin the look of their pages with big ugly google ads everywhere. I know that I really disliked adding ads to my own site, but we can't afford it, as poor college students, without them. Is it really the same for LJ?
I agree. The US's failure to sign really irks me purely because it actually affects me (or my kids, etc). If Bush wants to mess things up for US citizens, fine, do it, he's your leader, it's your country. But when he makes a decision that will affect the globe and has the arrogance to think that just because we've established habits and rely on certain quotas, the world will have to come second - that's when I get annoyed.
Myspace might be popular but it certainly isn't one of the "Top 10 Internet Sites". The coders have no idea regarding scalability (not that I claim to, either, but then my site gets 25,000 hits/month so it's not a huge concern), so the site breaks all the time. Add to that the hilariously lax controls over what can go on your profile (css, javascript and tracking cookies, anyone?) and it's amazing the site hasn't imploded. But mark my words, one day it will, and millions of voices will suddenly cry out in terror and will be suddenly silenced.
Um.. doesn't this miss the whole point of the internet? We use things like online news (as opposed to physical media) because they're live and up-to-the-minute in ways that recorded/printed media cannot be. Surely by making static copies of it (and doesn't this violate some kind of Intellectual Property - those dreaded words - laws?!) and then removing them from their interactive state, they're just making the digital equivalent of yesterday's paper? Bad move guys.
Haha, good point, I guess it never occured to me that it might be some kind of musical annotation, even though I am actually a longtime musician. Doh..
I feel like a total n00b. I spent all last summer learning php/MySQL to redesign my site, and I only now realise it's pronounced 'Sequel' as opposed to "S-Q-L" as I'd been mentally calling it. Similarly, it took me a Java course at university to learn how to say C#.. the issues of being a lonely geek without others to converse with (in real life) and learn proper pronunciations.
Hahaha, I just arrived at/. thinking "Hey, it's been April Fool's Day here for an hour and a half, maybe there'll be some of the usual shenanigans already", and yet I still did a double take at this. Nice work guys (and girls?!).
What really got me lately was playing older apps, in this case Lucasart's Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, that can't recover from a minimise to desktop (eg, you can't click back onto them and resume gameplay). I'd be midway through assaulting the Imperal Construction Yards when Windows Update would popup, stealing focus to tell me to restart. 20 minutes later, same story. Man, if Microsoft existed during the Rebellion, we'd all be under the thumb of the Empire.
Slashdot Mirror
His name is Linus Torvalds.
His name is Linus Torvalds.
In September 2004 my dad got a job working on-site at various national building jobs. It meant he'd be travelling around the country a lot and often had to stay away monday-friday since driving the 4+ hours back wasn't an option each day. He got promoted in around May but by that time it was becoming clear to my parents that their relationship had changed and they split in September. While there were obviously other factors that determined the split which I won't go into on /., the fact that my dad was out of the house most weekdays meant it already felt like he'd left and made it easier for my mum to decide she could make it alone (or at least, without my dad). If you do take this role, think hard about how it's gonna effect your family, because from my teenage point of view, it totally sucked.
This had to fail, if everyone who found code issues in Myspace's programming wanted $150,000 they'd be bankrupt by Monday.
If that's how they pass their variables, they certainly won't be MyBank.
That's not so far from the truth:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3006486.stm
Uhh, not sure how that quote ended up at the bottom there, apologies everyone.
On the other hand, someone posted on the University's newsgroup a message about another IDE, BlueJ. To quote some of the professors:
This response was the reason they switched us to using DrJava, since BlueJ apparently uses a visual representation of classes and objects to aid understanding. I'm in favour of IDEs for the ease of use but I think it's important to be aware of the other methods, just like anything else. I don't clean my clothes using a mangle and washboard, but I appreciate that people did (do?) and it's a useful option for learning how to clean my clothes properly when I can't get access to a washing machine (or something..).
I'm hoping that, this year, we don't get a similar number thinking
they've learned a language called DrJava
Hmm, this post is giving me some troubling thoughts about how I've designed my site.
I made it in this sequence:
- Made a complete HTML/CSS layout
- Made individual PHP pages to grab database stuff and output it in HTML
- Broke the layout into two files at the "content here" part
- Included file 1 as header.php and file 2 as footer.php in the appropriate place in each PHP file.
Later I realised this didn't allow me to customise the title attribute so I had to go back and split header.php again to allow me to define this in the php files after the queries (dynamic titles).
Now I end up with a ton of php files all doing similar stuff for a database frontend (eg, add feature_x, delete feature_x, edit feature_x, list feature_x etc) all full of html and stuff. It's messy and needs some improvement - any tips?
Matt
Nearby? 246 trillion miles is close now?!
This quote just sums up the extent to which Microsoft doesn't understand OSS:
"Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial..."
Surely 'commercial' is against the nature of open source? His use of "maturing" implies he believes open source software is an immature concept. Yeah, just wait till those hippies with ponytails wise up to the fact that they could be selling their software rather than, *gasp*, working on quality code for free !
A tad insensitive to link to these guys sites given that the vast majority of slashdotters were gonna visit them? Yeah, OK, ad revenue might be a factor, but given the choice, I'd rather my site stayed up and I earned nothing.
How hard would it have been to Coral-cache them, Taco? Or even host them?!
"A communication device which could be a lifesaver for miners"? We already have Myspace.
Wait, miners? Oops.
All you people saying you organise like /root/music/$genre/$artist/ are limiting yourself a little - I turn off the Genre browse option in iTunes because a) they're mostly labelled wrongly (in my mind) and b) I can't categorise most of my music into one label, unless I invent tons of hybrids. It'd make finding stuff a lot harder.
/Records/$Band Name/$Album Name/$Track # $Disc # $Song Name/ which works fine for me. It used to irritate me that it truncates filenames at times but then I realised I'm not really interfacing with the files themselves that much anyway. iTunes' search function is wonderful (it is when you're used to Windows', anyway) and Smart Playlists are also cool concepts; I have one setup for songs I've yet to play which I try to shrink day-by-day. Despite being far from a mac fanboy, I tell all my friends that iTunes is just nicer than whatever they use (WMPlayer, in some cases..).
All I do is let iTunes manage my files (there's options in the Advanced tab). It automatically adds music to the 'Records' folder I have, in this format:
What I love in movies is that if we are to believe Hollywood, incredibly high-res webcams are dotted around every location on earth, with which we can zoom in and pan around right onto the faces of our subjects, from anywhere, in crystal-clear hi-res display. You'd think these cameras everywhere would get irritating, but I plain don't notice them.
Also, this kind of approach means everyone follows the trend. You get posts modded to +40 just because someone sees it at +39 and doesn't read but thinks "this must be awesome!" - group think mentality at its worse. The digg comment system has made me appreciate Slashdot's more, despite me never participating as a mod (yet) here.
Ahhh, you're right. I guess I didn't consider it being like that. Either way though, in an ideal world I'd rather not see the ads on LJ or on billboards..
It shows up when I comment their entries and when I read other comments to that post. I just feel that unless I chose to see the ads, I shouldn't see any just because someone I know chose to instead.
The main issue I have with this is how, well, obvious it seems. Imagine your favourite cool indie band signs to a major record label, then releases a record full of a bad, radio-friendly MTV tracks. LJ has done the internet equivalent - "signed" to a big corporation, and "sold out" with the ads. Here's my beef:
When a user decides they want some of the paid features, without paying for them, they can choose to see ads on the LJ site and their pages in return for some of those features. That's fine by me - their choice. What is NOT fine by me is that when I view that person's LJ, I see the ads too. I didn't choose to sacrifice ads for new features, so why should I have to see them too? And now it seems that if I choose to employ adblocking software, I'm actually breaking the TOS? This is really lame of LJ to do, and I'd always respected them as a pretty cool company.
Their justification for needing the ads, as posted by Brad (site creator) was laughable, it didn't explain anything really, just said they've wanted to do it for a while. I think he forgot to say the word 'money'. There can't be any other reason that they're willing to sacrifice their integrity and ruin the look of their pages with big ugly google ads everywhere. I know that I really disliked adding ads to my own site, but we can't afford it, as poor college students, without them. Is it really the same for LJ?
I agree. The US's failure to sign really irks me purely because it actually affects me (or my kids, etc). If Bush wants to mess things up for US citizens, fine, do it, he's your leader, it's your country. But when he makes a decision that will affect the globe and has the arrogance to think that just because we've established habits and rely on certain quotas, the world will have to come second - that's when I get annoyed.
Myspace might be popular but it certainly isn't one of the "Top 10 Internet Sites". The coders have no idea regarding scalability (not that I claim to, either, but then my site gets 25,000 hits/month so it's not a huge concern), so the site breaks all the time. Add to that the hilariously lax controls over what can go on your profile (css, javascript and tracking cookies, anyone?) and it's amazing the site hasn't imploded. But mark my words, one day it will, and millions of voices will suddenly cry out in terror and will be suddenly silenced.
Um.. doesn't this miss the whole point of the internet? We use things like online news (as opposed to physical media) because they're live and up-to-the-minute in ways that recorded/printed media cannot be. Surely by making static copies of it (and doesn't this violate some kind of Intellectual Property - those dreaded words - laws?!) and then removing them from their interactive state, they're just making the digital equivalent of yesterday's paper? Bad move guys.
Haha, good point, I guess it never occured to me that it might be some kind of musical annotation, even though I am actually a longtime musician. Doh..
I feel like a total n00b. I spent all last summer learning php/MySQL to redesign my site, and I only now realise it's pronounced 'Sequel' as opposed to "S-Q-L" as I'd been mentally calling it. Similarly, it took me a Java course at university to learn how to say C#.. the issues of being a lonely geek without others to converse with (in real life) and learn proper pronunciations.
Hahaha, I just arrived at /. thinking "Hey, it's been April Fool's Day here for an hour and a half, maybe there'll be some of the usual shenanigans already", and yet I still did a double take at this. Nice work guys (and girls?!).
What really got me lately was playing older apps, in this case Lucasart's Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, that can't recover from a minimise to desktop (eg, you can't click back onto them and resume gameplay). I'd be midway through assaulting the Imperal Construction Yards when Windows Update would popup, stealing focus to tell me to restart. 20 minutes later, same story. Man, if Microsoft existed during the Rebellion, we'd all be under the thumb of the Empire.