| last updated:03 May 2004 10:49 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 02 May 2004) | View Other Weeks |
| Saving contents of CRichEditCtrl in VC++ | Sun 02 May | Andrew Scott |
| All, Using Visual Studio C++ .net Un-managed code (not using .net) I have a standard Document/View app. The majority of the page is taken up by a CRichEditCtrl. I would like to save the contents using the seralize method provided in the Doc. However, the msdn examples for saving the contents of a CRichEditCtrl show opening the file and providing the callback function. This is giving me a bit of trouble as the CArchive already has the file open and reading and writing to it cause errors. I am a bit of newbie to MFC. I was rocking along until I hit this little snag. Thanks in advance! |
| Sun 02 May | Dave B. | You might try obtaining the CFile object from the CArchive object using CArchive's member function GetFile. Then use that particular CFile object in your callback to implement the read/write to the file. |
| Sun 02 May | Andrew Scott | Dave, You know, I did that around 12:30pm today and I had some problems with file persmissions (?). So I tried about five other ideas. After reading your comment I decided to try it again and behold! It worked! Evidently I did something wrong. Thanks for the comment! Andrew |
| Tried Outlining program on easel pads? | Sun 02 May | Mr. Analogy |
| Has anyone ever tried writing thier program outline (schema, types, classes, etc.) on easel pad sheets and posting those on the wall for easy reference? Im working on the architecture of a series of a dozen or so programs thatll reuse a basic structure. Im finding that I spend a lot of time flipping back and forth between type definitions, classes, etc. Im thinking of using something like these: Avery® Write-On Cling Sheets, 27 x 34, Plain White Paper http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=888321 You can stick em on any wall and write on em in eraseable or permanent marker. Anyone tried this? Anyone tried this particular product? Any helpful hints of what worked or didnt? (And if anyones interested, Ill report back how they work for ME). |
| Sun 02 May | John | I was in a session where something like that was used. The pad was on a easel and when a page was filled it was stuck up on the wall so we had all the pages visible at the same time. I don't recall anyone writing on the pages once they were off the easel so I don't know if that would work. I thought it workrd great. |
| Sun 02 May | JWA | Mr. A - If this is something that's going to stay around for a while, you could also do up the diagrams/tables/etc. and have them printed in large format on a plotter. Most Kinkos, etc. have the ability to do this. I like printing them to 11x17, as that's big enough to show the detail I want and small enough to be manageable. --Josh |
| Sun 02 May | Philo | Cheap solution: print to multiple pages and tape them together (invest in a roller cutter from staples - huge time save in trimming edges) Cooler solution, good investment if clients visit your office - print at Kinko's. They have a good setup where you can upload the file via their website and just go pick it up. It wasn't too expensive either. Best, but most expensive solution: invest in a large-format printer (eBay!) Philo |
| Sun 02 May | Mr. Analogy | Actually, I want a tool that won't get in the way of the thinking. So, I'd prefer to write on the large sheets, rather than entering them in the computer and printing them. That also lets me modify things. But, good suggestions if I do print them out. |
| My windows system have crashed out. | Sun 02 May | Victor NOAGBODJI |
| Hi all. My computer(win98) has crashed out 2 days ago, and I couldnt launch my computer anymore. I have copied some ms-dos file from c:\windows\command\ into the root directory so that I can enter ms-dos (but strangely I can still view windows logo at startup). I dont know if a computer can crashed out with no reason a day, but mine is quite strange. The sub-directories of c:\windows have changed into some ascii characters such as does with alt+xxx. I dont know if its a virus, do I have any chance of losing some files? ( I think that since the computer is not working no information is copied to memory so there is no activity, so, if it is a virus, it cant do anything to my files, except that Im wrong). If it is a virus, then the antivirus AVG is not a good one. As I have copied randomly dos files in the root dir(to be able to launch ms-dos) , I would like to know what are the real necessary files? And also, how to set the volume level in dos? Thanks for all, in advance. |
| Sun 02 May | Eric Debois | Yesterday it worked Today it is not working Windows is like that ( http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/error-haiku.html ) |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | Could be almost anything. If you keep AVG up-to-date it should catch any virus. It might even be a video card problem. My advice is to copy all documents you don't have a copy of as quickly as possible., and keep them safe. Then try troubleshooting from safe mode, if you can. If that doesn't help try restoring Windows on top of itself. If you have no luck with that, then try a clean format and reinstall. |
| Sun 02 May | message poster | You have automatic windows updates? Could be the 100% cpu problem? |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | You mean this 100% CPU problem that only affects Windows 2000? http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=841382 (Read the original post... not running Windows 2000.) |
| Sun 02 May | someone | what was that command again to start windows from dos? win.exe? Try that. |
| Rate - Part 2 | Sun 02 May | AnonAnonAnon |
| I have noticed that in the past two years, rates in the north east USA have stabilized to an $40/hr or $80/hr. You can still negotiate with people you had in the network, but new clients seem to be saying they have two scales. One for programmers and one for technical support staff. Is anyone else been going through the market and seeing this? One of my clients mentioned this is a by product of the vendor management firms that came through a couple of years ago. With exclusive agreements with companies they just refuse to present anyone who want more, regardless of qualifications or experience. Worse, according to her, is many companies do not even know that candidates are being filtered out because of it. I am not sure a company would care, unless _no_ candidates were available. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | Are you saying that programmrs now get a standard rate of 80 and tech support 40? 40 seems REAL good for tech support if you mean answering the phone. Or do you mean doing stuff on site, troubleshooting and crimping cables and such? |
| Sun 02 May | T. Norman | Are the $40 and $80 referring to the rate paid by the client, or the rate paid to the individual doing the work? |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | It has to be the individual. I've never heard of a broker charging as little as $80 for programming. |
| Sun 02 May | AnonAnonAnon | This is the rate to the individual. In this case support is on-site desktop, lan support. |
| Is it unprofessional of me to ask the rate? | Sun 02 May | Thanks for any help. |
| I am being considered for a contract, and the hourly rate they continuously quote me seems low ($40). I keep insisting on my #s (50-60), but they say that they just cant give me that. So, I get this email Friday stating We will give you $40 an hour and your resume is in front of the client. Whooaaa, I didnt think that we were finished negotiating numbers and now the resume is in front of the client? I think 25% would be a fair cut of the rate. Is it unprofessional for me to ask what the rate is for the contract? Is there a tactful way of doing this? Secondly, what should I do about the already presented to the client situation? |
| Sun 02 May | Li-fan Chen | Either they can't afford it (unlikely) or they are trying to low ball you... what do you think you will do if you aren't forced to deal with them? |
| Sun 02 May | Thanks for any help. | More than likely, at $40 an hour I will just stay at my present job. I've told her repeatedly, that I was unemployed for 7 months up until August, and with this SIX month gig, they're going to have to pay me something significantly over my current salary to even consider it. Part of me is so pissed off that they went ahead and submitted my resume, that I want to hold off, do the interview, hopefully get the nod for the job, and then complain about the money. That would put them in a real bind. |
| Sun 02 May | Philo | It doesn't matter what the recruiter is getting on the contract. Period. Forget that interchange even exists. *All* that matters is the rate you negotiate with the recruiter. If you want 50-60, then tell them you want 60, period. If they say they can't do that, thank them and go on your merry way. Hopefully they would at least *try* to negotiate, though my experience seems to be that *that* fine art is dead in recruitingville. Well, not quite. Recruiter negotiation seems to work like this: 'We've been trying to fill this position for months, and you have a pretty unique skillset the client is looking for. We can offer you 40.' 'I really need 60 to consider the job.' 'We can't really go higher than 40.' 'This kind of position should pay 60 if you want the right candidate.' 'Yes, but you know, with the recession and all, rates aren't what they used to be.' 'I know - I used to bill 120. I'm asking for 60.' 'Let me talk to the client...' [next day] 'We can offer you 42.' [shrug] BTW, the recruiting agency really shot itself in the foot by putting your resume in front of the client before you'd settled on a rate. Now I'd *definitely* stick with 55-60 and hope the client really loves you, because that puts the recruiter in the wonderful situation of either trying to pay your rate or piss off the client. Did I mention it doesn't matter what the recruiter is getting? Whether they're getting 45 or 120, if they won't pay the rate you want, walk away. Philo |
| Sun 02 May | Inside Job | It is actually the professional thing to ask what the recruiter is getting, but they will do everything they can to avoid telling you. Tell them the rate you require and, if they don't provide it, leave. They will probably come back with some small compromise, at which you could leave again. Up to you. Only do this if you are prepared to miss out on the job. It sounds like you are. Philo, it matters a great deal what the recruiter's cut is. If the employer is paying a high rate, he will expect appropriate recognition and effort from the contractor. Thus it's vital the contractor knows whether he is a high value expenditure. (If so, the recruiter will fight even harder to avoid revealing it.) More important is to be responsible for your own presence. Only a dill would happily let someone screw them out of a lot money. |
| Sun 02 May | Inside Job | Recruiters usually emphasise that the rates are confidential and will intimate legal action if they're discussed. That's absolute baloney. Imagine the court case. All the details would come out. No recruiter wants that. One way to find out your rate - if you're already working - is to say to your boss: 'I get paid $40 per hour.' Is that significantly less than you're paying for me?' Uusally it will be. |
| Sun 02 May | Joe | No, you're not being unprofessional. In fact, I think you're being VERY PROFESSIONAL, because you're negotiating from a hard stance. So, if they even so much as HINT that you're behaving unprofessionally, when in fact, you are not, then find another agent. If you know what you're worth, then what they think doesn't matter. What you're trying to do is get your max rates. Isn't that what contracting agents do? :) Unless you're in the business of losing money, then I say, stick to your guns. No one else will ever try to represent your best interests, if it takes from their margin. So, as a free-agent, make them value your time. And, be willing to walk away, if you feel it's unfair. Good luck..! |
| Sun 02 May | Matt Conrad | Like Philo says, there's no need to ask the rate they're getting, it just clouds the issue. Not your worry. They sound like weenies. Keep that in mind as you decide whether you want to start working for them. If they're acting like weenies during the interviewing, they'll probably find ways to be weenies down the road. Make sure any rate you accept makes up for this. I'd be ready to walk away from this one. |
| Sun 02 May | gladiator | Well, since the placer started the ball rolling by presenting you to the client, I'd go through with any interview that might be scheduled. But DO NOT suggest to the placer that this rate issue is settled. If the client wants you after an interview, you will hold ALL the cards when the rate negotiation resumes, and further, you will know the client's name and how to eventually contact them if rate negotiations with the placer collapse. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Forbes | Ultimately, whether going through a recruiter or not, you need to know what cost the customer is incurring having you, because in the end you need to give them a feeling that they're getting value. If the customer is paying substantially more than you're getting, they'll be under much higher expectations of returns than you might believe the position entails (and hence reduce your personal effort accordingly). |
| Sun 02 May | Bored Bystander | Gad, nothing is new. Read this. http://www.it-proletariat.com/HowToBeAnIC.html The entire reason for existence of a contract technical recruiter (broker) is to optimize his income by finding the lowest billing person that meets the client's stated needs for a contract. They need VB and 2 years of experience, you have 5 years of VB and 9 years of C++? Doesn't matter. In fact, the broker will probably consider the less experienced person because they won't demand as high a rate. It's not unprofessional to ask the rate, but negotiation in this domain is futile unless you're willing to walk away from the deal entirely. As far as the billing rate 'not mattering', it DOES matter because if the bork is marking you up by 100% or more (say charging $80 while paying you $40) the client will expect a much higher level of expertise than is indicated by the rate you're being paid. IE, a high markup can make the contract relationship unstable. |
| Sun 02 May | gladiator | It's important to recognize that the placer's rate is not the negotiating point, but a decoupled piece of trivia. Don't get too focused on that number. You are negotiating the lease of your skills and time for a rate that makes it worth your time. Your aim is to beat your opportunity cost (albeit, by as much as possible). The placer's rate serves only as a guide for how much your services are truly worth to the client, not a negotiating point. Learn the rate when you reach the client, it's easy enough to discover. What's relevant to you right now is not settling for less than your minimum, whatever that might be. The lower you go, the shorter you should allow the term of the contract. If you're hard up for the work, then maybe take a low rate for a short term, and renegotiate harder when they'd like to renew. But don't let them screw you. As others have said, be ready to walk away. Ultimately, your goal should be to build a network, so you and your clients aren't reliant upon the pimps. |
| Sun 02 May | son of parnas | I think you should know the rate you are being billed at because it has to do with client expectations. If you are at 40 and they are getting billed at 120, they might have different expectations about your skill and productivity. |
| Sun 02 May | T. Norman | Not only will the gross rate the client pays affect their expectations, but it will also influence who gets chopped when things get tight. The guy who makes $40 while being billed at $60 will have less to worry about than you who are making $40 and being billed at $100. |
| Sun 02 May | Unfocused Focused | Lots of good advice here, pick your ground and stick to it. You stated if you don't get your price then you stay with what you're working on. You also stated that your resume is with the potential client and they are interested. This is the best spot to be in with your negotiations. Just remember, what's the point of moving if you're not the one getting benefit from it. On professionalism - my general rule of thumb is that when someone starts mentioning professionalism in negotiation, it's a good sign that I'm already exhibiting it and they're trying to get me to make a choice that is NOT professional. Specifically one that benefits them and not me. And on the rate thing - definately know what the client is going to pay - that's the level of work you're going to be exptected to deliver. There are lots of other items to consider, but that's the factor that you should keep in mind at all times. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | Given that placement agencies prefer to place underqualified persons willing to work for the lowest rate, while billing them out as subject matter expert's for a king's ransom, why do you suppose it is that companies use placement agencies? They are paying a premium to get the most desparate bottom of the barrel candidates? Wouldn't it make much more sense to pay that ransom to the contractors directly and thus attract a much higher caliber of professional? |
| Sun 02 May | T. Norman | Yes, it would make more sense. But the powers that be in this industry aren't driven by logic. It's driven by CYA and hype. There is better (perceived) CYA safety when they deal with an agency than with a contractor directly. Just like there is more CYA safety when they spend $10 million for supported proprietary software instead of using 'unsupported' open source software to do the same thing. |
| Sun 02 May | son of parnas | >Wouldn't it make much more sense to pay that ransom > to the contractors directly and thus attract a > much higher caliber of professional? Would ebay have made it if this was an easy thing to do? Middlepeople have a role in economies. |
| Sun 02 May | gladiator | Absolutely, CYA. Companies don't make choices, individuals do. They're not spending they're own money, but if they make the search themselves, they *do* risk something of their own: reputation. Also, they're generally too lazy or stupid to do the legwork to make a search that they would feel safe to attach their own name to. To lazy or stupid to do anything but follow the common practice where they work. Etc. The higher-ups are often too stupid or careless to realize that a lucky placement here and there doesn't justify an exclusive placing deal, or else they're just doling out those deals to firms owned by their friends as part of the driving force of the corporate world: deal-trading among the boys networks. I've found the most diligent clients were small business owners spending their own money. Especially when first considering the use of paid consultants they tend to be very timid and noncommital. With them, it's sometimes wise to offer a discount or weekly terms until they feel safe, because they're frightened to risk their hard-earned money or blow the business opportunity they need your help with. Your corporate middle-manager types just flippantly request the company-sanctioned body-finding firm to send an X, Y, or Z for three months, perhaps with a single short interview to feign diligence. Nice and safe. Stupid too. |
| Sun 02 May | Thanks for any help. | Thanks for all of the great advice. I think I will hold out three days as if I didn't receive the email regarding that she had presented my resume. After the three days, I will ask what the going rate is for the contract. A few days later, I will restart the negotiations arguing expectations, my incurred risk of leaving a salaried position, etc. She sounded pretty firm, for everytime I have rebutted with my numbers, she has come back that 40 is the max. But we'll see.... |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | By the way, if she didn't get your permission first before presenting the resume, that is considered by most to be quite unethical behavior by a broker. Something to consider if you are wanting to predict what sort of tactics she is likely to use in the future. |
| Sun 02 May | Contractor who knows better | Sounds like this recruiter b*tch is treating you like their current employee. Recruiters lie and are scum, and stupid techies without integrity or loyalty to their own kind lambast anyone who speaks this truth. |
| Sun 02 May | Inside Job | You won't be able to 'talk' her into anything reasonable. She does this all day every day and knows every trick in the book. Your only leverage is to refuse the job, so you must simply set limits and leave if they're not met. No stuffing around. |
| Sun 02 May | Inside Job | Dennis > Wouldn't it make much more sense to pay that ransom to the contractors directly and thus attract a much higher caliber of professional? The reason recruiters exist and continue in business is that they spend all day on the phone finding jobs and then offering candidates to fill them. It's the path of least resistance for employers. |
| Sun 02 May | Sam Livingston-Gray | I'm with Philo: their premium is none of your business, and asking them for it only makes the discussion more complicated. You can probably find out once you decide to take the job, but the only thing that really matters to you is what they pay you. Don't bother 'holding out' or pretending you didn't get that email -- because that *is* unprofessional. Just call the agent on her BS. Personally, I'd go to the interview as a courtesy to the client, but make very clear to the agent that $40 is not enough, period. Having a job already gives you a very nice position to bargain from. As 'Inside Job' points out, your only leverage is to refuse the job... but what a lever it is! Either you don't get the offer, in which case it's all moot, or you do, and then the agent -- not you -- is in a tight squeeze (and best of all, it's one she put herself in). At that point, assuming you don't cave in, she can either keep the rate she quoted to the client so she can pay you extra, or she can change the rate on the client (which may cause them to bail, leaving you with... a decent job you've already got). Doing that would probably make this the last job you got through this particular agent, and that too is a good thing, because she doesn't sound like someone you'd ever want to work with. No matter what happens, you win! Treat it like buying a car -- you have to be absolutely prepared to walk out the door at *any* point during the process, even if you're two minutes from the end. |
| Sun 02 May | Mr. Analogy | My, limited, experience has been that technical recruiters are young, attractive women. I've known two of them personally. Nice girls, but didn't know squat about technical matters. They were very cheery and positive. Is this common? |
| Sun 02 May | Inside Job | Philo and Sam, I will sell your house for you. You don't need to know how much I actually get for your house; I will give you something you considerable acceptable. OK? You might not understand market rates in your area or for your house, in which case I will pocket $300,000 above what I pay you. OK? Mr Analogy, a lot of recruiters are attractive women, for obvious reasons. There are also plenty of guys though. Generally these people will be your best friend until you question or challenge them. Then they reveal another side. The bigger recruiting firms are the worst. They don't become big by being honest or nice. |
| disabling ctrl-alt-del? | Sun 02 May | Eric Debois |
| Hey, Imagine you have a bookstore, and you want to make a PC available to the customers for searching and stuff. You want to use a webpage, but lock it down so the users cant exit IE, which is in fullscreen mode. (The kind of fullscreen you can get with javascript where there is no browser widgets visible at all) Remove the delete key? Use linux? General advice on tamper-proofing a public machine also appreciated. |
| Sun 02 May | Li-fan Chen | Look up zbdesk on sourceforge.net. It's part of the Zeiberbude project and is responsible for the locking of Win32 clients. The implementation is in C++. |
| Sun 02 May | Matthew Lock | You could remove the hard drive from the machine and custom roll your own Linux that will boot of a CD and connect to a web site, like Knoppix. That way if anything went wrong just reboot the machine. Alternatively there is this 'HDD Sheriff' product which apparently wipes and resets the machine back to its original state on reboot. I have never used it however: http://www.kelvin.com/ts_hddsheriff.html |
| Sun 02 May | Philo | 'The kind of fullscreen you can get with javascript where there is no browser widgets visible at all' Any reason not to use iexplore -k ? Philo |
| Sun 02 May | Al C | Hi, just a couple general suggestions if you use Windows 2000 or XP. Run Internet Explorer in kiosk mode (iexplore -k optional_url). Create a user and use group policy editor (gpedit.msc in the run box) to further limit that user. Definitely educate yourself on GPE; It's a very powerful tool. Al |
| Sun 02 May | Philo | Whoops, forgot to answer the question: if we're talking Windows XP Pro, Start, Run, gpedit.msc There are a whole lotta options there you'll want to lock down. I'm not sure if you can *disable* Ctrl/Alt/Del, but you can turn off everything except 'Shut Down' and 'Cancel' and you can set a policy that prevents the logged-in user from having permission to shut down... Philo |
| Sun 02 May | Eric Debois | OK, sounds good. Thanks |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | I wouldn't normally ask this, but seeing that the point has come up, how to I get a shortcut to a web page to open the browser in kiosk mode? |
| Sun 02 May | Ori Berger | Make the shortcut run "iexplore -k <url>" instead of making the shortcut to the URL itself ..... (the icon may differ, though) |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | Thanks; actually the inverted commas have to go before the -k switch or it won't work. That is to say 'C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE' -k D:\default.asp.html and not 'C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE -k D:\default.asp.html' which isn't a valid target. Now what I'm trying to find out is a way to close the page in kiosk mode on machines where control + alt + delete is disabled (and no, Eric, I can't rememer offhand how I did it, but if you use the group policy snap on you'll find it there). Incidentally, if you don't have a domain the group policy snap settings will apply to all users. The way to get round it is to use the snap on to configure what you want, but making sure you still keep run working, and then export the registry key it has created, and then undo the settings. Then later import the settings into the current user registry. |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | If it's XP Pro, then enable remote desktop. Run "mstsc /console" and then connect to the console session of XP. Log in as the admin, as opposed to the kiosk user, which will cause the kiosk user's session to terminate forcefully. |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | Thanks but not practical. I have 45 computers and they are locked down so that the users can only access the apps on the desktop and the start menu only has shut down and log off, and all of the shortcut keys are disabled (I hope). The students have no access to the file menu or any of the drives except in one small application, where they can't do any damage. What I want to do is add some exercises which can be saved as web pages, but not allow them to get anything from the IE Explorer menu bar. In other words a partial kiosk mode. However I do want them to be able to terminate the application so as to be able to get back to the desktop. I have no control over the controls on the web pages, which are created by the exercise authoring program. Any ideas? |
| Sun 02 May | Marcus | Could you open the websites inside a frame and have a javascript:close()-link in a small top/bottom-frame while opening the excerises in the fullsized frame, while running -k? |
| Sun 02 May | Li-fan Chen | Check out Philo's suggestion. Investigate the various options of IE, it does have kiosk modes (fine tunable, although I forgot where the settings are documented) although it might not be what you need, but check it out anyway (you may need to turn of Javascript when in reality you need it for example). Netscape/Mozilla also have kiosk modes switches. |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | It's finding where fine tuning the kiosk modes are documentable that is the problem. The truth is that Microsoft security is like a Swiss cheese. You can run in kiosk mode but if there is a graphic on the page up pops the toolbar from the Windows fax viewer or whatever and you can then open the My Pictures Folder and go on from there. So of course, if you've set kiosk mode up on 180 machines you then have to go back and find a way of disabling the fax viewer (not even sure it's possible) for the lot. |
| Sun 02 May | Think before you post | Geez Stephen, you're new at this aren't you? Please don't confuse your lack of knowledge/experience for a system shortcoming. I'm not sure there are any admins who'll bother replying here and, quite frankly, I couldn't be bothered educating you so I'll leave the solution to this non-problem for you to research (research which, BTW, should have been conducted before displaying your ignorance to the world) |
| Another look at the search engine world | Sun 02 May | Seun Osewa (afriguru.com) |
| Sun 02 May | Jorel on Software | What points? |
| Sun 02 May | Ankur | 'Influence'? Microsoft wants to enter the search space in order to maximize shareholder value. That's what public corporations do. |
| Sun 02 May | Seun Osewa (afriguru.com) | Corporations are not mindless robots, they are managed people. By "infleunce" I meant "market domination" which, you would agree, really helps Microsoft to provide shareholder value :-P |
| Answering Machine (MsCOMM) | Sun 02 May | Sh0rt |
| I am trying to design a application for call center, using MsCOMM (no TAPI) in VB6. It is able to dial & Recieve calls, (Most of Codes are CUT & PASTE ;). But now i want to record the conversartion. So, please guide me how to record a comuunication ( if possible in some compressed format ). Code As follows : Option Explicit flow control variables. Strings for now. Integers taking enumerated constants would be better eg. Const phSending = 0 Const phReceiving = 1 Dim Phase As String Dim Stage As String Dim ReceiveBuffer As String Const ReceivingInterval = 100 Private Sub Command1_Click() Dim strBuffer As String Dim i As Integer MSComm1.Settings = 56000,N,8,1 MSComm1.CommPort = 2 MSComm1.InputLen = 0 Default anyway MSComm1.RThreshold = 1 Fire OnComm event with a single character in input buffer MSComm1.PortOpen = True Transact ATE0, 500 command to tell the modem not to echo the AT back Stage = Initialising Modem End Sub Sub Transact(SendText As String, TimeOut As Integer) WriteLog Sending: & SendText Timer1.Interval = TimeOut milliseconds ReceiveBuffer = MSComm1.Output = SendText & vbCr Timer1.Enabled = True Phase = Sending End Sub Private Sub Timer1_Timer() Dim strBuffer As String WriteLog Timer: Interval: & Timer1.Interval & Stage: & Stage & Phase: & Phase Select Case Phase Case Sending WriteLog Nothing Received Case Receiving strBuffer = TrimBoth(ReceiveBuffer) WriteLog Received: & strBuffer Select Case Stage Case Initialising Modem If Right$(strBuffer, 2) = OK Then Transact ATS0=2, 300 Set Modem S0 register to 2 (Answer on two rings) Stage = Setting S Reg Phase = Sending Else WriteLog Modem not responding End If Case Setting S Reg Select Case Left$(strBuffer, 2) Case OK Stage = Listening Phase = Receiving Listen 300 Case Else some sort of error End Select Case Listening Select Case strBuffer Case OK Case RING WriteLog Incoming call Case CONNECT The connect message may have some protocol information appended. WriteLog Connected End Select End Select End Select Timer1.Enabled = False End Sub Function TrimRight(Intext As String) As String strip blanks, tabs, line feeds etc from end of string Dim Text As String Text = Intext If Len(Intext) > 0 Then Do While Asc(Right$(Text, 1)) <= 32 Text = Left$(Text, Len(Text) - 1) Loop TrimRight = Text End If End Function Private Sub MSComm1_OnComm() WriteLog OnComm: & MSComm1.CommEvent Select Case MSComm1.CommEvent Case comEvSend 1 Send event. Case comEvReceive 2 Receive event. Phase = Receiving ReceiveBuffer = ReceiveBuffer & MSComm1.Input WriteLog ReceiveBuffer: & ReceiveBuffer Timer1.Enabled = False Timer1.Interval = ReceivingInterval Timer1.Enabled = True Case comEvCTS 3 Change in clear-to-send line. Case comEvDSR 4 Change in data-set ready line. Case comEvCD 5 Change in carrier detect line. Case comEvRing 6 Ring detect. Case comEvEOF 7 End of file. errors Case comEventBreak 1001 A Break signal was received. Case comEventFrame 1004 Framing Error. The hardware detected a framing error. Case comEventOverrun 1006 Port Overrun. A character was not read from the hardware before the next character arrived and was lost. Case comEventRxOver 1008 Receive Buffer Overflow. There is no room in the receive buffer. Case comEventRxParity 1009 Parity Error. The hardware detected a parity error. Case comEventTxFull 1010 Transmit Buffer Full. The transmit buffer was full while trying to queue a character. Case comEventDCB 1011 Unexpected error retrieving Device Control Block (DCB) for the port. End Select End Sub Function TrimLeft(Intext As String) As String Dim Text As String If Len(Intext) > 0 Then Text = Intext Do While Asc(Text) <= 32 Text = Mid$(Text, 2) Loop TrimLeft = Text End If End Function Function TrimBoth(Intext As String) As String TrimBoth = TrimLeft(TrimRight(Intext)) End Function Sub WriteLog(Text As String) This could be modified to write to a log file Dim strBuffer As String strBuffer = TrimBoth(Text) If Len(strBuffer) > 0 Then Debug.Print Now & & strBuffer End If End Sub Sub Listen(TimeOut As Integer) WriteLog Listening: & TimeOut & millisecs Timer1.Interval = TimeOut milliseconds ReceiveBuffer = Timer1.Enabled = True Phase = Receiving End Sub |
| Sun 02 May | no name | Do you want us to send that to Bangalore? |
| Sun 02 May | someone | look at this site: http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/VB/Code/vbMedia/Audio/index.asp |
| The "Big Ball of Mud" pattern | Sat 01 May | Kalani |
| I stumbled on this article recently (via lambda the ultimate) and thought that it was a pretty fair characterization of the majority of software out there: http://www.joeyoder.com/papers/patterns/BBOM/mud.html |
| Sat 01 May | PooNanny | Personally, I like "Puddle of Mudd". |
| Sat 01 May | Matthew Lock | Have you noticed how computer programs are like the cables at the back of your computer. You start off with the intention of keeping all the wires tangle free but each new cable you add gets the wiring into more and more of a tangle. Programs seem to be the same, you start off with a clean design but each new feature you add causes more and more tangles in the design until it's a big tangle of connections between the components in the program. |
| Sat 01 May | son of parnas | Yes, i think this is the perhaps the best paper ever. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | This has come up a few times before here. Don't miss the original article that covers it in glorious hilarity and impeccable detail: http://www.laputan.org/mud/ It's not always an antipattern. It's actually a very useful one and many times is one of the most effective approaches to design - note for example, nearly all successful software in the world, which uses this pattern. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | Nevermind my link, it's to the same article as the first one posted; I was waiting for the first one to load. |
| Sun 02 May | Erik | [It's actually a very useful one and many times is one of the most effective approaches to design - note for example, nearly all successful software in the world, which uses this pattern.] Surely you are joking, right? I mean, that it is actually an approach to design? And that all succesful software 'uses' this pattern? As opposed to suffering from it? And still being succesful in spite of it? Please tell me that is what you meant. |
| Sun 02 May | Tayssir John Gabbour | A good property of the big ball of mud is that when you add something to it, it's still a ball of mud. So you can add work to parts which are currently deficient. This is incremental growth. I think Common Lisp is a useful case study; it supports syntactic abstraction, so when you add stuff to it, you're really just growing a ball of mud. So one thing to do is prune stuff, and reshape things to be more robust. Weird things evolve; instead of a bunch of for(;;) loops, there's basically an uber-sublanguage called loop, which seems to package together a lot of iteration that people generally want. (Keeps people from going out and reinventing for(;;), I guess.) I hear the Smalltalkers have their own take on it... I should learn it because the next wave of languages will probably look a lot like Smalltalk. |
| Sun 02 May | Dennis Atkins | > Surely you are joking, right? Not at all - read the article to be enlightened to the advantages of the mud ball. > I mean, that it is actually an approach to design? Yes, and these fine fellow are at long last giving the world's most popular software architecture a proper name. > And that all succesful software 'uses' this pattern? Not all but most. > As opposed to suffering from it? That too. > And still being succesful in spite of it? Ahh, now you understand, grasshopper. > Please tell me that is what you meant. Ball of Mud is here to stay. Ball of Mud won't go away. Ball of Mud is our Design. To the Mud we are resigned. |
| Sun 02 May | Mr.Roboto | 'Ball of Mud is here to stay. Ball of Mud won't go away. Ball of Mud is our Design. To the Mud we are resigned.' Dennis, I think you may have missed your true calling. |
| Project David a Hoax? | Sat 01 May | K |
| Remember SpecOpLabs? This was the company that claimed to run any windows software on linux. I visited their website and it has all the makings of a hoax. Apart from a writeup on david (the one who slaying goliath), they are not providing some details on how they can actually accomplish it. No screenshots even. I just wonder how its possible that so many got conned without even asking questions?, The WINE Team has been working since 1983 and they dont have a working version yet which can simulate windows programs. Check their website (Google SpecOplabs) . |
| Sat 01 May | K | Actually theu do have some sparse details. They are not any more beliveable than the Google Piegon technology hoax |
| Sat 01 May | Li-Chen Fan | >>'The WINE Team has been working since 1983' Wow......8 years before Linux was created. They really got a head start on it. |
| Sat 01 May | Emperor Norton | WINE started in 1993. http://www.winehq.com/site/docs/wine-faq/index#WHATS-THE-HISTORY-OF-WINE |
| Sat 01 May | repu | "1983" ...and 7 years before Windows became more than a sparkle in Bill's glasses. |
| Sun 02 May | K | yes i meant 1993. typo. that was not the point which you missed. |
| Sun 02 May | Leauki (Andrew J. Brehm) | I don't use Wine often but it does seem to work. |
| Know what I want in a cell phone? | Sat 01 May | Philo |
| I want a phone where, if the caller ID doesnt click, it at least indicates where the call is originating from based on area code & exchange. [and if anyone knows how to get this, let me know!] Philo |
| Sat 01 May | andrew | Caller ID helps to identify (filter) the caller and to chase up missed calls. I can think of two situations when the caller ID is absent: 1) Caller ID disabled to maintain privacy. My sister is a police officer and does not want to give her 'clientele' access to her phone number. Geographical caller ID at the receiver’s discretion is a breach of privacy. What if the caller could specify an arbitrary caller ID (that does not reveal a phone number)? It wouldn’t help with missed calls but does give you some ID. 2) Caller’s phone system doesn’t support caller ID. I've never experienced a PABX that propagates caller ID (I often see the main switch number). I suppose that new systems support this feature but not everyone has the latest. Perhaps the telco could implement a caller ID mapping that at the very least provides you with a main switch number. This would give some coarse-grained identification. It might help with missed calls… “Good morning, Monolithic Inc. How may I help you?” “Um, did you just call me???” …or not. |
| Sat 01 May | Philo | I just mean that instead of getting 952-555-1212 I'd like to see 952-555-1212 Minneapolis, MN You could actually do this with software on the phone, though it would have to be updated once in a while. Philo |
| Sat 01 May | Matthew Lock | That would be cool. In Australia (at least a few years ago when I checked) there was a list of number prefixes to suburbs at the back of the whitepages phone book. So it would just need to be scanned it and looked up. |
| Sat 01 May | Matthew Lock | Thinking further I have often typed in missed call numbers into Google and it's suprising how often they turn up on web pages. Maybe in the future when we can program our own phones and do web lookups we could get the phone to try and summarise some things the web knows about that phone number. |
| Sat 01 May | repu | Ahem... number portability? |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | For the moment, anyway, number portability only applies to cell phones, which generally have their own unique exchanges. So 952-555-1212 says "Minneapolis, MN" whereas 952-556-1212 (a cell phone exchange) says "Cell Phone User". |
| Sun 02 May | Philo | Why not 952-556-1212 Minneapolis, MN [cell] ? After all, there area code is generally related to the user in some way... Philo |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | No problems, per se, although the information is potentially meaningless (and therefore confusing). It's definitely no guarantee of where they're standing at the time, nor even of where they live any more. |
| Sun 02 May | Unfocused Focused | Hey Philo, If you're using a Smart Phone, have you checked to see if there is an API call to let you get a hook in for this? (Honest question - I haven't looked at the Smart Phone API, just the .Net CF framework.) |
| Sun 02 May | anon | The best part is you can refuse to answer service calls from the poorer neighborhoods where the riff raff lives. |
| Sun 02 May | Joe Blandy | > The best part is you can refuse to answer > service calls from the poorer neighborhoods > where the riff raff lives. Why devolve this into a flame war? I think Philo's request is a perfectly reasonable one. |
| Sun 02 May | anon | I have Sanyo RL-7300 from Sprint PCS. It shows the incoming or outgoing calls in the format 952-555-1212 Minnesota |
| Sun 02 May | Jason | I just signed up for a VOIP service, and one of their features is that you can get a NY (or whatever) area code even if you live in Texas |
| Sun 02 May | David Jones | 'Caller ID' is useless, as callers _CAN_ specify arbitrary caller-ID. It's a standard function of ISDN, and telemarketers use it to generate the numbers of their multiple clients from a single call center. Unscrupulous telemarketers just fake or suppress the caller-ID, period. As a telemarketing enforcement measure, it's useless. As long as a caller can arbitarily specify or fake it, it's useless. If you ABSOLUTELY require reliable caller-ID, then you need to get a 1-800 number and have it forwarded to your cell phone. The phone companies have a feature called 'automatic number identification' (ANI). It's what they use for billing, and it cannot be faked. It is made available to owners of 1-800 and 1-900 numbers. They are considered to be privileged given that they are paying for the call. Of course, you need to figure out how to get the cell phone to relay the ANI information. By default, no cell phone can receive ANI. Perhaps some entrepreneur will figure out how to forward 1-800 numbers to cell phones and convey the ANI in a format that the cell phone can use. |
| Accessing DBMS remotely: MySQL? FireBird? | Sat 01 May | Fred |
| Hi, Some of our customers have remote offices. I was wondering if itd be safe to have a DBMS running at their central office, and have our client application running on hosts in the branches connect to it through a VPN via the Net? What happens if the connection goes south while a branch office was making changes? Does the DBMS just rollbacks changes automatically after a time-out? Should we set up some kind of replication instead? Also, are there compeling reasons to go for Firebird instead of MySQL? I dont know enough about the capabilities of each DBMS today to make an educated choice. Thank you for any tip |
| Sat 01 May | Almost Anonymous | 'I don't know enough about the capabilities of each DBMS today to make an educated choice.' You might wanna read up then. MySQL is just getting most standard DBMS features (like transactions) and doesn't yet have triggers or stored procedures. I don't know too much about Firebird. PostgreSQL is an excellent open source database, you might want to look into it. |
| Sat 01 May | Philo | If we're talking about paying clients and their data, you need to hire either a consultant or a DBA to do this for you - if you're asking questions like this you should NOT be making the decision. Seriously - get a consultant in to at least help with the setup; use that as a screen to decide if you want to keep them around longer term to help build and manage it. Philo |
| Sat 01 May | Egor | Speaking as someone who has done a considerable amount of work with all three DBMS mentioned, I'd like to warn you: that they all have serious problems in a number of departments. Firebird is the less problematic in terms of stability and bugs, but it's 1983's design, and feature-wise, it's a joke. Unless you're building something very simple, or a busy website (think MySQL), go with something different. |
| Sat 01 May | Matt Conrad | Egor, care to elaborate on your problems with PostgreSQL? |
| Sun 02 May | Egor | 1. Speed. In my case it was prohibitively. Getting total number of records in a table took forever, among other things. 2. Bad, inflexible query planner. PostgreSQL has several types of joins (hash join, and others). If the planner chooses a suboptimal one for a part of the query (which it does far too often), the only way you can change that is to disable this join type for the _whole_ query, which can make it even slower, because for another pair of tables it may well be best. Adding a LIMIT clause can actually _slow down_ the query a great deal. Why is that, even the developers couldn't explain. 3. Buggy, features not working as advertised. I gave up on it after learning that absolute cursor positioning only works on 'simple' queries, giving unpredifctable results on others. I was also getting repeated error message in the log, which text I don't recall, but it had to do with storage internals. |
| Sun 02 May | Fred | Thank you for the input. BTW, we're only talking a few megabytes of data, nothing major :-) I'd just like to make sure that performance and stability is OK when accessing over the Net. |
| Sun 02 May | dir at badblue com | Consider slapping a web service on top of MySQL (or any other database, for that matter) to abstract out the backend technology as well as the database schema. Just give the clients the spec for the web service and you're ready to roll... |
| Sun 02 May | Matt Conrad | Thanks, Egor. |
| Sun 02 May | KillYourTV | >> Firebird is the less problematic in terms of stability and bugs, but it's 1983's design, and feature-wise, it's a joke. Care to explain why its feature set is a joke? |
| Sun 02 May | Herbert Sitz | >> Firebird is the less problematic in terms of stability and bugs, but it's 1983's design, and feature-wise, it's a joke. Care to explain why Firebird should be discounted because it's 1983's design? For same reason some say Unix should be discounted because it's 1970's design? It's not like Interbase/Firebird haven't gone through many versions of updates and modifications. One major recent example could be the change from 'Classic' to 'Superserver' architecture. |
| Sun 02 May | Alex Tronin | Never allow remote connection to a database via public Internet. This is strictly no-no. VPN will serve you nicely. Use latest version of MySQL as a server. If connection goes down: 1) if there were no active transactions, just reconnect 2) if you had running transaction, it will be rolled back 3) there is no substitute for smart programming and basic DBA understanding |
| Sun 02 May | MR | 2) if you had running transaction, it will be rolled back Only if you remember to use inno-db. |
| Microsoft says 8 million machines compromised | Sat 01 May | Unfathomable |
| http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5184439.html?tag=nl later upped to 9.5 mil http://news.com.com/2100-1002-5201807.html?tag=nl These are the MINIMUM amount of infected machines. I hope the stock price shoots to zero and MS has to spen 50B build something decent. In fact, the worm hit so hard that the company quickly asked some development teams to stop work on the software giants next version of Windows and create an interim update, known as Service Pack 2, to enhance the security of Windows XP Looks like LHorn is s l i p p i n g . . . Please when somebody asks you what type of pc is best for them. Tell them anything but Windows. |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | Old news. So a lot of people didn't patch. Shocker. That's a 9 month old worm. You think Longhorn is slipping NOW because of a worm that's 9 months old? |
| Sat 01 May | matt | Who is 8 million a surprising number to? I'm surprised it's not higher. |
| Sat 01 May | Jason | If you don't patch soon, you get screwed big time period. [Disclaimer I don't work for Microsoft, Philo does] |
| Sun 02 May | fw | One of my webservers still get hit with worms from two years back. This really gets me going. The offenders should be disconnected by their ISP, then told to clean up their boxes, whatever way they wish. They then get charged heavily for a reconnection, and if they offend again, repeat the process. |
| Sun 02 May | Eric Debois | Patching is not as easy as it sounds. My brother tried to patch his box but he gets hit as soon as he goes on line and then the box shuts down. He reinstalled XP, and went online again to get the patches, and boom. Shutdown. |
| Sun 02 May | Chris Nahr | How about a firewall then? Or does this particular brand of worm slip through firewalls somehow? |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | When I repave my boxes: Install item #1: Operating System Install item #2: ZoneAlarm Install item #3: Network cable Do your brother a favor and go download a free firewall like ZoneAlarm for him. Anybody who's online w/o a firewall is just... well, begging for trouble. I don't care WHAT OS you're running. |
| Sun 02 May | Eric Debois | Yeah, Im installing some stuff for him right now. (Firewall) It appears the virus diddnt re-infect as I had thought, It was the bloody 'restore' CD that diddnt clean out the previous installation. How fu**ing retarded is that? |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | One tning that is quite common is for System Restore on XP to keep the viruses for the restore points, so if your system goes down, and you choose an old enough restore you might find you're with the virus and without the patch. Bllaster is incredibly easy to get infected by. I connected a machine to the college network a month ago to transfer some files. It immediately got infected and then immediately infected the other 45 machines it was connected to in the room. When I asked the college sysadmin why this hadn't been cleaned nine months ago as I thought it had he told me that it was the ATM switches that were infected, and Marconi no longer supported them. |
| Microsoft Security patch MS04-011 | Sat 01 May | Interaction Architect |
| Did anyone install this and then wish they hadnt? Try to uninstall with the System process running at almost 100%... JFC, how much testing does Microsoft do before releasing these things? |
| Sat 01 May | Interaction Architect | http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=841382 |
| Sat 01 May | Mike | Look at the drivers that this thing fails with. One of them is Dlttape.sys. Gee could that likely be on any servers? How nice. Way to go you enterprise computing midgets. That will be a nice surprise for the admin that has Windows update itself automatically. So all you people here that say it's not hard to patch. It doesn't take time. Just automate it. Well some customers just got f'd over for about the 37,000th time. When will we learn. If you depend on a computer don't load Windows on it. Simple, really. Microsoft makes nice desktops, but they are a joke when it comes to enterprise computing. |
| Sat 01 May | Here's your sign | 'Microsoft makes nice desktops, but they are a joke when it comes to enterprise computing. ' Yeah, nobody runs Windows on the enterprise because of this. Everyone knows Windows won't run the enterprise. That's why you don't see any large companies with Windows servers. None. None whatsoever. |
| Sat 01 May | Mike | I don't mean ignorant people don't use them for enterprise computing, they surely do. I just meant Microsoft doesn't understand enterprise computing. Giving people patches that cause servers to go to 100% cpu usage is stupid, AND preventable. |
| Sat 01 May | Coward! | And the fact that the unix core has had 30 years to evolve doesn't mean shit. By the way, I know of atleast one major cluster that use Windows NT, so there you go.. |
| Sat 01 May | . | I remember hearing this sort of stuff in the early 90's. 'windows is a toy and there's no way we're replacing our Unix machines with THAT.' 'Macs are far superior to anything else and that's KPMG has committed to using Macintoshes throughout the world.' 'OS/2 is a much better operating system and that's why we've committed the bank to an OS/2 strategy.' 'Command lines are much better. That's why Windows will never replace DOS.' |
| Sun 02 May | DomF | Not sure about the OS/2 one, but in the early 90's, those would surely all be comments about windows *desktops*. I don't really understand how this kind of problem gets through. IPsec is set to Auto by default - in this case it is almost as if they really didn't install it themselves to see if it worked, something I have thought was ridiculous to suggest in the past. |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | Maybe this is their subtle way to encouraging people to upgrade to Windows Server 2003. :-D |
| Sun 02 May | Mike | 'Maybe this is their subtle way to encouraging people to upgrade to Windows Server 2003. :-D' Still, it looks like they tested it on one or two machines and threw it out for public consumption |
| Sun 02 May | Myron A. Semack | Security patches are always a compromise between a quick fix and rigorous testing. You are complaining about how you feel that Microsoft didn't test MS04-011 well enough. However, MANY people complain that Microsoft doesn't patch vulnerabilities quick enough. First, people complained the patches weren't tested enough. Then people complain that they aren't patched fast enough. Damned if they do, and damned if they don't. To be fiar, given how many patches come out for all of the different Microsoft products, I think the frequency from problematic patches is actually quite low. |
| SCORM - Is this standard widely used? | Sat 01 May | Fuzzy Logic |
| I recently came across the standard SCORM - Shareable Content Object Reference Model Initiative. There is a good overview on SCORM at http://xml.coverpages.org/scorm.html Is the SCORM standard widely used? It was meant for content management and academinc applications. |
| Sat 01 May | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | Yes, this standard is widely adopted amongst LMS (Learning Management Systems) makers and also learning content makers so that their respective products can co-operate (track usage, scoring, etc). More information from the organization responsible for the standard can be found here: http://www.adlnet.org |
| Sat 01 May | Ryan | I'm still not convinced that SCORM's market penetration is enough to make it worth the effort. A couple ago, I was lead developer for a commercial course management system. Our clients were pretty insistent about wanting it -- it was coming up in lots of RFPs and such. So we spent an extraordinary amount of effort adding support for SCORM learning modules to our application. But it turned out that very few clients actually needed it. They wanted us to be buzzword-compliant, but they didn't actually have SCORM content yet. |
| Sat 01 May | Ryan | Further, there seem to be more SCORM players than SCORM content authoring tools. Lots of systems can use SCORM content, but few can create it. That's one reason why it's not in wider use. |
| Sun 02 May | Curious | That sucks. How does one go about creating SCORM content then? Is it just xml (in which case you could use xmlspy or your xml editor of choice) or is it xml plus some other format? |
| Interesting Old Books | Sat 01 May | Humans Being |
| A couple of books that I found interesting when I first started to program are: Graphical User Interface Programming: Steve Rimmer - This book discussed creating a GUI under DOS. Its very extensive and helped me understand GUI concepts and the architecture of the x86 PC (Interrupt handlers, Disk access via bios, Direct Access to Video Memory, Mouse programming, Programming the VGA card... etc... etc...). It also helped me learn some 80x86 asm and C. Hey, I was gonna create my own Windows and become rich! After all, at the time, Windows was built on DOS. I think I ended up creating a small Windowed GUI using Turbo C. It ran in 640x480x16 mode and used the Borland Graphics Interface libraries. Turbo C++ Users Manual: Borland - A great manual - also for DOS. Explains C/C++ and OO concepts very well. Turbo Pascal Users Manual: Borland - Another very well written manual that helped me learn how to program. (Also for DOS) ========================================= Anyone else have some favorite old books they would care to share? Yes, I realize old is a relative term. ) |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | Back in my DOS programming days, I used to have a few of the little 'cheat sheet' books (you know the type... about 1/4 the page size of a normal book) with things like all the interrupts in the system. One section for int 10, one for int 13, etc. They're long gone, so I don't even remember their names. Not even sure I would recongize the titles, although if I had one in hand, I think I'd be able to recognize the book format. |
| Sat 01 May | Mike Swieton | I still love my copy of Knuth's Art of Computer programming ;) Old, but not obsolete by any means. |
| Sat 01 May | Mark Hoffman | 'DOS 5 Techniques and Utilities' by Jeffrey Prosise. 'Using Assembly Language' by Allen Wyatt |
| Sat 01 May | robtwister | Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC: was one of my favorites back then. It used DOS debug.exe to teach you all about 8086 asm programming. Good foundation for all future programming work. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0136619010/102-7423576-7448967?v=glance Peter Norton's PC Problem Solver: another good one that takes you through BIOS interrupts and other low-level stuff. May not be too relevant today however. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1566860121/qid=1083448514/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-7423576-7448967?v=glance&s=books |
| Sat 01 May | Egor | Wasn't that "Problem Solver" book written by Jourdain, not Norton? In any event, it was simply an excellent. I especially liked that for each problem, it gave two solutions: high-level (Basic), and low-level (Assembler). I wish modern books had used this approach more, although today it obviously wouldn't be assembler. |
| Sun 02 May | Should be working | Mastering Turbo Assembler DOS Programmer's Reference Turbo C++ 1.0 manuals I probably learned more about computers and programming from these three books than any other 10. |
| Sun 02 May | Keith Moore | One of my favorite *really* old computer books was 'Machine Language Disk I/O and Other Mysteries' from WAY back in the early 1980's. The print quality was poor, the formatting was horrible, the paper was cheap. However, it clearly demonstrated the power of combining an interpretive language (Level II BASIC) with low-level machine code. This book, more than any other, inspired me to learn Z-80 assembly language. |
| Sun 02 May | pcx | The PC from the Inside Out. Sargent and Shoemaker Solid explanation of early PC hardware, would form a good foundation upon which to build an understanding of today's PC hardware. Might have even been updated for all I know. |
| W-2 Hourly vs. Incorporated | Sat 01 May | Rob |
| I have been a W-2 hourly employee of a consulting co. for some time now. The client outsourced but wanted to keep me. So I am switching to a preferred vendor of the firm the clients outsourced to. The company that got the outsourcing contract told the prefered vendor that rates will remain the same. I know the bill rate. Lets say it is 100/hr. Currently, I am getting 80% as W-2 hourly employee. I want to incorporate finally and go as Corp-to-Corp. So, the age old question, how much should I get as Corp-to-Corp? The new broker offered to pay 7.65% extra since they wont be paying any taxes and I will be paying all taxes. That will give them 12.35%. I think it is too much for doing little. I am thinking something like 6-7% is fair, if that. As I understand, this margin is pure profit for them after their expenses to pay my corp. I say I should get 94% of the bill rate now. What do you folks think? Thanks. |
| Sat 01 May | Mark Hoffman | 'The new broker offered to pay 7.65% extra since they won't be paying any taxes and I will be paying all taxes.' The taxes aren't the only expense an employer has to cover on their W-2 employees. Since you are now technically the employer of yourself, a few other expenses to think about: 1. Health, disability insurance. 2. Vacations and sick time. All of these expenses, plus the payroll taxes, are rolled into the rate that consulting firms charge for their W-2 employees. So there is more to it than just the 7.65% percent to cover payroll taxes. I'd also recommend double checking what the exact payroll taxes are going to be. FICA is going be roughly 7.5%, I forget the FUTA rates, and the state will normally charge a higher unemployment tax when you first start off. Then there are the various state and city taxes that might come into play. Anyway, just make sure that the 7.65% really does cover all of your payroll tax expense. Good luck! |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | Payroll tax is 7.65% up until you mean your annual obligation. Employees pay 7.65% in FICA up to the same point. So, the government collects 15.3% in social security money. When you're self employed, the Payroll tax isn't paid, but a Self Employment tax is paid and, magically, it's 7.65% and up until the same obligation. :-p It all goes to the same place, of course. As far as I know, it's been like that for many many years. What changes every year is that they raise the level at which your obligation stops. If memory serves, for 2003, it was pretty near to $90,000 of gross wages. |
| Sat 01 May | Rob | So, what does the broker pay, if any, when I go corp-to-corp? I am guessing nothing. The only cost to them is the cost to pay my corp. Am I right? |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | That's right. If you go Corp to Corp, then they don't pay the Payroll taxes, you do (because once you're incorporated, then it switches from a Self Employment tax to a Payroll tax). |
| Sat 01 May | no name | Welcome to the great recruiter scam. Yes, they will happily take as much money as possible without doing a thing to earn it, and tie you up in contracts and lies if you dare to question it. In your situation, one solution is to sunset the recruiter's margin, which means it has a phase-out date instead of just remaining there for ever. So after six months it declines to half its initial value, and after 12 months it disappears. |
| Sat 01 May | Philo | As a 1099 you should get 2x what you get as a W-2. Otherwise walk away. First of all, all their costs are now your costs - hardware, software, books, training. Medical, dental, various other benefits - gone. (medical for a family can run $12k/year or more) The tax shift mentioned above. You're paying for vacation time by not earning during vacations. In addition vacation time is no longer an entitlement - you pretty much have to negotiate for it. Your pay is offset by *at least* two weeks, likely four. (As a salaried employee, you're paid on time like clockwork. As a 1099 you have to work the time, submit an invoice, and wait for them to pay you) Finally, don't think 'but I get paid for every hour I work' - that's true, but it's a rare client that will eat 50-60 hour/week invoices without complaining, even if that's what it takes. Even though you were working 50 hours/week salaried to meet their schedules, if you go 1099 they will budget 40 hours/week at your pay rate, and 'overtime' will really chap their hides. Never mind that you do good work, or meet schedules, or create perfect code - every two weeks you'll have to have the same argument about 'trying to keep costs down' So you have to budget for 40 hours/ week, and generally that means 2x the pay to maintain the same standard of living. Philo |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | The other reason for the 2x rule (which is a good rule) is because you'll be on the bench from time to time. You can't necessarily count on working 50 x 40 or 48 x 40. Most of the consultants I know assume they'll work about 35 weeks a year. |
| Sat 01 May | Rob | Gentlemen, I already get 80% of the bill rate. My questions are: 1. Does the broker have any expenses at all? I know all taxes become my problem. I don't worry about medical insurance since I get that from my wife's employer. 2. This broker didn't even find me the contract. How much of the bill rate should I agree to give them to just send a check to my Corp? Is 6% of the bill rate fair? |
| Sun 02 May | whatever | You seem to be quite concerned about how money the broker is getting. What the hell does it matter? The question you need to be asking yourself, and what people here are trying to tell you, is make damn certain you are getting what you need to cover all of your expenses. It doesn't matter if you are getting 80% of the bill rate if 80% isn't enough to cover your expenses. I don't care if a broker is making 4 billion a year on my services as long as I am earning what I wanted. |
| Sun 02 May | John | To see if the rate is reasonable you could see what other firms charge for the service. You could also find out what it takes to become a prefered vendor so you could go direct. Then you will have an idea of their overhead. There may be expenses you have not considered. Another issue is whether you get paid on a regular basis or after the agency has been paid. If you want them to pay you based on your invoice instead of when the client pays them it costs them money. Finally, I did this a few years ago and with the expense of incoporating, getting a business account and the extra accounting, tax filing etc was not worth it to me. YMMV. |
| Sun 02 May | anonymous | Also remember that if you are 1099, and they refuse to pay you, you have to take them to court to collect. The legal fees may exceed the amount they owe you. If you are W-2, and they refuse to pay you, the state Labor board will probably puruse collection for you. It seems that almost everyone I know who's a consultant has stories about clients refusing to pay. |
| MBA: What did you really learn? | Sat 01 May | T. Norman |
| For those of you who have done MBAs, what sort of things did you learn that were actually useful on the job, or just valuable for life in general? If you could have paid somebody $5000 to directly upload the MBA knowledge into your brain, without any degree awarded for it, would it be worth it? Conversely, if you took a blow to the head on the day after graduation that erased everything you learned in MBA school (but didnt affect anything else in your brain), would your career have been any worse off due to lack of that knowledge? (In other words, you have the qualifications but not the knowledge.) |
| Sat 01 May | no name | '''would your career have been any worse off due to lack of that knowledge''' The fact that they have time to browse & post JoS indicates that their MBA hasn't really paid off. You're skewering your sample. |
| Sat 01 May | Craig | > You're skewering your sample. Ouch, that would hurt. |
| Sat 01 May | Sexist | But true. There's two types of MBAs -- those that move towards a "business" path (banking, marketing, senior management, etc) and those that end up doing the same job they would have done without the MBA (such as a former developer now being the team lead of developers). The first type is the one that really benefitted from the MBA, and obviously, they won't be hanging around on Joel On Software. |
| Sat 01 May | Mark Hoffman | 'If you could have paid somebody $5000' Are you thinking that you can get an MBA for $5,000? That seems a little on the low side. Ok, it seems a lot on the low side. |
| Sat 01 May | T. Norman | Yes, it is deliberately on the low side. For $5,000 I might be able to accumulate MBA knowledge by reading books on my own, taking a few business classes, interacting with experienced people, reading journals, etc. Just as one could accumulate the knowledge equivalent to a CS degree for $5000 or less. The question was aimed at discerning the value of the knowledge independently of the formal qualifications. |
| Sat 01 May | T. Norman | And if I am unrealistic in thinking that I can accumulate said knowledge outside of an actual MBA program, what and why are those aspects of knowledge? |
| Sat 01 May | Philo | Don't forget part of my advice - if you pursue an MBA, do it at night school. Then you get two added benefits: 1) Class discussions are among people with actual work experience, which makes the lessons far more relevant. 2) Networking. You'll get neither of these from just reading books. Philo |
| Sat 01 May | Sexist | Only a small percentage of the value of an MBA comes from in-class learning. Yes, you could duplicate that yourself for under $5000. The real value comes from: * Networking with classmates and alumni (not just the opportunity to do so; but also the forced practice since you're essentially required to attend so many networking events). * Reputation - a guy who says 'I have a Harvard MBA' will be perceived as having something more than a guy who merely read some finance books, even if they both actually know the same material. It's called 'brand equity'. * Access to recruiting opporutnities. Stanford business school gets dozens of CEOs and executives as guest speakers each year, plus hundreds of companies do formal recuriting. These job opportunities simply aren't available to someone who's self-studying the course material. But I have to disagree about the night course MBA. I'm a believer that an MBA has value only if you get it from a top 10 school -- otherwise, the ROI simply isn't there for most people. |
| Sat 01 May | Prakash S | Norman, take a look at the MIT Open CourseWare. Also, d/l the course listings from any of the top 10 MBA schools, find the related books and start working on your MBA on the cheap. What you will not get is the networking and knowledge from your peers, and you will not be able to tap into the Alumni network. If you have already been networking your plan does sound good. Good luck and let me know how it goes. |
| Sat 01 May | Jason | 'You'll get neither of these from just reading books.' God, Philo you are just frickin' genius, are you not baby? |
| Sun 02 May | Steve | I have an MBA along with an undergrad in computer engineering, and work as a software architect/project manager. Could I do my job without the MBA? Probably, but likely not as well. MBA programs give you a set of specific skills. You can analyze financial statements, define appropriate organizational structures for organizations, and think about business stragegy among a bunch of other stuff. Do I do these things every day? No, but I occasionally find myself arguing a point or making a decision based in part on specific knowledge or skills from the MBA program. However, I attribute my analytical skills more to the MBA than to my undergraduate engineering program. Engineering students spend a lot of time designing and calculating but do not learn to prioritize, evaluate, or deal well with incomplete or imperfect information. The latter is what MBA's do well. I second the previous poster's assertion that there's little career bump value from an MBA that is not a top ten program. Mine is from a top-50 school, but that means nothing to an investment bank or top-tier management consulting firm. MBA's from lesser schools can be of value when coupled with some good work experience and other academic credentials, but they're not worth much in isolation. Would reading some books deliver as much benefit? It might. Don't read Jack Welsh's bio--instead, consider one of Porter's business strategy books. And, if you are serious, think about organizing a small study group of like minded folks. The discussions in an MBA classroom are valuable, but they might be replicable in a Starbucks as well. However, a good professor does add a lot of value. That's my two cents. |
| JOS & whatcounts.com | Sat 01 May | Laurent |
| I needed to re-subscribe to the JoelOnSoftware newsletter. So I went to the appropriate page on the web site. Then I thought: which email address shall I give, the one I normally use for mailing lists, or my personal email address, the one I try to keep as private as possible. I thought: Joel and Fog Creek are nice people, nothing to worry about... so I provided my personal email address. Then I realised that JoelOnSoftware uses the services of a company called WhatCounts to actually manage the mailing list. Im sure the guys at WhatCounts are honest people, but still, Id prefer it if they didnt have my email address in their database. Maybe there should be some kind of disclaimer on the subscribe page. Cheers; Laurent Humbert |
| Sat 01 May | K | Wow. Do you work for the CIA or the MI5? |
| Sat 01 May | Laurent | Na, but you may have heard about a problem on the Internet called spam. |
| Sat 01 May | Wayne | (K, do people in the CIA or the MI5 like spam even less than normal people?) Laurent, the simple solution is this: no matter how much you think you like a company never give anything but your spam address. That way, you also get the added benefit of having all 'commercial' communications going into one account. |
| Sat 01 May | mb | right, not only do you have to worry about the current company (e.g. are they trustworthy today), but their scucessors and others (what happens if they get bought out? what happens if someone steals the database? what happens if someone sues them?) sure, there's levels of paranoia here, but since there's such a simple solution (everyone gets the junk or a unique address), it's worth it to use the solution. although i and many others have noted that very little spam seems to come from giving out your address to places which ask for it. rather it seems to be scraped or generated addresses. |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | I'm surprised people even have 'spam' and 'private' e-mail addresses now. The world is full of spam filtering e-mail readers. Are people still suffering by hand-deleting spam? Mozilla Thunderbird is free. Bayesian in the box. Go get it. |
| Sat 01 May | josReader | So you have your personal address and your spammable address. There may be a distinction initially, then your friend gives your personal address to ecards, evite, or 'forward this article' on news service. Your screwed either way. |
| Sat 01 May | Oren | I agree with the observation that spam doesn't arrive through addresses you give out to companies. In the past five years I've given a unique email address every time I was asked for one (e.g., <service_name>@mydomain.com). I must have given hundreds of such addresses, and I haven't received a single spam from them. All the spam I get comes from a few addresses that have "escaped into the wild", and can be seen in some public web pages. |
| Sat 01 May | Seun Osewa | My sentiments exactly. I feel that the whole spam issue is probably overrated. What's the purpose of having two addresses (one spamable, on private) if not reduced efficiancy? You would still have to deal with the spam on the "spamable" address anyway. Productivity gain: nill. Just use a good spam filter and avoid posting your regular address to newsgroups or the web (use contact forms, etc.) Use a newsgroup service tht allows you to display a false e-mail address and use your signature to direct those that want to get in touch to your contact form on your site. Every tech professional has one, right? |
| Sat 01 May | no name | '''Every tech professional has one, right? ''' No. Only the really nerdy ones. |
| Sun 02 May | Eric Debois | On the 'companies dont spam' thing. I thought this too, untill I gave my addy to Amazon.com. A brand spanking new email addy. I diddnt even have the chance to use it for anything but ordering those books before spam began to flow in. I wrote them a very angry letter about that. They said they didnt sell it, but I dont believe them. |
| Sun 02 May | Stephen Jones | ----'I diddnt even have the chance to use it for anything but ordering those books before spam began to flow in.'---- Could have been dictionary spam. That is to say the spam was pouring in before you created the email address but there was no address for it to go to. I have a fairly common surname and so I was not surprised to receive spam at my srilankan email address even though I have never sent it to anybody. A quick check of the headers makes it clear that spammers are just blitzing the domain. A fair proportion of the spam I get at my Saudi address comes as a result of this as well. |
| Sun 02 May | Mr. Analogy | 'A quick check of the headers makes it clear that spammers are just blitzing the domain' Yes, I've seen this at our 'catcahall' address for our company. In fact, I've often thought this would be a GREAT way to detect spam. I'll often get the same spam message to a non-existent email address (caught by the catchal) AND at my regular email address. So... you could flag any message as spam if it showed up at a 'non existent' email address. Nothing new, really. It's the way the mailing list companies make sure that you won't reuse the list. They salt it with a few 'decoy' addresses, that exist only on the list, but are monitored. If they get 3 pieces of direct mail from MyCompany, but I only paid to use the list once, then they know I was illegitimately using th list 2 times. |
| LGPL/GPL software for internal corporate use? | Sat 01 May | Roose |
| I was looking at some software I might want to use at my job, such as SDL: http://www.libsdl.org/index.php Does anyone know if you can use this in a corporation, internally only, without any problems? It would never be distributed to paying customers. I just wouldnt want some fiasco where our internal source code had to be released because were using open source software. |
| Sat 01 May | Roose | Oh here is the license: http://www.libsdl.org/license.php |
| Sat 01 May | MyNameIsSecret(); | Internal usage of GPL is allowed without distribution of the source. That is how I read the license. LGPL is a little different you are allowed to distribute LGPL libraries with your software without the distribution of your main source. The GPL part usually comes in to effect when you modify the library and distribute the modified library. The usual IANAL disclaimer of course. |
| Sat 01 May | Leauki (Andrew J. Brehm) | The GNU Web site says this: The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization. But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL. Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html The FSF consider this a question of privacy and consider privacy a part of the freedom Free software is supposed to allow. The requirement to release source code to the public even if the software was merely modified and used as opposed to modified and distributed was one of two reasons why the Apple open source licence was not considered a Free software licence until version 2.0. So my understanding is that you can use GPLed and LGPLed software internally without having to release your modifications, UNLESS you distribute your modified version outside the company, but IANAL. But do understand that releasing a few modifications into the wild might not be so bad afterall. |
| Sat 01 May | Roose | So I wonder if some companies are still reluctant to use it... what if you started releasing some internal tools to contractors. That is sort of inside the company but sort of outside. And then what if the contractors put it on their home PC to use it. And then their brother used the program for something he might have need to do, etc. It seems like even though you could have the best of intentions only to use software internally, people could make a case against you if something out of the ordinary happened. |
| Sun 02 May | Leauki (Andrew J. Brehm) | If you give the software to contractors for the purpose of working on it for you, you have not given them the software as such. They are still obligated to respect your right to privacy, which the GPL makes very clear exists. They would not be allowed to put it on their home PC to use it unless you give permission to them to do so. As for them giving the software to others, that is not an issue of the GPL/LGPL but could happen with non-GPLed software also. The GPL merely demands that IF you give the software to somebody for good, you MUST give him the same rights you have to the software. But the GPL does not demand that you give your software to anybody or that others could simply copy your private data. At least that is my reading of the situation and the GPL FAQ of gnu.org seems to support that view. Ask Richard Stallman if you need clarification. |
| bsd security | Sat 01 May | FullNameRequired |
| Hi all, was just wondering past slashdot and this little gem caught my eye: We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 3.5. We remain proud of OpenBSDs record of eight years with only a single remote hole in the default install. one remote hole in 8 years. bloody amazing if you ask me :) |
| Sat 01 May | Li-fan Chen | Astroturf |
| Sat 01 May | Matthew Lock | Hey my ZX Spectrum has had no security exploits in 20 years. |
| Sat 01 May | Eric Debois | Astroturf? As in, FNR is getting paid to act as a regular joe who is impressed with OpenBSD? Id think, hes just a regular joe who is impressed with OpenBSD. I am too, though Ive never tried it. They are behind the curve performancewise, and the other BSDs are prtty secure too so Ive never felt the need to use it. |
| Sat 01 May | FullNameRequired | 'Astroturf' ? assuming it means what Eric ascribed to it Id love to know the origin of that usage?
Ive not used it either...I dont even have a particularly strong desire to do so...osx works fine for me...
I just thought it was kind of an impressive record.
|
| Sat 01 May | Eric Debois | see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing |
| Sat 01 May | FullNameRequired | interesting. so the idea is that by posting once to JOS about the impressive security record of openbsd Im hoping to start a surge of users, a grassroots push of computer users screaming 'use openbsd.....its secuuureeeee' as their warcry...overcoming the reluctance of our managers towards the change we will hurtle from business to business forcibly replacing their operating systems, deleting their non-secure linux installations and replacing them with that ultimate OS, openbsd. finally, in a grim-eyed orgy of destruction my army of maddened JOS users will burn their windows and mac instruction manuals and retire to their parents basement, giggling in quiet ectasy. actually sounds kind of fun. anyone got an openbsd installation cd? |
| Sat 01 May | FullNameRequired | wow, thats stupid li-fan. who on earth would pay me to persuade you to use a free OS? what would the motive be? its opensource you moronic little termite, no one cares whether you use the sodding thing or not...not the author(s) and certainly not me (Im a mac/osx user by choice and a windows/mac developer by habit). heh...nice justice though, Ive been known to throw guerilla marketing accusations around myself. |
| Sat 01 May | Oh? | Nice to see that JOS users have almost reached the SlashDot level of cynicism, arrogance and stupidity. Li-fan Chen, it's pretty clear to the rational readers that the OP simply was impressed with this and wanted to say as much. That's what this board is here for, you tard. |
| Sat 01 May | Li-fan Chen | Unfortunately, Eric Debois, without a full name we'll never know what's grassroot and what's astroturfing... |
| Sun 02 May | I got it. | In other words astroturf = Howard Dean |
| Sun 02 May | fw | OpenBSD has a record in this area. The developers recognise one thing, which some people don't. There is *NO* one solution. They actively audit code, have stack protection and now w^x on some types of machines. This is great, really, but it doesn't come free, so to speak. java is a pain on it (1.3 works ok iirc), it doesn't ship with some features. For example your php/mysql app may break pretty soon on a default openbsd machine because apache is chroot'd, also it's a heavily modified version. Of course you are free to undo all of this work, and install your own apache etc...but then you do lose some of the security. |
| Sun 02 May | Bob Stout | I switched to OpenBSD a while back due to frequent roots while running hardened linux. I have never looked back. www.highcountryrugby.com |
| Being a coder from 25yo to 70yo | Fri 30 Apr | Scooopex |
| Im a 34 yo developer with 10 years of experience Last week my boss ask me during my yearly review (last time I had one was 7 years ago) asked me where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years... I told him what Im now, thats a bloody code monkey ... He said fair enough Do you think its odd that if one dont want to move to management ? project manager? architect Im now asking myself if I should cut code for the rest of my life... Do you plan pissing code the rest of your life (are you still enjoying it ?) |
| Fri 30 Apr | JT | I think it was the classic 'Art of Computer Programming' book that talked about this, but it might have been something else. Basically, it's baffled managers for years that programmers tend to like their jobs, and most don't actually want to advance to management positions. I know of at least one individual who threatened to quit if given such a 'promotion.' So yes, it is very common, and it will bug your manager, who thinks that being a manager is great (obviously). He will never understand why you don't want to 'advance' your career. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Not a Capitalist | Not much different than in other fields, where management can't fathom why a worker bee may not wish to become another drone in the owning class... |
| Fri 30 Apr | I guess it takes all kinds. | TO: Not a Capitalist Management drones aren't in the 'owning class.' But uh, fight the machine, comrade. Etc. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Dewd looks like a lady | Yeah it's pathetic. Go up and become a manger or something. Get a life basically. |
| Sat 01 May | Len Holgate (www.lenholgate.com) | I'm 37, been coding since I was er 15 or so, still love it (mostly), still getting better at what I do (generally), still find it a challenge. Can't think why I'd want to do anything else to earn a living. I did the promotion to management thing once and didn't like it. I'd found that as an employee of someone else's company the only way I could earn more was to be promoted to management; so I started my own company. Now I do contract programming and consultancy for banks (which fixed the 'earn a bit more without being promoted' issue), and fixed price development and product based stuff for other clients (which helps with the 'working for banks the whole time is often a tad dull' issue). If and when the age descrimination thing bites I'll just switch more of my focus over to the fixed price and product based stuff and hope that people think I'm just the boss... As for why I still love it, well, these two babblings on my blog explain that in a little more detail: http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000164.html http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000300.html |
| Sat 01 May | no name | > Management drones aren't in the 'owning class.' But they sure wish they were. |
| Sun 02 May | Rodney | Managers are soooooo adorable when they think they're in a higher position than programmers. (Or, for that matter, that they're actually calling the shots.) 'Moving up' indeed. Ha! |
| Sun 02 May | goody | Architect is not a title. It's reaching the level of Master Programmer. 'Architects' who don't write software every single day might have been granted a corporate title, but their relevance, skill, and understanding dwindles every day spent not writing software, while that title becomes a badge of embarrassment. If you love building software, aspire to mastery. Management is a degradation compared to a creative endeavor like programming. |
| DoS & RSS | Fri 30 Apr | Prakash S |
| Reading some stuff on Werner Vogels blog got me thinking about Denial of Service & RSS. Assuming a website has quite a few RSS feeds, and if all these feeds are pulled simultaneously by a large number of *users*, would it be able to bring down a site? Is this even possible? How could this be prevented? Thoughts... |
| Fri 30 Apr | Bob | Slashdot prevents you from grabbing their feed more than once per hour. If you do, you get banned for an amount of time. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Koz | The RSS feeds are just XML documents. Do your sites crash when lots of people simultaneously pull down index.html? It's just yet another file, no magic DoS powers. Make sure your site is cache friendly and can handle the load, you'll be fine. |
| Sat 01 May | Ross | Recently, on Wired News 'Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?': http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63264,00.html It seems some hungry RSS readers do not (ask the host to) check if the file to download has changed in the meantime since the last petition. So they ask to download the same file, all of it, every time. |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | Yes, but those readers are very few and far between. All the most popular readers do support conditional GETs. |
| Sun 02 May | fw | It's simply traffic, like any normal request. I think the issue may be, if you are a real smartie pants, then you may have say, 10,000 people reading your blog? ok? Most of these people are like blog addicts, they use rss readers, not a browser. Most of these readers get the feed once an hour, by default. Which means instead of going to a site once a day, you're going 24 times by default. Now add x000 people, or x0,000 people doing this to your blog. I doubt it's a real issue anyway, it's not a huge amount of bandwidth really, I'd imagine 99.999% of blogs could handle a hell of a lot of readers on a dsl line. |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | 10k hits an hour to static content is clearly no sweat. Since 99.999999999999% of the time you'll be service back '304 No Change', then it's REALLY no sweat. Centralized subscription services like Bloglines or NewsGator Online Services reduces this even further, since everybody shares a single copy of the data. |
| Sun 02 May | Prakash S | thanks guys |
| Gmail: Orwell meets Monty Python | Fri 30 Apr | Gmailer |
| Gmails gotten a lot of heat for its idea to scan email message contents and display ads corresponding to the keywords found. While many have commented on the Big Brother aspects of this, heres one view with a more comical perspective: http://starbulletin.com/2004/04/11/business/brandao.html |
| Fri 30 Apr | Philo | Nicely done! BTW, if anyone here cares to defend GMail against some 'police state' or '4th Amendment' crap, please remind the speaker that while Google seems all-powerful, they're not the government, and private entities are free to contract to provide whatever services they like. ...and consumers are free to not use them. Philo |
| Fri 30 Apr | Code Monkey | Philo Writes: >BTW, if anyone here cares to defend GMail against some 'police state' or '4th Amendment' crap, please remind the speaker that while Google seems all-powerful, they're not the government, and private entities are free to contract to provide whatever services they like. ...and consumers are free to not use them. Coming from someone who works and shills for Microsoft..it is no wonder you think that way....otherwise it would be hard to defend behavior like this : http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/wmp8dvd.htm By your twisted logic I can create a website which provides a 'service' of storing your ATM card number and PIN and that should be OK as longer I do not force anyone to use it. This does not mean that GMail is on the same level but people have a legitimate need to know and comment on the privacy aspects of GMail especially if one wants them not to go the way of Microsoft |
| Fri 30 Apr | runtime | People are (apparently) already selling their Gmail beta accounts on ebay. Buy yours today! :-) http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=gmail |
| Fri 30 Apr | Philo | 'Coming from someone who works and shills for Microsoft' Please see the discussion about siderailing discussions with silly epithets at the 8th post at http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=132078 Where I work has absolutely zero to do with the fact that Google is not the government, so neither the word 'constitutional' nor the phrase 'police state' apply. That was my only point. Have a nice weekend, Philo |
| Fri 30 Apr | Kyralessa | 'By your twisted logic I can create a website which provides a 'service' of storing your ATM card number and PIN and that should be OK as longer I do not force anyone to use it.' He's right! And I'm sure he's making a point somewhere with this example, but it escapes me. If the USPS were reading my mail, that would be a different matter, because I have no other reasonable way to send (paper) mail; there are no competitors. But Gmail _already_ has competitors, so I really don't get the hysteria, other than that passing oneself off as a raving 'privacy advocate' is a good way to get one's name in the news. |
| Fri 30 Apr | FullNameRequired | 'Coming from someone who works and shills for Microsoft' that is an entirely unfair characterisation of Philo, and it is also a point which is entirely irrelevant to this conversation. 'By your twisted logic I can create a website which provides a 'service' of storing your ATM card number and PIN and that should be OK as longer I do not force anyone to use it.' absolutely, as long as you are absolutely clear about what you are storing and how you use the information then wheres the harm? 'This does not mean that GMail is on the same level but people have a legitimate need to know and comment on the privacy aspects of GMail especially if one wants them not to go the way of Microsoft' Philo was not saying anything to the contrary you drooling, moronic fool. Philo simply made a single statement of fact. I mean, come on, if you dont like Philo...fine, if you dont like Microsofts practices then fine, but if you _really_ want to make your point you should probably avoid sounding like a witless dullard. |
| Fri 30 Apr | HeWhoMustBeConfused | Philo, you are 100% correct. I have a Hotmail account for personal use, and I'm tired of the over-worked interface and ad-intrusive functionality. As soon as Gmail is publicly available, I plan to switch away from Hotmail. I don't care if they present ads to me on the basis of my mail content, I'm making a value-decision that increased storage and a clean user interface is worth more than 'privacy' of my mailbox. I quote 'privacy' because there is no guarantee of privacy with ANY hosted mail service. Any sysadmin can read your mail, any sniffer between mail servers can intercept at least part of your messages. I don't really care. After all, if you are REALLY concerned about the privacy of your messages, encrypt them and send the encrypted files as attachments. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Craig | Sometimes Google's 'context sensitive' ads can be comical. I sometimes read rec.aviation.soaring on Google Groups. About half the time, the ads are for the type of 'glider' that is really an armchair. I'm pretty sure its flying characteristics are crap... |
| Sat 01 May | Mu | What an idiotic comment Philo! When somebody says 'I don't want a Police State' It means he doesn't want tyranny! It matters little to the logic of the statement whether the tyranny is government imposed or (partially) privatized! If you think that's freedom, you should try living in Iran, it's definately not a Police State by your definition! The Hezbollah man who shoots you in the streets if he doesn't like your clothes is 'officially' just a private citizen. He isn't 'officially' anything at all to do with the Government and may even be breaking Parliament's regulations. He probably isn't even 'officially' a member of Hezbollah! People are complaining about their email being snooped on, and at that not by a single other party, but by a very rich and powerful organization. This definately has 'Big Brother' potential. I would definately be worried by the abuses that could be committed in such a setup if said organization were not Google, but your obnoxious and provenly (on many occasions) criminal employer, which is why I don't use Hotmail Look on The Register for the 'All your Biz Plans are Belong to us' article. |
| Sat 01 May | FullNameRequired | 'It matters little to the logic of the statement whether the tyranny is government imposed or (partially) privatized!' yeah, Ive always been uncomfortable with the fact Philo pointed out for exactly that reason. also because its eminently possible (and happens now) for the government to hire private companies to do the snooping in the first place. IMO both free speech and privacy need to be supported and enforced at every level of society for them to last....and that includes private companies. OTOH Philos statement was one of accepted legal fact in america, not necessarily one that reflected his own thoughts on the matter. |
| Sat 01 May | Brad Wilson | 'also because its eminently possible (and happens now) for the government to hire private companies to do the snooping in the first place.' Hire? Hell, as long as the PATRIOT ACT is in place, they don't have to hire anybody. They can raid absolutely any private database under the guise of 'assistance with terrorism', and whoever gets raided is prohibited for saying that it happened. And let's be honest here: AG Ashcroft is easily the most frightening individual ever to sit in the chair (even moreso than Janet Reno, which a hell of a feat). He has no problems bending and breaking every rule and law in pursuit of whatever he feels is justified. It was pretty big new whens some libraries in California (?) decided to stop keeping long term book borrowing records. The government was very interested to know who reads what, since some books are 'trigger' books for terrorists. The libraries basically said that they're shredding the records once the books are returned, until the PATRIOT act is repealed. So, if you're the paranoid type, then EVERY SINGLE COMPANY WITH ANY BRANCH IN THE US is also an arm of the US government. |
| Sat 01 May | Stephen Jones | Dear Mu, Are you sure that Hezbolah operates within Iran; although Iranian backed I thought it was restricted to Lebanon. And as I've stayed in hotels right on the dividing line between the Hezbollah and Druse sectors of Beiruit and seen churches, pubs and brothels in both I am surprised that they would go after clothes. Are you sure you are not confusing Hezbolah with the Revolutionary Guard. Adn if you are, I think you will find that they have definite backers within the Iranian power structure. Exactly the same can be said for the Saudi Mutaween. A fairer analogy would be to consider the influence wielded by Baptist Churches in the South of the USA. |
| Sat 01 May | Philo | 'When somebody says 'I don't want a Police State' It means he doesn't want tyranny!' Do me a favor and go look up 'tyranny' Then let me know which definition means 'having a large number of alternatives and being open and honest about one's practices.' Philo |
| Sat 01 May | Coward! | This is soo funny. The comparision with Iran is just pathetic. You people come from a country who invades privacy of the rest of us and have laws which basically means you can seize and arrest anyone because of 'domestic or foreign terrorism', which is an arbitrary term right now dictated by the bush-powell junta. It's from the same country who considered communists illegal less than fifty years ago. And, it seems, the heritage lives on... Anyway, I'll sign up for GMail as soon as I can. If some robot scans my program, it's at least sincere. Sorry for the bad spelling... |
| Sun 02 May | Brad Wilson | 'the bush-powell junta' In fairness to Colin Powell, he's mostly a dove. He's gone along with things, but mostly unwillingly, presumably so he doesn't abruptly end his political career. The drivers behind the war in Iraq are Bush and Cheney, not Bush and Powell. |
| Sun 02 May | Mu | Second idiotic comment Philo. You'll find the definition that says 'Having your mail and phone calls monitored by Big Brother, who can coerce you with the information he has gained and thus subtract from your freedom'. So why don't you look up 'Blackmail'. The point that you have a large number of alternatives is irrelevant, because they are all detrimental except for the one you are blackmailed into taking. The method used to coerce you, whether it be interior ministry troops, or blackmail, is irrelevant. The point is that you are being controlled by a Tyrant. And as for mentioning 'honest' and 'practices' when defending Microsoft, well that's your third idiotic comment. |
| Sun 02 May | Mu | Dear Stephen, There is more than one group named 'Hezbollah'. The Iranian one is one of several groups packed with the Revolutionary Guards' buddies. These groups don't wear uniforms and aren't officially 'Governmental'. They take orders direct from the mosques, not from Khatami. When these thugs stab student demonstrators and defenestrate them, they are supposedly 'unknown rioters'. The 'Official' agencies controlled by the hardliners are always very slow to investigate cases involving them... |
| Sun 02 May | Robert 'Groby' Blum | Dear Mu, I suggest you seek some anger management. Philo's comments are quite well-founded. You might not agree with them - but that doesn't make them idiotic. If you have a large number of alternatives that are all corrupt, you can still opt to choose none of them. If you use GMail, you're entering a contractual relationship with them - you *allow* them to read your mail and send you ads in return. You are *not* entering that relationship with your government - you're *forced* to abide by their laws and rules. That's why there are stricter guidelines for governments. (Or at least should be) If you subscribe to GMail and think Google is a Tyrant, you're acting foolishly. You're entrusting your mail to an authority you distrust. The point is - you did it *wilfully*. Nobody can force you to use Google. As for your insults against Philos employer - what exactly does that have to do with *anything* regarding GMail? |
| Sun 02 May | FullNameRequired | Hi Mu, 'And as for mentioning 'honest' and 'practices' when defending Microsoft, well that's your third idiotic comment.' actually Philo did no such thing in this thread...hes only posted twice and in neither case did he even mention microsoft oh...and in the spirit of your posts I think Ill throw in a little bit of personal abuse. wouldn't you be more at home on slashdot you repulsive little anthill? frankly I find the thought of someone as stupid and illogical as yourself entering the computer industry rather scary :) maybe you should be a manager of some kind instead? I suspect you will find you have a unique talent there. |
| dumb question on dvr's | Fri 30 Apr | fee phobe |
| DVRs are great, but I dont require all the intelligent services that make up the monthly fee. I simply want a machine would record tv shows onto a harddrive, pause live tv, 30 second fast forwarding, etc. The user would have to input the time, date, and channel to record, much like a vcr. Does such a dvr exist? |
| Fri 30 Apr | Li-fan Chen | I think if you buy a All-In-Wonder card like the ones from ATI you get free (but uh, not exactly perfect) scheduled recording with Guide Plus or something like that. All of the recording software out there will likely do schedules, for TV capture software it's an basic feature people come to expect. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Infinite Monkeys | Or Freevo for the uber-nerds: http://freevo.sourceforge.net/about.html |
| Fri 30 Apr | sgf | Or MythTV, also for uber-nerds. www.mythtv.org |
| Fri 30 Apr | Doug | If you're looking for something prebuilt, Panasonic DVD recorders DMR-E80H and DMR-E100HS have hard drives and require explicit programming. I'm not sure about how they handle pausing live TV. They're typically more expensive than a tivo + lifetime subscription, however. If you can put the DVD recorder feature to use archiving home movies or whatever then perhaps you could justify one. I have one of the Panasonic recorders without the hard drive and it can do most of what you ask but only has a 6 hour capacity per disc. It doesn't have the exact equivalent of a pause live TV function but can play and record different shows simultaneously. RCA made one called the Scenium. I don't believe it's manufactured anymore but they're available on eBay. There are also tivos that come with a basic subscription that doesn't require an additional monthly fee. Toshiba makes one. |
| Fri 30 Apr | Li-fan Chen | I am planning |