|
AspDotNetDev wrote: (to be fair, the first I had heard of a PMB was when I got one)
So, one morning you got out of bed, had coffee, heard a knock on the door, and there stood a PMB claiming" Hi! I'm yours!" ?
|
|
|
|
|
I was at a shop that helps you send packages. I noticed they had mailboxes and I needed one (assuming they were PO Boxes), and when I signed up the PMB concept was explained to me.
|
|
|
|
|
"In a van down by the river"
"Avenue of the Americas"
"Broadway" is a contraction of "Broad Way" and I get depressed when I see "Broadway Road". I bet someone would make a "Penny Lane Street".
There are plenty of Spanish-named streets around here -- Calle Azteca , Via de Ventura , etc. When I lived in San Diego, I was on Caminito Alvarez, one company abbreviated it to Caminito Alvar, and I had to call them to change it to CMTO Alvarez.
I worked for a cab company here in Phoenix and one of the other developers insisted that he could create a UI with textboxes for:
number , direction (N, S, E, W) , name , and type (st, ave, etc.) e.g. 123 E Main St
and it took some convincing to get him to see the light. The next developer never saw the light.
A few weeks ago I called the company to order a cab and it took some doing to convince the operator that my street doesn't have a direction.
When accepting addresses, don't try to make it fit a pattern.
|
|
|
|
|
Germany has leading-zero zip codes.
West Germany had five-digit zip codes, none starting with 0. East Germany had 4 digit zip codes. Solution? Stick a zero in front of the East German ones.
Related: Falsehoods programmers beleive about names[^]
The TL;DR is: Don't decompose further then necessary. For many applications, a multiline text field is good enough for address, as is a single "name" field.
This prevents some searches, though ("all ladies with first name Rose living on Rose street", "all our customers in odd numbered houses on We-Dig-A-Canal street"), which turns the thing into a really interesting problem: since you cannot compose reliably, you have to hold redundant data, or live with substandard searches.
|
|
|
|
|
In the last couple of years, I've been adding the HTML/JS/CSS skillset to my stack of required skills and my talks and courses have reflected that change. To my readers who are deep in the XAML stack, this change seems to have come at somewhat a shock to many. I've even been accused by some of abandoning the Silverlight, WPF, Win8, WinPhone folks. This has caused me a lot of frustration because I don't believe that developers can or should only know one possible stack. To reach the full breadth of users, sometimes you need to be able to develop across the ecosystems. Are your skills still relevant? How do you keep up to date?
|
|
|
|
|
My process is usually:
- See. See new stuff I like.
- Read. Read book(s) about new stuff.
- Make. Make something (utility, article, website) with new stuff.
- Employ. Use new stuff at job.
That last step doesn't always happen, but it's nice when it does. That's the crucial step to be sure I am proficient in the "new stuff". Also helps to keep me motivated.
|
|
|
|
|
Some time ago, I compared NHibernate and Entity Framework. It was from a very technical point of view, and I think it is still up to date. Today, I want to talk about the current state of things, from a less technical stand. First, let me just say the obvious: NHibernate originated and is driven by the community, while Entity Framework is a Microsoft product. This makes all the difference in the world. To be ORM not to be? That is the query.
|
|
|
|
|
Hi there! This webpage covers the space and time Big-O complexities of common algorithms used in Computer Science. When preparing for technical interviews in the past, I found myself spending hours crawling the internet putting together the best, average, and worst case complexities for search and sorting algorithms so that I wouldn't be stumped when asked about them. Know Thy Complexities!
|
|
|
|
|
My research is focused on biomolecular NMR and, as such, often involves transferring resonance assignments from one multidimensional NMR spectrum to another. In theory this should be a simple task, but it can be extremely time consuming due to small variations in the sample used to acquire the data or in the way the data were acquired. The good news, however, is that it is possible to automate this process using an optimization.... The transfer of resonance assignments is different in that individual resonances are either matched with each other or not. The transformation from one set of data onto another is effectively discrete (more specifically, it is binary). This type of optimization is known as “binary integer programming.” Step 2: make sure optimization errors do not accidentally cause zombie apocolypse.
|
|
|
|
|
The Start button is back. But that's just one of a very long list of changes you'll find in Windows 8.1, which will be available as a preview in a few weeks and will be released before the end of the year. Don't let the name or the price tag (free) fool you: this is a major update. Here's what's inside. The Start button is just the start of it.
|
|
|
|
|
There’s a saying dating back to the early MS-DOS days: “Wait for the point release.” The implication was that the x.0 version of any new MS-DOS was sure to have problems (if you were around at the time, 2.0 and 3.0 certainly had some issues), and you should wait for the inevitable x.1 update before upgrading. That attitude later changed to “wait for the first Service Pack” when we moved to Windows 95 and NT, and while there have been occasions where things more or less worked as expected, there are still many users—and even more businesses—who hold off on upgrading to a new Microsoft OS until it’s been out in the wild for a while. What are you looking forward to in the next update to Windows 8?
|
|
|
|
|
Microsoft is plugging its security intelligence systems into Azure so that service providers and local authorities can get near-realtime information on botnets and malware detected by Redmond. The new Windows Azure-based Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (C-TIP) was unveiled on Tuesday by Microsoft as an extension of its crime-busting Microsoft Active Response for Security (MARS) program. C-TIP will let ISPs and Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTS) get a direct link between their servers and Windows Azure to ingest near-realtime data on malware-infected computers tracked by Microsoft. MARS attacks... known botnets and infected systems every 30 seconds.
|
|
|
|
|
Mary Meeker’s annual Internet trends report is out; you can read the full 2013 edition here. Not up for 120 slides? Here’s my pull of the best ones, with a focus on the data-heavy charts and graphs. Mobile continues to be the biggest trend in the deck, by far. And that extends to people living their lives online and documenting them as they go — just look at the growth of shared photos. But last year’s theme was the mobile monetization gap, and it still exists. The State of the Internet, in pictures. Sorry, no cats.
|
|
|
|
|
The large number of coursework-only MS degrees that we are collectively granting is eroding whatever prestige and credentialing value was previously associated with an MS. To put it bluntly, people have caught on.... The thesis is that job applicants with MS degrees are often weaker than those with BS degrees. I see similar effects here at Utah where I’m often the instructor for a mixed graduate and undergraduate operating systems course. The best MS students and the best undergrads are extremely strong. However, the median-quality MS student is weaker than the median-quality undergrad. A lot of this is caused by the MS students who don’t have a CS background: they simply are not ready for a serious upper-division CS class. Is a college degree in Computer Science still relevant?
|
|
|
|
|
I'm working on mine right now, and while I am going the coursework route, I don't really seem to be in the group he's talking about. I'm doing it primarily for personal reasons, i.e. all the cool classes are graduate level, and if I going to take them I might as well get a degree out of it
Plus, I just finished my BS in CS this month, so I'm just extending my knowledge instead of doing it to switch fields. As for the coursework version, I chose it because it just fits me better. I don't have any specific area I'm interested enough to want to do a thesis on, and I have no plans to move on to a PhD, so there's no benefit to going that route for me.
|
|
|
|
|
Seems to me that the way to go if you can handle it is a Software Engineering degree. Traditionally CS degrees seem to be aimed at building OS's and Compilers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
AspDotNetDev wrote: Anti-freeze properties in the blood?
I've heard before that some fish (and other kind of critters) have this ability, but not for Mammals.
Nihil obstat
|
|
|
|
|
Yeah, I thought that was why they were woolly. Didn't think they'd also need defrosters.
|
|
|
|
|
So when can I own a pet mammoth?
|
|
|
|
|
Probably within the next 5 years. However, I am going to wait until the price drops. I expect that will happen once Americans find out how tasty they are (*wonders to self if MammothBurgers.com is registered...*).
|
|
|
|
|
There’s this debate that goes round and round about a process that’s commonly known as responsible disclosure or in other words, notifying the owner of a system that their security sucks and giving them the opportunity to fix it rather than telling the great unwashed masses and letting them have at a vulnerable system. The theory goes that responsible disclosure is the ethical thing to do whilst airing website security dirty laundry publicly makes you an irresponsible cowboy, or something to that effect. With great power (to hack) comes great responsibility.
|
|
|
|
|
When I became interested in alternate keyboard layouts about 3 years ago and researched possible more ergonomic alternatives, I also stumbled upon geekhack and was immediately drawn to the idea of starting my learning process with a new keyboard, which of course had to have mechanical switches.... Finally, when I had realized how much the custom layout - by now I had switched to AdNW - was making my day job as software developer more comfortable I decided to also get a better input device, and in lack of any interesting and affordable alternatives was soon tempted to build one myself... If at first you don't succeed, build one yourself.
|
|
|
|
|
Ask a room of developers what they’d do to help diagnose a live bug in their app. Most of them would say ‘add some logging’. Ask them how and they’d reply ‘use log4x to write to a log file’. They’d write some text out to a disk. There’s your problem. What only a very few would say is add some monitoring. Rather than write out a line to a file that says ‘Connecting to the database’ they’d record a key value pair for active database connections. Rather than writing out ‘Home page requested’ they’d prefer a meaningful data structure detailing the request received. But, for my own part, it was printf to me...
|
|
|
|
|
I’ve been thinking about making a platform game recently, but I’ve never done one before, so I wanted to start small, very, very small! How about starting with just a tiny rectangle player character jumping around on some larger rectangle platforms. Play the game, or grab the code and build your own version.
|
|
|
|