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  • DIY Weather-Aware Umbrella Stand Signals Stormy Weather

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    This clever DIY project adds ambient weather notification to your umbrella stand–simply walk by it on your way out the door to get a subtle reminder to take your umbrella. The clever setup involves a hobby board, motion detection, and LEDS to a rather clever end. As you walk by the semi-translucent umbrella stand all of it is mounted in, it lights up to indicate the weather conditions. Blue indicates the forecast for the day shows no sign of rain, green indicates rain, and red indicates thunderstorms. Check out the above video to see the hardware involves and the stand in action; hit up the link below for the full build guide including code. DIY Umbrella Stand Hack with Rain Alert [via Make] How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows HTG Explains: Why Screen Savers Are No Longer Necessary 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7

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  • Why is cleverness considered harmful in programming by some people?

    - by Larry Coleman
    I've noticed a lot of questions lately relating to different abstraction techniques, and answers saying basically that the techniques in question are "too clever." I would think that part of our jobs as programmers is to determine the best solutions to the problems we are given to solve, and cleverness is helpful in doing that. So my question is: are the people who think certain abstraction techniques are too clever opposed to cleverness per se, or is there some other reason for the objection? EDIT: This parser combinator is an example of what I would consider to be clever code. I downloaded this and looked it over for about half an hour. Then I stepped through the macro expansion on paper and saw the light. Now that I understand it, it seems much more elegant than the Haskell parser combinator.

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  • Is “Application Programming Interface” a bad name?

    - by Taylor Hawkes
    Application programming interface seems like a bad name for what it is. Is there a reason it was named such? I understand that people used to call them Advanced Programming Interfaces and then renamed to Application Programming Interface. Is that why it is poorly named? Why is it not named Application (to) Programmer Interface. I guess I'm just confused of the meaning behind that name? I write more about my confusion around the name here: BREAKING DOWN THE WORD “APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE” This is a very confusing word. We mostly understand what the word Interface means, but “Application Programming”, what even is that. Honestly I'm confused. Is that suppose to be two words like “Application”, “Programming” and then the “Interface” is suppose to mean between the two? Like would a “Computer Human Interface” be an interface between a “Computer” and a “Human” (monitor , keyboard, mouse ) or is a “Computer Human” a real thing - perhaps the terminator. So a CHI is our boy Kyle Reese who is the only way we are able to work with the computer human. I think more likely “Application Programming Interface” was simply poorly named and doesn't really make sense. It was originally called an “Advanced Programming Interface” , but perhaps being a bit to ostentatious merged into the now wildly accepted “Application Programming Interface”. So now, not wanting to change an acronym has confused the living heck out everyone.... Any thoughts or clarification would be great, I'm giving a lecture on this topic in a month, so I would prefer not to BS my way through it.

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  • How customers view and interact with a company

    The Harvard Business Review article written by Rayport and Jaworski is aptly titled “Best Face Forward” because it sheds light on how customers view and interact with a company. In the past most business interaction between customers was performed in a face to face meeting where one party would present an item for sale and then the other would decide whether to purchase the item. In addition, if there was a problem with a purchased item then they would bring the item back to the person who sold the item for resolution. One of my earliest examples of witnessing this was when I was around 6 or 7 years old and I was allowed to spend the summer in Tennessee with my Grandparents. My Grandfather had just written a book about the local history of his town and was selling them to his friends and local bookstores. I still remember he offered to pay me a small commission for every book I helped him sell because I was carrying the books around for him. Every sale he made was face to face with his customers which allowed him to share his excitement for the book with everyone. In today’s modern world there is less and less human interaction as the use of computers and other technologies allow us to communicate within seconds even though both parties may be across the globe or just next door. That being said, customers view a company through multiple access points called faces that represent the ability to interact without actually seeing a human face. As a software engineer this is a good and a bad thing because direct human interaction and technology based interaction have both good and bad attributes based on the customer. How organizations coordinate business and IT functions, to provide quality service varies based on each individual business and the goals and directives put in place by its management. According to Rayport and Jaworski, the type of interaction used through a particular access point may lend itself to be people-dominate, machine-dominate, or a combination of both. The method by which a company communicates information through an access point is a strategic choice that relates costs and customer outcomes. To simplify this, the choice is based on what can give the customer the best experience interacting with the company when the cost of the interaction is also a factor. I personally see examples of this every day at work. The company website is machine-dominate with people updating and maintaining information, our groups department is people dominate because most of the customer interaction is done at the customers location and is backed up by machine based data sources, and our sales/member service department is a hybrid because employees work in tandem with machines in order for them to assist customers with signing up or any other issue they may have. The positive and negative aspects of human and machine interfaces are a key aspect in deciding which interface to use when allowing customers to access a company or a combination of the two. Rayport and Jaworski also used MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson preliminary catalog of human and machine strengths. He stated that humans outperform machines in judgment, pattern recognition, exception processing, insight, and creativity. I have found this to be true based on the example of how sales and member service reps at my company handle a multitude of questions and various situations with a lot of unknown variables. A machine interface could never effectively be able to handle these scenarios because there are too many variables to consider and would not have the built-in logic to process each customer’s claims and needs. In addition, he also stated that machines outperform humans in collecting, storing, transmitting and routine processing. An example of this would be my employer’s website. Customers can simply go online and purchase a product without even talking to a sales or member services representative. The information is then stored in a database so that the customer can always go back and review there order, and access their selected services. A human, no matter how smart they are would never be able to keep track of hundreds of thousands of customers let alone know what they purchased or how much they paid. In today’s technology driven economy every company must offer their customers multiple methods of accessibly in order to survive. The more of an opportunity a company has to create a positive experience for their customers, in my opinion, they more likely the customer will return to that company again. I have noticed this with my personal shopping habits and experiences. References Rayport, J., & Jaworski, B. (2004). Best Face Forward. Harvard Business Review, 82(12), 47-58. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

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  • Passing class names or objects?

    - by nischayn22
    I have a switch statement switch ( $id ) { case 'abc': return 'Animal'; case 'xyz': return 'Human'; //many more } I am returning class names,and use them to call some of their static functions using call_user_func(). Instead I can also create a object of that class, return that and then call the static function from that object as $object::method($param) switch ( $id ) { case 'abc': return new Animal; case 'xyz': return new Human; //many more } Which way is efficient? To make this question broader : I have classes that have mostly all static methods right now, putting them into classes is kind of a grouping idea here (for example the DB table structure of Animal is given by class Animal and so for Human class). I need to access many functions from these classes so the switch needs to give me access to the class

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  • Resource Monitor (resmon) in Windows Server 2008 R2

    - by Clever Human
    In Windows Server 2008 R2's Resource Monitor, is there a way to set the scale of the various graphs to be constant values instead of variable based on data? It seems to me that the utility of a graph is to get a quick overview glance at the values those graphs are showing. So if I look at the CPU graph and the line is up near the top, I can know immediately that something is using all my CPU and go investigate what. I don't really care if the CPU is jumping between .01% and 2%. Or if the network usage monitor is up near the top, I will know that all my bandwidth is being used up, and go figure out what. But the way things are now, the graphs are meaningless because the scales constantly shift. If you look at the network usage graph in one second it might have a scale out of 100kbps, and the next second have a scale based on 1mbps! So... is there a registry key or something that will peg the scale of these graphs to logical maximums? (the graph on the right hand side of the screenshot below):

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  • Fixed Resource Monitor Graph Scale in Windows Server 2008 R2

    - by Clever Human
    In Windows Server 2008 R2's Resource Monitor, is there a way to set the scale of the various graphs to be constant values instead of variable based on data? It seems to me that the utility of a graph is to get a quick overview glance at the values those graphs are showing. So if I look at the CPU graph and the line is up near the top, I can know immediately that something is using all my CPU and go investigate what. I don't really care if the CPU is jumping between .01% and 2%. Or if the network usage monitor is up near the top, I will know that all my bandwidth is being used up, and go figure out what. But the way things are now, the graphs are meaningless because the scales constantly shift. If you look at the network usage graph in one second it might have a scale out of 100kbps, and the next second have a scale based on 1mbps! So... is there a registry key or something that will peg the scale of these graphs to logical maximums?

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  • Cannot Install Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit)

    - by Clever Human
    I have tried every way I know how to get Windows 7 SP1 to install. It fails every time. Below is what looks like the relevant contents of the CBS.Log file. If there are further details that would help or more information I can gather, I will get it. 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS Startup: Package: Package_for_KB976902~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.17514 completed startup processing, new state: Installed, original: Installed, targeted: Installed. hr = 0x80070490 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS WER: Generating failure report for package: Package_for_KB976932~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.17514, status: 0x80070490, failure source: CBS Other, start state: Partially Installed, target state: Installed, client id: SP Coordinater Engine 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS Failed to query DisableWerReporting flag. Assuming not set... [HRESULT = 0x80070002 - ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND] 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS Failed to add %windir%\winsxs\pending.xml to WER report because it is missing. Continuing without it... 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS Failed to add %windir%\winsxs\pending.xml.bad to WER report because it is missing. Continuing without it... 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS SQM: Reporting package change completion for package: Package_for_KB976932~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.17514, current: Partially Installed, original: Partially Installed, target: Installed, status: 0x80070490, failure source: CBS Other, failure details: "(null)", client id: SP Coordinater Engine, initiated offline: False, execution sequence: 517, first merged sequence: 517 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS SQM: Upload requested for report: PackageChangeEnd_Package_for_KB976932~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.1.17514, session id: 101457924, sample type: Standard 2011-08-15 10:32:52, Info CBS SQM: Ignoring upload request because the sample type is not enabled: Standard I have downloaded the service pack and ran it from the EXE, I have installed it from Windows Update, I have ran all the "troubleshooting" trouble shots I could find. Nothing has worked so far. Any advice would be appreciated.

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  • How can I extract paragaphs and selected lines with Perl?

    - by neversaint
    I have a text where I need to: to extract the whole paragraph under the section "Aceview summary" until the line that starts with "Please quote" (not to be included). to extract the line that starts with "The closest human gene". to store them into array with two elements. The text looks like this (also on pastebin): AceView: gene:1700049G17Rik, a comprehensive annotation of human, mouse and worm genes with mRNAs or ESTsAceView. <META NAME="title" CONTENT=" AceView: gene:1700049G17Rik a comprehensive annotation of human, mouse and worm genes with mRNAs or EST"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT=" AceView, genes, Acembly, AceDB, Homo sapiens, Human, nematode, Worm, Caenorhabditis elegans , WormGenes, WormBase, mouse, mammal, Arabidopsis, gene, alternative splicing variant, structure, sequence, DNA, EST, mRNA, cDNA clone, transcript, transcription, genome, transcriptome, proteome, peptide, GenBank accession, dbest, RefSeq, LocusLink, non-coding, coding, exon, intron, boundary, exon-intron junction, donor, acceptor, 3'UTR, 5'UTR, uORF, poly A, poly-A site, molecular function, protein annotation, isoform, gene family, Pfam, motif ,Blast, Psort, GO, taxonomy, homolog, cellular compartment, disease, illness, phenotype, RNA interference, RNAi, knock out mutant expression, regulation, protein interaction, genetic, map, antisense, trans-splicing, operon, chromosome, domain, selenocysteine, Start, Met, Stop, U12, RNA editing, bibliography"> <META NAME="Description" CONTENT= " AceView offers a comprehensive annotation of human, mouse and nematode genes reconstructed by co-alignment and clustering of all publicly available mRNAs and ESTs on the genome sequence. Our goals are to offer a reliable up-to-date resource on the genes, their functions, alternative variants, expression, regulation and interactions, in the hope to stimulate further validating experiments at the bench "> <meta name="author" content="Danielle Thierry-Mieg and Jean Thierry-Mieg, NCBI/NLM/NIH, [email protected]"> <!-- var myurl="av.cgi?db=mouse" ; var db="mouse" ; var doSwf="s" ; var classe="gene" ; //--> However I am stuck with the following script logic. What's the right way to achieve that? #!/usr/bin/perl -w my $INFILE_file_name = $file; # input file name open ( INFILE, '<', $INFILE_file_name ) or croak "$0 : failed to open input file $INFILE_file_name : $!\n"; my @allsum; while ( <INFILE> ) { chomp; my $line = $_; my @temp1 = (); if ( $line =~ /^ AceView summary/ ) { print "$line\n"; push @temp1, $line; } elsif( $line =~ /Please quote/) { push @allsum, [@temp1]; @temp1 = (); } elsif ($line =~ /The closest human gene/) { push @allsum, $line; } } close ( INFILE ); # close input file # Do something with @allsum There are many files like that I need to process.

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  • Interpretation of empty User-agent

    - by Amit Agrawal
    How should I interpret a empty User-agent? I have some custom analytics code and that code has to analyze only human traffic. I have got a working list of User-agents denoting human traffic, and bot traffic, but the empty User-agent is proving to be problematic. And I am getting lots of traffic with empty user agent - 10%. Additionally - I have crafted the human traffic versus bot traffic user agent list by analyzing my current logs. As such I might be missing a lot of entries in there. Is there a well maintained list of user agents denoting bot traffic, OR the inverse a list of user agents denoting human traffic?

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  • A public struct inside a class

    - by Koning Baard
    I am new to C++, and let's say I have two classes: Creature and Human: /* creature.h */ class Creature { private: public: struct emotion { /* All emotions are percentages */ char joy; char trust; char fear; char surprise; char sadness; char disgust; char anger; char anticipation; char love; }; }; /* human.h */ class Human : Creature { }; And I have this in my main function in main.cpp: Human foo; My question is: how can I set foo's emotions? I tried this: foo->emotion.fear = 5; But GCC gives me this compile error: error: base operand of '-' has non-pointer type 'Human' This: foo.emotion.fear = 5; Gives: error: 'struct Creature::emotion' is inaccessible error: within this context error: invalid use of 'struct Creature::emotion' Can anyone help me? Thanks P.S. No I did not forget the #includes

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  • How to find next (by a single parameter) element in c++? (stl) [closed]

    - by user2136963
    I have n humans of THuman class Each human has scored some points in one of two rounds. (score1 and score2) Each human has its unique id. Score1 and 2 are also unique. Besides, a human has a score_t=score1+score2, which can be the same for two of them. I need to implement 6 variables to THuman which return id of a human with: bigger score1 smaller score1 bigger score2 smaller score2 bigger score_t smaller score_t (if there are many humans those satisfy theese conditions, the one with smallest difference of corresponding parameter should be chosen (like score1 for 1 and 2)) In other words, it's some kind of storing 3 human sortings. Two more functions I need should get argument x, set score1 or score 2 to x, and then refresh some of the 6 variables above. If I needed sorting by only one variable, I would simply create set and defined and < operators for my class. But what is the solution for three of parameters? Is it possible to use STL here, or I should create my own lists/treaps? __ Answer: How to update set of pointers c++?

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  • Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

    - by J Swaroop
    Re-posting Bruce Tierney's original post - albeit a day late: I reckon this is Oracle's most interesting launch this year. Enjoy! The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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  • Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

    - by Bruce Tierney
    The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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  • The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

    - by Applications User Experience
    By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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  • Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

    - by Ralf Westphal
    “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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  • How should I structure my turn based engine to allow flexibility for players/AI and observation?

    - by Reefpirate
    I've just started making a Turn Based Strategy engine in GameMaker's GML language... And I was cruising along nicely until it came time to handle the turn cycle, and determining who is controlling what player, and also how to handle the camera and what is displayed on screen. Here's an outline of the main switch happening in my main game loop at the moment: switch (GameState) { case BEGIN_TURN: // Start of turn operations/routines break; case MID_TURN: switch (PControlledBy[Turn]) { case HUMAN: switch (MidTurnState) { case MT_SELECT: // No units selected, 'idle' UI state break; case MT_MOVE: // Unit selected and attempting to move break; case MT_ATTACK: break; } break; case COMPUTER: // AI ROUTINES GO HERE break; case OBSERVER: // OBSERVER ROUTINES GO HERE break; } break; case END_TURN: // End of turn routines/operations, and move Turn to next player break; } Now, I can see a couple of problems with this set-up already... But I don't have any idea how to go about making it 'right'. Turn is a global variable that stores which player's turn it is, and the BEGIN_TURN and END_TURN states make perfect sense to me... But the MID_TURN state is baffling me because of the things I want to happen here: If there are players controlled by humans, I want the AI to do it's thing on its turn here, but I want to be able to have the camera follow the AI as it makes moves in the human player's vision. If there are no human controlled player's, I'd like to be able to watch two or more AI's battle it out on the map with god-like 'observer' vision. So basically I'm wondering if there are any resources for how to structure a Turn Based Strategy engine? I've found lots of writing about pathfinding and AI, and those are all great... But when it comes to handling the turn structure and the game states I am having trouble finding any resources at all. How should the states be divided to allow flexibility between the players and the controllers (HUMAN, COMPUTER, OBSERVER)? Also, maybe if I'm on the right track I just need some reassurance before I lay down another few hundred lines of code...

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  • Unwanted SDL_QUIT Event on mouseclick.

    - by Anthony Clever
    I'm having a slight problem with my SDL/Opengl code, specifically, when i try to do something on a mousebuttondown event, the program sends an sdl_quit event to the stack, closing my application. I know this because I can make the program work (sans the ability to quit out of it :| ) by checking for SDL_QUIT during my event loop, and making it do nothing, rather than quitting the application. If anyone could help make my program work, while retaining the ability to, well, close it, it'd be much appreciated. Code attached below: #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "SDL/SDL_opengl.h" void draw_polygon(); void init(); int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { SDL_Event Event; int quit = 0; GLfloat color[] = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f }; init(); glColor3fv (color); glOrtho(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 1.0); draw_polygon(); while(!quit) { while(SDL_PollEvent( &Event )) { switch(Event.type) { case SDL_MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: for (int i = 0; i <= sizeof(color); i++) { color[i] += 0.1f; } glColor3fv ( color ); draw_polygon(); case SDL_KEYDOWN: switch(Event.key.keysym.sym) { case SDLK_ESCAPE: quit = 1; default: break; } default: break; } } } SDL_Quit(); return 0; } void draw_polygon() { glBegin(GL_POLYGON); glVertex3f (0.25, 0.25, 0.0); glVertex3f (0.75, 0.25, 0.0); glVertex3f (0.75, 0.75, 0.0); glVertex3f (0.25, 0.75, 0.0); glEnd(); SDL_GL_SwapBuffers(); } void init() { SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING); SDL_SetVideoMode( 640, 480, 32, SDL_OPENGL ); glClearColor (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0); glMatrixMode( GL_PROJECTION | GL_MODELVIEW ); glLoadIdentity(); glClear (GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); SDL_WM_SetCaption( "OpenGL Test", NULL ); } If it matters in this case, I'm compiling via the included compiler with Visual C++ 2008 express.

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  • Windows Media Center 6 Development on Vista

    - by Clever Human
    I have two development machines -- one is Windows 7, the other is Windows Vista. Depending on where I am in my house is which machine I use. I am writing a Windows Media Center 6 (which ships as part of Windows 7) application. I installed the WMC6 SDK on my Windows 7 machine with no issues. However, when I try and install it on my Vista machine, I am told the WMC6 SDK cannot be installed on Vista. So my questions are: How can I develop a WMC6 app on Vista? If I use the Vista version of the SDK (WMC5.3 SDK) will I be able to edit / compile and test the same application from each machine. I imagine the answer to the second question is "no" because the API changed between those two versions. So can I only work on this application from my Windows 7 machine? That really sucks if it is true!

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  • Compiler issues on VC++ 2008 Express, Seemingly correct code throws errors.

    - by Anthony Clever
    Hi there, I've been trying to get back into coding for a while, so I figured I'd start with some simple SDL, now, without the file i/o, this compiles fine, but when I throw in the stdio code, it starts throwing errors. This I'm not sure about, I don't see any problem with the code itself, however, like I said, I might as well be a newbie, and figured I'd come here to get someone with a little more experience with this type of thing to look at it. I guess my question boils down to: "Why doesn't this compile under Microsoft's Visual C++ 2008 Express?" I've attached the error log at the bottom of the code snippet. Thanks in advance for any help. #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "stdio.h" int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { FILE *stderr; FILE *stdout; stderr = fopen("stderr", "wb"); stdout = fopen("stdout", "wb"); SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING); fprintf(stdout, "SDL INITIALIZED SUCCESSFULLY\n"); SDL_Quit(); fprintf(stderr, "SDL QUIT.\n"); fclose(stderr); fclose(stdout); return 0; } /* 1>------ Build started: Project: opengl_crap, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------ 1>Compiling... 1>main.cpp 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(6) : error C2090: function returns array 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(6) : error C2528: '__iob_func' : pointer to reference is illegal 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(6) : error C2556: 'FILE ***__iob_func(void)' : overloaded function differs only by return type from 'FILE *__iob_func(void)' 1> c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\stdio.h(132) : see declaration of '__iob_func' 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(7) : error C2090: function returns array 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(7) : error C2528: '__iob_func' : pointer to reference is illegal 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(9) : error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'FILE *' to 'FILE ***' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(10) : error C2440: '=' : cannot convert from 'FILE *' to 'FILE ***' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(13) : error C2664: 'fprintf' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'FILE ***' to 'FILE *' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(15) : error C2664: 'fprintf' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'FILE ***' to 'FILE *' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(17) : error C2664: 'fclose' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'FILE ***' to 'FILE *' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>c:\documents and settings\owner\my documents\visual studio 2008\projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\main.cpp(18) : error C2664: 'fclose' : cannot convert parameter 1 from 'FILE ***' to 'FILE *' 1> Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast 1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\opengl_crap\opengl_crap\Debug\BuildLog.htm" 1>opengl_crap - 11 error(s), 0 warning(s) ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ========== */

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  • Best Practices for Working with Multiple Monitors in Visual Studio 2010

    - by Clever Human
    Now that Visual Studio 2010 has support for multiple monitors, I am curious how other people have their environments arranged. I have yet to come up with an arrangement that I am really satisfied with. The current best I have come up with for my 2 monitor system is to have all code windows detached. Then, on my primary monitor, I am able to have two code windows side by side (using the Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts WinKey+LeftArrow and WinKey+RightArrow.) On my secondary monitor I put the rest of the IDE with all of the tool windows that are normally on the bottom (errors list, find window, call stack, etc...) docked where the code windows normally go. I've also tried having all those things detached and having almost nothing in the IDE proper. The problems with this layout are: Newly opened code windows always open in the IDE, not on top of one of the detached windows. Detached code windows do not remember their exact placement from session to session (they are slightly off, having me to use the winkey + arrow key shortcut again and again for each window. There seems to be no way to have the code panes aware that they are on top of one another (IE -- multiple tabs.) The CTRL+TAB shortcut always displays on top of the IDE proper. The Code Panes are always "on top" of (children of) the IDE. So clicking on any code pane brings the IDE to the foreground, even when I care only about that code pane, and not the IDE. Other more minor issues... What would go a long way to making this better is having the code panes detach such that they are tab strips that can have other code panes docked within them. The new multi-monitor support in VS2010 is good, but it still seems really lacking. Can these issues be solved with an add-in? If so, is anyone aware of one? Is there a better way to work with the IDE on multiple monitors than what I am doing? NOTE: While this question is subjective (there is certainly no "this is the best way and that's final" answer) I'd really like to know possibly better methods of working with the IDE than what I have come up with. The intent is not to start a "mine's best" flame war.

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  • Expanding list of databases in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Takes Longer than SQL Server 2005

    - by Clever Human
    Is it just me, or does expanding the list of databases in SQL Server 2008 Management Studio take significantly more time than expanding the list of databases in SQL Server 2005 Management Studio? If it isn't just me, is there an explanation for this behavior? Whatever it is doing in the background that makes it take longer, can we turn that off? Is it configurable? I know, it seems trivial, but I am perpetually being surprised at how long this takes.

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  • PLINQO Not Naming Entities Correctly

    - by Clever Human
    I have my CSP file set up to use TableNaming and EntityNaming as Singular: <TableNaming>Singular</TableNaming> <EntityNaming>Singular</EntityNaming> Yet the generated entities are plural. For instance, I have a table called Companies. The generated name is "Companies" I expected "Company" (like LinqToSql did -- I am upgrading a project.) I have a table named EntityStorageItems (no relation to these entities.) The generated name is "EntityStorageItems" I expected the entity name to be "EntityStorageItem" IOW, it is creating plural names. And I need them to be singular (to work with existing code.) Am I doing something wrong?

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