I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me “Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

Source.

So I got an Asus W7J via UPS today (joy!) for my sister-in-law, who's attending college as a freshman this upcoming semster.  I had a very good impression of the W5F when I purchased it for my wife in May, so I decided to stick to Asus laptops (I did momentarily, in a haze of insanity, contemplate a Dell as the W7J availability was scarce).

At the time of purchase, the W7J was selling for far less than the W5F (difference of ~$250.00), which made it an awesome deal considering that the W5F is only equipped with integrated video while the W7J has a dedicated video card.  However, as I checked Geared2Play's website, I noticed that the W5F is now retailing for less (@ $1329.00) than the W7J (@$1449.00).  D'oh! 

Unfortunately, the W7J is only available in the US in black.  I guess this is to differentiate it from the W5F a bit?  As with the W5F, you can tell immediately as you pick up the laptop that the W7J is a high quality component; the chasis is very sturdy.  You'll see in the pics just how similar these two notebooks are, at least cosmetically.

Still in the box

Profile shot; not the thinnest I've seen, but very compact considering what's in the package

Touchpad is made of the same material that the handrest is. It's not a very "slick" material, so there is some added resistence when using it

Screen is better than I expected! From what I read, the new "V-Cut" technology was supposed to be a bust, but the screen is extremely bright with good contrast and very good viewing angles

From the other side...

Vertical viewing angle...

Straight on...

Surprisingly, the size is extremely close to that of the W5F; I expected it to be larger (the angle distorts the size in this photo)

About the same height...

Another angle...

Can't see the W7J under the W5F at all!

Another size comparison shot, this time the W5F in front

The W5F and W7J screens, side by side. Both laptops are on AC power and on the second highest brightness setting. My opinion is that the W7J screen is better than the W5F in terms of contrast and brightness. The W5F's screen, compared to the W7J's, looks ever so slightly washed out. In addition, the larger diemensions of the W7J's screen makes things much more legible and reduces eye strain.

The W7J seems to have better vertical viewing angle...one of the best I've seen on a laptop.

Two very nice laptops from Asus

Back to back...

The W7J is indeed a nice laptop.  Knowing that the W5F is cheaper than the W7J now, would I still have picked the W7J?  Well, not for my sister-in-law, who really has no need for the additional processing and graphics capabilities (1.66 Ghz vs. 1.83 Ghz, W5F and W7J respectively).  While $1449.00 is a damn good price for this laptop, it's ultimately more than I would have liked to spend since she'll probably just end up using the office applications and browsing the web.  For any business users and developers, the W7J is a steal.  As for myself, even I'm getting itchy to pull the trigger and forego Merom (so tempting).

As a side note, I find it weird that many developers prefer monster 17" behemoth laptops.  I myself have a 15-incher currently and I find even that to be intolerably cumbersome when I have to travel.  As such, I've made up my mind that I'll likely get a smaller 12"-13.3" laptop the next time I upgrade.  Since I hardly ever use the laptop keyboard or screen, as I am always plugged into a proper LCD screen and I use a wireless USB keyboard, I don't see the need to get a laptop with a big screen.  If I'm travelling, I'm more than willing to give up the screen real estate in exchange for a laptop that's easier to handle. 

But that's just me

If you're interested in a more in depth review, you can check out NotbookReview.com's full length review and also the owner's lounge thread at NotebookReview.com.

Compared to all the love that Nintendo has been getting for innovating in terms of how we interact with our games, both Microsoft and Sony have been accused of not innovating enough to provide for a compelling reason to purchase either platform simply to get prettier versions of yesteryear's games.

Certainly, Live is a huge innovation on Microsoft's part, but an old one that has existed since the original XBox (yes, it wansn't the first online console, but it was the best implementation (and still is)).  But it still seemed like it fell short a bit by not allowing for far greater possibilities, namely, user generated content (community created games).  This was the first thing that I thought about when I read about XNA before the XBox 360 launched.

Well it seems like Microsoft is going a step further by releasing a free version of XNA (much like the Express versions of SQL Server and Visual Studio):

Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'.

The details of the new tech are as follows: XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.

Nice!  This is quite awesome as it opens up the home console to anyone with a few dollars and the ability to write code.  In itself, this is quite an innovative concept in the cosole gaming arena (it's been done on the web in the form of Flash games for years now), but it will surely also lead to innovative games and gameplay concepts as it will allow quirky, oddball ideas to flourish which would otherwise flounder in today's mass market games development.

Certainly, my feeling is that the ratio of good games to bad will be very low, but even if 1 in 10 is a keeper, I think it'll be an amazing success and offer a much greater variety of gameplay aside from FPS style games which XBox 360 is known for ("Bald Space Marine" syndrome) at an affordable price which will likely draw in a larger audience.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles the various issues and questions that arise from this and how they build the marketplace to sell these user created games (or are they free?).  Will users be charged for the distribution of the games (to help pay for bandwidth and hosting)?

Regardless of the details, it's a ground breaking innovation in the area of console gaming and hopefully, it'll bring into the fold a new generation of console games developers who have the freedom (not constrained by big budget funding) and desire (not forced to program shitty games to put food on the table) to create new gaming experiences.

Will you look at that?

The team that won the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competion used Microsoft Windows XP Embedded to run their bot.

From the team's white paper:

The Windows XP Embedded operating system along with Matlab 7 were utilized in order to create an easy and quick development environment.

Not only did the team win, but they retained their championship title from last year.

Very cool.

Welcome to the inaugural "Developer Life Lessons" post!  Like my DevTools posts, I hope to make these a series which contain little developer life stories, tidbits, and advice (at least whatever I'm qualified to offer).

So what shall our topic be for this first post?  How about the most crucial and perhaps most overlooked (by some) tool of all: the developer workstation.

Lesson 1a: Always have a backup machine.  Hardware fails, catastrophes happen.  Be prepared by having a second dev machine which is fairly capable and has most of the necessary software already installed.  If you need to, take a day to do this on some project down time...most managers will understand and will be supportive as having a backup in place and ready to go with a few updates could be a life saver come crunch time and your workstation refuses to boot.  Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with having a good backup strategy for your code and source control to get your working code onto the new machine (we'll cover this in later editions, I guess).  If you work in a team, you should have at least one backup machine for every 10 team members (random number ).  It just makes sense, you know?

Lesson 1b: Never buy Compaq or HP.  Never.  I would not use their top of the line machines even if they gave them to me for free and paid me to endorse them.  Compaq and HP are truly pieces of turds that should have no place on a developer's desk.  I have never had a single good experience with either brand and refuse to buy anything made by these two terrible hardware manufacturers.  Be it printers, laptops, desktops...whatever, stay away, stay far, far away from these two brands.

As in all cases, a true geek never trusts his/her machine to the unknown by buying a retail PC (different story with laptops as DIY is still not as common and accessible as with the PC market).  A true geek will always hand build his/her primary machine (and of course, use the old machine as the backup (see Lesson 1a)). 

The big benefit of course is that as you pick your own components, you can optimize the pieces for what you plan on doing and you can ensure that every piece is from a known manufacturer with a good warranty.

Indeed, it requires more research, possibly more work, and possibly more money, but in the end, you have a fine tuned tool that you can be proud of, that you know inside and out, and that is far, far better than what you'd otherwise get from a retail PC manufacturer.  With the amount of resources on the web these days on building PCs, it's really quite trivial and I think it's something that everyone should do at least once.

If you absolutely must buy a retail PC, then go with Dell.  Dells suck hard as well, but not nearly as hard as HP/Compaq.  Of course, having the luxury of building your own workstation is not always possible and is in fact quite rare, but if you do have the luxury, dont' settle for a retail PC!

Lesson 1c: When interviewing for new jobs, always make a point to check out the machines and monitors that people are using in the office.  If they're using machines from 2002 with Celerons, 512 MB of RAM, and stuck with Office 2000 and still using CRTs, it's typically a sign that the company is tight with the purse strings.  This can be a good thing in general, but when it comes to development machines, it's always a bad sign as having good workstations (don't even have to be top of the line) shows that the managers understand the needs of the developers and they've invested in making sure that they've done everything they can, from a hardware perspective, to help make the developers as efficient as they can be (who wants to sit through lenghty compiles?).  After all, time is money and slow machines bog down the developer and those seconds and minutes add up over time.

Via Fark, I came across a short article by Gregory P. Smith titled "Top 10 Reasons Why People Quit Their Jobs".

The interesting bit is the conclusion drawn by Smith:

Interesting, isn’t it — that all ten factors begin with the phrase “Management….” Interesting, too, just how many of these high-turnover factors are preventable? My retention survey confirmed the truth of the saying, “Employees don’t quit their companies, they quit their bosses.” Thirty five percent of the respondents answered yes to the question, Was the attitude of your direct supervisor/manager the primary factor in your quitting a previous job?

In a seperate newsletter, logoworks cites Roger Herman:

Recruiting, selecting, and hiring a new employee takes time and money . . . neither of which you have a lot of. Then, when you do find somebody that you hope will work out, you have to invest in training time and some team building to move that new employee into a position of productivity. Meanwhile, the business keeps moving. There’s no way to push a “pause” button while you adjust.

Regarding my first job that I had out of college as a consultant at ITT Industries, I remember I was told by my manager, when I asked for a well deserved raise, that I was "replaceable" and that in fact, all employees are.  Needless to say, with this type of attitude in management, interacting with management was always stressful and my own morale was low...I lost a lot of respect for my manager after that encounter; it's one thing for management to believe some management training BS, but it's just not right for management to say it to directly to an employee...

Herman continues by adding:

People know each other, they’re comfortable with each other, they work well together. This kind of relationship can be powerful when there’s a rush order to get out or when there’s a problem somewhere in the manufacturing process.

This can be even more critical in IT as many of the people that work in this field are introverts (like myself), whom generally have a hard time finding people who they can relate to and form bonds with.  And of course, this type of employee bonding is important so that responsibility is gladly shared by teammates and coworkers come crunch time, so that morale remains high (and by proxy, productivity and quality), and so that good talent doesn't slip away.

On a completely unrelated note, I came across a goldmine of cute as I was browsing around the web.  Can you tell which one doesn't belong (at least according to Nature) with the other?

Too cute!

Despite all those Discovery channel shows, sharks are still one of the most misunderstood animals in the oceans.  They are magnificent creatures who's ferocity, for the most part, is exaggerated due to the media frenzy that occurs with each shark attack, which typically leads to the killing of the suspect shark at human hands.  Quite sad when such a creature is simply living within Nature's guidelines.

Perhaps what's even more disturbing is how the Chinese and the Japanese systematically hunt, de-fin, and then discard live sharks.  I once saw a video of this when I was in high school (you can find a similar PSA-type video here) and I will never forget the image of the blood red waters around the vessel, the writhing sharks, still alive and bleeding after the dorsal fin was cut off discarded like garbage into the ocean.

Absolutely sickening...

So it's encouraging to read that Yao Ming, a prominent role model to Chinese youth and Chinese society in general, has sworn off shark's fin soup and has apparently picked up a cause to help promote wildlife protection.  Hopefully, this leads to a decrease in the incredibly grissly, wasteful, and disgusting practice of finning sharks.

I came across an article on Tomshardware this morning regarding Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, who is now starting a social networking site/portal for seniors.

... <that's me sitting here contemplating>

Yeah, sounds familiar to me alright.  Back in the summer of 2000, I was working with a Mister Ezra Hedaya at a small startup called iCanServices.  The idea was to tap into a largely ignored marketspace: the "mature adult" (age 55+) internet user and offer them a way to stay in touch with their families, with each other, and offer a variety of services specifically tailored to these users.

It's one of those situations where the idea was ahead of its time.  One of the biggest issues was that most of the elderly were very wary of computers and certainly, the high prices of components those days didn't help much at all.  It was a big stumbling block to try to introduce a web application when most of the users didn't have access to the web. 

Fast forward to today, seven years later.  Technology has slowly melded into the society even more so since 2000 and a new generation of these mature adults are starting to retire from a business world that has embraced computers and the Internet as a daily instrument.  Computers and internet connections while certainly commonplace in 2000, were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today and nowhere near as affordable.  With the introduction of UMPCs (Ultra Mobile Personal Computers) and the slew of really cheap desktops nowadays, Captain's dream might have taken off and perhaps I'd be a wealthy IPO millionaire today (yeah, in my wildest dreams).

Chalk this one up as another missed opportunity

I came across an article on some common myths with regards to Windows passwords (via Fark).

The short of it is to keep the password easy to remeber, make it at least 15 characters, and don't forget that you can use spaces in passwords as well to create passphrases.

Man, I don't about anyone else, but I personally cannot wait for these guys to open a can of whup-ass :D Graaaaaawr (I really mean that)!!

The schedule can be found on the Team USA subsection of NBA.com.

I'm really looking forward to this team play as it should be some fast paced, exciting basketball.