General Errors:
I think the greatest electronic achievement that mankind will ever have, will be to create computer error messages that actually make sense to the average person.
Most times, the message you get on screen is just a baffling as the reason why it is there in the first place.
Oh sure, I could go online and look up a list of common computer errors, but that still won’t help usually.
What we really need is an easy to read, detailed message that we can pass onto out tech support people. A message that truly outlines what may be going wrong and how long it might take to fix.
If this occurs, people just might start to understand their computers better and get more comfortable with them.
Of course, that can never happen, lest our tech support “geeks” lose their mystique and perceived value. We need to continue thinking that errors are all dangerous warnings that must be heeded unless we want our laptops to delete their own hard drives.
We must never know that in most cases a simple “turn it off then back on” procedure is what is needed to fix the problem.
No. We must never know.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Rude food: God’s own dish
- by VIR SANGHVI
Whenever people ask me if I have a favourite cuisine or a favourite dish, I always say that I don’t because, frankly, there is so much good food out there that it is hard to choose. I’m reluctant also to say if I have a favourite among the many regional cuisines of India. But if you hold a gun to my head, then I will probably concede that – at least in my opinion – the greatest Indian cuisine is the food of Kerala.
Why Kerala? Well, partly because it is a personal preference. I just love the food. But there are also good rational reasons for my choice.
First of all, Malayali food is one of the few Indian cuisines that covers everything. There is terrific fish as you would expect from a coastal state. But the meat and poultry dishes are great too. How many other states can boast a good recipe for duck along with a brilliant one for crab? And then, there’s the outstanding vegetarian food. (Though frankly, Malayalis tend to get a little carried away with their drumsticks… And you have to be one of God’s own people to love tapioca as much as they do).
Secondly, Kerala is a synthesis of three of the greatest religions in the subcontinent – Hinduism, Christianity and Islam – and the cuisine reflects that. The Moplah cuisine of the Malabar Muslims has an Arab flavour, borrowed from the traders who regularly visited the region. The Syrian Christians are among the world’s oldest Christians (legend has it that they were converted by St Thomas, the apostle who was the Doubting Thomas of the Bible). So there were Christians in Kerala when many people in Europe were still living on trees. Syrian Christian cuisine is rich and varied and uses pork, beef and other ingredients you don’t always find in other Indian cuisines.
And the Hindu Malayali food is delicious, full of great vegetarian dishes that are distinguished by their lightness and subtlety.
Thirdly, it is the spices. Indian food is not only about the quality of the ingredients (as Western cuisine is); it is about combining the flavours of the spices. And Kerala is the spice garden of India. It has the most wonderful, fragrant spices and the food of all three communities – Muslim, Hindu and Christian – is distinguished by the skill with which spices are used.
Thirdly, it is the spices. Indian food is not only about the quality of the ingredients (as Western cuisine is); it is about combining the flavours of the spices. And Kerala is the spice garden of India. It has the most wonderful, fragrant spices and the food of all three communities – Muslim, Hindu and Christian – is distinguished by the skill with which spices are used.
When I first got into Malayali food in the 1980s, it was only available in South India and especially in Kerala itself. Because the cuisine is so complex, it revealed its secrets slowly. Even now, each time I try a new dish from Kerala, I am surprised by the dexterity with which meats, vegetables and spices have been cooked.
The mark of a great cuisine, I always think, is that the food that ordinary people eat – not just the banquet and party food made by great cooks – is interesting and memorable. My favourite Kerala dishes have always been the simplest ones.
Take Egg Roast. It is not, as you might imagine, a roasted egg. It is, in fact, a dish in which hard-boiled eggs are cooked in a wet masala. I first tried it for breakfast in the 1980s in Cochin. And now, I am addicted to it.
Why is it called a roast when it is actually a dry-ish curry? Nobody I spoke to seemed to know. One theory is that the egg is meant to be roasted, which makes no sense to me.
And where is it from? I asked Arun Kumar TR, the filmmaker-turned-chef who has now reinvigorated the excellent Zambar chain. Arun said that every little dhaba and restaurant in the Fort Cochin area served it. Perhaps, it was a Christian dish.
I checked Lathika George’s The Suriani Kitchen, a wonderful cookbook, full of Syrian Christian recipes and found that she had claimed it for her community. Like Arun, George also regards it as a dhaba dish, and provides a recipe.
I checked Lathika George’s The Suriani Kitchen, a wonderful cookbook, full of Syrian Christian recipes and found that she had claimed it for her community. Like Arun, George also regards it as a dhaba dish, and provides a recipe.
She writes: “Perfectly browned onions are the base of this slowly stir-fried dish. This is a favourite in little tea shops and truck drivers’ haunts all over Kerala, usually served with parota or appams. Bakeries sometimes stuff the spiced eggs into triangles of flaky pastry and sell them as egg puffs…”
Chef Ananda Solomon denies that the Egg Roast was a Syrian Christian dish
Finally, I decided to check with Dinesh Nair, the foodie who is MD of the Leela chain. Though the Leela goes on and on about Megu, Le Cirque etc. (with justification), the chain’s real strength has always been its South Indian food. Dinesh’s father Captain Nair opened his first hotel in Bombay convinced that even if all else failed, it would still be a success solely on the strength of his wife Leela’s Malayali cooking. The original cooks and chefs were all chosen by Mrs Nair herself and her family continues to be obsessed with food. For instance, the idlis at the Bangalore Leela have been justly praised for their excellence. So, Dinesh insists that the rice for idlis at every Leela property is flown in from Bangalore to ensure the same level of perfection.
Dinesh Nair, insists that the rice for idlis at every Leela property is flown in from Bangalore to ensure the same level of perfection.
Though all Leela hotels do a fabulous Egg Roast, on par with anything I have eaten in the dhabas of Kerala, I thought I should also find out how the home-cooked version is made. So I checked with Hindu friends in Malabar how they made the dish in their own kitchens.
Their recipe was broadly the same except that, because my friends are from plantation families, they relied on spices more than the dhaba cooks did. Also, their version kept the onions slightly more solid at the end of the dish (not unlike the Lathika George recipe) while the Leela Egg Roast depended on the onions melting into the masala.
Broadly, the differences in all the recipes were to do with a few ingredients. Ananda used kokum, Lathika George used no garam masala. My Malayali friends used cinnamon bark and cloves to make a more fragrant Egg Roast. Purshotham used fennel, which nobody else did.
And they treated their eggs differently. Usually people put the whole hard-boiled eggs in. My friends halved the eggs so that they could soak in the flavours. Purshotham kept the eggs whole, but made deep gashes in the whites to let the masala permeate the inside. My friends poured the masalas over the eggs. Purshotham cooked the hard-boiled eggs in the masala for a few minutes.
Chef Purshotham says that the Egg Roast is now too ubiquitous to be associated with any one community.
But whichever recipe you select, you should end up with a mound of onion-rich masala, delicious, dark and fragrant, combining the teekha flavours of the Malabar coast, the spicy aromas of the plantations of Kerala and the earthy simplicity of small roadside dhabas. The eggs, yellowed with spice stains, should be poking shyly through the masala, imploring you to eat them.
You should scoop it all up with a freshly-made appam or a parota and let the taste of Kerala fill your mouth.
You should scoop it all up with a freshly-made appam or a parota and let the taste of Kerala fill your mouth.
It is God’s own dish.
Chef Purshotham’s Egg Roast
4 portions (should serve 8)
Ingredients
16 hard boiled eggs (remove shell, make gashes)
800 gm onions, sliced
50 gm garlic pods, peeled and chopped
15 gm ginger, julienned
15 gm green chillies, slit
10 gm curry leaves
200 gm tomatoes, sliced
20 gm coriander powder
8 gm red chilli powder
3 gm turmeric powder
2 gm fennel seeds
3 gm black pepper, crushed
2 gm cumin powder, roasted
2 gm garam masala powder
Salt to taste
10 gm coriander leaves, chopped
60 ml vegetable oil or coconut oil
16 hard boiled eggs (remove shell, make gashes)
800 gm onions, sliced
50 gm garlic pods, peeled and chopped
15 gm ginger, julienned
15 gm green chillies, slit
10 gm curry leaves
200 gm tomatoes, sliced
20 gm coriander powder
8 gm red chilli powder
3 gm turmeric powder
2 gm fennel seeds
3 gm black pepper, crushed
2 gm cumin powder, roasted
2 gm garam masala powder
Salt to taste
10 gm coriander leaves, chopped
60 ml vegetable oil or coconut oil
Method
* Heat oil in pan, add fennel seeds, garlic, ginger, onions, green chillies and curry leaves.
* Stir fry for few minutes on a low flame until the onions become translucent.
* Add red chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, cumin powder and salt and fry for a few minutes.
* Add tomatoes and saute until tomatoes are mashed.
* Now add eggs and stir fry without breaking the eggs.
* Add crushed black pepper, garam masala powder and chopped coriander leaves and cook on low flame until the oil separates from the sides of the pan and the eggs are slightly crisp.
* Adjust the seasoning and serve with appams.
* Heat oil in pan, add fennel seeds, garlic, ginger, onions, green chillies and curry leaves.
* Stir fry for few minutes on a low flame until the onions become translucent.
* Add red chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, cumin powder and salt and fry for a few minutes.
* Add tomatoes and saute until tomatoes are mashed.
* Now add eggs and stir fry without breaking the eggs.
* Add crushed black pepper, garam masala powder and chopped coriander leaves and cook on low flame until the oil separates from the sides of the pan and the eggs are slightly crisp.
* Adjust the seasoning and serve with appams.
The Home-Style Recipe
Ingredients
1 portion (serves 2)
4 hard boiled eggs
6-7 big onions, finely sliced (keep a fistful aside for later)
3 small tomatoes, diced (don’t dice them too small, it lets out too much moisture)
3-4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Small piece of ginger, finely chopped
2-3 green chillies, slit into two (add more if you like it hot)
2-3 tsp cooking oil
3-4 cloves
2 pieces cinnamon bark
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp red chilli powder (less, if you don’t like it so hot)
1/2 tsp garam masala
Coriander leaves and curry leaves
Salt to taste
Method
* Heat the oil in a hot pan. Add garlic, ginger and onion (in that order) to the oil and fry them slowly over a slow fire till they are a little more than golden brown. Stir continuously so that the onions do not burn or caramelise.
* Now roughly grind the cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves with a mortar-pestle and add to the pan. Keep the fire low. Once you sense the aroma of the cloves, stir in the turmeric powder,
coriander powder and red chilli powder. Let the spices roast with the onions for a minute or so (be careful not to burn them).
* Throw in the green chilli slices and tomatoes. Stir till the
tomatoes are cooked, making sure the gravy is not too squishy. Stir in the garam masala.
* Your gravy is ready.
* Now, halve the boiled eggs, place them on your serving dish, and pour your gravy over them. Throw in some chopped
coriander and curry leaves. You can fry the onions you kept aside, and mix them in just before serving for added texture.
* The dish tastes better if you let it rest for an hour or so before serving as the eggs will take a while to absorb the flavours.
* Heat the oil in a hot pan. Add garlic, ginger and onion (in that order) to the oil and fry them slowly over a slow fire till they are a little more than golden brown. Stir continuously so that the onions do not burn or caramelise.
* Now roughly grind the cloves, cinnamon and bay leaves with a mortar-pestle and add to the pan. Keep the fire low. Once you sense the aroma of the cloves, stir in the turmeric powder,
coriander powder and red chilli powder. Let the spices roast with the onions for a minute or so (be careful not to burn them).
* Throw in the green chilli slices and tomatoes. Stir till the
tomatoes are cooked, making sure the gravy is not too squishy. Stir in the garam masala.
* Your gravy is ready.
* Now, halve the boiled eggs, place them on your serving dish, and pour your gravy over them. Throw in some chopped
coriander and curry leaves. You can fry the onions you kept aside, and mix them in just before serving for added texture.
* The dish tastes better if you let it rest for an hour or so before serving as the eggs will take a while to absorb the flavours.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
The Sharp Dropoff In Worker Happiness
The Sharp Dropoff In Worker Happiness:
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.
A friend of mine resigned his long-time bank management job this week to take early retirement. I learned about it on Facebook.
As I began reading his announcement, I fully expected it to be an animated recounting of all the new hobbies he planned to pursue and exotic trips he intended to take. But it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary farewell note. He was truly upset about ending his career prematurely and wanted everyone close to him to understand why.
It was painful to discover that my former colleague had grown profoundly disheartened by the way his organization’s leadership had been treating him. With over two decades of service behind him, he called it quits simply because he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I felt like no one cared about me as a person there, and finally decided to extricate myself from the grind. I know many of you feel the same way now in your jobs…trapped and unappreciated.”
There was a sense of relief in his words, as if I was reading about someone who had been imprisoned, found an escape route, and wanted to show others the way to freedom.
“You may not be able to retire quite yet like me, but please do yourself a favor and look for something more satisfying. It might take a while (it took me eight months once I made the decision), but it’s been so worth it. If you're old like me, then think about early retirement. If you're young, look for a more satisfying, fulfilling career path. Don't let these companies drain off your sense of worth, pride, health, energy, honesty and ethics. Are you listening [XYZ Bank]*? Of course you're not.”
I share his words as another illustration that our common approach to workplace leadership is failing. And experts have been trying to tell us this for years.
New York’s Conference Board, a century-old research firm, began studying employee satisfaction and engagement 25 years ago. Their work shows that worker happiness has fallen every year since--in good economic times and bad. Today, over half of American workers effectively hate their jobs.
But it’s the past four years that have brought employee discontent to new and highly charged levels.
"People were already unhappy, but the recession years have made things much worse," says John Gibbons, formerly of the Conference Board and now Vice President of Research and Development at the Institute For Corporate Productivity. "Whether we realize it or not, workers have been under constant duress. Because of scarce resources, few opportunities for development and promotions--not to mention the fact that people often have been required to do the work of more than one person--a lot of our workforce is burnt out. Employees across the country feel overworked, under-rewarded and greatly unappreciated."
The recession has been hard on managers too, no doubt. Delivering great customer service, and achieving KPIs and revenue goals all have been a tremendous challenge during this extended period of limited means.
But it’s clear that many leaders have lost sight of what matters most to people at work. Appreciation. Support. Recognition. Respect. And when people feel disillusioned and virtually convinced things have to be better somewhere else, they do what my friend did. They quit.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, 2.1 million people resigned their jobs in February, the most in any month since the start of the Great Recession.
Dating back to mid-2011, numerous studies have reported that at least one-third of the American workforce planned to jump ship in 2012. Since very little action has yet to be taken on that threat, however, those predictions have come to be seen only as “Chicken Little exaggerations.” Business leaders, therefore, have grown less concerned.
But the government’s new “Job Opening And Labor Turnover Survey,” (JOLTS), holds the reminder why more employees haven’t (yet) departed. Jobs have remained scarce; 12.7 million people remain unemployed in the U.S. today, while only 3.5 million job openings exist. That translates into nearly four people chasing every one job--not including already employed workers seeking greener, and more respectful, pastures.
Simply because 2.1 million people were able to find new jobs, February’s mass exodus may prove to be the watershed moment when turnover becomes the problem it was predicted to be.
However, there still may be time for managers to re-recruit their employees before they leave. This won’t be easy and it will most definitely require a significant change in leadership practices. Here are three things leaders should learn quickly and never forget:
1. What makes people happiest in their jobs is all profoundly personal. “Do I work for an organization whose mission and methods I respect?” “Does my boss authentically advocate for me?” “Is the work I do meaningful?” “Am I afforded sufficient variety in my day?” “Do I feel valued and appreciated for all the work that I do?”
We know that all these matter more to people than their compensation--and workers generally don’t quit jobs when these basic needs are met. According to a worldwide Towers Watson study, the single highest driver of employee engagement is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well-being. Today, only 40% of workers believe that.
2. People only thrive when they feel recognized and appreciated. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Why Appreciation Matters So Much," Tony Schwartz reminds us that all employees need to be praised, honored, and routinely acknowledged for their efforts and achievements. Consequently, leaders must allow themselves to manage more from their hearts.
Our brains are great at building strategies, managing capital, and analyzing data. But it’s the heart that connects us as human beings, and its what’s greatly lacking in American leadership today. This is what now must change.
3. Your employees will stay if you tell them directly you need them, care about them, and sincerely plan to support them. Any time someone quits a job for a reason other than money, they’re leaving in hope that things will be better somewhere else. So, everyone who works for you must be made to feel that they matter. Plan one-on-one meetings and re-discover the dreams each person has at work. Tell people directly how valuable they are to you. To be successful, all your future behavior must demonstrate to your employees that their best career move is to remain working for you.
Being human and treating one another with dignity and respect is something the heart already knows to do. Leaders would all do well to follow it.
*His former employer, one of the U.S.’s largest financial institutions.
Mark C. Crowley is a former National Sales Manager for WaMu Investments, where he was named its Leader of the Year. He’s the author of Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century; follow him on Twitter at @MarkCCrowley.
[Image: Flickr user Vinoth Chandar]
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.
A friend of mine resigned his long-time bank management job this week to take early retirement. I learned about it on Facebook.
As I began reading his announcement, I fully expected it to be an animated recounting of all the new hobbies he planned to pursue and exotic trips he intended to take. But it quickly became clear that this was no ordinary farewell note. He was truly upset about ending his career prematurely and wanted everyone close to him to understand why.
It was painful to discover that my former colleague had grown profoundly disheartened by the way his organization’s leadership had been treating him. With over two decades of service behind him, he called it quits simply because he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I felt like no one cared about me as a person there, and finally decided to extricate myself from the grind. I know many of you feel the same way now in your jobs…trapped and unappreciated.”
There was a sense of relief in his words, as if I was reading about someone who had been imprisoned, found an escape route, and wanted to show others the way to freedom.
“You may not be able to retire quite yet like me, but please do yourself a favor and look for something more satisfying. It might take a while (it took me eight months once I made the decision), but it’s been so worth it. If you're old like me, then think about early retirement. If you're young, look for a more satisfying, fulfilling career path. Don't let these companies drain off your sense of worth, pride, health, energy, honesty and ethics. Are you listening [XYZ Bank]*? Of course you're not.”
I share his words as another illustration that our common approach to workplace leadership is failing. And experts have been trying to tell us this for years.
New York’s Conference Board, a century-old research firm, began studying employee satisfaction and engagement 25 years ago. Their work shows that worker happiness has fallen every year since--in good economic times and bad. Today, over half of American workers effectively hate their jobs.
But it’s the past four years that have brought employee discontent to new and highly charged levels.
"People were already unhappy, but the recession years have made things much worse," says John Gibbons, formerly of the Conference Board and now Vice President of Research and Development at the Institute For Corporate Productivity. "Whether we realize it or not, workers have been under constant duress. Because of scarce resources, few opportunities for development and promotions--not to mention the fact that people often have been required to do the work of more than one person--a lot of our workforce is burnt out. Employees across the country feel overworked, under-rewarded and greatly unappreciated."
The recession has been hard on managers too, no doubt. Delivering great customer service, and achieving KPIs and revenue goals all have been a tremendous challenge during this extended period of limited means.
But it’s clear that many leaders have lost sight of what matters most to people at work. Appreciation. Support. Recognition. Respect. And when people feel disillusioned and virtually convinced things have to be better somewhere else, they do what my friend did. They quit.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, 2.1 million people resigned their jobs in February, the most in any month since the start of the Great Recession.
Dating back to mid-2011, numerous studies have reported that at least one-third of the American workforce planned to jump ship in 2012. Since very little action has yet to be taken on that threat, however, those predictions have come to be seen only as “Chicken Little exaggerations.” Business leaders, therefore, have grown less concerned.
But the government’s new “Job Opening And Labor Turnover Survey,” (JOLTS), holds the reminder why more employees haven’t (yet) departed. Jobs have remained scarce; 12.7 million people remain unemployed in the U.S. today, while only 3.5 million job openings exist. That translates into nearly four people chasing every one job--not including already employed workers seeking greener, and more respectful, pastures.
Simply because 2.1 million people were able to find new jobs, February’s mass exodus may prove to be the watershed moment when turnover becomes the problem it was predicted to be.
However, there still may be time for managers to re-recruit their employees before they leave. This won’t be easy and it will most definitely require a significant change in leadership practices. Here are three things leaders should learn quickly and never forget:
1. What makes people happiest in their jobs is all profoundly personal. “Do I work for an organization whose mission and methods I respect?” “Does my boss authentically advocate for me?” “Is the work I do meaningful?” “Am I afforded sufficient variety in my day?” “Do I feel valued and appreciated for all the work that I do?”
We know that all these matter more to people than their compensation--and workers generally don’t quit jobs when these basic needs are met. According to a worldwide Towers Watson study, the single highest driver of employee engagement is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well-being. Today, only 40% of workers believe that.
2. People only thrive when they feel recognized and appreciated. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, "Why Appreciation Matters So Much," Tony Schwartz reminds us that all employees need to be praised, honored, and routinely acknowledged for their efforts and achievements. Consequently, leaders must allow themselves to manage more from their hearts.
Our brains are great at building strategies, managing capital, and analyzing data. But it’s the heart that connects us as human beings, and its what’s greatly lacking in American leadership today. This is what now must change.
3. Your employees will stay if you tell them directly you need them, care about them, and sincerely plan to support them. Any time someone quits a job for a reason other than money, they’re leaving in hope that things will be better somewhere else. So, everyone who works for you must be made to feel that they matter. Plan one-on-one meetings and re-discover the dreams each person has at work. Tell people directly how valuable they are to you. To be successful, all your future behavior must demonstrate to your employees that their best career move is to remain working for you.
Being human and treating one another with dignity and respect is something the heart already knows to do. Leaders would all do well to follow it.
*His former employer, one of the U.S.’s largest financial institutions.
Mark C. Crowley is a former National Sales Manager for WaMu Investments, where he was named its Leader of the Year. He’s the author of Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century; follow him on Twitter at @MarkCCrowley.
[Image: Flickr user Vinoth Chandar]
Saturday, May 12, 2012
DropqQuest 2012 is Live. Get 1 GB free space
Dropquest
2012 Walkthrough
Begin
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012
Prologue
Chapter 1
46637
64529
38645
Chapter 2
Go to https://www.dropbox.com/about
With each hint, move to a new person like how a chess knight would.
ChenLi Wang -> Ramsey H. - > Allison Louie -> Naveen Agrawal -> Emily Zhao
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012/crane
Chapter 3
SMUDGES
Chapter 4
SOMA
Chapter 5
MADLIB
Chapter 6
Invert the colours, look at the ones that don't match their text descriptions. Use the M/D/Y and use that date on https://www.dropbox.com/events
Should be one of the following:
https://www.dropbox.com/events?ns=false&n=0&d=1-7-2003
https://www.dropbox.com/events?ns=false&n=0&d=3-21-2005
https://www.dropbox.com/events?ns=fa...0&d=11-28-2001
Chapter 7
The letters are in the soundcloud comments, use the legend to figure out the order by converting it to numbers.
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012/LEADING
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012/DEALING
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012/ALIGNED
Chapter 8
TRIUMPHANT
Chapter 9
Rearrange file names to say, “Your next destination is the last page of the tour.”
Go to https://www.dropbox.com/tour/6
Send an invite to boxer@dropbox.com, savior@dropbox.com or flash@dropbox.com via https://www.dropbox.com/referrals
Chapter 10
MEXICO, ARGENTINA, KOREA
Chapter 11
SOUTHPOLE
Chapter 12
Restore Chapter12.txt to its previous version via https://www.dropbox.com/revisions/Dropquest 2012/Captain's Logs/Chapter 12.txt
Then go to https://www.dropbox.com/help and click on the shield icon of "Security and Privacy".
Chapter 14
Use this to help solve the sudoku puzzle: http://www.solvemysudoku.com
Re-arrange the slider puzzle according to the highlighted part of the sudoku puzzle (once you solve it)
Use this to help solve slider puzzle: http://analogbit.com/software/puzzletools
Chapter 15
Share a folder with the email listed on the page (should be the same as in the one you invited in Chapter 9).
Then go to https://www.dropbox.com/share and click on the larger rainbow icon next to "Sharing".
Chapter 17
SHANGHAI
Chapter 18
Go to https://www.dropbox.com/home/Dropquest 2012/Spring Cleaning
Put 1, 3, 6, 8, 9 (.jpg) into Category 1
Put 2, 4, 5, 7, 10 into Category 2
If you did this via the desktop app, use the Repair Dropquest Folder link on the lower left corner of the clue page to start over and do it properly from the web interface..
Chapter 19
For each column, subtract the smaller card value from the larger one. The answer should be one of the following links:
http://db.tt/94J964
http://db.tt/72j933
http://db.tt/Q2J9J4
Chapter 20
Ocean's Eleven
X-Men: First Class
Twenty-One
Super 8
28 days later
Sixth Sense
https://www.dropbox.com/dropquest2012/apollo13
Chapter 21
ABUSIVELY
Chapter 22
FACED, MACAU, BADGE, BASED, or ADAGE
Chapter 23
MACHU PICCHU
Endgame
COLOSSEUM
Sunday, May 6, 2012
The UTF-8-Everywhere Manifesto
The UTF-8-Everywhere Manifesto:
Text made easy once again Purpose of this documentThis document contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.To promote usage and support of the UTF-8 encoding, to convince that this should be the default choice of encoding for storing text strings in memory or on disk, for communication and all other uses. We believe that all other encodings of Unicode (or text, in general) belong to rare-edge cases of optimization and should be avoided by mainstream users. In particular, we believe the very popular UTF-16 encoding (mistakenly used as synonym to ‘widechar’ and ‘Unicode’ in Windows world) has no place in library APIs (except specialized libraries dealing with text). If, at this point, you already think we are crazy, please skip straight the FAQ section. This document recommends choosing UTF-8 as string storage in Windows applications, where this standard is less popular due to historical reasons and lack of the native UTF-8 support by the API. Yet, we believe that even on this platform the following arguments outweigh the lack of native support. Also, we recommend forgetting forever what are ‘ANSI codepages’ and what were they used for. It is in the customer’s bill of rights to mix any number of languages in any text string. We recommend avoiding C++ application code that depends on _UNICODE define. This includes TCHAR /LPTSTR types on Windows and APIs defined as macros such as CreateWindow . We also recommend alternative ways to reach the goals of these APIs.We also believe that if an application is not supposed to specialize in text, the infrastructure must make it possible for the program to be unaware of encoding issues. A file copy utility should not be written differently to support non-English file names. Joel’s great article on Unicode explains the encodings well for the beginners, but it lacks the most important part: how should a programmer proceed, if she does not care what is inside the string. BackgroundIn 1988, Joseph D. Becker published the first Unicode draft proposal. At the basis of his design was the assumption that 16 bits per character would suffice. In 1991, the first version of the Unicode standard was published, with code points limited to 16 bits. In the following years many systems added support for Unicode and switched to the UCS-2 encoding. It was especially attractive for new technologies, like Qt framework (1992), Windows NT 3.1 (1993) and Java (1995).However, it was soon discovered that 16 bits per character will not do. In 1996, the UTF-16 encoding was created so existing systems would be able to work with non-16-bit characters. This effectively nullified the rationale behind choosing 16-bit encoding in the first place, namely being a fixed-width encoding. Currently Unicode spans over 109449 characters, with about 74500 of them being CJK Ideographs. Microsoft has ever since mistakenly used ‘Unicode’ and ‘widechar’ as synonyms for ‘UCS-2’ and ‘UTF-16’. Furthermore, since UTF-8 can’t be set as the encoding for narrow string WinAPI, you must compile your code with _UNICODE rather than _MBCS . It educates Windows programmers that Unicode must be done with ‘widechars’. As a result of the mess, Windows C++ programmers are now among the most confused ones about what is the right thing to do about text.In the Linux and the Web worlds, however, there’s a silent agreement that UTF-8 is the most correct encoding for Unicode on the planet Earth. Even though it gives a strong preferences to English and therefore to computer languages (such as C++, HTML, XML, etc) over any other text, it is seldom less efficient than UTF-16 for commonly used character sets. The Facts
Our ConclusionsUTF-16 is the worst of both worlds—variable length and too wide. It exists for historical reasons, adds a lot of confusion and will hopefully die out.Portability, cross-platform interoperability and simplicity are more important than interoperability with existing platform APIs. So, the best approach is to use UTF-8 narrow strings everywhere and convert them back and forth on Windows before calling APIs that accept strings. Performance is seldom an issue of any relevance when dealing with string-accepting system APIs. There is a huge advantage to using the same encoding everywhere, and we see no sufficient reason to do otherwise. Speaking of performance, machines often use strings to communicate (e.g. HTTP headers, XML). Many see this as a mistake, but regardless of that it is nearly always done in English, giving UTF-8 advantage there. Using different encodings for different kinds of strings significantly increases complexity and consequent bugs. In particular, we believe that adding wchar_t to C++ was a mistake, and so are the Unicode additions to C++11. What must be demanded from the implementations though, is that the narrow strings would be capable of storing any Unicode data. Then every std::string or char* parameter would be Unicode-compatible. ‘If this accepts text, it should be Unicode compatible’—and with UTF-8 it is also easy to do.The standard facets have many design flaws. This includes std::numpunct , std::moneypunct and std::ctype not supporting variable-length encoded characters (non-ASCII UTF-8 and non-BMP UTF-16). They must be fixed:
How to do text on WindowsThe following is how we recommend to everyone else for compile-time checked Unicode correctness, ease of use and better multi-platformness of the code. This substantially differs from what is usually recommended as the proper way of using Unicode on Windows. Yet, an in-depth research of these recommendations resulted in the same conclusion. So here goes:
Working with files, filenames and fstreams on Windows
Conversion functionsThe policy uses the conversion functions from the CppCMS booster::nowide library, which can be downloaded as a separate package: The library also provides a set of wrappers for commonly used standard C and C++ library functions that deal with files.These functions and wrappers are easy to implement using Windows’ MultiByteToWideChar and WideCharToMultiByte functions. Any other (possibly faster) conversion routines can be used.FAQ
Myths
About the authorsThis manifesto is written by Pavel Radzivilovsky, Yakov Galka and Slava Novgorodov, as a result of much experience and research of real-world Unicode issues and mistakes done by real-world programmers. The goal is to improve awareness of text issues and to inspire industry-wide changes to make Unicode-aware programming easier, ultimately improving the experience of users of those programs written by human engineers. Neither of us is involved in the Unicode consortium.Much of the text is inspired by discussions on StackOverflow initiated by Artyom Beilis, the author of Boost.Locale. You can leave comments/feedback there. External links
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