The Solution
Customizing the list of filters isn't an obvious action, but nor is it difficult if you're comfortable with text editors (and Eclipse users certainly should be). There may be other ways, but this is what I did:
- Locate the directory of the Eclipse plugin being used for editing. This is usually something like eclipse/plugins/[plugin name]_[version]. I spend most of my time in Aptana, so my plugin directory is eclipse/plugins/com.aptana.ide.scripting_0.2.9.16696.
- Open the plugin.xml file in a text editor.
- Find the extension element whose point attribute has a value of org.eclipse.ui.ide.resourceFilters.
- Create a new filter element like any others that already exist, but containing the needed file pattern. If no extension element is found for resourceFilters, see below.
- Restart Eclipse using the -clean switch.
Being an Aptana user, I found that the plugin.xml file I had to edit didn't contain any resource filters so I just created one by adding the following code to the bottom of plugin.xml:
Using a class is just as simple. When writing .your_class you style all tags with a class with the name “your_class”. In the example above we have .warning which will style e.g.
You need one more building block: the id. This time you style an element with the attribute “id” set to the id you have chosen. Ids work exactly like classes except for one thing; you can only have one id with a certain name in each of your HTML documents. In the example above we style
Management speak - don't you just hate it? Emphatically yes, judging by readers' responses to writer
1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada
2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers . I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England
3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist . And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand
4. " Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland
5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline . I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England
6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US
7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change . What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach , whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester
9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool
10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B
11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit ."
Paul, Formby, UK
12. "And looking under the bonnet ."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh
13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning . Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter
15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate , widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston
17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire
18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space . So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London
19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go ."
Andy, Herts
20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together . 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada
21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London
22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton
23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one . To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London
24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend
25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by... "
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia
26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule . Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK
27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue . What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno
28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play , which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London
30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition . Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US
31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110% , usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK
32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth . When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US
33. "I once had a boss who said, ' You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music .' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban
34. " Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK
35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts , now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA
38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading ) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton
39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London
40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set ."
Andrew, London
41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity , meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela
42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK
43. "After a reduction in workforce , my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US
44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff
45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London
46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase . What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK
47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory ?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico
48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down , which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London
49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York
50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic ."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya
first, make a script, like /root/check_temp.sh:
#!/bin/sh TEMP_A=`/usr/sbin/smartctl -d ata -A /dev/sda | grep Temperature | cut -d ' ' -f37` TEMP_B=`/usr/sbin/smartctl -d ata -A /dev/sdb | grep Temperature | cut -d ' ' -f37` THRESHOLD=65 #In case Temp B doesn't return a reading (You only have one drive) if [ "$TEMP_B" = "" ] ; then TEMP_B=0 fi #Check to make sure it's not running too hot if [ $TEMP_A -gt $THRESHOLD ] || [ $TEMP_B -gt $THRESHOLD ] ; then logger -s "One of the drives has exceeded the threshold of $THRESHOLD degrees C." poweroff fi
make it executable: chmod 755 check_temp.sh
edit root's crontab (/etc/crontabs/root) to include this script. This one will run the script every fifteen minutes:
# standard crontab format for busybox cron daemon. # fields may be lists # min hour day month wd command # * * * * * dosomething # save the time every 60 minutes use 7 minute past the hour. 7 * * * * date +%m%d%H%M%Y.%S > /var/lib/now 0,15,30,45 * * * * /root/check_temp.sh
Then, either reboot the box, or restart cron: /etc/init.d/crond.sh stop, etc/init.d/crond.sh start
The most common refresh rate for today's Televisions are 60hz for NTSC-based systems and 50hz for PAL-based systems. However, with the introduction of some Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD players that can actually output a 24 frame per second video signal, instead of the traditional 30 frame per second video signal, new refresh rates are being implemented by some television display makers to accommodate these signals in the correct mathematical ratio.
If you have a TV with a 120hz refresh rate that is 1080p/24 compatible (1920 pixels across the screen vs 1080 pixels down the screen, with a 24 frame per second rate). The TV ends up displaying 24 separate frames every second, but repeats each frame according to the refresh rate of the TV. In the case of 120hz each frame would be displayed 5 times within each 24th of a second.
In other words, even with higher refresh rates, there are still only 24 separate frames displayed every second, but they may need to be displayed multiple times, depending on the refresh rate.
To display 24 frames per second on a TV with a 120hz refresh rate, each frame is repeated 5 times every 24th of a second.
To display 24 frames per second on a TV with a 72hz refresh rate, each frame is repeated 3 times every 24th of a second.
To display 30 frames per second on a TV with a 60 hz refresh rate, each frame is repeated 2 times every 30th of a second.
To display 25 frames per second on a TV with a 50 hz refresh rate (PAL Countries), each frame is repeated 2 times every 25th of a second.
To display 25 frames per second on a TV with a 100 hz refresh rate (PAL Countries), each frame is repeated 4 times every 25th of a second.
If the television is also required to do a 24 frame per second to 30 frame per second or vice versa frame rate conversion, then you also have to deal with 3:2 or 2:3 Pulldown as well where the 24 frames of film will be stretched onto 30 frames.
Yum is usually already installed if you're running Fedora Core. In case you are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux or an older Red Hat Linux distribution. You can find Yum at: http://dag.wieers.com/packages/yum/
The configuration of Yum is inside the rpmforge-release package. You need to install it yourself.
If you've done that, the rest is simple. Upgrade your system by doing:
yum update
You can add new software by typing:yum install
Or update installed software:yum update
Or search for software in the local repository meta-data:yum search
Or simply list all available software:yum list available
From time to time you may want to save some diskspace:yum clean
From time to time people email me asking how to get started as a quant. While there are a number of fields that comprise the quant discipline and no list can be all-inclusive, if you are going to be interviewing for a quant position, you may wish to be conversant in the following areas:
- Finance and Financial Engineering, including complex financial derivatives and valuations, volatility surfaces and smiles, replication, arbitrage and equilibrium pricing models, CAPM, APT, Fama-French models and possibly risk management concepts depending on the area you’ll be supporting.
- Statistics and Probability, at a fairly deep level with a good knowledge of distributions, maximum likelihood theory and perhaps empirical distribution fitting, tests for normality and fitting of joint distribution using tools such as copulas, how to perform out of sample tests, properties and expectation of random variables, correlation and covariance and so on.
- Strong mathematics skills in areas including stochastic calculus, including martingales, markov processes (quick! What is the difference between a martingale and a markov process?), Ito’s lemma and so forth as well as ordinary calculus, differential equations, numerical methods, linear algebra and possibly a little computational complexity, algorithm analysis and optimization.
- Econometrics – properties of ARCH, GARCH, detecting the order of an AR/MA process and so on, stationary and non-stationary variance and how to test and correct for the same if need be, transformations, random walks, unit root tests and so forth.
- Knowledge of several computer packages, operating systems and languages including SAS, S-Plus, R, Matlab; expertise in a programming language such as C++, C# and/or Java, and experience with a non-Windows operating systems such as Unix.
- Detailed knowledge of capital markets may be required, including understanding of credit derivatives, mortgage securities, fixed income and detailed knowledge of various interest rate models, depending on where you will be interviewing.
- Understanding of simulation techniques such as generating simulations from various distributions and inverse transform theory, details of the Monte Carlo method and how simulation is used to value various financial instruments (also when you need to simulate as opposed to using other methods), possibly including variance reduction methods; random and pseudo-random number generation techniques, the pros and cons of various techniques, extreme value theory and so forth.
This should get you started. Good luck, and if you have questions, just post them in the comments section.
The very factors that have consumers worried about affording this year's tax bill could work in their favor this tax season.
Taxpayers whose wages were slashed in 2008 -- or worse, who were laid off -- may be eligible for tax credits that weren't within their reach in previous years. In addition, first-time home buyers and parents of children under age 17 may also be able to save a little money on their tax bill. Here are four credits that can help boost your refund:
Recovery Rebate Credit
Feel like you got shortchanged last year when the government doled out its Economic Stimulus Act rebate checks? Well, if you didn't qualify for the rebate before or didn't receive the full amount ($600 per taxpayer and $1,200 if married and filing jointly) because your income was too high (or too low), you may now be able to collect.
The rebate checks that were sent out last year were based on information on your 1040 for 2007. This second chance to collect will be based on your 2008 1040. So if your income took a hit last year, it may be worth a shot.
Homeowner Credit
For those who bought a home last year or want to in the months ahead, Uncle Sam has a little present for you. This tax credit, essentially a temporary, no-interest loan, is being offered to those who bought -- or will buy -- a home between April 9, 2008, and June 30, 2009, and who didn't own a home during the three years preceding the purchase.
The maximum amount of the credit equals either 10% of the home's price or $7,500 ($3,750 if you are married, but filing separately), whichever is less. One hitch: Homeowners will have to repay the credit over 15 years by either owing more in taxes or receiving a smaller refund.
Child Tax Credit
Many parents will be eligible to receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child this year as long as that child was under the age of 17 at the end of 2008. (This credit is in addition to the regular $3,500 exemption that you can claim for each dependent.)
The child tax credit begins phasing out for filers whose modified adjusted gross income is above $110,000 if they are married and filing jointly, above $75,000 for single filers, or more than $55,000 for married filing separately. In addition, the child (who can also be the filer's sibling, stepchild, grandchild, niece or nephew) must not have provided more than half of his or her own support and, in most cases, must have lived with the filer for more than half of 2008.
The one catch: The amount you receive from the child tax credit is partly based on your income, so you may not receive the full amount -- or possibly anything. If you don't qualify for any or all of the $1,000 child tax credit, you're still in luck. Try applying for the additional child tax credit, which also offers up to $1,000 per qualifying child. (Taxpayers who qualify for parts of both credits can only receive a maximum of $1,000 per eligible child.) Typically, this credit is reserved for low-income taxpayers, but a recent change in the way the IRS computes eligibility for this credit, will allow more middle-income taxpayers to qualify this year, says Eric Smith, a spokesman for the IRS.
Earned Income Tax Credit
To qualify, families with two or more children must have made less than $41,646 in 2008, and those with one child must have earned less than $36,995. Also, individuals without children who make less than $15,880 are eligible. The maximum credit for each of these groups is $4,824, $2,917 and $438, respectively.
