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it's whether it's sufficiently unique or not.

His point was more abstract than that. He wasn't referring to the uniqueness requirement of patent-ability, but rather to the "promote progress" justification for the existence of software patents in the first place. Software patents have the potential to hobble open collaborative software development to the point of extinguishing it. Given how much more software now is open source than was in 1968 - and how the waterfall cycle (a complete joke in and of itself) is practically never part of such development work - the writer was questioning if Goetz is even knowledgeable enough of the current situation to be a knowledgeable commentator.

The waterfall method is still the best development model.

That's funny because the waterfall model was first described by Winston Royce in a two-part article using it as a fictional "bad" approach to software engineering.

Due to the two-part setup of the article, many people only read the first part that described the waterfall model but not the second part where he lays out just why it is a bad model. Consequently, thousands of papers have gone on to cite Royce's paper as the source of the model without realizing that his only reason for describing it was to discredit it.

Kind of like the way people often refer to Ben Franklin as the creator of "daylight savings time" when in fact it was a big joke.

Developers [mirror]

Ahh, 20th anniversary of Windows. May be a good reason to pull out the Ballmer musical again (Dance Monkey Boy and Developers cut together to an outstanding acoustic drama).

Uh, no. You are incorrect, sir. I can only infer from your comment above that you are not in the applications development industry (or have extremely limited experience with it...Perhaps you are a "Gates fanboy").

You, and Mr. Gates (if this is what he professes to believe), are also mistaken that a rising number of students in these programs will correlate to a rising amount of top-notch talent. There's no correlative or causative relationship there, as the last tech boom (in the late nineties) proved. (How many of those graduates were considered "top-notch"?) There is a finite number of people who will be interested in this sort of work and an even smaller number of those who will be "good" and an even smaller number who will be "great". Those people know who they are and will frequently self-select into the field. Even fewer of those will be willing to work in the high pressure, "always on," "Ballermized" culture of Microsoft. (Think of the famous Windows 1.0 sales pitch or the "I love this company" speech or the "Developers" chant. As you watch the segements, ask yourself, "Would I want to work for this man?"). More likely, they will go work for Google.

Basically, you either have the "skillz" or you don't. No amount of training will take you to that level if you don't have the ability to intuitively grasp the underpinnings of the field. You could still be a programmer, but it would be unlikely that Microsoft would consider you to be a "good enough" programmer.

While this may do some good, really (in terms of inspiring people who might not have had a clue what they would want to do for a living) it strikes me as a strategic play to keep the cost of good developers low and to placate those who are politically opposed to raising the quota for H1-B visas in the US.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant, as the undergraduates (as another poster already mentioned) are smarter than they look and have finally figured out that law and finance are the two industries in this country in which demand will never decrease. And it is, definately, the smart play.

>The only good thing to come out of Sony today are 20,000 dollar CRT tubes.

The only good thing to come out of Microsoft... maybe this?

Either way, MS will have a lot of dancing to do to explain why it is that every other word processor will use OpenDoc but them.

Good thing they've already started.

To: SteveB@microsoft.com, SteveB@ceo.microsoft.com
Date: September 3rd, 2005
Subject: Whats your opinion on this, eh, Sexy Steve-Baby-Monkey?

Hi Stevey-Baby!

Just heard your delightful and not-at-all-rude comments about Google! Just thought I'd let you know my feelings (because of course, all of Microsoft are always interested in their users... aren't you?)

I just saw the attached video, and I thought I'd let you know;

'You're going to f***ing having a heart attack, You have done it before, and you will do it again. You're going to have a f***ing heart attack.'

Best wishes, and hoping you are fit and healthy Mr. Ballmer!

PS.. Oh, and good luck with your company! I hear it's not doing so well against some company named after a fruit, and some silly search engine? Now thats a shame... Maybe you should rename yourself to 'MonkeyAngryFatBastard' - you do look like a overweight monkey with a anger-management and an obesity problem.

PPS... If you don't get sarcasm, you sicken me. Why can't you just be happy for a company that's doing so much better - and, doing things so much better for their users, than you are?

[my name removed :D]

Attached File: MonkeyDance.Mpeg [thx to tarmo.fi!] (really, its worth watching, just to see how much Steve Ballmer is out of breath at the end!)

I really can't stand that guy.

Dug

Yeah, a neanderthal, and there's evidence to back up your claim too...

http://www.tarmo.fi/arc/monkeydance.mpeg

I'll take it you've never watched the Steve Balmer "Developers, developers, developers" video then? (aka Monkey Dance)

Well if you missed it: have a look here

Ofcourse! It must be! it all makes sense now

. . . is, naturally, this.

You must be new here.

Clicky

Um...porn?

This just in:
Newer! Developers - The Musical (6,088,224 bytes)

3 minutes of non-stop "Developers" music video.
faster mirror

Hilariously funny!

I want my monkey man!

Perhaps this will hold you over in the mean time.

I can't believe that guy is a top executive of a major corporation.

Really? Just wait until you see the monkey boy dance (mirrors).

i've only got one 1 to add

developers
developers
developers
developers!

and that's that!