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Verizon Drops Opposition To Cell-Number Portability
EyesWideOpen writes "Verizon has announced (NYTimes - free registration required) that it would drop its opposition to the proposed F.C.C plan that would allow callers to keep their wireless phone numbers when they switch carriers. Verizon, the nation's largest mobile phone company, was seen as 'the standard-bearer of the opposition against wireless number portability' but has shifted it's position citing the recent court ruling as the reason for doing so. The F.C.C has set a deadline of November 24 for it's rules to take effect. Other mobile phone companies such as Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless are still expected to appeal the court ruling. Several previous stories on number portability here(1), here(2), here(3), here(4), and here(5)."
first post
where are the WMD's?
Iraq was an imminent threat? What..were they going to ship over Scud missles and launch them from Florida?
intelligent discussion about the process & practice of open source development vs. "closed" enterprise
development. I am going to compare the open source programmer mentality to that of the paid-per-hour contractor
or consultant, discuss how these different mentalities result in completely different outputs, and finally wrap
up by comparing Linux to a closed-source but open-source mentality project, Lotus Notes.
The enterprise
developer is paid by the hour. He is making money everyday, but he has little to no freedom in what he is doing.
He must read (and usually write) features documents, requirements documents, UI specifications, etc., etc. He
must author high and low-level design documents, and be prepared to defend these documents in front of his peers.
He must also participate in reviewing other people's documentation. All this is done before any code is written.
Finally, you are held accountable that your code's function & appearance is consistent with what you and the
other stakeholders have agreed to. Nobody likes doing this stuff - but that is why you are getting paid. If you
don't do it, sooner or later you will stop getting paid.
Now consider the open-source developer. He is doing
what he does because his is (a) willing and able to donate his free time, and (b) he loves to write code. He is
exciting about contributing to a project and enthusiastic about the expected result. However, this kind of
energetic programmer brings an attitude to the table; since he is doing this for himself and on his free time,
you can not dictate processes or practices to him. You can't force him to adopt a certain coding standard or
force him to code a specific UI on top of an application or guarantee a certain feature set. You can't make sure
he is not repeating the work done by anyone else, since you don't really know what he is doing. Even if you
could, there is no central authority to mandate and enforce these concepts. There is no 'PHB' with the bigger
picture looking over his shoulder and guiding him.
The output of an enterprise development shop is a coherent,
functional application or set of applciations. Since the requirements were carefully analzyed and approved, there
are no major missing features or redundant feature points. Since the design and code has been carefully reviewed
and formally tested, there are no major security problems or other 'bugs' prevelant in the software. The output
from an open source project can be wildly different. Since there was no formal requirements specification or UI
design, you can't even be sure if what you have now is what you set out to build in the first place. Since there
is no formal development lifecycle or methodology, you can't be sure if the missing or redundant features were
intentional or just happened that way. For example, take a look at the Redhat 9.0 'distro', which includes no
less that 4 seperate text editors. Why would any user want 4 text editors? The open source programmer might revel
in the freedom of choice the user has, completely ignoring the burden of choice now placed on the user. I
do not have the time or inclination to examine, compare and contrast all 4 text editors and weigh my decision on
which to use. What is lacking here is a central authority to mandate a specific UI for a text editor, which a
specific feature set, and then to hold programmers accountable if the output does not match the
requirement. Unfortunately, given that open source is developed by programmers living all across the world, and
these programmers do not communicate with each other - much less an 'authority figure', there seems to be no way
to make this concept workable. As a