The mith of American management is that it exists
on
Do You Like Your Job?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I've been working for twenty five years for people that I wouldn't trust to know which end of a [expletive deleted] to suck.
I have come to the realization that the ONLY people I ever worked for who had a clue as to what management is about, what projects are about and what the deliverable was supposed to be were in the military.
Not that they were all that great but you could count on them not to try to 'fix' the steering on truck while its careening around a curve and heading for a cliff.
That's why a military toilet seat costs six hundred bucks. Because you can at least be sure that your ass will fit, that its over a latrine and that it will have a hole in it.
With civilian (mis-)management, they'd skip cutting out the hole and justify it as cutting out the cost. And there'd be shit everywhere.
Read "systemantics." It'll clue you in on why things are so screwed up. It won't help a damn but at least you'll know why you're getting reamed.
On the minus side, I haven't earned a dollar in salary since September, '01.
It not for lack of mailing out resumes, getting interviews (even second interviews,) or chopping my income requirements, moving to get my expenses down, cashing in the 401k to get rid of all my debts [actually, they were leaking close to a grand a month before that anyway so it waa cheaper to cash 'em in than hold on to 'em,]
Its just tough out there. I'm in a depression. The economy's in a recession.
Before the crash(es, two planes and an economy) I worked for somebody who believed that systems are maintained by oral tradition, never wrote down things like specs or documentation and was ignorant of the glaring flaws in the system and in her managerial abilities.
This person was a DE-motivator. The biggest kick in the 'nads you can ever get is a whiny voice intoning "But I 'TOLD' you." Yeah, like I have time to listen to every word of your endless stream of conciousness and engrave it in my memory.
I'm poor, going on broke but I'm still better off than if I'd stayed there.
Now I sleep nights (mostly,) and I've stopped worrying about planes and falling buiuldings but I still get nightmares about "But I TOLD you..."
HDTV is still very limited and the content's not there. Its good to watch some sports games (like the Knicks on MSG TV,) and the rest sucks as hard as it usually does. Broadcast TV, Feh!
It is good for watching DVD movies if you happen to be anti-social, can't stand crowds and want good pop-corn.
If it can't KNOW who I am, it's still spoof-able
on
Pictorial Passwords
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· Score: 5, Informative
Passwords have never been more than a low level rung on the ladder of trust. If you want security, equip the ATM with a fingerprint pad and/or a camera and eye piece capable of taking retinal prints.
The rest, as we can read, is just a bunch of jokes.
Not effin' likely... The Otis people get sued for every broken leg. They're not going to be that stupid.
Eventually some dweeb will come up with a real killer script. One that infects hospital systems, screws up with the meds and results in a few hundred deaths.
Then some smart lawyer will go after M$ and learn that they do not warranty the suitability or fitness of their product for any purpose what-so-ever.
Then the governor of the state who's aging mother died because of the boo-boo will get into the act and the software industry will be as regulated as the automotive industry.
Given the number of blazing Corvairs and chest impalements by steering columns, this will NOT be a bad thing. But its about as likely as M$ selling elevator systems.
As long as the cost is ONLY money, nobody in the corporate world gives shit. Its not their money. They don't want to waste time or money fixing the problem. They don't even want to report the problem.
I know of at least one company that got screwed on Sept. 11, 01 because they hadn't even taken a copy of their back-up tapes off site in months. Takes too long. Costs money. Like cab fare. Believe it...
When I did brain surgery on my ancient Mac to slap in an extra meg and a half and a SCSI interface I had to install the 'flapper' fan or whatch my case do a Dali "soft watch."
Gluing a piezo fan onto the chip is not very smart anyway. And it does generate some 'flexing' heat where there is the least air motion. And it makes noise like a butterfly on speed.
You don't get something for nothing. Moving air other than by convection causes turbulence which causes vibrations. Vibration IS noise. Which is more irritating, a flapping buzz or a whirling whoosh? Its a matter of taste.
When you find yourself flipping through ninety five channels and the most interesting thing on there can't slop the flipping, its time to read a book, kiss the girlfriend or slam out some code.
Wether we use 'natural selection' or bio-engineering, what's the diff? We still end up with people who are great at what they do, though they may be sub-optimal at other things.
Basketball players make lousy power-lifters.
Make chess an Olympic event.
Make wheel-chair dancing an Olympic event.
Make priapism an Olympic event.
You'll get the individuals best suited for the sport.
M$ grew to its present size by using techniques worthy of "Tony Soprano."
Jus't because they grew big doesn't mean that its good. Not for them and not for anyone else.
Right now the PC sales slump (negative growth!) means vastly reduced sale cashflow. Their products are not so useful or so unusable that they can coerce replacement. I know a financial firm using DOS to run their Fax sever. I know someone using Windows 3.11. That's all he needs. I know people using Windows '95 or '98. It came with the PC, it works well enough and that's where they'll stay. Who's got money to waste?
In nature/agriculture a monopoly is called a monoculture and its particularly vulnerable to changed environments conditions, pests and parasites. (Computing equivalent: Change of platform, script-kiddies and viri?)
In economics it called a monopoly and needs special safeguards placed on it before it restricts trade in other areas of the economy.
Not only can M$ cause inflation strictly through greed, endanger its users through its constant lagging in implementing security (I don't think Symantec "et alia", are worried about being made unnecessary,) but its ability to usurp other people's innovations to fold it into Windows is a powerful disincentive to development.
Leaving aside the morality or practicability of the situation, AOL would just be a vertically integrated media content supply and delivery supply chain. (Imagine AOL at reliable broadband speed... Why, they'd become huge. Oh. They ARE huge.)
But not all the way down to the hardware it would run on. There are sensible reasons why you're not likely to ever see them bid on shares of Intel any time soon.
As the automotive industry has shown, in hard or unstettled time, that's just not a good idea. If you fall out of favor at anypoint in the chain ("We don't like < whatever > !") the entire chain falters.
Why do you think the vehicle manufacturers don't make tires? If Ford couldn't sell cars because of Firestone's bad press, (or Ford Tire Company's bad press,) a third of the automotive production capacity of the Western world be dead in the water. One faulty tire making machine spewing out substandard product could idle hundreds of thousands of people and cause economic dislocation greater than the GNP of many nations (combined!)
Only in the area of operating systems (I won't quibble about the operating part,) do we have such a ridiculous concentration of supply versus demand with just ONE supplier having acquired, by successive illegal and anti-competetive means, 85% of the total market.
When the patforms shifts to 64-bits and implements bio-metric security, the 85% will find themselves hamstrung in their efforts to improve their lot.
Luckily, M$ can't get in where security is an issue. NO company, NO country is going to risk using M$ anything in contracts where they have to garantee 99.999999% up time or face the consequences. (M$ Outlook crashes on me almost EVERY time I use it. Its the only piece of M$ software in my house and I use it to remind myself of how bad their products are.)
"Starwars" and the Missile Condom" will be the death of M$ if you play it right. Linux is hard to hack and much more reliable. Prove it (with help from ths NSA, etc) and the rewards will be truly great.
Intel is in no way responsable or liable for the quality of the software that runs on it.
Lego is in exactly the same position. Let LegOS thrive the same way Linux is thriving and for exactly the same reasons. It serves different needs.
Its not even necessary to provide interoperability but it would be the smart thing to do. If Intel had done that from the start, its customers might have saved a trillion dollars and a billion person-hours lost to the malevalent M$ monopoly.
A model of cooperation instead of beligerence and bullying might serve to inspire future industrial empires.
crappy ideosyncratic syntax cobbled together before the industry ever hear of writing specs, QA or who the fuck is actually using the boxes.
It ain't the geeks. It ain't the dweebs and it ain't people with progidious memory capacity.
Its people who are trying to get something done and having to memorise all this crap (what directory did this make file put the modules into, and why is this called that and who are all the users, real or virtual, with accounts on this machine?)
I end up writing code in Squeak! to work on my Linux box (and my Macs,) because I can FIND the damn code, its ORGANIZED, its EVIDENT and I don't get fuckin' tripped up trying to do things only to be stymied by some idiots lousy sense of spelling or lack of QA or their pathetic punsterish humor.
I'm trying to USE the tools not be a toolsmith but man pages are illegible and explain nothing and every fuckin' dialect and distro seems to think its their God given right to fuck with the directory tree.
I just want to get what I need to happen, to happen. Me and the majority of people stuck with Windows.
I'm sick and tired of pedophagia being used as the excuse for every oppressive measure adults use on each other.
Face it, statistically, pedophiles are a small and far less dangerous segment of the community that used car salesmen who sell defective Detroit Iron to mentally defective sixteen year olds (who then go to a bar to celebrate their rite of passage into the adult community by drinking until they hurl and then weave their way home.)
YOU care about your kids. Great! YOU watch over them and trust that they will have enough sense to scream and kick. (You have taught them to do that or did you abrogate that responsability too?)
I care about your kids the same as you care about mine. Neither of us really gives a rat's-ass. Its an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem.) (That's why terrorists are never effective. If you can walk away you DO or you died and aren't terrorized anymore.)
By the way "pro bono publico" is Latin for "for the greater good" (implying 'not for profit.') You'd do a better job of that by getting the drunks off the street.
As for the hookers, pimps, dealers, thieves, purse-snatchers and lawyers. we'd be better off without them too.
Sadly, the same biometric mechaisms which will make transactions over the internet completely secure will also make it impossible for people to hide outside of their own homes (and many governments will try to put them inside as well.)
Since surveillance cameras are cheap, can be unobtrusive, (can you tell me where the cameras are around you?) always there and always on, the powers that be will use them to implement surveilance that's just as pervasive.
Since these cameras will be installed in community owned spaces surveying community owned property, you'll have absolutely no say in the matter.
In fact, the excuses will be that the surveilance is mandated and demanded by a responsable community.
Lisp is okay. The syntax is trivial but over the years it has evolved some good libraries and it is reflexive.
You can use lisp to write/generate lisp code which you can then interpret/compile and execute. The problem comes from the architecture of the VM. It was not fundamentally designed with objects and message passing in mind.
Prolog has a similar simple syntax but its VM is designed completely differently.
From that respect, the Smalltalk VM is closer to the paradigm.
While all three have had time to mature and evolve over the decades of their existence, Smalltalk has the most usable and extensive libraries to date.
Smalltalkers find Java class libraries "quaint."
That said, Smalltalk is still flawed because it is container based and the contained don't know they are contained unless explicitely made aware of the fact.
This is its major flaw, as a brick in a wall can make amply clear, its in a wall and its held there. The wall is the aggregate of the relationships between the bricks.
I have never seen an organization as clueless as M$. The whole point of the 'Net (and of.NET I would guess,) is a create a collaborative work environment,
MyNotebook, MyCalendar, MyPrep-H are all obvious rehash of the isolationist, PC-centric, lone-gunman, divide-and-conquer mentality we're evolving past.
This is absolutely NOT the purpose of the 'net, the Web not should it be the paradigm for.NET.
They will screw themselves with this the same way as they have with everything else. It will take until.NET-3 for them to see what its really about.
But maybe by then we'll all be using Itaniums and G4 & G5 PowerPCs and the entire problem will disappear as M$ finally implodes.
And on the Mac I still use WordPerfect. It does what I need to use so I use it.
Feature-itis amd software bloat is something I avoid.
M$ being open? Look for 'em to change their minds
on
Microsoft vs. Ximian
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· Score: 2
They usually do this to strand their compet, uh, partners into incompatible standards.
They did this to Aple with TrueType and the fuckin' alphabet. They did this to everybody that ever tried to get into bed with 'em.
What they don't outright streal, they screw the competition by "co-operating."
It may be my Canadian experience that is providing me with perspective here, and the Trudeau paraphrase, but when you're in bed with an elephant, you feel every twitch and rumble, no matter how benign the elephant might be.
And M$ is about as benign as the tobacco companies or the car companies before they were LEGISLATED into equipping cars with collapsible steering column so that drivers wouldn't get impaled in a crash.
Lots of software is described as having evolved...
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Software Aesthetics
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· Score: 2
It has evolved in the same way that melanoma can be considered to have evolved from healthy skin cells.
Part of the problem lies with the root of the profession. Most software practitioners would compare themselves to doctors. Well with their media generated "Dr. Kildare" image of doctors.
Real doctors harbor no such illusions of infallability. They know its called a practice for a rason. They're practising. Medicine unlike say, architecture, is far from an exact science.
Most software projects start with simplifications based on unjustifiable assumptions and descend quickly into a managerial surreality where no regard is shown to the customer needs, marketability or even reality.
Most people who cobble software together, like Frankeinstein stitching away in his laboratory, should consider careers in other fields: ("Ya wan' fries wi' 'hat?") They are too fuckin' ignorant to do it right at almost any level.
Just because any fool can write a Visual Basic program with VisualStudio doesn't means that its a good idea.
While the level of naivete shown by software developers at all levels, from the CEO to the janitor, might be delightful in a three year old it is downright frightening in alleged adults when you consider the degree of waste generated by the ineptitude of these cretins. They are forever re-inventing the wheel in the name of intellectual property. What property? What fuckin' intellect?
The problem with comparisons to architecture is that they aren't valid. Architecture has standards groups, construction guidelines, review boards and comittees, material science and the one thing all architecture is in opposition to: gravity. Its residents may suck but the earth doesn't. Even at that people plunge down shafts, fall off balconies or trip and break off bits every year.
How about automotive design? Until there were mandated to by force of law (and long jail sentences for murder,) cars had long solid steering wheels which could be counted on to impale the person behing the wheel in a head-on colision like a bloody butterfly to a display case. The Chevy Impala was also the Chevy impaler. The Corvair launched Ralph Nader's career. The litany of tragedy is not limited to one company or one continent.
How about roads? The Romans built roads that are still in use. Yes. Nice flat roads on nice flat lands. Along mountain roads in many countries they plant a white wooden cross for every person who has died as the result of a plunge into the abyss at that spot in the road. (Bus plunges are specially showy but not as effective as a steel guard rail.)
Most design isn't. Jonathan Ives may be brilliant at putting together pleasing designs but I wouldn't necessarily trust the guts if he had to put together the ENTIRE box, contents and all.
Most software is inadequate crap slapped together by people who are trying something with one lobe of their brain tied behind their back. Its systemic and self-inflicted container-based stupidity.
Most managers can't manage to keep out of the friggin' way or to keep their people supplied with guidelines and guidance. Most QA is dedicated to catching shit when the clients are already stepping in it. Most documentation sucks the wind that someone else broke. Its always late and never accurate and is usually written by someone whose grasp of any human language is, at best, tenuous.
Hey! I wouldn't ask Proust to write a payroll program, why the fuck is some COBOL jockey writing a user manual? He can barely complete or comprehend a compound sentence. Nobody ever knows about the context that their software has to operate in.
All in all, this is a pretty sorry industry.
Now for the big pronouncement:
This industry will be fucked as long as we use a container-based paradign for encapsulating software architecture.
The very thought of encapsulation is a management fallacy.
The management technique of drawing the box and cutting out everything that slops over the side is completely backwards.
What fits completely inside the box is monotonic, generatable and hopelessly isolated.
The strength of a system lies in the parts that slop over the edge.
Systems are made up of objects and their relationships in the same way as a brick wall is comprised of bricks, mortar and the spacial relationships betwen the bricks.
Architecture is not about bricks and mortar but about bricks, mortar and the space that is defined.
Software architecture is about classes, objects and relationships.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been working for twenty five years for people that I wouldn't trust to know which end of a [expletive deleted] to suck.
I have come to the realization that the ONLY people I ever worked for who had a clue as to what management is about, what projects are about and what the deliverable was supposed to be were in the military.
Not that they were all that great but you could count on them not to try to 'fix' the steering on truck while its careening around a curve and heading for a cliff.
That's why a military toilet seat costs six hundred bucks. Because you can at least be sure that your ass will fit, that its over a latrine and that it will have a hole in it.
With civilian (mis-)management, they'd skip cutting out the hole and justify it as cutting out the cost. And there'd be shit everywhere.
Read "systemantics." It'll clue you in on why things are so screwed up. It won't help a damn but at least you'll know why you're getting reamed.
Actually I can't think of a single use for it.
And if you believe this piece of dross, read their predictions from ten years ago.
'Nuff said.
I used to work on the 83rd floor of a target.
On the plus side, I'm still suckin' air.
On the minus side, I haven't earned a dollar in salary since September, '01.
It not for lack of mailing out resumes, getting interviews (even second interviews,) or chopping my income requirements, moving to get my expenses down, cashing in the 401k to get rid of all my debts [actually, they were leaking close to a grand a month before that anyway so it waa cheaper to cash 'em in than hold on to 'em,]
Its just tough out there. I'm in a depression. The economy's in a recession.
Before the crash(es, two planes and an economy) I worked for somebody who believed that systems are maintained by oral tradition, never wrote down things like specs or documentation and was ignorant of the glaring flaws in the system and in her managerial abilities.
This person was a DE-motivator. The biggest kick in the 'nads you can ever get is a whiny voice intoning "But I 'TOLD' you." Yeah, like I have time to listen to every word of your endless stream of conciousness and engrave it in my memory.
I'm poor, going on broke but I'm still better off than if I'd stayed there.
Now I sleep nights (mostly,) and I've stopped worrying about planes and falling buiuldings but I still get nightmares about "But I TOLD you..."
HDTV is still very limited and the content's not there. Its good to watch some sports games (like the Knicks on MSG TV,) and the rest sucks as hard as it usually does. Broadcast TV, Feh!
It is good for watching DVD movies if you happen to be anti-social, can't stand crowds and want good pop-corn.
Passwords have never been more than a low level rung on the ladder of trust. If you want security, equip the ATM with a fingerprint pad and/or a camera and eye piece capable of taking retinal prints.
The rest, as we can read, is just a bunch of jokes.
Not effin' likely... The Otis people get sued for every broken leg. They're not going to be that stupid.
Eventually some dweeb will come up with a real killer script. One that infects hospital systems, screws up with the meds and results in a few hundred deaths.
Then some smart lawyer will go after M$ and learn that they do not warranty the suitability or fitness of their product for any purpose what-so-ever.
Then the governor of the state who's aging mother died because of the boo-boo will get into the act and the software industry will be as regulated as the automotive industry.
Given the number of blazing Corvairs and chest impalements by steering columns, this will NOT be a bad thing. But its about as likely as M$ selling elevator systems.
As long as the cost is ONLY money, nobody in the corporate world gives shit. Its not their money. They don't want to waste time or money fixing the problem. They don't even want to report the problem.
I know of at least one company that got screwed on Sept. 11, 01 because they hadn't even taken a copy of their back-up tapes off site in months. Takes too long. Costs money. Like cab fare. Believe it...
Get used to it.
if someone uses private non-algoritmically generated keys to encrypt and decrypt, then the communications are probably secure.
If they use synchronized one-time pads then the communications are probably even more secure.
aren't claiming its anything new.
When I did brain surgery on my ancient Mac to slap in an extra meg and a half and a SCSI interface I had to install the 'flapper' fan or whatch my case do a Dali "soft watch."
Gluing a piezo fan onto the chip is not very smart anyway. And it does generate some 'flexing' heat where there is the least air motion. And it makes noise like a butterfly on speed.
You don't get something for nothing. Moving air other than by convection causes turbulence which causes vibrations. Vibration IS noise. Which is more irritating, a flapping buzz or a whirling whoosh? Its a matter of taste.
When you find yourself flipping through ninety five channels and the most interesting thing on there can't slop the flipping, its time to read a book, kiss the girlfriend or slam out some code.
Nuff said.
Wether we use 'natural selection' or bio-engineering, what's the diff? We still end up with people who are great at what they do, though they may be sub-optimal at other things.
Basketball players make lousy power-lifters.
Make chess an Olympic event.
Make wheel-chair dancing an Olympic event.
Make priapism an Olympic event.
You'll get the individuals best suited for the sport.
He sees you when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've surfed for porn.
don't jack-off for goodness sake.
the problems of this industry.
M$ grew to its present size by using techniques worthy of "Tony Soprano."
Jus't because they grew big doesn't mean that its good. Not for them and not for anyone else.
Right now the PC sales slump (negative growth!) means vastly reduced sale cashflow. Their products are not so useful or so unusable that they can coerce replacement. I know a financial firm using DOS to run their Fax sever. I know someone using Windows 3.11. That's all he needs. I know people using Windows '95 or '98. It came with the PC, it works well enough and that's where they'll stay. Who's got money to waste?
In nature/agriculture a monopoly is called a monoculture and its particularly vulnerable to changed environments conditions, pests and parasites. (Computing equivalent: Change of platform, script-kiddies and viri?)
In economics it called a monopoly and needs special safeguards placed on it before it restricts trade in other areas of the economy.
Not only can M$ cause inflation strictly through greed, endanger its users through its constant lagging in implementing security (I don't think Symantec "et alia", are worried about being made unnecessary,) but its ability to usurp other people's innovations to fold it into Windows is a powerful disincentive to development.
Leaving aside the morality or practicability of the situation, AOL would just be a vertically integrated media content supply and delivery supply chain. (Imagine AOL at reliable broadband speed... Why, they'd become huge. Oh. They ARE huge.)
But not all the way down to the hardware it would run on. There are sensible reasons why you're not likely to ever see them bid on shares of Intel any time soon.
As the automotive industry has shown, in hard or unstettled time, that's just not a good idea. If you fall out of favor at anypoint in the chain ("We don't like < whatever > !") the entire chain falters.
Why do you think the vehicle manufacturers don't make tires? If Ford couldn't sell cars because of Firestone's bad press, (or Ford Tire Company's bad press,) a third of the automotive production capacity of the Western world be dead in the water. One faulty tire making machine spewing out substandard product could idle hundreds of thousands of people and cause economic dislocation greater than the GNP of many nations (combined!)
Only in the area of operating systems (I won't quibble about the operating part,) do we have such a ridiculous concentration of supply versus demand with just ONE supplier having acquired, by successive illegal and anti-competetive means, 85% of the total market.
When the patforms shifts to 64-bits and implements bio-metric security, the 85% will find themselves hamstrung in their efforts to improve their lot.
Luckily, M$ can't get in where security is an issue. NO company, NO country is going to risk using M$ anything in contracts where they have to garantee 99.999999% up time or face the consequences. (M$ Outlook crashes on me almost EVERY time I use it. Its the only piece of M$ software in my house and I use it to remind myself of how bad their products are.)
"Starwars" and the Missile Condom" will be the death of M$ if you play it right. Linux is hard to hack and much more reliable. Prove it (with help from ths NSA, etc) and the rewards will be truly great.
My advice to the makers of Lego is to do likwise.
Intel is in no way responsable or liable for the quality of the software that runs on it.
Lego is in exactly the same position. Let LegOS thrive the same way Linux is thriving and for exactly the same reasons. It serves different needs.
Its not even necessary to provide interoperability but it would be the smart thing to do. If Intel had done that from the start, its customers might have saved a trillion dollars and a billion person-hours lost to the malevalent M$ monopoly.
A model of cooperation instead of beligerence and bullying might serve to inspire future industrial empires.
crappy ideosyncratic syntax cobbled together before the industry ever hear of writing specs, QA or who the fuck is actually using the boxes.
It ain't the geeks. It ain't the dweebs and it ain't people with progidious memory capacity.
Its people who are trying to get something done and having to memorise all this crap (what directory did this make file put the modules into, and why is this called that and who are all the users, real or virtual, with accounts on this machine?)
I end up writing code in Squeak! to work on my Linux box (and my Macs,) because I can FIND the damn code, its ORGANIZED, its EVIDENT and I don't get fuckin' tripped up trying to do things only to be stymied by some idiots lousy sense of spelling or lack of QA or their pathetic punsterish humor.
I'm trying to USE the tools not be a toolsmith but man pages are illegible and explain nothing and every fuckin' dialect and distro seems to think its their God given right to fuck with the directory tree.
I just want to get what I need to happen, to happen. Me and the majority of people stuck with Windows.
Got a problem with that?
If you want a secure system, you have to jettison Windows.
You could get viri that would decode all your "secure" media and transmit it via email.
I'm sick and tired of pedophagia being used as the excuse for every oppressive measure adults use on each other.
Face it, statistically, pedophiles are a small and far less dangerous segment of the community that used car salesmen who sell defective Detroit Iron to mentally defective sixteen year olds (who then go to a bar to celebrate their rite of passage into the adult community by drinking until they hurl and then weave their way home.)
YOU care about your kids. Great! YOU watch over them and trust that they will have enough sense to scream and kick. (You have taught them to do that or did you abrogate that responsability too?)
I care about your kids the same as you care about mine. Neither of us really gives a rat's-ass. Its an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem.) (That's why terrorists are never effective. If you can walk away you DO or you died and aren't terrorized anymore.)
By the way "pro bono publico" is Latin for "for the greater good" (implying 'not for profit.') You'd do a better job of that by getting the drunks off the street.
As for the hookers, pimps, dealers, thieves, purse-snatchers and lawyers. we'd be better off without them too.
Sadly, the same biometric mechaisms which will make transactions over the internet completely secure will also make it impossible for people to hide outside of their own homes (and many governments will try to put them inside as well.)
Since surveillance cameras are cheap, can be unobtrusive, (can you tell me where the cameras are around you?) always there and always on, the powers that be will use them to implement surveilance that's just as pervasive.
Since these cameras will be installed in community owned spaces surveying community owned property, you'll have absolutely no say in the matter.
In fact, the excuses will be that the surveilance is mandated and demanded by a responsable community.
I hear Ted Kazinski's cabin is for sale.
Lisp is okay. The syntax is trivial but over the years it has evolved some good libraries and it is reflexive.
You can use lisp to write/generate lisp code which you can then interpret/compile and execute. The problem comes from the architecture of the VM. It was not fundamentally designed with objects and message passing in mind.
Prolog has a similar simple syntax but its VM is designed completely differently.
From that respect, the Smalltalk VM is closer to the paradigm.
While all three have had time to mature and evolve over the decades of their existence, Smalltalk has the most usable and extensive libraries to date.
Smalltalkers find Java class libraries "quaint."
That said, Smalltalk is still flawed because it is container based and the contained don't know they are contained unless explicitely made aware of the fact.
This is its major flaw, as a brick in a wall can make amply clear, its in a wall and its held there. The wall is the aggregate of the relationships between the bricks.
I'd sooner trust a shark's smile.
I have never seen an organization as clueless as M$. The whole point of the 'Net (and of .NET I would guess,) is a create a collaborative work environment,
.NET.
.NET-3 for them to see what its really about.
MyNotebook, MyCalendar, MyPrep-H are all obvious rehash of the isolationist, PC-centric, lone-gunman, divide-and-conquer mentality we're evolving past.
This is absolutely NOT the purpose of the 'net, the Web not should it be the paradigm for
They will screw themselves with this the same way as they have with everything else. It will take until
But maybe by then we'll all be using Itaniums and G4 & G5 PowerPCs and the entire problem will disappear as M$ finally implodes.
And on the Mac I still use WordPerfect. It does what I need to use so I use it.
Feature-itis amd software bloat is something I avoid.
They usually do this to strand their compet, uh, partners into incompatible standards.
They did this to Aple with TrueType and the fuckin' alphabet. They did this to everybody that ever tried to get into bed with 'em.
What they don't outright streal, they screw the competition by "co-operating."
It may be my Canadian experience that is providing me with perspective here, and the Trudeau paraphrase, but when you're in bed with an elephant, you feel every twitch and rumble, no matter how benign the elephant might be.
And M$ is about as benign as the tobacco companies or the car companies before they were LEGISLATED into equipping cars with collapsible steering column so that drivers wouldn't get impaled in a crash.
It has evolved in the same way that melanoma can be considered to have evolved from healthy skin cells.
Part of the problem lies with the root of the profession. Most software practitioners would compare themselves to doctors. Well with their media generated "Dr. Kildare" image of doctors.
Real doctors harbor no such illusions of infallability. They know its called a practice for a rason. They're practising. Medicine unlike say, architecture, is far from an exact science.
Most software projects start with simplifications based on unjustifiable assumptions and descend quickly into a managerial surreality where no regard is shown to the customer needs, marketability or even reality.
Most people who cobble software together, like Frankeinstein stitching away in his laboratory, should consider careers in other fields: ("Ya wan' fries wi' 'hat?") They are too fuckin' ignorant to do it right at almost any level.
Just because any fool can write a Visual Basic program with VisualStudio doesn't means that its a good idea.
While the level of naivete shown by software developers at all levels, from the CEO to the janitor, might be delightful in a three year old it is downright frightening in alleged adults when you consider the degree of waste generated by the ineptitude of these cretins. They are forever re-inventing the wheel in the name of intellectual property. What property? What fuckin' intellect?
The problem with comparisons to architecture is that they aren't valid. Architecture has standards groups, construction guidelines, review boards and comittees, material science and the one thing all architecture is in opposition to: gravity. Its residents may suck but the earth doesn't. Even at that people plunge down shafts, fall off balconies or trip and break off bits every year.
How about automotive design? Until there were mandated to by force of law (and long jail sentences for murder,) cars had long solid steering wheels which could be counted on to impale the person behing the wheel in a head-on colision like a bloody butterfly to a display case. The Chevy Impala was also the Chevy impaler. The Corvair launched Ralph Nader's career. The litany of tragedy is not limited to one company or one continent.
How about roads? The Romans built roads that are still in use. Yes. Nice flat roads on nice flat lands. Along mountain roads in many countries they plant a white wooden cross for every person who has died as the result of a plunge into the abyss at that spot in the road. (Bus plunges are specially showy but not as effective as a steel guard rail.)
Most design isn't. Jonathan Ives may be brilliant at putting together pleasing designs but I wouldn't necessarily trust the guts if he had to put together the ENTIRE box, contents and all.
Most software is inadequate crap slapped together by people who are trying something with one lobe of their brain tied behind their back. Its systemic and self-inflicted container-based stupidity.
Most managers can't manage to keep out of the friggin' way or to keep their people supplied with guidelines and guidance. Most QA is dedicated to catching shit when the clients are already stepping in it. Most documentation sucks the wind that someone else broke. Its always late and never accurate and is usually written by someone whose grasp of any human language is, at best, tenuous.
Hey! I wouldn't ask Proust to write a payroll program, why the fuck is some COBOL jockey writing a user manual? He can barely complete or comprehend a compound sentence. Nobody ever knows about the context that their software has to operate in.
All in all, this is a pretty sorry industry.
Now for the big pronouncement:
This industry will be fucked as long as we use a container-based paradign for encapsulating software architecture.
The very thought of encapsulation is a management fallacy.
The management technique of drawing the box and cutting out everything that slops over the side is completely backwards.
What fits completely inside the box is monotonic, generatable and hopelessly isolated.
The strength of a system lies in the parts that slop over the edge.
Systems are made up of objects and their relationships in the same way as a brick wall is comprised of bricks, mortar and the spacial relationships betwen the bricks.
Architecture is not about bricks and mortar but about bricks, mortar and the space that is defined.
Software architecture is about classes, objects and relationships.