"They are full-time employees, with 401K stock options. Some work for IBM or Oracle. What does that mean? It means that Linux doesn't exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more. There is big commercial [firms] like IBM and there is small commercial [firms] like Ubuntu," he said. Right, because commercial businesses have never supported, contributed to or founded free software before. Oh yes, and because FSF has always stated that free software is against business. People work at companies and people power free software. Having a job doesn't make a someone a non-person. And, for the record, Linus Torvalds is not the representative of the free software movement (thank heavens!) -- he's half-assed even as an advocate.
|fixing a bug causing a known issue can also fix several unknown issues
Just as often the reverse applies. A bug often shadows other bugs. Take away the main bug and there's just another right behind it which might even be worse. This is why you don't just "shoot from the hip" when fixing bugs.
Are you suggesting it's better to not fix the bug and thus reveal the problems it masks? When fixing bugs causes many bugs it usually indicates one of two common things:
The bug fixer is being careless and there isn't sufficient regression testing happening, or
the initial code was fragile to begin with.
In many ways, problem 1 is much more serious than problem 2 as the code is probably getting worse rather than better. It would seem to follow then that the fact that a person 'fixing' something can screw it up more is not a strong rationale for avoiding fixing bugs as long as the engineers' and SQA skill level is sufficient to handle the risk associated with the project. Of course, if people would just engineer things right the first time...;)
"Our company spends significantly to root out security issues," says the reader. "We train all our programmers in secure coding, and we follow the basic tenets of secure programming design and management. When bugs are reported, we fix them. Any significant security bug that is likely to be high risk or widely used is also immediately fixed. But if we internally find a low- or medium-risk security bug, we often sit on the bug until it is reported publicly. We still research the bug and come up with tentative solutions, but we don't patch the problem." I don't believe this is a prudent approach. Bugs often cause (or mask) more problems than the issue causing the bug to be fixed. In other words, fixing a bug causing a known issue can also fix several unknown issues. Without a significant reason to not do so (such as a product that has beene completely replaced in a company with very limited resources,) it is irresponsible to not fix bugs. The debatable point is how long small bugs should be allowed to collect before issuing a point release.
What I find MORE interesting about Halo is the whole back story and universe continuity that has been created for Halo. While the games are OK to play, I find reading about the fictional universe even more interesting. Is there a book/comic/fan fiction series related to this or do you mean the in game storyline?
I played Halo and Halo 2 to completion and I don't understand why they are held up as excellent FPS games. They were good, but I don't recall a single innovation and even where they were good, they were not great. The original Half-life, FarCry, Deus Ex and several others were much better. That's totally just an opinion and it doesn't mean much, but I'd like to know why Halo is considered by a fairly large population to be a great game. Perhaps more useful: would they have been considered great games if they were released on the PC but not the XBox?
I thought the key to getting good mileage with a hybrid was understanding how to drive it properly and, when that was done, folks were getting close to the listed mileage.
The math for that is pretty reasonable. It's pretty easy to type that fast. However, most code time is spent thinking, testing, editing, refactoring, etc. and any code which doesn't have a good application of these habits is not worth writing. You're seriously better off doing things in smaller increments, especially with how human memory works. That's not always possible of course, but preferrable. I'd rather spend two days writing code than one day writing and the next three days fixing. It's especially discouraging to have unworking code for days at a time, and this is known to kill many otherwise promising projects, even open source ones. As general advice, I think that's solid. There are times when the moon is just right and the focus is 100% that you can code in a sustained, brilliant way for many, many hours and actually produce better code than the usual 8-hour shift (with 2-3 hours of actual coding for most people.) I don't think I've ever experienced that hacker mind while physically at a traditional business office, but I've lucked into it many times at home. It really is a great experience.
Paul Graham is the same guy who said he could calculate whether the patent system was a net win if given a couple weeks. This is something I've read more than one Ph.D. thesis on, but sure, a couple weeks sounds completely reasonable, Paul. A couple of weeks? Hmm.. if only he had 5000 dollars to pay his expenses while he worked out version 1.0.
If you've written several thousand lines of code in a day, it is safe to say you have seriously neglected something. What do you mean? My copy/paste keys are working perfectly?:)
Seriously, the busiest days are when I simply don't sleep but have worked through the entire night into the next day and then sometimes through the next night as well. Does that still count for SLOC in a day?:)
"There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed." This is simple, old fashioned scare-tactics. Have we forgotted SCO's patent suits and how, for all the saber-rattling, weak their actual case was. Bringing it to court, Microsoft, because you can't beat free software professionally?
Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68. So, a typical GNU/Linux desktop distribution includes software from a couple thosand projects, with probably upwards of 10,000 actual contributors. And, they're going to sue the users? BULLSHIT. Microsoft, you're doomed and you know it.
Graham loves it when his little chicks take on the big birds. "These guys have written 40,000 words of code in three months!" he crows. "You never see that in a big company!" Who counts by 'words' of code? Working for big companies, I've written several thousand lines of code in a day many times. It's not typical, but it's not quite rare either. Of course, after a writing flurry I'd usually spend the rest of the week pulling my hair out because of the bugs I had added.;)
How much do you usually invest?
Usually $5000 + $5000 per founder. So $15,000 for two founders, $20,000 for three. Occasionally we invest more. The goal is usually to give you enough money to build an impressive prototype or version 1, which you can then use to get further funding. This is peanuts. If this is all the money you're going to get, it's probably a better use of your efforts to keep your day job and do your startup on your own spare time.
I think OSS already has an excellent form of software as service (stretching the definition, of course): distributed SCM. Thousands of open source projects that produce libraries rather than applications and are updateable, buildable, etc with a quick 'svn update'-'make install' cycle. A major difference between the current OSS model and the traditional service-oriented approach is that SOA is usually based around black-box components controlled externally, but I don't think the OSS community would accept a more opaque delivery system for a myriad of reasons.
Rather than this dodgy "aerogel" technique, you could use the molecules that nature has used for millenia : antibodies. But then what they patent and sell for gazillions of dollars?;)
Is that really all they're talking about here? I would think it's more about carrying applications and data, and letting them run transparently on some other installation of Windows. Thanks for pointing that out. The key difference appears to be that the applications wouldn't have to be installed on the host computer.
From the article:
The technologies will be designed to let mobile computer users carry a complete image of their desktops in their pockets, allowing them access not only to their data -- standard stuff for today's USB drives -- but also their applications and user interface setup while on the go. If this is the case, it sounds like it amounts to a pretty limited set of changes to Windows, especially since many of the changes necessary have already been available on network shared drives.
But, if all this doesn't matter to you, then don't complain when MS does something and people like me let you know you had your chance. Win the war, adopt a strategy that will beat MS.
I didn't mean to disparage what Microsoft is doing and I don't see it as a conflict. More power to Microsoft for doing this; I was noting that it was not unique or original, even in (what I, at least, would consider) a fairly large scale way.
GNU/Linux and its BSD cousins are fantastic accomplishments right now and I personally don't think they 'need' any particular change. It brings me great joy to think of so many people contributing to and using free software and I think the free software culture does not need to change, even if it may be unfamiliar to Joe User. Hopefully, Joe User will become more familiar with free software as time goes on, as has happened with many 'Artsy Fartsy Frankies' (love those names) in Appleland.
I studied programming for about 4 years. Only somewhat relative courses to portability were courses about Java and PHP. After the school I'm quite amazed that there was nothing about wxWidgets, or SDL or any other library that allows programmers to create portable applications easily, and still maintain the look of the native application. It seems strange that programming classes would generally be platform specific. Even if a person had some sworn allegiance to an OS, that OS will almost certainly (A LOT) change over the course of their career. Learning how to write programs in general, portable ways is very useful. On the other hand, it's good to go all the way wiht the limitations of a machine/OS now and then!:)
...when a program was a single executable file?
I hope those weren't the good old days when applications came with their own slew of device drivers (graphics, audio, scanners, mice, etc.) Especially on old XT/AT hardware. Those were the days...;)
Microsoft said it plans to add support for the technology into its Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. Needless to say, GNU/Linux, etc has ran beautifully on removable media for years. I'm surprised MS didn't go for a specialized Windows CE.
Vampires, rejoice ! Soon, the artificial blood project will be complete !
New, in Italian, Mexican and Indian flavors. Wonderful! I hope they make hot and spicy too!:)
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Are you suggesting it's better to not fix the bug and thus reveal the problems it masks? When fixing bugs causes many bugs it usually indicates one of two common things:
In many ways, problem 1 is much more serious than problem 2 as the code is probably getting worse rather than better. It would seem to follow then that the fact that a person 'fixing' something can screw it up more is not a strong rationale for avoiding fixing bugs as long as the engineers' and SQA skill level is sufficient to handle the risk associated with the project. Of course, if people would just engineer things right the first time... ;)
I played Halo and Halo 2 to completion and I don't understand why they are held up as excellent FPS games. They were good, but I don't recall a single innovation and even where they were good, they were not great. The original Half-life, FarCry, Deus Ex and several others were much better. That's totally just an opinion and it doesn't mean much, but I'd like to know why Halo is considered by a fairly large population to be a great game. Perhaps more useful: would they have been considered great games if they were released on the PC but not the XBox?
I thought the key to getting good mileage with a hybrid was understanding how to drive it properly and, when that was done, folks were getting close to the listed mileage.
Seriously, the busiest days are when I simply don't sleep but have worked through the entire night into the next day and then sometimes through the next night as well. Does that still count for SLOC in a day?
Usually $5000 + $5000 per founder. So $15,000 for two founders, $20,000 for three. Occasionally we invest more. The goal is usually to give you enough money to build an impressive prototype or version 1, which you can then use to get further funding. This is peanuts. If this is all the money you're going to get, it's probably a better use of your efforts to keep your day job and do your startup on your own spare time.
I think OSS already has an excellent form of software as service (stretching the definition, of course): distributed SCM. Thousands of open source projects that produce libraries rather than applications and are updateable, buildable, etc with a quick 'svn update'-'make install' cycle. A major difference between the current OSS model and the traditional service-oriented approach is that SOA is usually based around black-box components controlled externally, but I don't think the OSS community would accept a more opaque delivery system for a myriad of reasons.
I didn't mean to disparage what Microsoft is doing and I don't see it as a conflict. More power to Microsoft for doing this; I was noting that it was not unique or original, even in (what I, at least, would consider) a fairly large scale way.
GNU/Linux and its BSD cousins are fantastic accomplishments right now and I personally don't think they 'need' any particular change. It brings me great joy to think of so many people contributing to and using free software and I think the free software culture does not need to change, even if it may be unfamiliar to Joe User. Hopefully, Joe User will become more familiar with free software as time goes on, as has happened with many 'Artsy Fartsy Frankies' (love those names) in Appleland.
...is that calls from the doctor can restart your pacemaker.
...when a program was a single executable file? I hope those weren't the good old days when applications came with their own slew of device drivers (graphics, audio, scanners, mice, etc.) Especially on old XT/AT hardware. Those were the days......3, 2, 1.
I was almost out of V8.