In a related development, I saw something on tv this week (one of the Discovery channels - Science, whatever) that Shroedinger's wave equation provided the correct model for rogue waves at sea, and has led to an explanation of that phenomenon. Again, no claim that quarks causes rogue waves, but the math fit, led to a model, the model seems valid, a solution seems found.
In addition to bad naming for timesharing, I nominate them for the bad naming of their corp entity - Computation Research Laboratories, or CRL, for supercomputing anything.
There are a lot of threads about corporate users not upgrading until SP1 is out - an agreed good thing.
However - and please correct me if I'm wrong - I believe that Windows 7 is the name of the great big fix to Vista and that furthermore, the name was changed from Vista to Windows 7 to avoid the bad taste, as "proven" by Mojave.
Now, if I have my history and nomenclature correct, Win7 is really some flavor of VistaX and if so named would have by-passed the SP1 adoption rule. The catch is that the Vista name was sullied by bad performance (or defects, whatever).
So, the real problem in my opinion isn't that Win7 is new - it's that it's the waited-for corrected Vista, but because of their own shenanigans, they can't win: the Vista name is poison, a "brand new" Win7.
FWIW, they could just take a page from Apple's playbook when their time comes: scrap their OS, use some *nix variant as a core - say.... Linux? - and then layer their own GUI on top of it. This was a highly successful strategy resulting in a market-acceptable product for Apple, and I am being NEITHER a fanboy nor catcalling when I suggest surprise that MS is NOT copying this approach yet.
(Just to save us all some time - I'm well-documented hereabouts as being a supporter and critic of both MS and Apple, so props in advance for not putting me in some narrow category when reading this post or replying to it. A few days ago, I praised MS, today I'm dising them.)
This solution was proposed in a short scifi story several decades ago, in fact. In the story involving the USA and USSR, one side was visiting the other and no one noticed that a colonel from the entourage stepped aside and pulled a counterpart aside and they spoke briefly. A year later there were two accidental launches, one from each side. Political tensions eased when it became clear that the two small nukes landed in the deep ocean, and sent up huge plumes of water vapor with little radiation. Not too long after, global warming was solved.
If we were smart enough, here's what we'd do: 1. Build open source election software and put it on Sourceforge 2. Build open source hardware and give dot-com-and-org presences for it, a la OpenMoko 3. Develop necessary and sufficient security for the system to meet our standards - lot of peer review available here 4. Develop a viable way for local election authorities to adopt it
Viable way to adopt: This is going to require a lot of political savvy.
I do not think that we are smart enough. I don't think that I am.
I'm the president of the Society of Lurkers. Perhaps you've heard of us, or remember us, from days gone by where we were mentioned often in various posts and articles that used words like denizens and netiquette.
These days, one virutally never hears of Lurkers anymore, and that's just how we like it.
But I am writing you today to discuss this shocking turn of events regarding Anonymous. As many know, Anonymous is a splinter group of Lurkers. We Lurkers are highly anxious that investigations into Anonymous will lead upsteam to us and understandably so.
However, let's be clear - just because Lurkers are anonymous, Lurkers are not and never are Anonymous. It's true that Lurkers may on occasion post - but then only under adherence to paragraph 14, subsection iv of our charter, section titled, Pseudonym and Real Name Posting but as everyone here is aware of that, that goes without saying.
That clause may have been forgotten as few netizens even mention us Lurkers anymore.
We admit that from time to time we find someone attempting to maintain membership in both Lurkers and Anonymous. While both groups seem to the outside to abhor that behavior, the Lurkers approach is intervention and counseling, and expulsion only when that fails. Anonymous approach is to publicly deny this, but they will actually encourage newly Anonymous people to also be Lurkers - and the simple sad fact is that they're bitter.
Today, they target Anonymous. We laud Slashdotters everywhere for sticking up for Anonymous, even though as Lurkers we cannot.
I am simply writing to hope and pray in advance that should the time come, Slashdotters will protect Lurkers with equal zeal. After all, when our time comes, we won't be able to stand up for ourselves - we're the Lurkers.
So-called beta testers that have had no real exposure to the known disciplines of testing are - in my opinion - not testers at all.
From you:
Of *course* they're not 'testers'. Guys like *you* are the real testers, right?
Yes. Guys like me are the real testers because I know to test. Beta testers that have been taught something are also the real testers. Beta testers that are taught nothing - by the company providing the beta at the very least - or because their aim (as another poster so aptly described) is just to have the latest and greatest - are not testers.
You're a beta tester - so how about instead of being up in arms at me, we establish some common ground: being a beta tester is no small thing. You're being asked to risk your platform, your time and your data for an exchange of benefit - if you do well, you give me, the supplier, a better product - if my beta does well, you get to use some aspects of a better product earlier than you would if you waited for my release schedule. I have a high risk on our relationship if you don't understand your risks. I have a high risk for my QA program because I weaving in user commentary into developer commentary.
But you risk your platform, time and data - all pretty big things - and I risk losing a customer.
So. I simply applauded Microsoft for doing a good job in specifying what/how to do at this point. It certainly reduces risk to the betas' time and possibly their data as well. Pretty cool. It opens discussions in various places - like the discussions attached to this thread - where people are clarifying what is testing what and when is it time to test what or how to what (e.g. the upgrade path). So that action by MS sparked an organic set of events where real-world people ask real-world questions and get real-world answers. And that is called training.
That's all that I implied. Kindly don't talk down to me for that - and you did - as if I have not really cared professionally for decades about my betas' experiences or my customers - because I have - and as if I have never been a beta tester myself - because I have. Kindly ask how long I've been a tester, too, instead of railing on me if there's some miscommunication as to what I implied.
Many thanks in advance for that.
And as testers, let's not get each other started as to why MSFT OSs are so buggy as to be POS - there's not enough hours in anyone's day.
In the discipline of system test, you're describing a formal test - best done by Microsoft - rather than a beta test activity.
Any organization that substitutes beta test for formal test is a bunch of asshats. I'm not calling MS that, but reserve the right to call any org that if they so behave.
Besides, if you aren't doing formal tests correctly, then you're not - by the very definition - performing any beta testing - you're just jerking off the market.
Beta test only addresses what beta test addresses.
While you're completely correct that beta test is for that real-world feedback - you have to allow for things when it comes to beta for an OS as opposed to beta for an app. In your scenario, you'd need someone like Dell to be your beta - for that part.
The testplan for what you identify would HAVE to include the vendor (e.g. Dell) beta as well as the Joe Public beta as well as the formal tests.
We test a lot - we produce software. And all testing platforms are defined as soft, meaning that the platform is to be completely scrubbed before new systems tests or that they are literally soft, as in virtual machines.
Whether testing an OS or a complex app suite, this is the way to go. When the item under test is the operating system, only upgrade when it is the upgrade process itself that is being tested.
We got this from the hardware community - always KNOW your testbed.
So-called beta testers that have had no real exposure to the known disciplines of testing are - in my opinion - not testers at all.
That Microsoft is trying to specify test parameters is very good thing.
...poaching from states like Lousiana and New Mexico...
Film making began in New Mexico in 1898. We - New Mexico - DEFINED the Western, and as you no doubt know, most "Texas Westerns" were shot here as well. And it's not just Westerns, unless you don't want to count drama, comedy, action/adventure and SciFi.
But hey, Texas is no Johnny-come-lately, either. After all, the first film shot in Texas was documentation of the hurricane around Galveston in 1900.
And, gee, that was only two years after New Mexico had started and only a year after New Mexico started to define genres in film making.
So, other than your complete ignorance of the facts, golly yes, New Mexico is poaching your film industry.
Pardon me, but the floor is on rapid approach to my body, already convulsing in hysterical laughter.
I'm sorry, I'm probably being harsh. Maybe you should mention that Microsoft and atom bombs started in Texas and make up the ground you've lost.
I'm sorry, but I was doing fine until you made that statement.
At the risk of being modded troll or flamebait - which this definitely is not - you have no right to express to Americans who SHOULD NOT be running our country - plain and simple, as you say, this isn't your country.
I have liked and disliked foreign politicians in my time, but have never had the audacity or arrogance to suggest that someone should or should not be running some other country - I simply am one of those Americans that does not believe that I'm in the right telling other people in other countries what they should or shouldn't do.
And that, by the way, is the reason that Obama had a lot of support in this country - despite his glaring shortcomings and potential for failure, I voted for him because I no longer wanted a president that projected to the world that America, read: Americans, are all about telling others what to do. America has been guilty of that for some time, but Americans stood up and have attempted to correct that problem with a chosen change of leadership.
This isn't flaming either, but I know I'm taking my chances: I find no irony whatsoever that you think Obama should not be running our country and at the same time, you are telling us how America should be.
Color me sad - very, very sad.
Evidently, war is indeed an inevitable part of the human condition.
Action of this nature against a company is still civil disobedience, as you are going up against somebody who has set themselves as an artificial authority.
When we put electronics into space, we shield them and/or design them so that the harmful background radiation will not upset the delicate semiconductors. We then say that they are radiation hardened - or - "rad hard" - because then the radiation either cannot get in or it cannot affect things if it does. (To my brethren in the field, slack please, all clear in the next statement.)
I don't suppose that if I were to use the term "info hard" that it would mean or imply anything.
I am thinking of the children! One of them may actually believe you rather than discover for themselves that at no point in the wikipedia entry for civil disobedience does it reserve it as a tool for any specific organization. One of them might actually believe, without looking, that wikipedia entry contains something that it does not, and think that facts are facts if one simply decides to repeat something made up loudly and often.
No - I do not post this for you - I posted this for atraintocry, because he, too, took your initial inquiry seriously, as I did, and not as the complete analogy to the mythical character living under a bridge that it turned out to be.
I have at my command the ability to now go on to prove - yes, prove! - that the actual definition of civil disobedience is the act of putting a spoon into a bowl of ice cream, scooping some up, and putting that in your mouth. Except - I cannot type with my mouth full. And that's too bad, because leaky screwdrivers are like Rocky Road, and I can only imagine the enlightenment you would receive if only I weren't eating ice cream and could have typed any of this. In fact, I felt so bad about it that I needed the comfort food - hence, the ice cream.
And just so that you forgive me, and know that I, too, completely surrender to the mastery of your logic, I will at least solve this age old puzzle for you:
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Answer? To get to the other side!
And given that it's a franchise business model, I guess I'd like to know two things: are there delivery guarantees and does Uncle Enzo know about this?
Slashdot Mirror
Well said.
In a related development, I saw something on tv this week (one of the Discovery channels - Science, whatever) that Shroedinger's wave equation provided the correct model for rogue waves at sea, and has led to an explanation of that phenomenon. Again, no claim that quarks causes rogue waves, but the math fit, led to a model, the model seems valid, a solution seems found.
http://www.math.uio.no/~karstent/waves/index_en.html
Its is always possessive - it's always means it is. Its was correct.
In addition to bad naming for timesharing, I nominate them for the bad naming of their corp entity - Computation Research Laboratories, or CRL, for supercomputing anything.
Cray Research (CRI) or Cray Laboratories, anyone?
Isn't it possible that Google's move is nothing more than a response to the recent Apple-centered trouble about a patent on automatic updates?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/07/1654220&from=rss
Should've used preview - Vista name is poison, as is a "brand new" Win7.
There are a lot of threads about corporate users not upgrading until SP1 is out - an agreed good thing.
However - and please correct me if I'm wrong - I believe that Windows 7 is the name of the great big fix to Vista and that furthermore, the name was changed from Vista to Windows 7 to avoid the bad taste, as "proven" by Mojave.
Now, if I have my history and nomenclature correct, Win7 is really some flavor of VistaX and if so named would have by-passed the SP1 adoption rule. The catch is that the Vista name was sullied by bad performance (or defects, whatever).
So, the real problem in my opinion isn't that Win7 is new - it's that it's the waited-for corrected Vista, but because of their own shenanigans, they can't win: the Vista name is poison, a "brand new" Win7.
FWIW, they could just take a page from Apple's playbook when their time comes: scrap their OS, use some *nix variant as a core - say.... Linux? - and then layer their own GUI on top of it. This was a highly successful strategy resulting in a market-acceptable product for Apple, and I am being NEITHER a fanboy nor catcalling when I suggest surprise that MS is NOT copying this approach yet.
(Just to save us all some time - I'm well-documented hereabouts as being a supporter and critic of both MS and Apple, so props in advance for not putting me in some narrow category when reading this post or replying to it. A few days ago, I praised MS, today I'm dising them.)
This solution was proposed in a short scifi story several decades ago, in fact. In the story involving the USA and USSR, one side was visiting the other and no one noticed that a colonel from the entourage stepped aside and pulled a counterpart aside and they spoke briefly. A year later there were two accidental launches, one from each side. Political tensions eased when it became clear that the two small nukes landed in the deep ocean, and sent up huge plumes of water vapor with little radiation. Not too long after, global warming was solved.
And not too long after that, the ice age started.
I think it was by Elison....?
If we were smart enough, here's what we'd do:
1. Build open source election software and put it on Sourceforge
2. Build open source hardware and give dot-com-and-org presences for it, a la OpenMoko
3. Develop necessary and sufficient security for the system to meet our standards - lot of peer review available here
4. Develop a viable way for local election authorities to adopt it
Viable way to adopt:
This is going to require a lot of political savvy.
I do not think that we are smart enough. I don't think that I am.
Nice!
That actually made my day, Stranger.
Many thanks....
Hello,
I'm the president of the Society of Lurkers. Perhaps you've heard of us, or remember us, from days gone by where we were mentioned often in various posts and articles that used words like denizens and netiquette.
These days, one virutally never hears of Lurkers anymore, and that's just how we like it.
But I am writing you today to discuss this shocking turn of events regarding Anonymous. As many know, Anonymous is a splinter group of Lurkers. We Lurkers are highly anxious that investigations into Anonymous will lead upsteam to us and understandably so.
However, let's be clear - just because Lurkers are anonymous, Lurkers are not and never are Anonymous. It's true that Lurkers may on occasion post - but then only under adherence to paragraph 14, subsection iv of our charter, section titled, Pseudonym and Real Name Posting but as everyone here is aware of that, that goes without saying.
That clause may have been forgotten as few netizens even mention us Lurkers anymore.
We admit that from time to time we find someone attempting to maintain membership in both Lurkers and Anonymous. While both groups seem to the outside to abhor that behavior, the Lurkers approach is intervention and counseling, and expulsion only when that fails. Anonymous approach is to publicly deny this, but they will actually encourage newly Anonymous people to also be Lurkers - and the simple sad fact is that they're bitter.
Today, they target Anonymous. We laud Slashdotters everywhere for sticking up for Anonymous, even though as Lurkers we cannot.
I am simply writing to hope and pray in advance that should the time come, Slashdotters will protect Lurkers with equal zeal. After all, when our time comes, we won't be able to stand up for ourselves - we're the Lurkers.
Best regards,
EarlyMon
From me:
So-called beta testers that have had no real exposure to the known disciplines of testing are - in my opinion - not testers at all.
From you:
Of *course* they're not 'testers'. Guys like *you* are the real testers, right?
Yes. Guys like me are the real testers because I know to test. Beta testers that have been taught something are also the real testers. Beta testers that are taught nothing - by the company providing the beta at the very least - or because their aim (as another poster so aptly described) is just to have the latest and greatest - are not testers.
You're a beta tester - so how about instead of being up in arms at me, we establish some common ground: being a beta tester is no small thing. You're being asked to risk your platform, your time and your data for an exchange of benefit - if you do well, you give me, the supplier, a better product - if my beta does well, you get to use some aspects of a better product earlier than you would if you waited for my release schedule. I have a high risk on our relationship if you don't understand your risks. I have a high risk for my QA program because I weaving in user commentary into developer commentary.
But you risk your platform, time and data - all pretty big things - and I risk losing a customer.
So. I simply applauded Microsoft for doing a good job in specifying what/how to do at this point. It certainly reduces risk to the betas' time and possibly their data as well. Pretty cool. It opens discussions in various places - like the discussions attached to this thread - where people are clarifying what is testing what and when is it time to test what or how to what (e.g. the upgrade path). So that action by MS sparked an organic set of events where real-world people ask real-world questions and get real-world answers. And that is called training.
That's all that I implied. Kindly don't talk down to me for that - and you did - as if I have not really cared professionally for decades about my betas' experiences or my customers - because I have - and as if I have never been a beta tester myself - because I have. Kindly ask how long I've been a tester, too, instead of railing on me if there's some miscommunication as to what I implied.
Many thanks in advance for that.
And as testers, let's not get each other started as to why MSFT OSs are so buggy as to be POS - there's not enough hours in anyone's day.
In the discipline of system test, you're describing a formal test - best done by Microsoft - rather than a beta test activity.
Any organization that substitutes beta test for formal test is a bunch of asshats. I'm not calling MS that, but reserve the right to call any org that if they so behave.
Besides, if you aren't doing formal tests correctly, then you're not - by the very definition - performing any beta testing - you're just jerking off the market.
Beta test only addresses what beta test addresses.
While you're completely correct that beta test is for that real-world feedback - you have to allow for things when it comes to beta for an OS as opposed to beta for an app. In your scenario, you'd need someone like Dell to be your beta - for that part.
The testplan for what you identify would HAVE to include the vendor (e.g. Dell) beta as well as the Joe Public beta as well as the formal tests.
Kindly note that in my post, I differentiated that a valid case - a separate one, however.
We test a lot - we produce software. And all testing platforms are defined as soft, meaning that the platform is to be completely scrubbed before new systems tests or that they are literally soft, as in virtual machines.
Whether testing an OS or a complex app suite, this is the way to go. When the item under test is the operating system, only upgrade when it is the upgrade process itself that is being tested.
We got this from the hardware community - always KNOW your testbed.
So-called beta testers that have had no real exposure to the known disciplines of testing are - in my opinion - not testers at all.
That Microsoft is trying to specify test parameters is very good thing.
PPP???? SLIP!!!
Sadly, that makes me think of usenet more than the web...
Did they ever make an alt.microsoft.developers.developers.developers ?
What? Am I the only one here who posted to alt.vampires.flonk.flonk.flonk using tin?
Geez, I miss the real usenet.
Ok, I propose tabling the philosophical discussion on rights to criticize for a moment - maybe we both make cogent points, even if mine is better. :)
I can view a Canadian web page on a computer in Canada, and the US can eavesdrop on my browsing.
Perhaps I'm not as familiar as I might think I am with internet routing.
Is what you say true? Would you happen to mind showing a traceroute on that - Canada to USA to Canada - for me? Or, some other reference?
...poaching from states like Lousiana and New Mexico...
Film making began in New Mexico in 1898. We - New Mexico - DEFINED the Western, and as you no doubt know, most "Texas Westerns" were shot here as well. And it's not just Westerns, unless you don't want to count drama, comedy, action/adventure and SciFi.
But hey, Texas is no Johnny-come-lately, either. After all, the first film shot in Texas was documentation of the hurricane around Galveston in 1900.
And, gee, that was only two years after New Mexico had started and only a year after New Mexico started to define genres in film making.
So, other than your complete ignorance of the facts, golly yes, New Mexico is poaching your film industry.
Pardon me, but the floor is on rapid approach to my body, already convulsing in hysterical laughter.
I'm sorry, I'm probably being harsh. Maybe you should mention that Microsoft and atom bombs started in Texas and make up the ground you've lost.
Sources:
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/FF/ecf1.html
http://nmfilmmuseum.org/history/romance.php
On a serious note - I like your posts and am not flaming you. Teasing the hell out of you, but not flaming.
Few states have depth in film making. I wish Texas the best of luck, seriously. But please, give props where due. We poach on no one.
And for others, if you've never been to Austin, check it out.
Either way, he shouldn't be running your country.
I'm sorry, but I was doing fine until you made that statement.
At the risk of being modded troll or flamebait - which this definitely is not - you have no right to express to Americans who SHOULD NOT be running our country - plain and simple, as you say, this isn't your country.
I have liked and disliked foreign politicians in my time, but have never had the audacity or arrogance to suggest that someone should or should not be running some other country - I simply am one of those Americans that does not believe that I'm in the right telling other people in other countries what they should or shouldn't do.
And that, by the way, is the reason that Obama had a lot of support in this country - despite his glaring shortcomings and potential for failure, I voted for him because I no longer wanted a president that projected to the world that America, read: Americans, are all about telling others what to do. America has been guilty of that for some time, but Americans stood up and have attempted to correct that problem with a chosen change of leadership.
This isn't flaming either, but I know I'm taking my chances: I find no irony whatsoever that you think Obama should not be running our country and at the same time, you are telling us how America should be.
Color me sad - very, very sad.
Evidently, war is indeed an inevitable part of the human condition.
Action of this nature against a company is still civil disobedience, as you are going up against somebody who has set themselves as an artificial authority.
When we put electronics into space, we shield them and/or design them so that the harmful background radiation will not upset the delicate semiconductors. We then say that they are radiation hardened - or - "rad hard" - because then the radiation either cannot get in or it cannot affect things if it does. (To my brethren in the field, slack please, all clear in the next statement.)
I don't suppose that if I were to use the term "info hard" that it would mean or imply anything.
It is not reserved as a tool for any specific organization, regardless of the wikipedia entry (yay legitimized misinformation!)
I'm going to post these links for absolutely no reason that concerns you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_resistance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
I am thinking of the children! One of them may actually believe you rather than discover for themselves that at no point in the wikipedia entry for civil disobedience does it reserve it as a tool for any specific organization. One of them might actually believe, without looking, that wikipedia entry contains something that it does not, and think that facts are facts if one simply decides to repeat something made up loudly and often.
I was very tempted to post the link for Satyagraha - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha - but thankfully, I am not a complete smartass, so not only did I NOT post a link for that, I am not posting the wiki link for Gandhi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Gandhi - because I am just that nice of a guy.
No - I do not post this for you - I posted this for atraintocry, because he, too, took your initial inquiry seriously, as I did, and not as the complete analogy to the mythical character living under a bridge that it turned out to be.
I have at my command the ability to now go on to prove - yes, prove! - that the actual definition of civil disobedience is the act of putting a spoon into a bowl of ice cream, scooping some up, and putting that in your mouth. Except - I cannot type with my mouth full. And that's too bad, because leaky screwdrivers are like Rocky Road, and I can only imagine the enlightenment you would receive if only I weren't eating ice cream and could have typed any of this. In fact, I felt so bad about it that I needed the comfort food - hence, the ice cream.
And just so that you forgive me, and know that I, too, completely surrender to the mastery of your logic, I will at least solve this age old puzzle for you:
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Answer? To get to the other side!
It'll cost you a few trillian, no biggy.
Thanks for the tip - at first, I was afraid that was in Kongbucks but if we're only talking bluebacks, it's practically free.
They will probably try to sell you some special hipster indie cred mouse soon. They may have a point but I'm too poor to afford them.
Without point AND click, why try to afford them?
(ducks!)
LOL!
And given that it's a franchise business model, I guess I'd like to know two things: are there delivery guarantees and does Uncle Enzo know about this?