As a researcher in this field, I'm happy to see recognition, if not necessarily interest, in requirements in open source projects. As so many have pointed out, these projects come about as a result of someone's "itch", and as such there is no real customer to drive requirements early on.
We're left with a situation where we want to retrofit requirements to the project, which is completely backwards from what you will normally find in commercial, software-for-money type projects. I think this is a wonderful idea; different design methods call for different requirements methods.
The question then becomes: Why should I, an open source developer, bother stating requirements, especially after-the-fact? I think what we're starting to see, at least in my narrow view of the world, are strong correlations between good requirements definitions and the ability to safely modify, repair, explain, and reuse complex software. That is, by properly stating what your software "does", you can help ensure it's longevity and usefulness to people using it without access to the initial developers.
Perhaps a re-thinking of the meaning of "requirement" is needed for open-source projects. Whereas a requirement has traditionally been a pre-development statement of what the software will do, open-source requirements are perhaps more likely to be in- and post-development statements of the same thing...and perhaps they will be more accurate for being such;)
I wondered much the same myself. I actually teach scuba diving, but only at the recreational level (up to 130'). However, it is my understanding that diving to depths of ~350' is not uncommon at all in military and industrial applications. There are gases and such specifically designed for this, i.e. trimix. The cold would certainly be a problem, but of course dry suits and such can help alleviate this. Diving to this depth would certainly require all sorts of decompression precautions, but I would hope that any country with nuclear submarines would be ready provide this!
Anyhow, I would guess that everyone on board would have died very soon after the initial explosion. It's a sad state all around, but I would have expected divers or subs to have reached the down sub much sooner. Very wierd.
What all does Time-Warner/AOL control?
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AOL Nation
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Is there some definitive list of all the companies and such that are controlled by T-W/AOL? I understand, of course, that T-W was huge, but I think a lot of us would gain a real understanding of what the merger means if we can see what is all under one control now. Thanks in advance for any pointers and stuff.
If I remember correctly, Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi are long time friends (as in from their schoolyears), so that's why they work together so well and so often. I think it will be an excellent casting decision...Bruce Campbell is always fun to watch, and I think he'll fit the comic-book movie style perfectly:)
--BEGIN SARCASM-- Don't forget us uber-geeks who don't read the manual because we would be sissies if we did! Manuals are only for the weak. Anyone who is good enough knows that software installation is not about pressing the right buttons or putting files in the the right places...it's about attitude. If you approach installation with the belief that you might break something, you damn well will. On the other hand, if you boldy start just putting files where you think they ought to go with full confidence that it will work, it'll work first time with no glitches.
Linux doesn't need more manuals or more helpful gurus. Linux needs a 12-step confidence-enhancement program! --END SARCASM--
It seems like there should be a manual out there on how to read the available manuals. At first, as the article points out, the amount of information can be entirely overwhelming. You say read an O'Reilly book? I agree, but how do newbies know to read an O'Reilly book;)
A well-publicized document that pointed to HOW-TOs, O'Reilly, gnu.org, etc. would be a good start. But it would be nice if we could somehow verbalize the "Zen" of finding Linux docs. I'm sure anyone who's spent any amount of time trying to configure the OS has entered the special state where all of the sudden you simply know where and how to find the right information. It's like a combination of knowing all the right keywords, knowing all the right sources, and being able to filter out the crap...and it's a feeling of immense power:)
I don't think I could begin to write a document like this; perhaps we could find a journalism major. But it really seems to me that the meta-skill of groking the documentation is as important or more so than just RTFMing. Is there anything remotely like this out there?
I think as a whole, though, that we have learned some kind of a lesson. To be sure, we didn't all wake up one morning and say "Wait a second...tyranny and oppression are wrong!", but I think that humanity as a whole is more aware and sensitive to these kinds of things. I think you're right, though, in that it seems like we should be learning a lot more than we are.
While I agree that reducing Hitler or Stalin or whoever to ideology is a little extreme, I think Brin is making a more subtle point than that. I don't think he is arguing that Hitler's entire world view, personality, motivations, etc. can be summed up in the beliefs of facism, the pages of a book, or whatever. I think Brin's real point is that ideologies are manifestations or tools that got employed a lot in the 20th century and that we need to learn the lesson that ideologies are, to steal your phrase, "an excessivly simplistic analysis of a complex and intricate problem". That "problem", I suppose, is life and civilization; there is no simple way to approach that problem, but ideologies claim that they can do it.
Like I said, and I think you agree, I don't think facism or communism or capitalism or whatever will ever be able to explain a person, much less society. However, we may be able to come out of the 20th century with the knowledge that we need to be wary of anyone who proselytizes the simple solutions that historical ideologies have proffered. We may not need to condemn them (i.e. MLK or Ghandi), but we need to be sure to understand that there is something deeper than their simple solutions.
So, I think what Brin is trying to say is that ideologies, at least by his definition, are just the facade or "front" for deeper issues, whether we understand that at the time or not. As such, they can't address everything coherently. He is not saying that "ideologies are bad because ideologies are bad"...that would be tautological and pretty silly. It seems that he is simply showing how, by his definition of ideologies as "simplistic visions of utopia", ideologies are not the final answer, and that we need to learn that lesson.
I think you're right, though, that we can't let this stifle our search for the answer. Some "ideologies" have been almost inarguably good in their effects, and we've learned a lot from even the bad ones (not that I'd care to repeat some of them!). Hopefully the lesson we take with us will be one of humility, something like "we don't know the answer, we've tried some simple ones that for whatever reason don't work, but we've learned to be more careful and think about things a little more". Who knows. At least people like you and Brin are thinking about it; if everyone looked at it with some criticality, I think we could solve a lot of problems (although that, too, is probably an ideology:).
I read about this somewhere (probably in a company ergonomics pamphlet or something), but the claim was that you can help alleviate a lot of repetetive stress by changing the height of your chair, or more generally, the relative height of the mouse/keyboard, throughout the day by as little as a few inches. Apparently, this changes the angle-of-attack that your wrist has to work at and decreases the perceived repetetiveness of the actions. I don't know about all the physiology behind the idea, but it certainly seems to help. I've made it a habit to raise and lower my chair from time to time and that has helped reduce the amount of pain or stiffness I build up during the day.
A big criteria for my selection of WMs was the whole keyboard control thing. With sawmill, the configuration of "hotkeys" is simple and flexible. My options are open enough that I can use emacs with no conflicts (at least, in my regular usage...I'm sure I override *some* esoteric emacs command). I do have to use the mouse from time to time to go fetch a window that gets placed "behind" the gnome panel, but there may even be ways to fetch that window without using the mouse...I haven't investigated that yet.
I love the marble as well...it has saved me all sorts of pain. The are some initial precision problems, but I'm as precise with the marble as I am with a mouse after practice, and I'm almost as fast...the speed may just never come. Like others have said, though, the ball and internal contacts needs to be cleaned from time to time, but this only takes about 30 sec in my experience. BTW, the center mounted track balls are great, too...I used one for several years, and I was very happy with it, too.
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We're left with a situation where we want to retrofit requirements to the project, which is completely backwards from what you will normally find in commercial, software-for-money type projects. I think this is a wonderful idea; different design methods call for different requirements methods.
The question then becomes: Why should I, an open source developer, bother stating requirements, especially after-the-fact? I think what we're starting to see, at least in my narrow view of the world, are strong correlations between good requirements definitions and the ability to safely modify, repair, explain, and reuse complex software. That is, by properly stating what your software "does", you can help ensure it's longevity and usefulness to people using it without access to the initial developers.
Perhaps a re-thinking of the meaning of "requirement" is needed for open-source projects. Whereas a requirement has traditionally been a pre-development statement of what the software will do, open-source requirements are perhaps more likely to be in- and post-development statements of the same thing...and perhaps they will be more accurate for being such ;)
I wondered much the same myself. I actually teach scuba diving, but only at the recreational level (up to 130'). However, it is my understanding that diving to depths of ~350' is not uncommon at all in military and industrial applications. There are gases and such specifically designed for this, i.e. trimix. The cold would certainly be a problem, but of course dry suits and such can help alleviate this. Diving to this depth would certainly require all sorts of decompression precautions, but I would hope that any country with nuclear submarines would be ready provide this! Anyhow, I would guess that everyone on board would have died very soon after the initial explosion. It's a sad state all around, but I would have expected divers or subs to have reached the down sub much sooner. Very wierd.
Is there some definitive list of all the companies and such that are controlled by T-W/AOL? I understand, of course, that T-W was huge, but I think a lot of us would gain a real understanding of what the merger means if we can see what is all under one control now. Thanks in advance for any pointers and stuff.
If I remember correctly, Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi are long time friends (as in from their schoolyears), so that's why they work together so well and so often. I think it will be an excellent casting decision...Bruce Campbell is always fun to watch, and I think he'll fit the comic-book movie style perfectly :)
Don't forget us uber-geeks who don't read the manual because we would be sissies if we did! Manuals are only for the weak. Anyone who is good enough knows that software installation is not about pressing the right buttons or putting files in the the right places...it's about attitude. If you approach installation with the belief that you might break something, you damn well will. On the other hand, if you boldy start just putting files where you think they ought to go with full confidence that it will work, it'll work first time with no glitches.
Linux doesn't need more manuals or more helpful gurus. Linux needs a 12-step confidence-enhancement program!
--END SARCASM--
A well-publicized document that pointed to HOW-TOs, O'Reilly, gnu.org, etc. would be a good start. But it would be nice if we could somehow verbalize the "Zen" of finding Linux docs. I'm sure anyone who's spent any amount of time trying to configure the OS has entered the special state where all of the sudden you simply know where and how to find the right information. It's like a combination of knowing all the right keywords, knowing all the right sources, and being able to filter out the crap...and it's a feeling of immense power :)
I don't think I could begin to write a document like this; perhaps we could find a journalism major. But it really seems to me that the meta-skill of groking the documentation is as important or more so than just RTFMing. Is there anything remotely like this out there?
Not to dig into the rest of the conversation, but what does multi-tasking have to do with how many users can log in?
I think as a whole, though, that we have learned some kind of a lesson. To be sure, we didn't all wake up one morning and say "Wait a second...tyranny and oppression are wrong!", but I think that humanity as a whole is more aware and sensitive to these kinds of things. I think you're right, though, in that it seems like we should be learning a lot more than we are.
Like I said, and I think you agree, I don't think facism or communism or capitalism or whatever will ever be able to explain a person, much less society. However, we may be able to come out of the 20th century with the knowledge that we need to be wary of anyone who proselytizes the simple solutions that historical ideologies have proffered. We may not need to condemn them (i.e. MLK or Ghandi), but we need to be sure to understand that there is something deeper than their simple solutions.
So, I think what Brin is trying to say is that ideologies, at least by his definition, are just the facade or "front" for deeper issues, whether we understand that at the time or not. As such, they can't address everything coherently. He is not saying that "ideologies are bad because ideologies are bad"...that would be tautological and pretty silly. It seems that he is simply showing how, by his definition of ideologies as "simplistic visions of utopia", ideologies are not the final answer, and that we need to learn that lesson.
I think you're right, though, that we can't let this stifle our search for the answer. Some "ideologies" have been almost inarguably good in their effects, and we've learned a lot from even the bad ones (not that I'd care to repeat some of them!). Hopefully the lesson we take with us will be one of humility, something like "we don't know the answer, we've tried some simple ones that for whatever reason don't work, but we've learned to be more careful and think about things a little more". Who knows. At least people like you and Brin are thinking about it; if everyone looked at it with some criticality, I think we could solve a lot of problems (although that, too, is probably an ideology :).
I read about this somewhere (probably in a company ergonomics pamphlet or something), but the claim was that you can help alleviate a lot of repetetive stress by changing the height of your chair, or more generally, the relative height of the mouse/keyboard, throughout the day by as little as a few inches. Apparently, this changes the angle-of-attack that your wrist has to work at and decreases the perceived repetetiveness of the actions. I don't know about all the physiology behind the idea, but it certainly seems to help. I've made it a habit to raise and lower my chair from time to time and that has helped reduce the amount of pain or stiffness I build up during the day.
SMACK You asked for it :) Really, though, that is a good keyboard if you like the split kind.
A big criteria for my selection of WMs was the whole keyboard control thing. With sawmill, the configuration of "hotkeys" is simple and flexible. My options are open enough that I can use emacs with no conflicts (at least, in my regular usage...I'm sure I override *some* esoteric emacs command). I do have to use the mouse from time to time to go fetch a window that gets placed "behind" the gnome panel, but there may even be ways to fetch that window without using the mouse...I haven't investigated that yet.
I love the marble as well...it has saved me all sorts of pain. The are some initial precision problems, but I'm as precise with the marble as I am with a mouse after practice, and I'm almost as fast...the speed may just never come. Like others have said, though, the ball and internal contacts needs to be cleaned from time to time, but this only takes about 30 sec in my experience. BTW, the center mounted track balls are great, too...I used one for several years, and I was very happy with it, too.