A simple bit of research in the origins of the word will show that "playboy" comes to english from the french "bon vivant" and dates to at least from 1829. Similarly, "playmate" dates to the mid-15th century in the non-sexual meaning and to the mid-17th century with sexual overtones.
There is no legal basis to recognize a word in common usage as a trademark within the domain in which it is used commonly. For example, I can not make a company called "Carpenters" and trademark that term within the domain of people who work with wood; but, I could trademark it as it relates to music (if it wasn't so already trademarked!).
The problem here is that "Playboy Magazine" is arguing that the word "playboy" which was in common usage within the sexual domain for a hundred years prior to their existence is now exclusively there own. And for some reason these moronic judges are buying the argument.
Stocks are NOT the company, and many people forget that.
Large institutions may have been holding several hundred thousand (or even millions) of dollars of SCO stock.. perhaps purchased when the stock was at 4 or 5 or 10 dollars a share.
It is to these companies advantage to BUY MORE stock to drive the price up so that they can sell it for a largeer profit even if they take a loss on some percentage of shares.
Everyone knows SCO is a dying bird. But that doesn't mean that the stock is automatically worthless.
Right now with the stock hovering around $17 a share is actually not a bad time to BUY. Large institutional purchases will probably drive this stock up to 20 or so at least one more time before the real sell-off begins.
While that is most PLAYER'S viewpoint, there's no mathematical proof that this is the case. It may well be that with best play white wins, or even more oddly, that with best play black wins.
We don't know. We assume that best play is a draw because otherwise it implies the game is unfair in some fundamental way. But we have no proof that this assumption is correct.
True. However, there are some things that even a lay-person can understand.
For example, on "multiple universes."
Now, the work "Universe" means "everything that is."
Now, consider if multiple universe exist, then one of two things is possibly true about them.
1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish.
OR
2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word.
But, crap like this isn't new. However, it does seem to be getting to the point where even respectable peer reviewed journals are having a harder and harder time finding people who will actually stand up and SAY something like that.
To make it big you need radio air-play on radio stations with significant audience share. And you can't do that off of an indie label for a whole host of reasons.
If you mean "make a living at this stuff" then you do what indie bands have always done -- play the college towns, play the music fests, play the local events, and continue to put on live show after live show where you sweat your heart and soul out for the dozen folks that will stay after and buy your disks for you. And keep doing that for 250+ shows a year and you can make enough money to keep doing that . . . till you burn out.
Which is about the life cycle of most bands - and that's not a bad thing either. 'Cause it means that the people who stay in are the ones that have a real passion for what they're doing.
But you won't ever make enough to retire on from an indie lable, and if you're at all worried about how you'll ever have a family, go on vacation, etc., etc., etc., you'll either get out of the biz by the time you're 25 or 26, or you'll get picked up by a major label (even then you'll still probably not make it, but maybe you can cut down to 150 live shows and see the occassional big bucks from being an opening act for a big name).
my response to such a request would be something along the lines of:
"I'm sorry, but that's simply not realistic. The programmers, designers, and other employees of this company have families and lives outside of their job. The project schedule is set up assuming no more than 5.5 hours of work per day, if the employees are soley dedicated to this one project. The rest of the time in the employee's day is taken up in administrative time.
"If you wish this project to be completed sooner, then you need to increase resources, and funds. But I must warn you that crashing a project (that is, reducing the scheduled completion date by radically increasing resource loading) is highly risky and will negatively impact your chances of successful completion within your budget and schedule.
"I wish to further point out that I will need several [days, weeks months depends on the complexity] to reschedule and rebudget this project. I will expect the resulting new project plan to be signed off by you, with you taking responsibility for the heavily increased risk.
"Morevoer, I wish to make clear that there will be a risk statement produced for this project, and I will certainly make reference to numerous case studies that indicate that fast tracking a project can reduce chances of success to next to zero. I wish it to be absolutely clear that you are ordering these changes, will fund the changes, and will take sole responsibilty for the decission to engage in this highly risky behavior."
Of course, I doubt I would have ever become a project manager for that type of management in the first place . . .
But I'm sure they're getting what they're paying for . . .
Re:Can there ever be a fair match?
on
Men vs. Machines
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· Score: 2
Actually, Kramnik is playing a copy of "Deep Fritz" which was only recently made publically available. The program is also going to include a customized opening book, and a huge set of tablebases for endgame play.
Moreover, he didn't want just a copy of the program, he also wanted a copy of the HARDWARE it was going to be running on.
There's a hell of a difference between Fritz on a 1ghz pc and Deep Fritz on an 8-way xeon box with 4 gigs of ram and the complete tablebases for all endgames with 5 or fewer pieces on the board.
Not to notice how dull your fine point is, but, I've spent the 12 years since I've been a software engineer doing kernel programming learning how to be a PM.
I've attended thousands of hours of seriously difficult training. I've spent as much time studying business texts as I ever did studying programming manuals and CS texts.
Indeed, my first job as a programmer was obtained walking right out of the army with absolutely no training in anything! I had one course in lisp, and a decent capacity for logic, but no experience or training at all.
After years of effort I am just now starting to obtain a level of proficiency in project management high enough to be able to manage seriously complex projects.
Good project management is non-trivial, and is far more difficult than programming. To be a good programmer you have to be a master of two domains - the problem domain and the language domain. To be a good PM you have to be an adept psychologist, be a master of the business domain in which the problem rests, be conversant in the lananguage domain the programmer uses, be able to handle major accounting problems, risk management, quality managment, and a host of other problem areas.
The reason so many projects do fail in business these days is precisely that you CAN'T just hire some moron with good hair as a PM and succeed.
Most people can't be good PMs. Being a good PM requires a highly specific set of personality traits, business skills, technical skills, and years or training.
Truly good PMs are far rarer than truly good programmers.
I've rarely had a project for any company that didn't have at least one compitent programmer somewhere in the company. Most had more than one. I've seen many companies that don't have a compitent PM, and from their reactions to meeting someone who is, they've never had one before ...
'm a senior project manager in a medium sized company where the programmers have no business experience of any sort. I'm of the opinion that programmers should understand the business that they're part of and want to move into programming myself. I'm aware that I may meet resistance from the current programmers - many of them have been hired with no previous experience of anything. Previous suggestions to senior management that myself and other project managers would feel better with business person programming on projects have been dismissed. As a result we are routinely told to push out deadlines or that our requirements are impossible, with an emphasis on how technically aesthetic things are rather than how well things meet the business requirements. Has anyone else found the barrier to programming is their business knowledge. How did you get past it?"
Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.
One of the great claims of the OSS movement is how RAPID OSS programs are developed. Yet WINE, which is one of the larger OSS efforts out there, can not achieve this seemingly meager goal year after year.
Indeed, the only thing that seems to have kept WINE anywhere close to being on-target is the support of private companies who contribute their code back to the WINE tree. Some of these companies,like Codeweavers are decidedly on the OSS bandwagon. But others, like Corel aren't (though they did play nice with OSS, to their credit).
In the meantime, closed source efforts to port similarly complex API's succeed in much less time with far higher quality results (VM Ware anyone!).
Can someone explain how the failure of a project to hit a stationary target (the Win95 API has not changed though implimentation bugs may have) after such a lengthy period of time is anything but a proof by counter example of the grandiose claims of how much better OSS is for just this sort of development?
Actually, no product Microsoft offers is up to the task of producing a thesis. The bibliographical tools just aren't there.
Now, if you go with some good 3rd party add-on software (for around $500 or so) you can get the ability to do proper bibliographies. However, you still can't properly typeset the thing, and will end up with references not properly placed at the very least. If your school's thesis standards have strict requirements for typesetting you'll almost certainly have to either have it printed by a professional printing service or use TeX or LaTeX.
Actually, if I have an expectation of privacy on a phone line into my house, then I have that same expectation of privacy if I use it for voice or data. The expectation applies to the phone device, not to the type of traffic it carries.
The professor is confussing "legal" with "right." Frankly, I see software piracy, especially of the larger conglomerate companies like Microsoft, as a moral issue more than a legal one.
Yes, it is illegal. But so long as companies like Microsoft abuse their position, lie to consumers, produce broken software, knowingly release bug-ladden insecure crap, and otherwise mistreat the public it is difficult to defend, on moral grounds, striking back at the evil empire.
Now, there's certainly a question to be raised regarding piracy in that it may well do more good than harm to a company's actual bottom line. But the question of if it is "right" should not be confused with the question of if it is legal.
Much that is legal is not morally defensible. And much that is morally defensible is not legal.
Certainly there are those, perhaps even the majority, who pirate for entirely selfish reasons. But there are those who pirate because they see it as striking at a morally bankrupt corporations heart.
Something that Linux developers, like most developers, are very bad at is understanding a customer base.
Linux is very good in the server and network world because most of the developers of Linux and Linux software are themselves "customers" of that market segment. By simply developing a system to do what they want and need, they have succeeded in meeting the demands of that market.
Linux is very poor in the desktop environment because the vast majority of linux developers have no clue what a "typical user" wants or needs. They cover up this ignorance by belittling the "typical user" as being too "stupid" to really understand that Linux is so much better for them than Windows.
Until Linux developers start taking significant steps to understanding what the desktop users needs really are, Linux will be little more than an "also ran" in that category.
Moreover, until Linux meets the desktop users needs better than MS does, MS will continue to rule the roost in the business world. Cost of doing business is more than simply the cost of supporting the install base of systems. Sure, it costs more to support MS - but guess what? I, as a manager, can use anyone of a thousand local companies to outsource my desktop support to. I can leverage computer sales for breaks on training costs. And I don't have to worry about a new administrative support person not being familiar with the software environment.
I can go to any of a thousand local temp agencies to find people proficient in MS Office. Where can I find the temp staff proficient in KDE Office?
I can't.
But of course, I'm just a typical user, so I'm really just too stupid to understand how much better Linux is than Windows.
There are at least 2 problems with calling these instructors 'smart.'
First, it is stupid to think that a user wants to understand the inner workings of the system. The user wants to unlock functionality. They want a simple, easy way to accomplish a task. They want to have to learn as little as possible in order to accomplish that end.
The second is related, and that is in implying that those who are users and see computers as tools used to accomplish a goal rather than an object of study in and of themselves are not smart. Frankly, this is the sort of sub-cultural elitism that stops most "geeks" from actually having meaningfull career advancement. Until you can think of mere users as equals you'll always be working for someone else.
The article presents an interesting arguement for why a completely new software project must have an arbitrarily large upper bound for time/quality estimates and can have no lower bound.
But herein lies the rub -- exactly how many software systems are "completely new?"
Damn few!!
The average software project in an average industry will be primarily a repackaging of previously solved problems.The majority of integration tasks will be sufficiently similar to previous integration tasks as to be known.
You will be left with a small number of "sub problems" which are unique and new. But now we have a situation where the caveats of the article are very important. Specifically, if we have decomposed the programming tasks to a sufficient degree, it should be the case that the estimation is tractable.
Also, it should be noted, that the author assumes that a good estimate is one obtained through formal methods that is objectively defensible. However, in project maangement, a good estimate is defined as one that is believable and acceptable to all stakeholders in the process. The method for obtaining the estimate is not important.
Moreover, good project management will include some significant up-front analysis. One common (at least common to companies with good PM'ing track records) is to run "monte-carlo" simulations of project work with large variances in schedule-v-actual work. With a run of a few thousand simulations, those processes that are most important to the time and budget performance of the project.
These "key" work packages are often non-obvious without this type of simulation work. However, with a good work breakdown structure and a good simulator, it is possible to generate a reasonably accurate picture of project performance based on what is not known.
This means that in the "real world" of business, the article's claim is irrelevant!!
We don't NEED objectively defined and defensible estimates. Instead we need estimates that the project stakeholders (which includes the people doing the work) can agree to.
We don't NEED our estimates to be generated by formal methodologies. Subjective estimates backed up by years of experience are just as good, and often better, from a planning perspective.
This whole article strikes me as another programmer trying to show how dumb the business people are. Hey folks, good business people KNOW that estimating is hard and that it isn't objective. But just because something isn't objective doesn't mean it can't be done well. It is possible to build models that compensate for unknowns if you can do enough decompossing of the problem to limit the unknowns to a well defined, small manageable few.
So, in the view of this PM, this is all just academic and has no bearing on the real world.
It's a great idea that works well. It drastically lowers support and maintenence costs, and helps IT leverage their budget against something besides the help desk.
Now, for developers it presents a HUGE problem. However, the way around this is to make sure that the developer's machines include virtual machine software like VMWare and a set number of "development virtual machines" that the developers are free to do whatever they want with!
This does a number of very positive things. One, it keeps the developers from accidentally doing something that messes with company network, since the "development" machines are now all on their own virtual network inside a computer. It keeps IT in a state to be able to maintain the local network and systems and INCLUDE the developers. And it allows for everything to be standardized. Everyone goes home happy.
Now, where it won't work is if the developers won't be given a powerfull enough system to run multiple virtual machines, or the IT people refuse to entertain the idea of allowing a virtual machine product.
When either of those things happen, the results are either bad or worse.
The important thing is to raise these issues early in the process so that the business decission makers can be made to see the sense and reason behind giving the developers their own play environment in the form of a virtual machine.
Of course he was indicted. Indictment simply means that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial. It says NOTHING about if the law is good or not. I says NOTHING about constitutional issues. ALL an indictment means is that there is ample warrant to apply the resources of the court system to trying this case because there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a guilty verdict is POSSIBLE (not probable or even likely, but POSSIBLE).
Now, here's a hint of what will happen next. There will be a hearing to discuss constitutional issues. The defense will raise the issue of the constitutionality of the DMCA and it's application. The judge will enter the hearing into the record of the trial but will proceed anyway. More than likely a guilty verdict will be returned. The defense will appeal based on the evidence supplied at the aforementioned hearing. At this point the courts will look at the constitutionality of the law and it's application. It won't happen before the appeal process. Prior to the appeal's court the judges aren't going to weight in on constitutional questions
This isn't a reason to "give up" on the american legal system. It is simply the way the system is designed to work. The legislative body has passed a law. A lower court is applying the law as it understands it. An appeals court will (likely) look at the wording of the law, how it was applied, and what it was intended to address and rule on the constintutional issues. It is precisely the way the system is designed to work. Moaning about "unfairness" at this stage is just demonstrating ignorance of the way the system works.
Computer chess suffers many limitations that human beings do not. These limits are being extended, but they still exist and the human being in this match should not be counted out.
Many people think that since IBM's Deep Blue beat Kasparov that the debate has been settled that computers are better than people. However, there where some aspects of the way that match was played that gave the computer a decided advantage. Kasparov never got a chance to see any of Deep Blue's games. Kasparov never got a chance to play any warm up matches against Deep Blue. In otherwords, Kasparov went into the match "blind" as far as his opponent was concerned.
Deep Blue, on the other hand, had complete access to every professional game that Kasparov ever played, and a team of GM's working with the programmers to twink the machine to take advantages of weaknesses pin-pointed in Kasparov's games. In match play, preparation is the key to success. Against Deep Blue, Kasparov wasn't allowed to prepare.
This match is decidedly different. Kramnik has been given a copy of the program and the hardware to run it. He has been given time to analyze how the program plays and to see what weakness it has.
Moreover, Kramnik is a very positional player, whereas Kasparov was a very tactical player. Computers excel at complex tactics, even as good as Kasparov was, he can't out calculate a computer. However, that isn't the only way to play chess. Kramnik excels at finding positional improvements that will see their point well beyond the analysis horizon of the computer.
Kramnik has a very strong record against some of the best computers in the world. Including Fritz and Deep Junior - too offerings from the same company that makes Deep Fritz.
It is simply ignorance which would allow anyone to think that at this point in time the outcome of this match is a foregone conclussion. Certainly at some point in time the computers will be far better than people at Chess. But it is not the case that we are at that point today.
And for chess players and fans, this match promises to provide some very interesting games that will be well worth studying. And perhaps that aesthetic aspect is actually the point?!
Sorry, but you have no right to use of university property for your speach. You have the right to free speach, but you don't have some right to be published by others.
Unless you foot the bill to publish teh site and pay the costs of operation, you don't have the expectation of remaining uncensored.
Further, it isn't an abuse of the first ammendment to censor content. We all censor content all the time. Slashdot doesn't post every story it receives, for example.
There is no issue here other than a some young kid forgot that he wasn't paying the server bill and thought that the university was obligated to host his site for him through their connection. He then found out that when he didn't listen to the univesity officials that they actually had the power to do something about his impudence.
Sorry, but I don't cry for dummies. The fist ammendment says that the government can not censor you. It doesn't say that private institutions (and universities are that) have no rights to censor themselves.
With luck you learn something and get into another school and get on with your life.
Anyone who does disk space management with mission critical data using a symlink should be strung up by the short and curlies and summarily shot.
You simply don't do that sort of thing with mission critical data.
Of course, with mission critical data, you are using an enterprise class database so you don't have to, and that's the point. Postgres, MySQL and others are excellent products in the space they operate within. That space is not mission critical, enterprise level database servers. That is why lumping them in with a story about enterprise level servers is bad reporting. There are people out there who think that it is perfectly ok to keep a company's financials on Postgres, because they just don't know anybetter. What's sad, is that when the shit hits the fan and the stock holders come looking for the executive who has personal liability for that decission, the sysadmin who made the call isn't going to be the one who ends up bankrupt and in debt 5 mil to the corporation.
Slashdot Mirror
Try doing a stint in the military during prolonged combat operations.
If someone is not shooting at you on a more or less daily basis, then your job conditions aren't THAT bad.
A simple bit of research in the origins of the word will show that "playboy" comes to english from the french "bon vivant" and dates to at least from 1829. Similarly, "playmate" dates to the mid-15th century in the non-sexual meaning and to the mid-17th century with sexual overtones.
There is no legal basis to recognize a word in common usage as a trademark within the domain in which it is used commonly. For example, I can not make a company called "Carpenters" and trademark that term within the domain of people who work with wood; but, I could trademark it as it relates to music (if it wasn't so already trademarked!).
The problem here is that "Playboy Magazine" is arguing that the word "playboy" which was in common usage within the sexual domain for a hundred years prior to their existence is now exclusively there own. And for some reason these moronic judges are buying the argument.
Actually, it's a horrible time to sell short.
The reason being the short margin is so high.
Stocks are NOT the company, and many people forget that.
.. perhaps purchased when the stock was at 4 or 5 or 10 dollars a share.
Large institutions may have been holding several hundred thousand (or even millions) of dollars of SCO stock
It is to these companies advantage to BUY MORE stock to drive the price up so that they can sell it for a largeer profit even if they take a loss on some percentage of shares.
Everyone knows SCO is a dying bird. But that doesn't mean that the stock is automatically worthless.
Right now with the stock hovering around $17 a share is actually not a bad time to BUY. Large institutional purchases will probably drive this stock up to 20 or so at least one more time before the real sell-off begins.
That presumes that chess is a drawn game.
While that is most PLAYER'S viewpoint, there's no mathematical proof that this is the case. It may well be that with best play white wins, or even more oddly, that with best play black wins.
We don't know. We assume that best play is a draw because otherwise it implies the game is unfair in some fundamental way. But we have no proof that this assumption is correct.
This is an utterly disingenuous attempt to inflame.
Frankly, Netscape 4 is an utterly broken piece of crap that didn't even respect the HTML specifications that were in place when it was released.
Joe's site is completely compliant HTML, as he explains in the paragraph following the quote you pulled out.
True. However, there are some things that even a lay-person can understand.
For example, on "multiple universes."
Now, the work "Universe" means "everything that is."
Now, consider if multiple universe exist, then one of two things is possibly true about them.
1) they are measureable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally PART of our universe, and hence any talk of "multiple universes" is gibberish.
OR
2) They are not measurable and studiable from our universe, and hence, are definitionally NOT proper subject matter of physics but are properly subject matter of philosophy, and anything that is said about them isn't "science" in any meaningfull sense of that word.
But, crap like this isn't new. However, it does seem to be getting to the point where even respectable peer reviewed journals are having a harder and harder time finding people who will actually stand up and SAY something like that.
then you can't do it.
Period.
To make it big you need radio air-play on radio stations with significant audience share. And you can't do that off of an indie label for a whole host of reasons.
If you mean "make a living at this stuff" then you do what indie bands have always done -- play the college towns, play the music fests, play the local events, and continue to put on live show after live show where you sweat your heart and soul out for the dozen folks that will stay after and buy your disks for you. And keep doing that for 250+ shows a year and you can make enough money to keep doing that . . . till you burn out.
Which is about the life cycle of most bands - and that's not a bad thing either. 'Cause it means that the people who stay in are the ones that have a real passion for what they're doing.
But you won't ever make enough to retire on from an indie lable, and if you're at all worried about how you'll ever have a family, go on vacation, etc., etc., etc., you'll either get out of the biz by the time you're 25 or 26, or you'll get picked up by a major label (even then you'll still probably not make it, but maybe you can cut down to 150 live shows and see the occassional big bucks from being an opening act for a big name).
my response to such a request would be something along the lines of:
"I'm sorry, but that's simply not realistic. The programmers, designers, and other employees of this company have families and lives outside of their job. The project schedule is set up assuming no more than 5.5 hours of work per day, if the employees are soley dedicated to this one project. The rest of the time in the employee's day is taken up in administrative time.
"If you wish this project to be completed sooner, then you need to increase resources, and funds. But I must warn you that crashing a project (that is, reducing the scheduled completion date by radically increasing resource loading) is highly risky and will negatively impact your chances of successful completion within your budget and schedule.
"I wish to further point out that I will need several [days, weeks months depends on the complexity] to reschedule and rebudget this project. I will expect the resulting new project plan to be signed off by you, with you taking responsibility for the heavily increased risk.
"Morevoer, I wish to make clear that there will be a risk statement produced for this project, and I will certainly make reference to numerous case studies that indicate that fast tracking a project can reduce chances of success to next to zero. I wish it to be absolutely clear that you are ordering these changes, will fund the changes, and will take sole responsibilty for the decission to engage in this highly risky behavior."
Of course, I doubt I would have ever become a project manager for that type of management in the first place . . .
But I'm sure they're getting what they're paying for . . .
Actually, Kramnik is playing a copy of "Deep Fritz" which was only recently made publically available. The program is also going to include a customized opening book, and a huge set of tablebases for endgame play.
Moreover, he didn't want just a copy of the program, he also wanted a copy of the HARDWARE it was going to be running on.
There's a hell of a difference between Fritz on a 1ghz pc and Deep Fritz on an 8-way xeon box with 4 gigs of ram and the complete tablebases for all endgames with 5 or fewer pieces on the board.
*cough* BULLSHIT *cough*
..
Not to notice how dull your fine point is, but, I've spent the 12 years since I've been a software engineer doing kernel programming learning how to be a PM.
I've attended thousands of hours of seriously difficult training. I've spent as much time studying business texts as I ever did studying programming manuals and CS texts.
Indeed, my first job as a programmer was obtained walking right out of the army with absolutely no training in anything! I had one course in lisp, and a decent capacity for logic, but no experience or training at all.
After years of effort I am just now starting to obtain a level of proficiency in project management high enough to be able to manage seriously complex projects.
Good project management is non-trivial, and is far more difficult than programming. To be a good programmer you have to be a master of two domains - the problem domain and the language domain. To be a good PM you have to be an adept psychologist, be a master of the business domain in which the problem rests, be conversant in the lananguage domain the programmer uses, be able to handle major accounting problems, risk management, quality managment, and a host of other problem areas.
The reason so many projects do fail in business these days is precisely that you CAN'T just hire some moron with good hair as a PM and succeed.
Most people can't be good PMs. Being a good PM requires a highly specific set of personality traits, business skills, technical skills, and years or training.
Truly good PMs are far rarer than truly good programmers.
I've rarely had a project for any company that didn't have at least one compitent programmer somewhere in the company. Most had more than one. I've seen many companies that don't have a compitent PM, and from their reactions to meeting someone who is, they've never had one before .
'm a senior project manager in a medium sized company where the programmers have no business experience of any sort. I'm of the opinion that programmers should understand the business that they're part of and want to move into programming myself. I'm aware that I may meet resistance from the current programmers - many of them have been hired with no previous experience of anything. Previous suggestions to senior management that myself and other project managers would feel better with business person programming on projects have been dismissed. As a result we are routinely told to push out deadlines or that our requirements are impossible, with an emphasis on how technically aesthetic things are rather than how well things meet the business requirements. Has anyone else found the barrier to programming is their business knowledge. How did you get past it?"
Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.
One of the great claims of the OSS movement is how RAPID OSS programs are developed. Yet WINE, which is one of the larger OSS efforts out there, can not achieve this seemingly meager goal year after year.
Indeed, the only thing that seems to have kept WINE anywhere close to being on-target is the support of private companies who contribute their code back to the WINE tree. Some of these companies,like Codeweavers are decidedly on the OSS bandwagon. But others, like Corel aren't (though they did play nice with OSS, to their credit).
In the meantime, closed source efforts to port similarly complex API's succeed in much less time with far higher quality results (VM Ware anyone!).
Can someone explain how the failure of a project to hit a stationary target (the Win95 API has not changed though implimentation bugs may have) after such a lengthy period of time is anything but a proof by counter example of the grandiose claims of how much better OSS is for just this sort of development?
Best part of the story is the prominent "IBM/Lotus" add half-way down the page.
Actually, no product Microsoft offers is up to the task of producing a thesis. The bibliographical tools just aren't there.
Now, if you go with some good 3rd party add-on software (for around $500 or so) you can get the ability to do proper bibliographies. However, you still can't properly typeset the thing, and will end up with references not properly placed at the very least. If your school's thesis standards have strict requirements for typesetting you'll almost certainly have to either have it printed by a professional printing service or use TeX or LaTeX.
Actually, if I have an expectation of privacy on a phone line into my house, then I have that same expectation of privacy if I use it for voice or data. The expectation applies to the phone device, not to the type of traffic it carries.
The professor is confussing "legal" with "right." Frankly, I see software piracy, especially of the larger conglomerate companies like Microsoft, as a moral issue more than a legal one.
Yes, it is illegal. But so long as companies like Microsoft abuse their position, lie to consumers, produce broken software, knowingly release bug-ladden insecure crap, and otherwise mistreat the public it is difficult to defend, on moral grounds, striking back at the evil empire.
Now, there's certainly a question to be raised regarding piracy in that it may well do more good than harm to a company's actual bottom line. But the question of if it is "right" should not be confused with the question of if it is legal.
Much that is legal is not morally defensible. And much that is morally defensible is not legal.
Certainly there are those, perhaps even the majority, who pirate for entirely selfish reasons. But there are those who pirate because they see it as striking at a morally bankrupt corporations heart.
Something that Linux developers, like most developers, are very bad at is understanding a customer base.
Linux is very good in the server and network world because most of the developers of Linux and Linux software are themselves "customers" of that market segment. By simply developing a system to do what they want and need, they have succeeded in meeting the demands of that market.
Linux is very poor in the desktop environment because the vast majority of linux developers have no clue what a "typical user" wants or needs. They cover up this ignorance by belittling the "typical user" as being too "stupid" to really understand that Linux is so much better for them than Windows.
Until Linux developers start taking significant steps to understanding what the desktop users needs really are, Linux will be little more than an "also ran" in that category.
Moreover, until Linux meets the desktop users needs better than MS does, MS will continue to rule the roost in the business world. Cost of doing business is more than simply the cost of supporting the install base of systems. Sure, it costs more to support MS - but guess what? I, as a manager, can use anyone of a thousand local companies to outsource my desktop support to. I can leverage computer sales for breaks on training costs. And I don't have to worry about a new administrative support person not being familiar with the software environment.
I can go to any of a thousand local temp agencies to find people proficient in MS Office. Where can I find the temp staff proficient in KDE Office?
I can't.
But of course, I'm just a typical user, so I'm really just too stupid to understand how much better Linux is than Windows.
There are at least 2 problems with calling these instructors 'smart.'
First, it is stupid to think that a user wants to understand the inner workings of the system. The user wants to unlock functionality. They want a simple, easy way to accomplish a task. They want to have to learn as little as possible in order to accomplish that end.
The second is related, and that is in implying that those who are users and see computers as tools used to accomplish a goal rather than an object of study in and of themselves are not smart. Frankly, this is the sort of sub-cultural elitism that stops most "geeks" from actually having meaningfull career advancement. Until you can think of mere users as equals you'll always be working for someone else.
The article presents an interesting arguement for why a completely new software project must have an arbitrarily large upper bound for time/quality estimates and can have no lower bound.
But herein lies the rub -- exactly how many software systems are "completely new?"
Damn few!!
The average software project in an average industry will be primarily a repackaging of previously solved problems.The majority of integration tasks will be sufficiently similar to previous integration tasks as to be known.
You will be left with a small number of "sub problems" which are unique and new. But now we have a situation where the caveats of the article are very important. Specifically, if we have decomposed the programming tasks to a sufficient degree, it should be the case that the estimation is tractable.
Also, it should be noted, that the author assumes that a good estimate is one obtained through formal methods that is objectively defensible. However, in project maangement, a good estimate is defined as one that is believable and acceptable to all stakeholders in the process. The method for obtaining the estimate is not important.
Moreover, good project management will include some significant up-front analysis. One common (at least common to companies with good PM'ing track records) is to run "monte-carlo" simulations of project work with large variances in schedule-v-actual work. With a run of a few thousand simulations, those processes that are most important to the time and budget performance of the project.
These "key" work packages are often non-obvious without this type of simulation work. However, with a good work breakdown structure and a good simulator, it is possible to generate a reasonably accurate picture of project performance based on what is not known.
This means that in the "real world" of business, the article's claim is irrelevant!!
We don't NEED objectively defined and defensible estimates. Instead we need estimates that the project stakeholders (which includes the people doing the work) can agree to.
We don't NEED our estimates to be generated by formal methodologies. Subjective estimates backed up by years of experience are just as good, and often better, from a planning perspective.
This whole article strikes me as another programmer trying to show how dumb the business people are. Hey folks, good business people KNOW that estimating is hard and that it isn't objective. But just because something isn't objective doesn't mean it can't be done well. It is possible to build models that compensate for unknowns if you can do enough decompossing of the problem to limit the unknowns to a well defined, small manageable few.
So, in the view of this PM, this is all just academic and has no bearing on the real world.
It's a great idea that works well. It drastically lowers support and maintenence costs, and helps IT leverage their budget against something besides the help desk.
Now, for developers it presents a HUGE problem. However, the way around this is to make sure that the developer's machines include virtual machine software like VMWare and a set number of "development virtual machines" that the developers are free to do whatever they want with!
This does a number of very positive things. One, it keeps the developers from accidentally doing something that messes with company network, since the "development" machines are now all on their own virtual network inside a computer. It keeps IT in a state to be able to maintain the local network and systems and INCLUDE the developers. And it allows for everything to be standardized. Everyone goes home happy.
Now, where it won't work is if the developers won't be given a powerfull enough system to run multiple virtual machines, or the IT people refuse to entertain the idea of allowing a virtual machine product.
When either of those things happen, the results are either bad or worse.
The important thing is to raise these issues early in the process so that the business decission makers can be made to see the sense and reason behind giving the developers their own play environment in the form of a virtual machine.
Of course he was indicted. Indictment simply means that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial. It says NOTHING about if the law is good or not. I says NOTHING about constitutional issues. ALL an indictment means is that there is ample warrant to apply the resources of the court system to trying this case because there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a guilty verdict is POSSIBLE (not probable or even likely, but POSSIBLE).
Now, here's a hint of what will happen next. There will be a hearing to discuss constitutional issues. The defense will raise the issue of the constitutionality of the DMCA and it's application. The judge will enter the hearing into the record of the trial but will proceed anyway. More than likely a guilty verdict will be returned. The defense will appeal based on the evidence supplied at the aforementioned hearing. At this point the courts will look at the constitutionality of the law and it's application. It won't happen before the appeal process. Prior to the appeal's court the judges aren't going to weight in on constitutional questions
This isn't a reason to "give up" on the american legal system. It is simply the way the system is designed to work. The legislative body has passed a law. A lower court is applying the law as it understands it. An appeals court will (likely) look at the wording of the law, how it was applied, and what it was intended to address and rule on the constintutional issues. It is precisely the way the system is designed to work. Moaning about "unfairness" at this stage is just demonstrating ignorance of the way the system works.
Computer chess suffers many limitations that human beings do not. These limits are being extended, but they still exist and the human being in this match should not be counted out.
Many people think that since IBM's Deep Blue beat Kasparov that the debate has been settled that computers are better than people. However, there where some aspects of the way that match was played that gave the computer a decided advantage. Kasparov never got a chance to see any of Deep Blue's games. Kasparov never got a chance to play any warm up matches against Deep Blue. In otherwords, Kasparov went into the match "blind" as far as his opponent was concerned.
Deep Blue, on the other hand, had complete access to every professional game that Kasparov ever played, and a team of GM's working with the programmers to twink the machine to take advantages of weaknesses pin-pointed in Kasparov's games. In match play, preparation is the key to success. Against Deep Blue, Kasparov wasn't allowed to prepare.
This match is decidedly different. Kramnik has been given a copy of the program and the hardware to run it. He has been given time to analyze how the program plays and to see what weakness it has.
Moreover, Kramnik is a very positional player, whereas Kasparov was a very tactical player. Computers excel at complex tactics, even as good as Kasparov was, he can't out calculate a computer. However, that isn't the only way to play chess. Kramnik excels at finding positional improvements that will see their point well beyond the analysis horizon of the computer.
Kramnik has a very strong record against some of the best computers in the world. Including Fritz and Deep Junior - too offerings from the same company that makes Deep Fritz.
It is simply ignorance which would allow anyone to think that at this point in time the outcome of this match is a foregone conclussion. Certainly at some point in time the computers will be far better than people at Chess. But it is not the case that we are at that point today.
And for chess players and fans, this match promises to provide some very interesting games that will be well worth studying. And perhaps that aesthetic aspect is actually the point?!
Sorry, but you have no right to use of university property for your speach. You have the right to free speach, but you don't have some right to be published by others. Unless you foot the bill to publish teh site and pay the costs of operation, you don't have the expectation of remaining uncensored. Further, it isn't an abuse of the first ammendment to censor content. We all censor content all the time. Slashdot doesn't post every story it receives, for example. There is no issue here other than a some young kid forgot that he wasn't paying the server bill and thought that the university was obligated to host his site for him through their connection. He then found out that when he didn't listen to the univesity officials that they actually had the power to do something about his impudence. Sorry, but I don't cry for dummies. The fist ammendment says that the government can not censor you. It doesn't say that private institutions (and universities are that) have no rights to censor themselves. With luck you learn something and get into another school and get on with your life.
Anyone who does disk space management with mission critical data using a symlink should be strung up by the short and curlies and summarily shot.
You simply don't do that sort of thing with mission critical data.
Of course, with mission critical data, you are using an enterprise class database so you don't have to, and that's the point. Postgres, MySQL and others are excellent products in the space they operate within. That space is not mission critical, enterprise level database servers. That is why lumping them in with a story about enterprise level servers is bad reporting. There are people out there who think that it is perfectly ok to keep a company's financials on Postgres, because they just don't know anybetter. What's sad, is that when the shit hits the fan and the stock holders come looking for the executive who has personal liability for that decission, the sysadmin who made the call isn't going to be the one who ends up bankrupt and in debt 5 mil to the corporation.