As always, another flawed analogy. Virus writers manufacture the virii with express purpose to cause damage (in the worst case), while natural virii only cause damage as a side-effect. The better analogy would be (evil) scientists in the lab creating man-made bilogical virii to kill people. And we certainly don't want that, nor do we think that would help us in any way. The difference is intent combined with the knowledge of specific flaws to exploit.
Taken the other way, bugs or mistakes in programs may unintentionally create havoc in a system, and we should fix those. But they are not intentionally malicious, designed to take the utmost advantage of a flaw and cause the most damage. A biological virus is trying to replicate and survive, and does not exist merely to kill its host.
Not sure if this is true of all commercials, but I know that some of the "loudness" is due primarily to two factors:
1) Audio in commercials is often compressed (in in dynamic range, not quality or time) to get a better response on crappy audio output. This has the effect of putting more signal into the space where the speakers best produce sound. The effect seems louder than normal, but in reality is just more "busy". TV programs typically use the full dynamic range for maximum artistic effect and therefore don't usually compress their audio.
2) Content in the program is less loud on average due to the nature of the programming (dramatic, quiet moments, etc), which just makes the commercial seem louder than "average".
I wouldn't put it past people to actually crank the volume for commercials, but think most of the time it's due to these other effects.
(Don't get me wrong though, I hate how loud they seem).
The big advantage Sun has is in the high-end server market. Linux can't scale well beyond 4 processors right now, let alone 8, 16, or whatever. Frankly, neither can Microsoft. Sun's only real competition is IBM, which is just another expensive option.
However, IBM is (supposedly) putting a lot of effort to make Linux scale better, in which case it'll start to be real competition (on IBM hardware of course).
The other option is to use lots of smaller Linux servers in distributed fashion, but that can also get expensive or hard to manage, even if the your enterprise application allows such configurations.
In my experience, large enterprise shops will go Sun or IBM 95% of the time (some are still stuck with HP). Linux is picking up some steam, though.
This is a snapshot of today though, not tomorrow. The nice thing about Linux is that it is getting better in the high-end arena. Sun can't be happy that it's been slowly confined to the high-end market, and they should be looking out for Linux soon.
Think the airplane business. When you buy a 757, you don't get the blueprints for the wing. That's a trade secret.
Bad analogy. When you buy an airplane you have a reasonable expectation that it won't break, or that if it does, it's the manufacturer's fault and they are liable.
If I buy a piece of software, I should have reasonable recourse to fix problems with it. Other than filing a bug report to a corporation that isn't liable and probably won't listen to me.
Including source code could be a solution to the problem, but doesn't have to be. A corporation should provide some means for fixing problems. This could be a highly dedicated customer support staff, but it could also be access to source code. If depends on where they want to spend their money.
I am really looking forward to the time where international players freely interact -- it will be an interesting sociology experiement to see how national and cultural means, norms and paradigms manifest themselves in a virtual world.
This is actually a really great idea. It reminds me of the book "Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman, in which (**SPOLIER**) groups of people that were virtually connected (in a deeper sense than the Sims, of course) were able to see things from other peoples' perspectives fully, thus creating peace between them.
I wonder if this could go some small way towards creating this scenario in real life. Fostering interaction with other cultures, especially at a young age, could eliminate a lot of prejudice and apathy towards other religions/cultures/countries.
The next logical leap from the desktop paradigm would be to model an interface after your thought processes. Rather than have an analog to the way you WORK, you should have an analog to the way you THINK. This would speed up user interaction and make things feel more "natural".
Unfortunately there are two potential problems. First, we still have yet to understand human thought processes very well. We might be able to get around this, as there have been some successful attempts to model things without full understanding (various PIMs have done this, like Lotus Agenda).
Second, if we did understand them, they might be different for every person. That's why the desktop has stuck around for so long: it's a wide common base that many people can relate to. But who knows, maybe there's a common ground in the human brain as well.
Pair programming isn't a solution, it's a tool. In fact, it's a fantastic learning tool. When I started programming (13 years ago? good lord, I'm getting old), I sometimes programmed with a friend in exactly the manner described in XP. I learned a hell of a lot and I'm a much better coder for it.
In that respect it's a lot reading other people's source code. You learn a lot, but it doesn't necessarily make your current project better.
One caveat is that both programmers in the pair need to be at similar levels. A novice will hold back an expert, unless the expert is training the novice.
Also, once you do it for a while (years), you tend not to need it anymore. If you're an expert, you'll just end up using the other person as a crutch.
As for figuring out design flaws, that can be done before ever sitting down to code. A good design phase before implementation will find most of those flaws. Design is inherently collaborative, and serves that function of pair programming. Pair programing may be able to take care of it as well, but it is generally recognized that XP falters with larger groups. Hence, the design phase is the norm for large projects.
I have, it's called "The Humane Interface". It turns our everything he's saying makes sense. Not only that, he's actually built a system that does some of these things (in a limited way) called the Canon Cat.
He's not advocating an appliance or convergence device. In fact, he's advocating something this community should love: the GUI equivalant of a command line interface. The basic idea is that there is only one interface, like a document, and in order to do things like spreadsheets or images or whatever, you use a cimple command. These commands would be plug-ins, so the "application" isn't static and inflexible.
His book fleshes it all out in better detail, and he deals with the problems of games, multiple documents, etc. It's all quite visionary. It's all probably a ways in the future too. Making a system so generic and transparent is contrary to the branding strategies of most companies. So is the idea of selling small "commands" instead of monolithic applications.
P.S. The whole "extra keys" deal only means a few extra keys (load, save, undo, command, maybe one or two more), not 20 extra keys for each application. Plus he advocates getting rid of a lot of useless keys (function keys, ScrollLock, CapsLock, etc).
If you actually look at the icons, many of them are pretty good previews of what the file contains. Instead of one icon used for every document, they use partial contents to form a dynamic "icon."
That, plus the zooming interface brings to mind the excellent book "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin (also a Mac guy). The book points to the above ideas and more as a better GUI, with plenty of theory and practice to back it up.
Maybe eazel isn't going far enough to make it hang together properly, but if it's done well it could be the next big thing. I'll be the first to admit that big, static icons are useless, but this looks interesting and I plan to try it out soon.
Dismissing this project without trying it or doing any research is just an exercise in "thinking inside the box."
I had ADSL installed about a year ago and it took about 2 months to get them to install it, which included several delays. My roommate and I called them a whole bunch of times and that seemed to make them commit to dates and times a little better--they even called me back once!
The installation was quick and painless, and I haven't had any service problems. Their DNS servers have been down once or twice, but other than that inconvenience it's been pretty sweet.
BTW, according to some anti-trust law, PacBell is now forced to use SBC as the provider in this area. I've heard rumors that they lowered bandwidth in some area. My speeds seem fine however.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe you meant puppygames.net.
As always, another flawed analogy. Virus writers manufacture the virii with express purpose to cause damage (in the worst case), while natural virii only cause damage as a side-effect. The better analogy would be (evil) scientists in the lab creating man-made bilogical virii to kill people. And we certainly don't want that, nor do we think that would help us in any way. The difference is intent combined with the knowledge of specific flaws to exploit.
Taken the other way, bugs or mistakes in programs may unintentionally create havoc in a system, and we should fix those. But they are not intentionally malicious, designed to take the utmost advantage of a flaw and cause the most damage. A biological virus is trying to replicate and survive, and does not exist merely to kill its host.
Not sure if this is true of all commercials, but I know that some of the "loudness" is due primarily to two factors:
1) Audio in commercials is often compressed (in in dynamic range, not quality or time) to get a better response on crappy audio output. This has the effect of putting more signal into the space where the speakers best produce sound. The effect seems louder than normal, but in reality is just more "busy". TV programs typically use the full dynamic range for maximum artistic effect and therefore don't usually compress their audio.
2) Content in the program is less loud on average due to the nature of the programming (dramatic, quiet moments, etc), which just makes the commercial seem louder than "average".
I wouldn't put it past people to actually crank the volume for commercials, but think most of the time it's due to these other effects.
(Don't get me wrong though, I hate how loud they seem).
I think these questions are great! You can really learn a lot about a candidate by how they roll their eyes at you.
The big advantage Sun has is in the high-end server market. Linux can't scale well beyond 4 processors right now, let alone 8, 16, or whatever. Frankly, neither can Microsoft. Sun's only real competition is IBM, which is just another expensive option.
However, IBM is (supposedly) putting a lot of effort to make Linux scale better, in which case it'll start to be real competition (on IBM hardware of course).
The other option is to use lots of smaller Linux servers in distributed fashion, but that can also get expensive or hard to manage, even if the your enterprise application allows such configurations.
In my experience, large enterprise shops will go Sun or IBM 95% of the time (some are still stuck with HP). Linux is picking up some steam, though.
This is a snapshot of today though, not tomorrow. The nice thing about Linux is that it is getting better in the high-end arena. Sun can't be happy that it's been slowly confined to the high-end market, and they should be looking out for Linux soon.
Think the airplane business. When you buy a 757, you don't get the blueprints for the wing. That's a trade secret.
Bad analogy. When you buy an airplane you have a reasonable expectation that it won't break, or that if it does, it's the manufacturer's fault and they are liable.
If I buy a piece of software, I should have reasonable recourse to fix problems with it. Other than filing a bug report to a corporation that isn't liable and probably won't listen to me.
Including source code could be a solution to the problem, but doesn't have to be. A corporation should provide some means for fixing problems. This could be a highly dedicated customer support staff, but it could also be access to source code. If depends on where they want to spend their money.
I am really looking forward to the time where international players freely interact -- it will be an interesting sociology experiement to see how national and cultural means, norms and paradigms manifest themselves in a virtual world.
This is actually a really great idea. It reminds me of the book "Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman, in which (**SPOLIER**) groups of people that were virtually connected (in a deeper sense than the Sims, of course) were able to see things from other peoples' perspectives fully, thus creating peace between them.
I wonder if this could go some small way towards creating this scenario in real life. Fostering interaction with other cultures, especially at a young age, could eliminate a lot of prejudice and apathy towards other religions/cultures/countries.
The next logical leap from the desktop paradigm would be to model an interface after your thought processes. Rather than have an analog to the way you WORK, you should have an analog to the way you THINK. This would speed up user interaction and make things feel more "natural".
Unfortunately there are two potential problems. First, we still have yet to understand human thought processes very well. We might be able to get around this, as there have been some successful attempts to model things without full understanding (various PIMs have done this, like Lotus Agenda).
Second, if we did understand them, they might be different for every person. That's why the desktop has stuck around for so long: it's a wide common base that many people can relate to. But who knows, maybe there's a common ground in the human brain as well.
Shouldn't that be:
[...3 years later]
Pair programming isn't a solution, it's a tool. In fact, it's a fantastic learning tool. When I started programming (13 years ago? good lord, I'm getting old), I sometimes programmed with a friend in exactly the manner described in XP. I learned a hell of a lot and I'm a much better coder for it.
In that respect it's a lot reading other people's source code. You learn a lot, but it doesn't necessarily make your current project better.
One caveat is that both programmers in the pair need to be at similar levels. A novice will hold back an expert, unless the expert is training the novice.
Also, once you do it for a while (years), you tend not to need it anymore. If you're an expert, you'll just end up using the other person as a crutch.
As for figuring out design flaws, that can be done before ever sitting down to code. A good design phase before implementation will find most of those flaws. Design is inherently collaborative, and serves that function of pair programming. Pair programing may be able to take care of it as well, but it is generally recognized that XP falters with larger groups. Hence, the design phase is the norm for large projects.
I can't wait until they find out the moths actually cause sterility in humans...
He's not advocating an appliance or convergence device. In fact, he's advocating something this community should love: the GUI equivalant of a command line interface. The basic idea is that there is only one interface, like a document, and in order to do things like spreadsheets or images or whatever, you use a cimple command. These commands would be plug-ins, so the "application" isn't static and inflexible.
His book fleshes it all out in better detail, and he deals with the problems of games, multiple documents, etc. It's all quite visionary. It's all probably a ways in the future too. Making a system so generic and transparent is contrary to the branding strategies of most companies. So is the idea of selling small "commands" instead of monolithic applications.
P.S. The whole "extra keys" deal only means a few extra keys (load, save, undo, command, maybe one or two more), not 20 extra keys for each application. Plus he advocates getting rid of a lot of useless keys (function keys, ScrollLock, CapsLock, etc).
If you actually look at the icons, many of them are pretty good previews of what the file contains. Instead of one icon used for every document, they use partial contents to form a dynamic "icon."
That, plus the zooming interface brings to mind the excellent book "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin (also a Mac guy). The book points to the above ideas and more as a better GUI, with plenty of theory and practice to back it up.
Maybe eazel isn't going far enough to make it hang together properly, but if it's done well it could be the next big thing. I'll be the first to admit that big, static icons are useless, but this looks interesting and I plan to try it out soon.
Dismissing this project without trying it or doing any research is just an exercise in "thinking inside the box."
I had ADSL installed about a year ago and it took about 2 months to get them to install it, which included several delays. My roommate and I called them a whole bunch of times and that seemed to make them commit to dates and times a little better--they even called me back once!
The installation was quick and painless, and I haven't had any service problems. Their DNS servers have been down once or twice, but other than that inconvenience it's been pretty sweet.
BTW, according to some anti-trust law, PacBell is now forced to use SBC as the provider in this area. I've heard rumors that they lowered bandwidth in some area. My speeds seem fine however.