Which leaves, guess what... that other deeply mysterious human gender, Women. Huh, who woulda thunk it, a game popular with the ladies..., Gosh!, maybe they even deliberately designed it that way. Which is probably why, statistically speaking, most slashdotters don't get it.
My daughter (age 16), and freinds, loves the original Sims+Pack+++ and is eagerly awaiting the new game.
The Sims is a beautifully crafted and delivered fantasy AI world where players pretend absolute control over other peoples lives. To say nothing of the amazingly detailed, houses, landscaping, decoration, fashion and gizmo obsessions. The whole thing has a lightweight, easygoing ethic and experience that is light years from the dark and dangerous firefights guys enjoy.
Of course, what this fantasy may say about the real workings of the female psyche... I shudder to think, not something a guy/father can safely speculate about and stay politically correct, (or alive).
But what of it..., its fantasy, harmless entertainment liked by women, so EA found a winner, and a whole otherwise ignored market, so good luck to em I say.
Maybe we should all learn to write games and software that women as well as geek guys can like... Heck, I heard they were 50% of the random user base!
I am not an orbital mechanics guy, but it seems to me the problem reduces to altering the asteroids relative position at impact, by slightly more than the the earths radius. This change in orbit must be effected between the time of earliest possible interception and its scheduled crossing of our orbit. Do that, we win, fail... and its game over.
Early detection, capability to intercept and a practical method of delivering low thrust for the required period, probably via a remotely controlled probe, would seem to be all that is necessary.
I leave the rest as a trivial exercise in rocketry to be completed by our space cowboys, NASA, by the time of the next pop Extinction Level Event, coming to a planet near you.
It seems strange that we may become extinct because of our fascination with missiles and buck rogers heroism in space movies. This causes media driven agencies like NASA to ignore practical issues, like preserving the species.
On blowing things up: Turning a deadly extinction class asteroid into a radioactive shotgun cluster of deadly small asteroids, by peppering it with Nukes, will only demonstrate to our survivors that our civilization deserved to become extinct.
There is in our industry a self organizing, self replicating, set of commercial forces, which cause a recurring disease syndrome. I label it MAMF Acquired Methodology Failure, in recursive TLA style. It also involves much Motherhood and Apple pie. At any point, the public label of the syndrome varies, because the disease meme itself rapidly changes appearance and mutates. It is frequently detected early by alert Slashdot posters.
The MAMF often appears as "formal methods" or "algorithmic proofs" or in extreme cases "maturity models". The disease usually surfaces in comp-sci student authored articles, in CACM or IEEE, or other vectors for spreading academic ideas publicly. This suggests that universities publishing novel methodology ideas, have unanticipated consequences that are surprisingly dangerous to the common good. This is known and expected in some fields such as biological weapons, or nukes, its impact via software engineering may have been overlooked.
MAMF displays a broad class of characteristics:
Initiated based on subjectively oriented pseudo "research". This has the useful feature that it never withstands quantitative, independent, expert scrutiny by practitioners.
Justified based on high level commercial "failure" statistics. The failures being implicitly attributed to construction level development, as opposed to other less politically palatable possibilities, such as business management failures, or failed planning.
The infectious meme usually is injected into an organization via an article authored and sponsored by non programmers, individuals external to actual development. This is scarcely a coincidence as some people stand to gain by the meme's short lived success, this is part of its self replication pattern.
The "magic bullets" promised are always based on "process" and "structures" deemed generically applicable, they are also carefully camouflaged to NOT look like magic bullet promises, this is a key mutation pattern of the meme.
There is much "deeming" and imperatives of "quality", that is not based on actual usage patterns by development practitioners. The claims are usually extreme, and fundamentally non tangible.
Has the subtext that developers are weak and somehow at fault. Usually implies that developers must be forcefully re-organized into production line process teams, by those that must rule them.
Nearly always invokes Kuhns "Paradigms". This signature of MAMF appears to be as an attempt to justify change. In the current example we see "Paradigm shifts occur at junctures where existing change is required to sustain forward momentum. " Which is clearly a botched and rather desperate attempt to supply a valid appeal to "authority", if one considers Paradigms authoritative.
Moves the solution away from developers into the tools. This is of course a toolmakers ideal, as they can then sell a plethora of services and products to "raise the abstraction level". This thinly veiled tools sales pitch is a clear signal of MAMF infection.
The key infecting article, usually contains a strangely seductive idealized view of software development. A melange of the authors knowledge, speculations and preferred viewpoint, crafted to entice confused and concerned management. Reviewed by practitioners, the description invariably falls apart, but this is often overlooked by those already seduced.
Quite often, the article contains a shameless plug for an authoritative sounding book, as indeed does this example.
What can we do to help avoid MAMF ?
Well the good news is that the answer does not involve Hobbits or Rings, or dark lords, or evil empires, unless you really want to get extremely philosophical.
The bad news is that this is like trying to cure the common cold, this marketing meme is successful because it mutates rapidly. I believe there is no simple cure. The common solution is to simply endure the parasites and discomfort, until the organizations natural immu
Brings a whole new meaning to End Of Life doesnt it when the bolts on your wheels unlock themselves, maybe cos you pass a hotspot, or a repair dealer with a cash flow problem.
I think we need some laws that make it illegal to build a devices intended to prevent, the repair or alteration of the product offered for sale. Designing and making any device to remotely controlled by anyone other than the owner, should be jail time for the seller, the company CXO's and owners, do not pass go, do not collect marketing award.
I am old enough to remeber taking cars to bits for fun and profit (or was it girls... Yeah!)
How are kids gonna do that if they have to buy BOLT.EXE from Frod Rolloversoft for $15,000.
As other posters noted, this particular idea is way beyond stupid, mechanically. However... the business model that gives rise to the idea needs to be made illegal.
Its time to define into law a few mechanical and software reverse engineering maintenance, and alteration, rights and privileges.
Isn't this also a matter of national security? We are going to look really stupid if we cant maintain simple mechanical devices and systems in any future era, where our dealer infrastructure and InfraDaft Boltware companies are smoking holes in the ground.
Some things need to be fixable with simple tools, fast, in nasty places.
I would support unpleasant consequences for any product designer that infringes that mandate.
Did they stop teaching basic humanitarian and business ethics in design schools or something?
In the interim, punish companies that produce such trends in products by supporting a gratuitous existence failure in their sales. Do not buy the products.
I like the Golgafrinchan solution. Sod all political correctness for a farce, dump all the morons, make em somebody elses problem.
Ok, so I forced myself to read the entire article, not easy, its a collection of confused finger pointing, and poor journalistic sound bites, sole intent to fill a news article. Zero Meaningful Content..
To summarize: They are concerned about how the project was managed. Concerned that the investment may not get repaid. There are problems with the control system (not the magnetic levittation system itself note) The assets are apparently a series of patents. Thats odd really, considering this is a tewenty year old technology. The board and the university may have screwed up, they didn't put appropriate bonds in place, so now they are all nervous as to who gets blamed. A board member now blames the technology, saying that others (Japan) could not make it work. This is incorrect. Another guy refused to invest because of problems with the company (not the technology). Maglev trains are described as "floats on a cushion of air". Duh. Fine journalism. FRA has issued a stop work order, as usual asleep at the wheel. Way way way too late IMHO.
Overall, they all completely mismanaged this, tried to invent new stuff that doesn't work, and now need another two million dollar handout to get out of the hole they dug for us, the victim taxpayers.
Oh, and in the process they tarnish the reputation of a transportation technology we actually need.
Thanks for nothing ODU and FRA guys. Do us a favor, go fire yourselves.
I think that the question is invalid. There is the dubious assumption that you must pick a tool, to teach "database concepts". IMHO incorrect, subtly and forgivably so perhaps, but still false...
To give the maligned IT group the benefit of some doubt they are probably trying to standardize on something they have available cheaply, that looks (to them) as if its freindly to newbie students. Well, indeed it is freindly (like drug dealer freindly), unfortunately, freindliness is not a criteria for tackling the serious business of learning to design (non-trivial) databases. The first easy fix is for free, after that the new IDE junkie, spirals into nasty addiction, hooked into another mind-candy toolset.
However, if we assume that all databases in university courses are de-facto trivial, then an IDE is fine... because by the time the poor students figure out they have been duped, and hooked on a street vendors junk, its far too late to complain...
Tough love : If you really want to teach database concepts you use an ancient method called teaching, which uses an experienced "teacher".
Experienced as in "has actually done the task, in the real world, for a real system, for pay" not, "has read the course notes, 15 minutes before the class".
As many of us have not had the privilege of meeting a real teacher lately, because universitys do not hire them anymore, let me remind you that this is a sophisticated human assistant, who can communicate and teach database concepts. This includes design principles, theory, case studies, normal forms, denormalization (and when to use it), design symbology, drawing correct diagrams, discovery and definition of entitys in requirements, defining attributes and relations. The place of database design, in the larger practice of systems analysis and design. Some pragmatic history, such as when to use other non-relational types of databases (OO, Hierarchic, Hybrids). The mapping between database schemes and common program structures, and objects, linked-lists, queues and other similar constructs. Etc...
Implementation level languages and syntax such as DDL, DML, XML, etc, then become quite minor exercises, that a student can hack about, or not, as necessary.
Specialized, closed source, vendor IDE's (such as MS-Access) that blend some of these elements together with other development areas, do have a place, but IMHO, are not a relevant starting point. Unless of course, its really just edumacational hocus pocus, to sell lite and fluffy "design" courses.
There is a saying, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." Funny maybe, but also quite offensive and false, at least in this case. Fact is, those offshore are hard working humans, just like us.
I read the article (I know, not always required here) IMHO it is fairly clueless and light-weight, typical of the NY Times lately. Whats interesting is the depth of feeling about it on Slashdot.
I grew up in the UK with many freinds of Indian background, a fine people with a rich culture. I have worked alongside them, in the UK and in the USA on projects that are multi-shored. Fact is, the results do vary enormously, but thats normal in IT. However, offshoring seems to be improving faster than we are, offshore staff are usually highly educated, and very serious about improving quality and process. These are crucial capabilities, mired in apathy and management hostility in the USA.
Offshoring is kicking American Software Project performance butt, because our Management has a set of dumb mantras that will guarantee we ultimately lose this industry. To list a few:
Fear is the best motivator. Screw process. Quality? Yeah Right! Design? huh just build it?. Training Courses - hah!. Next quarters results rule. Arbitrary deadlines drive release dates. The dumb belief in staff fungibility as a method of imposing fear. A nasty, secretive, hostility to actual smart engineers and software developers.
Offshore, the countries and companies have a long term strategic view. In almost any game, a pragmatic strategy vs no strategy, will win. Our CEO/CIO/CXO are clearly incapable of such a strategic view, so offshore companies will win the future IT business and jobs. This is in no way a development problem, its simply an outcome of incompetent management direction and intent.
As part of the general frustration, its quite apalling how many people on Slashdot appear to hate most Project Managers, like myself.
Bear with me here, I would like to use an analogy; Project managers perform a similar role as the Director of a movie, but, without the award ceremonies or casting couches.
We are integrators, glue, we filter out much crap, communicators, wipers away of tears and fears, counsellors of the oppressed, buyers of beer, experts in the air-speed of african swallows. Generalist in a world of specialists (an oxymoron in itself really).
We do viewgraphs for the Lord High Poobahs, we faithfully deliver facts and opinions to those skilled in killing messengers. Many of us get killed in the process, I have been killed many times. Its not fun, and its going to get worse, IMHO there are long term problems for project managers, and thats ultimately pain for Business as well.
Software project managers (at least those with any kind of clue) have usually been developers and usually attempt to maintain some reasonable level of technical understanding. Fallen from the true hacker faith of 100% coding, we live on in the twilight world of software project integration.
We are tolerated by "Real Programmers" because we translate Technobabble into Poobah, and vice versa. We are a specialized form of babelfish. I have been entertained many times by folks with no translation experience trying to run software projects. Its pathetic and its dumb, but they continue to try.
Now the bit that really worries me:
I think that decent translators and software PM's will become a rapidly vanishing breed. The development work and quality and process understanding etc, will not happen here (for most given values of here). In next ten to fifteen years, few in the USA will be able to run a software project, based on actual personal development knowledge and experience. At that point there will be a real loss in translation and then of control. Companies will not be able to manage projects efficiently from within the USA. This is already happening, its just not on the radar yet, at least not the weak-ass
Thieves, hotwire a backhoe, drive it a couple of miles and use it to liberate an ATM from wherever, drop it into a truck and get the hell outa Dodge.
Imagine the disappointment when they get it home... if one of these fake ATM's gets selected for a backhoe style type smash and grab theft. Plus, imagine the disappointment for the original ATM fakers.... Delicious.
Murphys law says its gotta happen sometime!
Organized crime?, Nah!, for my money, its not really all that well organized....
I have wondered for a while about the need for a localized cellphone status protocol. LCSP?
I propose that Cellphones have a designed in default profile (allow user to disable?) setting which allows them to pick up a localized "Set Silent Command". Emit say one beep to let the user know its been tripped and then stay silent for a few hours (user configurable duration?). Localized means say within a specfic room or corridor.
There should be an inverse "Return to Prior State" protocol command that resets the cellphone back to its earlier alert state (which may have already been silent of course).
At the entrance to a movie, or live theatre, or sound studio, etc..., a small transmitter uses the protocol to "Set Silent" at the end of the movie, on the way out of the theatre, transmit "Reset State". Post a decal or two to let folks know that they are in a cellphone local protocol area or something.
Maybe we could use this to default cellphones to silent, while we are driving, might prevent a few accidents.
This seems likely to have been proposed somewhere before and clearly has not happened, but why not I wonder? I am sure there's some gotchas in here, but this would be a social boon in many circumstances. Is it a reasonable idea?, technical feasibility? any chance of it happening?
A physics professor, is riding his bicycle around a desolate San Jose strip mall, sad and lonely because his girl left him to live on a beach in Hawai.
He kicks an odd shaped, klein bottle lying under a bag of chips and rotten apples.
A flash and a bang and next thing you know a hacker genie-us is standing there, glaring at him with distaste. "Ok so your name tag says your a low-life newbie Physics guy. Sorry but your licenced version of reality only allows one level 3 rapid response wish. All other wishes I must transfer to local help desk support."
"My girl left me cos she thinks I don't have a job, please build me an application that can design a bridge, so I can ride over on my bike and see her!
"Are you nuts, thats a ridiculous waste of expensive computer design time, besides its too simple an engineering problem to be worthwhile, just use an existing bridge design and scale up the stress and load factors to account for the depth of water, and other negligible physical effects. Pick a serious problem!"
Ok, ha ha, just kidding!, here's my cellphone, please call my girlfreind and explain to her what a Physics Professor does for a living, so she comes back to me.
"Hmmm, I see your problem, ok, how many bike lanes did you want on that bridge?"
I have had some recent involvement with these folks and have been extremely impressed, they are capable engineers and deadly serious about making Maglev happen. I believe this would be a Good Thing and truly hope they succeed. We should be building a National network of Maglev High Speed Transit Links.
Heresy Warning : There are three major modes of transport available, not two as is apparently the belief of many Slashdotters. Roads, Rapid transit, and Planes linked together make sense and thats what most countries use and plan on expanding. For political reasons the USA has always shunned mass transit, its way past time that outdated corrupt and fundamentally dumb attitude changed. Maglev is Green, little or no pollution, post-construction phase. Unlike Planes and Cars and Trucks.
Maglev is hard to use as a terrorist target. Nowadays our highways are shooting galleries for insane snipers. Our airports are permanent security zoos and impossible to use efficiently due to the paranoia level required. (Side note. I think TSA is doing it as well as could be expected, its just that its a fundamentally misguided and hopeless task)
High speed maglev rail avoids the terrorism problem. Imagine being able to travel cross country without risking a body cavity search, or driving for five days!
If some nut takes over a Maglev train, shut down the power and call SWAT. No flying into buildings etc.
300+ MPH or so cruise speed, gets you across the country in 8 hours, thats about the same amount of time it takes to get from your apartment to the "sorry for the delay, were first in line for takeoff" if your airport is having a bad day.
Trains can be extremely reliable, luxuriously comfortable, smooth and fun to ride, they are rarely affected by weather,
most folks in America have never had an opportunity to take a good fast train, 'cos you don't have any here. Amtrak passenger transit is a broken joke.
Trains travel from the center of cities to the center of the next, not from some field in the boonies. Maglev high speed transit is also a national security asset, allowing movement of large quantities of goods across the country at high speed, without the need to fly it,
its good to have alternatives.
Come on folks, get real, Maglev high speed mass transit is a practical, proven twenty year old technology and the USA is standing on the sidelines whining about environmental impact statements and bogged down in litigation and monopolistic politics. How long do you think the Chinese spent on the environmental analysis for their train (Shanghai to Pudong)? We waste years on futile nit picking debate. I am all for public review, but not as an excuse to de-rail legitimate progress. We run a risk of falling way behind in this technology, instead of leading, lets get over the Not Invented Here problem, and get in the game, call your congresscritter and help make this happen.
The asking price is six ringgit, or less than two US Dollars. The de-facto Pirated Longhorn (Pronghorn?) street price is set. The new distribution channel is working. Are we seeing a new market testing strategy? The Bootlegged-Demo-Piracy-Test. Are pan-galactic hyper-intelligent marketing wizards doing something devious, or dodgy?. A new class of Free software, thats Free as in : "Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink, Know What I mean Squire!"
This is a new low cost offshore testing strategy, "Many pirates make all alpha tests shallow?" Reuters News Service notes that a Microsoft spokesman advises against installing this version, thats probably very good advice, but also deliciously tempting...
Wild speculation: If you willingly distribute demo copies of your closed source OS at a conference, you are probably aware this kind of thing can and will happen... So, its plausibly to wonder if its motivated by a deeper goal, maybe...
(1) Appearing to be the wounded victim of Pirates, provides more fuel for DRM, much needed sympathy in courts, press etc.
(2) Who cares. Any publicity is good publicity?
(3) Good viruses take time you know. Virus writers (out there somewhere) need plenty of reverse engineering time to keep the (massively profitable) anti-virus industry in business?
(4) Any bug report is a good bug report.
(5) Deliberate FUD, no signal, just noise, duh, move along now, nothing to see?.
(6) Nah, for my money this is all just conspiracy theory paranoia, triggered by regular PHB incompetence and normal illicit activity. NOP.
As several posters astutely point out, this doesn't prove much of anything, except perhaps the fascination folks have in the man vs machine philosophical conundrum. But WTF..., seems to me this occasional chess AI-Opera, is a small but valid part of exploring the mystery of our intelligence. Anything that gives us a point of comparison, or some datum points about how minds operate, however limited by arbitrary rules of engagement, is probably useful. Per Penrose, et-al, this mind stuff does seem to be genuinely hard to understand, a real frontier in our grokking of our selves. Some think, (and some philosophers just successfully simulate thinking), that there are fundamental limits to self reflection, and that we cannot describe and thus deliberately (by design) supercede our own intelligence. Bogus, IMHO, but then IANANAI (I think).
But it is true that most guys would probably pay big bucks to understand how women think some of the time! The reverse may be true, no man knows!
However this problem does not necessarily mean we cannot succeed in creating, a singular intelligence, probably by blind chance the method apparently favored by AI researchers. Or by an exhaustive search for LGM.
Seems we need a valid comparison in order to place our own intelligence into context and help us understand mankinds version of mind, yes yes even womens minds (plural?), ok weak joke now ended...
The discovery thing seems favorite to me, SETI would be justified simply by providing us with an existence proof that other intelligences can and do arise. Big bonus points if we get to communicate and infer how they think, or what they think with. Hmm, maybe they could help us with our significant other genders mind? What do we do if an Aliens first question is can we help them understand how their females think. Thats scary.
I think the machines will have arrived, when they get here with the beer, chicks and a suitcase full of cash. (Two out of three works for me). We can save the intelligent philosophical repartee until morning thanks.
Here's a poem about AI, written when I was out of my own tiny mind...
Man, the emperor mind,
clothes of ancient dna, woven wetware,
flesh and bone deconstructs, slashdots,
occams digital razor, strips the meat,
philosophy dances naked, logic unveiled,
a purists beautiful quantum enigma,
AI, mind less Man.
Ok, that was short and artificially pointless, now back to the endless chess match algorithm equals nascent AI debate...
There are a number of real world problems with this new design.
1. Simple designs with no moving parts, do not employ lots of people to run them. This is counter to the welfare program currently enjoyed by the Nuclear industry. They needs lots of manually operated, fragile equipment to maintain the publicly funded, fear based, nuclear engineer welfare state.
2. Its designed failsafe and easy to copy. This is completely unacceptable to the hordes of scientists who make a living running studies to evaluate the safety of our non-standard obsolete designs.
3. Its terrorist hostile. This really means it cannot be used for political fundraising. Damn! thats serious, what are they thinking? How can we be expected to set up a fear based, control and surveillance oriented, imperialistic, oil driven world order if people don't get with the program? All new nuclear technologies must be scary as hell. Whats so complicated about that?
4. Its not invented here! (for most values of here). Nuff said. Obviously its bad. Wrap it up in environmental lawsuits and regulatory nonsense for 25 years, or the half life of your oil based political agenda, whichever decays first.
5. It allows energy self sufficiency of small isolated communities. This is horribly close to independence, freedom and the associated evils of free speech, libertarianism, and other non right thinking creeds. Isolated people can decide they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! Alaska might start chucking coffee into the harbor and complaining about taxation without representation! How can we expect such communities to support wars in far away lands for oil, if they don't even need the stuff?
6. The waste it generates (30 years from now) is all in one easily transported and disposable lump. Just shove it on Joe's and Mo's truck and ship it to Yucca mountain(#2), or the New Mexico Waste isolation Pilot Plant (#3). We already know whats in it so we can't even spend billions of dollars characterizing it!. Thats way too easy! Where's the 100 year trillion dollar agency budget in that?
7. The material is the wrong sort to make Radiologic Dispersal Devices (Dirty Bombs for the media folks) what area they thinking, they could at least use something dodgy like Cesium 137, or Thorium or put it somewhere easy to steal (or just plain get a licence and order via the mail, see http://www.gao.gov reports GAO-03-804, GAO-03-638). Using stuff which is just plain safe is ridiculous. So think again nuclear designer folks!.
Many people will be totally opposed to these revolutionary, safe, simple, freedom oriented, cost efficient, anti-terrorist, green, disposable, long lasting, energy producing technologies.
Any fool can take water, malted grain, hops and yeast and come up with something boring like bread, or some such pointless item. It takes a real genius to make a great beer.
I hail from Macclesfield in Cheshire UK, so I was naturally brought up to see beer as a foodstuff, expecially Boddingtons! just one of the local nectars, and never dreamed any misguided folks thought differently until I moved to the USA.
Unfortunately, much as I love the place, beer is quite rare in the USA. The sad liquids called beer here, are usually strange chemical fluids the marketing folks reluctantly pay to put in the cans so their lite-weight flavorings and stabilizers dont just blow off the shelf. US beer is mostly ersatz, semi frozen, colored water, reminiscent of used mouthwash.
Nil Desperandum! Fortunately, Boddingtons is now here in the good ol USA, and better than ever (or maybe I just needed a real beer). Its brewed at the Strangeways brewery Manchester and imported from England by those excellent beer folks at LABATT USA. Boddingtons has genuinely advanced Draughtflow(r) System beer technology. Now thats what using technology is all about!
Any beer distinguishable from Real Draught Pub Nectar, is unsufficiently advanced.
Advanced real beers should be enjoyed cautiously by beer newbies unfamiliar with beer concepts such as having an actual taste, the complex concept of a creamy head (thats bubbles folks) and a reasonable alcohol ratio (thats where the food calories are). A real beer is a freind, treat it with respect and it will feed and look after you.
No one cares about US tech workers, including it seems those workers themselves. IT workers, (that includes me folks) have failed to organize or lobby or publicize effectively to protect themselves. We think of oursleves as elite, clever hackers (not crackers note), yet we are not a Profession, not protected, even though (I believe) we contribute much more indirectly to efficiency and culture and community than any other so called profession. The medical community is about making money, yet they market themselves as the caring profession, very smart PR, and impossible to offshore. We should learn some lessons from them.
We may be clever, but we miss the obvious, politically mal-droit, we can build operating systems via open source projects, but politically speaking we couldn't organize a kegger in a brewery. Wake up! they are pissing on our legs and telling us its raining. Are we going to stand here dripping urine and smile at them?
False IT labor shortage projections, created to justify allowing H1B's into the US was politically ok, as the bigger margins between billing rate and wages, accrued to the bottom line of US companies, who then make generous campaign contributions... Being a good capitalist, I believe they made the right decision, because its important that the US have the best politicians money can buy.
However, the big difference offshoring makes, is that the US tech firms will now NOT see the revenue from that Margin, IN the USA bottom line returns. Firms simply using Tech are better off however.
Margins will drop in the Tech producer US industry, quarterly returns will drop, CEO's bonuses will drop! (NOT). Jobs will be lost, forever. This means that lovely campaign funds and VOTES will be lost.
All the politicos and lobbyists will have to evaluate lower campaign contributions for allowing IT wages erosions, plus increased re-election and negative publicity concerns.
So, they will probably pass some half assed, innefective, semi-ludicrous legislative attempt to be PERCIEVED as trying to halt this trend. I say perceived, as they are not dumb, they know its hopeless. No country can fight the law of supply and demand. Bandwidth is here to stay.
Net effect (pun intended) is a lot of useless posturing, some marginal and pointless unionizing and much profitable public raving by media tech pundits.
Then back to status quo apathy about IT workers, (thats us folks), and the long slow spiral into lowest common denominator wages, global commodity pricing, for all distributable IT services.
IMHO, we either become a profession, with accreditation, licenced practitioners etc, or abandon all hope of competing with international globalization trends. Pick One.
So whats new here? Nothing much! Just media noise and politics. Boring. Everyone please move along....
Well.... IMHO there's fundamentally no answer to this because its an incompletely stated, perhaps not well formulated question. I don't mean to offend, but I think its too confused a query to be a useful debate. Its further confused because the Slashdot crowd mostly seem to assume that there's a valid technical answer to a business and quality issue? Why is that? To me, the underlying issue here is definition of Quality, as stated there really isn't one, or at least whats implied varies over time in an uncontrolled manner, so nothing definitive can be concluded as to whats ok, or not.
If the quick and dirty solution works, satisfying the customers stated, or implied quality criteria, its a job well done, thanks, move on.
If not, and the SOW, was incomplete, blame the project, business analysts, or business folks.
If the SOW was complete, and the system does not meet spec, then and only then is development performance an issue.
Basically, its seems that Q&D approach works for your company and your customer, but not for you, thats awkward, maybe consider changing your job. Most any other answer is a slippery slope argument leading to a religious war, for the ever waiting language/methodology/tool fetishists and flame crews. I do think that management in companies that cause such issues and debates, mostly reveal themselves as incompetent and not worth doing business with, whatever your quality stance, as they clearly have not defined their business process model sufficiently to trust the results or communicated the quality approach to the staff. My advice (FWIW), fire your company, or the PHB's and move on with your career, if the situation cannot be improved by discussion. Otherwise quit worrying about their dumb mistakes that you can't fix. In other words, maybe its time to just Get a Life. FYI, I am a technology manager, a PHB to most of Slashdot I guess, and sorry to bust any bubbles but not every shop is this dumb internally. Of course, thats only true for some limited ranges of stupid, and some sets of PHB's. YMMV.
"I just can't get jazzed about film and pics compared to someone, a real human, being there."
Sorry if this busts a bubble, but it likely neither of us is going to go. We are not going to be standing on the edge of Valleris Marinaris, looking at sunsets.
Do you want to hear "Crackle, buzz, gee thats a great sunset, (Suit temperature Alert) at 30%, I wish you folks at home could see this, I'll (Crackle vvvtt) try to Describe it (ZZZZttt)..... Etc. Plus a wobbly image from a handheld cam corder (1995 style, courtesy NASA procurement).
Don't get me wrong, if I understand you a-right, we want someone to "Be There!". I totally agree with you, the dream truly matters. It matters to me personally, it matters because it drives public opinion, and therefore funding.
However, Astronauts are humans, and incredibly vulnerable in space. They are also not Poets or Media personalities (mostly, so far...) they do not spontaneously utter uplifting prose. Thats just not the right stuff. They are and will be our best Scientists, Engineers, and Specialists. What we want is the experience, vicariously, remotely (inevitably). People want to share the Martian sunset experience for 45 seconds, between Maragritas and Sex.
So lets up the remote robot capability to give us 360 deg panoramic, views. Full surround sound (I know, may not apply). Plus any other sensors that drive the experience... Then give the data feed it to the media crews on Sol 3 to add the background symphony, poetry, heroic saga spin, virtual space explorers, etc etc. Hell let em appear to be standing next to the exploring robot, wearing a buck rogers suit, or a space babe bathing suit if you want (guess which gets better ratings and PR).
If you want to hear the experience from a real human, remember you may also get to hear... "My suit got torn!, darn cant seem to seal..., oopss thats hot, Zzzt, hurts... losing.... SSssss...." Probably followed by moaning, choking noises and then sad silence. That sucks!. Is that poetic enough for us all? Real death in space? Is that good PR ?
"If you take humans completely out of space you might as well fold it up and do it on a shoestring budget because only a few scientists (not the public) will get excited about it."
I don't agree, though you make a key point. Like many things, it depends how its presented. Its Real Space!, given the right video feeds, and manipulation, the publics interest can be engaged. The pictures of the Mars sunset can be spectacular, and as real as 99.9999 etc% of us are ever going to see...
Lots of folks in this debate have pointed out it seems that the risk reward mix is screwed up at NASA. Repeatedly traversing the high risk of launch and landing, of their aging space truck, at approx 1:50 odds of disaster,is not good PR and achieves nothing useful. I contend the robot approach gives us enough of the dream, for exploration to continue, and eventually lets us send, irreplaceable (though cheap to reproduce which is different) humans, when... its worth the risk.
I suggest that the "when do we send real people?" should not be under the control of NASA, especially, public relations influence. It should be a decision by an independent risk/reward evaluation board. I don't mean the internally loaded "good ol boys", I mean a board independent of NASA admin, and under public scrutiny. They want to risk peoples lives, let em show us why!
Whats worth the risk? Thats a real serious item here. Well... thats why we need an independent board..., maybe evidence of life, evidence of artifacts, otherwise unreachable resources, etc. Otherwise, send a robot.
I love space exploration, but unfortunately, I can't currently love NASA, their political problems has caused them to lose touch with reality. I for one, would willingly support increasing their budget if I thought they were using it to efficiently generate new useful knowledge. Instead of outdated, political, men in space, goals. Wake up NASA! the world has changed, give us results, not Buck Rogers!
Its clear that travel in space is going to be dangerous for a long time. The good news is we dont need to do it much. The dumb problem is NASA believes it must to survive politically. I contend that is a big fat mistake. That mis-assessment is killing some of our best people. We should only ask those with "the right stuff" to go when we have a destination in mind worth the significant and real risk, of losing their lives. I don't include running soap bubble experiments and other PR related feeble excuses to send the first into space. Did we really want to kill the first teacher into space, or the first Israeli, for this nonsense. We all have to realize we are a long way from needing a space station, for anything other than feeding our space opera, sci-fi fantasies. Get real.
Robotics is here. Remote and semi autonomous control is here. NASA management, thinks in terms of the technology it designed the shuttle with thirty years ago. Cheaper, faster, better, off the shelf, works. Yes we will have a few dumb mistakes like Mars Climate Orbiter, so what, No One Died. I read the Mishap Investigation Board report, it was mostly management cost cutting snafu's. The JPL folks navigating the thing were set up to fail by dumb PHB's (yeah they goofed it up too, but overworked, underfunded, folks will make mistakes). Imagine if that same mistake had lost us the first crew en-route to Mars. Robotics produces good, cheap science in space. Robot probes will boldly go where... You get the idea. Sojourner proved this. Beagle2, Spirit and hopefully Opportunity, will probably settle the issue. The long duration surveyors orbiting Mars right now have produced data thats invaluable in assessing that planet, including discovering water, this for a cost, and risk level, unattainable if humans were involved.
I want to see NASA re-focus their budget on on designing and launching small, cheap probes for a host of long duration missions. Robots should be used to explore truly interesting locations. Finally, they should be used to prepare the target environment for any human visit or colonization attempt. No career astronaut should feel obliged to risk long duration space travel, for NASA's PR and politics.
We should boldly go..., when we know there's somwewhere really worth boldly going to..., where the target has been surveyed and prepared for us by our Robots. Then our Astronauts may consider it worth the risk, to go where none have gone before.
A few humble additions to the latest, Ask Slashdot, unofficial summer reading guide. Lets just get past this reptitive stuff and start a GPL'd Geek Body Of Knowledge. Or GeeBok?...
I guess my list is mostly what I was reading sometime recently and is still lying
around the place. Ever noticed that read books, wait to be "borrowed", probably forever by a "friend" or just slid back into infinite "Library Space", by your freindly local Orangutan Librarian...
1. Metamagical Themas. The ever fascinating, Douglas R. Hofstadter.
2. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric S Raymond. Nuff Said.
3. The Portable Machievelli. Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa (Ed)
4. The art of deception. Nicholas Capaldi.
5. The Matrix and philosophy. William Erwin (Ed)
6. Asimovs guide to Shakespeare. Isaac Asimov.
7. The Canterbury Tales. Geofrey Chaucer.
8. Crossing the chasm. Geoffrey A. Moore.
9. The Discworld Series. Terry Pratchett.
10. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves series. P.G. Wodehouse.
11. The problems of Philosophy. Bertrand Russel.
There is another survey about Open Source Developers in the "Communications of the ACM", February 2002 Vol. 45. No. 2, which has the article "Who Is an Open Source Developer", by
Bert J. Dempsey, Debra Weiss, Paul Jones, and Jane Greenberg. ACM
The ACM researchers took a different approach, mostly compiling their data by analyzing many of the MetaLab Linux Archives, Linux Software Maps, the
formatted metadata files which are often used to describe a Linux contribution.
So the article could perhaps be titled "Who are Open Source Linux Contributors who uses LSM's."
The BCG survey gets more into the motivations and classifications of OSD's (another TLA?) while the ACM approach focusses on what code gets contributed. The two surveys appear to support and complement each other in several conclusions. The ACM research seems quite realistic,
and has interesting insights into Open Source Development, imho its not just a filler article re-stating the blindingly obvious for academic kudos.
The ACM paper has some not totally intuitive results (well some of it was news to me anyway). It also suggests that open source developers are a highly European, rather global group, with Germany in the lead and the UK featuring prominently, this supports the BCG survey.
The ACM article does not however get into where submissions based on.com addresses may
really originate from, While the BCG offers some insight there.
It supports the notion that each Open Source Developer tends to contribute a small number of code submissions in a
narrow area of specialized interest, usually application oriented (not games), which is counter to the
"heroic developer/hacker" stereotype and much more defensible as a stable development process.
The ACM study appears to provide support for the position that Open Source Development posesses an inherently
long term and dynamic stability. It suggests that Open Source Development is not dependent on a few people,
but rather on a growing effort to submit detailed, practical development work, by a diverse and truly globally
community of software developers. That may not be news to most/. folks, but good statistical support for such a conclusion
may be useful news for many technologists. the ACM study appears to bode extremely well
for the long term success of Open Source movements. Enjoy!
A few of my reasons for (rarely) paying for web sites info :
1) Time. It takes too long to fill in credit cards #'s etc, for such a small transaction. Time is a rare and precious resource, I sincerely object to wasting it for a marketdroids benefit.
2) Invalid payment model. Most sites use the subscription model, for items and services I view as an ad-hoc and probably one off usage.
3) Cost. IMHO most sites overcharge for the item/service. Often related to (2) above. Information has extremely subjective valuations, and a highly variable, short, shelf life. Many things are like this, the usual solution adopted is called haggling. I want to be able to make an offer if I don't agree with the asking price.
4) Trust. Web sites persist in demanding too much personal information and I have no reason to believe their canned promises not to abuse it. Given that they are usually controlled by marketing people, I have many empirical reasons to believe they will abuse it.
5) Privacy. Many purchases of information are necessarily private, do you want your competitors, significant other, boss, etc, to know what you are reading today? This privacy is at risk if the bills show up on a credit card bill, or in spam to my work email addresses, or in marketing stats.
6) It's hard to find any real value. Most stuff on the web is not truly unique or valuable, mostly I am paying for marginal convenience. Given a choice between spending ten minutes finding raw stuff for myself, or dropping $10 for some pre-digested bits, i'm nearly always gonna do the research... Thats a $60 an hour rate (ignoring tax). Plus the bonus of whatever I learn along the way, often equally valuable....
7) Keeping track. I don't want to have to check an extra 20 or so fiddling little items on my credit card bills. Thats like having to balance an account for the loose change in your pocket each day.
8) Caveat Emptor. I am wary of buying anything I can't see or try in advance. Especially from companys that subject me to problems 1 thru 5 above.
Overall, I don't think we can assume the problem is with our potential customers..., its gotta be our business model. Why "our model", well..., imho, seems to me that many folks on/. are in the business of selling and using packaged information, one way or another. So figuring out a usable financial instrument which supports "Bits4$" transactions, is something we would all potentially benefit from.
I suggest we pool some thinking about whats needed and maybe fire up an effort to fix this before the EAOTD (Evil Acronym Of The Day) or whomever start figuring out how to patent/sue/restrain or charge us repeatedly for every web page we hit.
My stab at some specs for micro transactions :
Fast. Easy, quick payment authorization, up to a user configurable limit.
Supports for making bids, can make offers for services and one-off payments.
Zero residual personal information available to vendor.
Fast. Like reaching in my pocket for a quarter fast...
Up front account payment. Zero additional accounting burden.
Umberimas Fides. Utmost good faith. Supports returns, no questions asked.
Did I mention fast?
Item (6) is clearly a tougher issue. However, I think that if a micro payment Bits4$ system was available, it might become a virtuous circle as sites use the funds for research.
A few, admittedly highly cynical observations, respectfully submitted:
This article is the typical mishmash of clueless quotes, half baked whines and self serving statistics that we all know and love from our friends the papparazzi. It's no better or worse than hundreds of others. I believe the slashdot community is one of the few that knows this, it's not really worth much of our time responding to these kinds of silly know-nothing opinions. That said, I'm going to anway dammit...
One truth (apparently accidentally) embedded here is that most projects should be killed at inception. As most of us know, projects are started by users with no idea what they want, which is frankly understandable, to a point. They are then ably aided and abetted by the common variety of clue challenged technology management teams, too weak to question them or help them figure it out. There's no motivation to challenge or help the users get focussed, because most managers are never measured or held accountable for the time they waste. Why not?, because managers being humans (yes its true!) are very careful not to measure the number and dollar cost of their failures.
I believe that an innovation we need is not some new language, tool or OS (even Linux), but a simple and practical project killing methodology. Basically, software development teams need to consider all projects a waste of time and money, until they are proven to have a viable business case and clearly achievable design. Middle management opinions should be considered inherently suspect. Failing all else, they should document their concerns and make sure these are noted by the CFO when the inevitable failure occurs. If you ever try to do this, you will probably be told its not your problem and the users/leaders/daddy knows best. If you ever hear this , its a huge red flag and clearly bullsh*t, given the failure rate. I consider this a perfectly ethical response to gross mis-management, for which developers are incorrectly blamed.
Remember, the fox is guarding the chicken coop. I believe that most management teams secretly love to have a huge backlog of support and bugs and many understaffed, under-planned, slowly failing projects. They are arsonists, who love to run around being hero's putting out fires they secretly started. Preventing the fires is no fun, and too hard, doesn't get you visibility or promoted and forces you to clash with ingrained cultures and cynical developers (yes that's us).
IMHO, this is an un-virtuous circle that lies at the heart of the so called software problem. That is, there isn't a software development problem at all, there is a software development leadership problem of enormous magnitude.
I know, I am one (d*mn, how did that happen!, I used to be a real developer honest..).
I am very doubtful that this problem is truly fixable. I believe it isn't because of the nature of human organization, the way technology projects are initiated and the inbuilt motivations to leave the situation the hell alone. These factors are built in, process improvements are transient and subject to entropy, in my experience they all fail, given sufficient time. That doesn't mean don't improve things, it means expect it to be temporary and won't matter much given the meta-chaos just described.
Finally, I believe the business and academic crowd, though fun and entertaining to watch, are fundamentally out of touch with what we need to fix this. They are inadvertantly contributing to the problems and confusion with silly research, bogus stats and idealized impractical methodologies. They mean well, but they can't openly grok whats going on.
Ok, I feel better now, gotta go, there's a new, cool, top priority, mission critical, must be done, greenfield, fully buzzword compliant project just starting. More sharp acronyms for the resume. You want in?...
Gotcha!
Man, the emperor mind, clothes of ancient dna, woven wetware, flesh and bone deconstructs, slashdots, occams digital razor, strips the meat, philosophy dances naked, logic unveiled, the pure, beautiful, quantum enigma, AI, mind less Man.
Opinion : 1. NASA projects often fail, that's to be expected given the difficulties. The real issue is that their political vulnerability and economic dependencies translate the lost missions into further failures of strategic leadership and vision. 2. NASA is simply not set up to be a risk taking/entrepenurial venture, which, is what we, the people, of earth, need. 3. I believe the evidence supports reasonable concern that our species, is at significant risk of extinction, while we remain isolated on an unguided oblate spheroid, trusting to blind chance to let us avoid Earth crossing asteroids. 4. Space has effectively infinite natural resources available for exploitation, with low/zero pollution impact. Take a look at the recent results from NEAR Shoemaker, from Eros. 5. I am not aware of any credible plan or program, from NASA, or anyone else, for the incremental economic buildout and exploitation of space. As a species, we need a business plan. I sincerely believe that the engineers, technologists, scientists, et-al, of Earth have the capability to exploit space. To discover, assess, access, colonize and make use of the abundant material resources. Oh and along the way, learn how to expand humanity into space as necessary and desirable. The game then changes from deciding who gets blamed for the next firework display over mars, to filling out the expense voucher for the next mars shuttle, Spacemiles (tm);-). What we clearly don't have, is the required leadership and economic incentives to make that happen. The dinosaurs never saw Chixculub coming, we may end up just as extinct, and a whole lot dumber, because we let a leadership failure defeat our intelligence. Suggestions : 1. NASA apparently can't, or won't, cut it, so lets relieve them of the problem, politically, ethically, legally, as nicely as possible, give em a useful role, make em feel good, but out of the way. Sometime yesterday would be good. 2. It's time to get some serious players get into the game, the best incentive is a clear potential to make obscene quantities of money. Vast uncountable wealth. Whatever the moral implications, it's worked in the past, so it should work again. Space has that incentive, so lets cut the profit factor loose and go get it. Yep there's some serious risk, many good people will probably die trying. Yet, many of us die for a lot less strategic reasons every day. As a species it's not a zero sum game, the upside potential for our race is effectively infinite. Think about that, the upside is unlimited resources, unimaginable technological leaps and survival, any of which are quite literally, priceless. It's not about who gets rich along the way, it's about whether or not humans get to go to the stars. I'm a human, I'm for us, I'm in!. IMHO the stars are the best possible gift, for our children. So, were all geeks, rumour has it we are marginally, smarter than most dinosaurs. How about we start using a few of those smarts to lead a little, obtain the necessary political influence, bend policy, so that there is a credible, incremental buildout, driving economic, exploitation of space. The goal, is the stars. Sound good?
Slashdot Mirror
Which leaves, guess what... that other deeply mysterious human gender, Women. Huh, who woulda thunk it, a game popular with the ladies..., Gosh!, maybe they even deliberately designed it that way. Which is probably why, statistically speaking, most slashdotters don't get it.
My daughter (age 16), and freinds, loves the original Sims+Pack+++ and is eagerly awaiting the new game.
The Sims is a beautifully crafted and delivered fantasy AI world where players pretend absolute control over other peoples lives. To say nothing of the amazingly detailed, houses, landscaping, decoration, fashion and gizmo obsessions. The whole thing has a lightweight, easygoing ethic and experience that is light years from the dark and dangerous firefights guys enjoy.
Of course, what this fantasy may say about the real workings of the female psyche... I shudder to think, not something a guy/father can safely speculate about and stay politically correct, (or alive).
But what of it..., its fantasy, harmless entertainment liked by women, so EA found a winner, and a whole otherwise ignored market, so good luck to em I say.
Maybe we should all learn to write games and software that women as well as geek guys can like... Heck, I heard they were 50% of the random user base!
Early detection, capability to intercept and a practical method of delivering low thrust for the required period, probably via a remotely controlled probe, would seem to be all that is necessary.
I leave the rest as a trivial exercise in rocketry to be completed by our space cowboys, NASA, by the time of the next pop Extinction Level Event, coming to a planet near you.
It seems strange that we may become extinct because of our fascination with missiles and buck rogers heroism in space movies. This causes media driven agencies like NASA to ignore practical issues, like preserving the species.
On blowing things up: Turning a deadly extinction class asteroid into a radioactive shotgun cluster of deadly small asteroids, by peppering it with Nukes, will only demonstrate to our survivors that our civilization deserved to become extinct.
The MAMF often appears as "formal methods" or "algorithmic proofs" or in extreme cases "maturity models". The disease usually surfaces in comp-sci student authored articles, in CACM or IEEE, or other vectors for spreading academic ideas publicly. This suggests that universities publishing novel methodology ideas, have unanticipated consequences that are surprisingly dangerous to the common good. This is known and expected in some fields such as biological weapons, or nukes, its impact via software engineering may have been overlooked.
MAMF displays a broad class of characteristics:
What can we do to help avoid MAMF ?
Well the good news is that the answer does not involve Hobbits or Rings, or dark lords, or evil empires, unless you really want to get extremely philosophical.
The bad news is that this is like trying to cure the common cold, this marketing meme is successful because it mutates rapidly. I believe there is no simple cure. The common solution is to simply endure the parasites and discomfort, until the organizations natural immu
Brings a whole new meaning to End Of Life doesnt it when the bolts on your wheels unlock themselves, maybe cos you pass a hotspot, or a repair dealer with a cash flow problem.
I think we need some laws that make it illegal to build a devices intended to prevent, the repair or alteration of the product offered for sale. Designing and making any device to remotely controlled by anyone other than the owner, should be jail time for the seller, the company CXO's and owners, do not pass go, do not collect marketing award.
I am old enough to remeber taking cars to bits for fun and profit (or was it girls... Yeah!)
How are kids gonna do that if they have to buy BOLT.EXE from Frod Rolloversoft for $15,000. As other posters noted, this particular idea is way beyond stupid, mechanically. However... the business model that gives rise to the idea needs to be made illegal.
Its time to define into law a few mechanical and software reverse engineering maintenance, and alteration, rights and privileges.
Isn't this also a matter of national security? We are going to look really stupid if we cant maintain simple mechanical devices and systems in any future era, where our dealer infrastructure and InfraDaft Boltware companies are smoking holes in the ground.
Some things need to be fixable with simple tools, fast, in nasty places.
I would support unpleasant consequences for any product designer that infringes that mandate. Did they stop teaching basic humanitarian and business ethics in design schools or something?
In the interim, punish companies that produce such trends in products by supporting a gratuitous existence failure in their sales. Do not buy the products. I like the Golgafrinchan solution. Sod all political correctness for a farce, dump all the morons, make em somebody elses problem.
Ok, so I forced myself to read the entire article, not easy, its a collection of confused finger pointing, and poor journalistic sound bites, sole intent to fill a news article. Zero Meaningful Content..
:
To summarize
They are concerned about how the project was managed.
Concerned that the investment may not get repaid.
There are problems with the control system (not the magnetic levittation system itself note)
The assets are apparently a series of patents. Thats odd really, considering this is a tewenty year old technology.
The board and the university may have screwed up, they didn't put appropriate bonds in place, so now they are all nervous as to who gets blamed.
A board member now blames the technology, saying that others (Japan) could not make it work. This is incorrect.
Another guy refused to invest because of problems with the company (not the technology).
Maglev trains are described as "floats on a cushion of air". Duh. Fine journalism.
FRA has issued a stop work order, as usual asleep at the wheel. Way way way too late IMHO.
Overall, they all completely mismanaged this, tried to invent new stuff that doesn't work, and now need another two million dollar handout to get out of the hole they dug for us, the victim taxpayers.
Oh, and in the process they tarnish the reputation of a transportation technology we actually need.
Thanks for nothing ODU and FRA guys. Do us a favor, go fire yourselves.
I think that the question is invalid. There is the dubious assumption that you must pick a tool, to teach "database concepts". IMHO incorrect, subtly and forgivably so perhaps, but still false...
To give the maligned IT group the benefit of some doubt they are probably trying to standardize on something they have available cheaply, that looks (to them) as if its freindly to newbie students.
Well, indeed it is freindly (like drug dealer freindly), unfortunately, freindliness is not a criteria for tackling the serious business of learning to design (non-trivial) databases. The first easy fix is for free, after that the new IDE junkie, spirals into nasty addiction, hooked into another mind-candy toolset.
However, if we assume that all databases in university courses are de-facto trivial, then an IDE is fine... because by the time the poor students figure out they have been duped, and hooked on a street vendors junk, its far too late to complain...
Tough love : If you really want to teach database concepts you use an ancient method called teaching, which uses an experienced "teacher".
Experienced as in "has actually done the task, in the real world, for a real system, for pay" not, "has read the course notes, 15 minutes before the class".
As many of us have not had the privilege of meeting a real teacher lately, because universitys do not hire them anymore, let me remind you that this is a sophisticated human assistant, who can communicate and teach database concepts. This includes design principles, theory, case studies, normal forms, denormalization (and when to use it), design symbology, drawing correct diagrams, discovery and definition of entitys in requirements, defining attributes and relations. The place of database design, in the larger practice of systems analysis and design. Some pragmatic history, such as when to use other non-relational types of databases (OO, Hierarchic, Hybrids). The mapping between database schemes and common program structures, and objects, linked-lists, queues and other similar constructs. Etc...
Implementation level languages and syntax such as DDL, DML, XML, etc, then become quite minor exercises, that a student can hack about, or not, as necessary.
Specialized, closed source, vendor IDE's (such as MS-Access) that blend some of these elements together with other development areas, do have a place, but IMHO, are not a relevant starting point. Unless of course, its really just edumacational hocus pocus, to sell lite and fluffy "design" courses.
Heresy?, sure...
There is a saying, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." Funny maybe, but also quite offensive and false, at least in this case. Fact is, those offshore are hard working humans, just like us.
:
:
I read the article (I know, not always required here) IMHO it is fairly clueless and light-weight, typical of the NY Times lately. Whats interesting is the depth of feeling about it on Slashdot.
I grew up in the UK with many freinds of Indian background, a fine people with a rich culture.
I have worked alongside them, in the UK and in the USA on projects that are multi-shored. Fact is, the results do vary enormously, but thats normal in IT. However, offshoring seems to be improving faster than we are, offshore staff are usually highly educated, and very serious about improving quality and process. These are crucial capabilities, mired in apathy and management hostility in the USA.
Offshoring is kicking American Software Project performance butt, because our Management has a set of dumb mantras that will guarantee we ultimately lose this industry. To list a few
Fear is the best motivator.
Screw process. Quality? Yeah Right!
Design? huh just build it?.
Training Courses - hah!.
Next quarters results rule.
Arbitrary deadlines drive release dates.
The dumb belief in staff fungibility as a method of imposing fear.
A nasty, secretive, hostility to actual smart engineers and software developers.
Offshore, the countries and companies have a long term strategic view. In almost any game, a pragmatic strategy vs no strategy, will win. Our CEO/CIO/CXO are clearly incapable of such a strategic view, so offshore companies will win the future IT business and jobs. This is in no way a development problem, its simply an outcome of incompetent management direction and intent.
As part of the general frustration, its quite apalling how many people on Slashdot appear to hate most Project Managers, like myself.
Bear with me here, I would like to use an analogy; Project managers perform a similar role as the Director of a movie, but, without the award ceremonies or casting couches.
We are integrators, glue, we filter out much crap, communicators, wipers away of tears and fears, counsellors of the oppressed, buyers of beer, experts in the air-speed of african swallows. Generalist in a world of specialists (an oxymoron in itself really).
We do viewgraphs for the Lord High Poobahs, we faithfully deliver facts and opinions to those skilled in killing messengers. Many of us get killed in the process, I have been killed many times. Its not fun, and its going to get worse, IMHO there are long term problems for project managers, and thats ultimately pain for Business as well.
Software project managers (at least those with any kind of clue) have usually been developers and usually attempt to maintain some reasonable level of technical understanding. Fallen from the true hacker faith of 100% coding, we live on in the twilight world of software project integration.
We are tolerated by "Real Programmers" because we translate Technobabble into Poobah, and vice versa. We are a specialized form of babelfish. I have been entertained many times by folks with no translation experience trying to run software projects. Its pathetic and its dumb, but they continue to try.
Now the bit that really worries me
I think that decent translators and software PM's will become a rapidly vanishing breed. The development work and quality and process understanding etc, will not happen here (for most given values of here). In next ten to fifteen years, few in the USA will be able to run a software project, based on actual personal development knowledge and experience. At that point there will be a real loss in translation and then of control. Companies will not be able to manage projects efficiently from within the USA. This is already happening, its just not on the radar yet, at least not the weak-ass
There is a popular ATM "modus operandi".
Thieves, hotwire a backhoe, drive it a couple of miles and use it to liberate an ATM from wherever, drop it into a truck and get the hell outa Dodge.
Imagine the disappointment when they get it home... if one of these fake ATM's gets selected for a backhoe style type smash and grab theft. Plus, imagine the disappointment for the original ATM fakers.... Delicious.
Murphys law says its gotta happen sometime!
Organized crime?, Nah!, for my money, its not really all that well organized....
I have wondered for a while about the need for a localized cellphone status protocol. LCSP?
I propose that Cellphones have a designed in default profile (allow user to disable?) setting which allows them to pick up a localized "Set Silent Command". Emit say one beep to let the user know its been tripped and then stay silent for a few hours (user configurable duration?). Localized means say within a specfic room or corridor.
There should be an inverse "Return to Prior State" protocol command that resets the cellphone back to its earlier alert state (which may have already been silent of course).
At the entrance to a movie, or live theatre, or sound studio, etc..., a small transmitter uses the protocol to "Set Silent" at the end of the movie, on the way out of the theatre, transmit "Reset State". Post a decal or two to let folks know that they are in a cellphone local protocol area or something.
Maybe we could use this to default cellphones to silent, while we are driving, might prevent a few accidents.
This seems likely to have been proposed somewhere before and clearly has not happened, but why not I wonder? I am sure there's some gotchas in here, but this would be a social boon in many circumstances. Is it a reasonable idea?, technical feasibility? any chance of it happening?
What say you Slashdot!
A physics professor, is riding his bicycle around a desolate San Jose strip mall, sad and lonely because his girl left him to live on a beach in Hawai.
He kicks an odd shaped, klein bottle lying under a bag of chips and rotten apples.
A flash and a bang and next thing you know a hacker genie-us is standing there, glaring at him with distaste. "Ok so your name tag says your a low-life newbie Physics guy. Sorry but your licenced version of reality only allows one level 3 rapid response wish. All other wishes I must transfer to local help desk support."
"My girl left me cos she thinks I don't have a job, please build me an application that can design a bridge, so I can ride over on my bike and see her!
"Are you nuts, thats a ridiculous waste of expensive computer design time, besides its too simple an engineering problem to be worthwhile, just use an existing bridge design and scale up the stress and load factors to account for the depth of water, and other negligible physical effects. Pick a serious problem!"
Ok, ha ha, just kidding!, here's my cellphone, please call my girlfreind and explain to her what a Physics Professor does for a living, so she comes back to me.
"Hmmm, I see your problem, ok, how many bike lanes did you want on that bridge?"
Maglev should be here in the USA check out these guys - High Speed Maglev - The Pennsylvania Project
I have had some recent involvement with these folks and have been extremely impressed, they are capable engineers and deadly serious about making Maglev happen. I believe this would be a Good Thing and truly hope they succeed. We should be building a National network of Maglev High Speed Transit Links.
Heresy Warning : There are three major modes of transport available, not two as is apparently the belief of many Slashdotters. Roads, Rapid transit, and Planes linked together make sense and thats what most countries use and plan on expanding. For political reasons the USA has always shunned mass transit, its way past time that outdated corrupt and fundamentally dumb attitude changed. Maglev is Green, little or no pollution, post-construction phase. Unlike Planes and Cars and Trucks.
Maglev is hard to use as a terrorist target. Nowadays our highways are shooting galleries for insane snipers. Our airports are permanent security zoos and impossible to use efficiently due to the paranoia level required. (Side note. I think TSA is doing it as well as could be expected, its just that its a fundamentally misguided and hopeless task)
High speed maglev rail avoids the terrorism problem. Imagine being able to travel cross country without risking a body cavity search, or driving for five days!
If some nut takes over a Maglev train, shut down the power and call SWAT. No flying into buildings etc.
300+ MPH or so cruise speed, gets you across the country in 8 hours, thats about the same amount of time it takes to get from your apartment to the "sorry for the delay, were first in line for takeoff" if your airport is having a bad day.
Trains can be extremely reliable, luxuriously comfortable, smooth and fun to ride, they are rarely affected by weather, most folks in America have never had an opportunity to take a good fast train, 'cos you don't have any here. Amtrak passenger transit is a broken joke.
Trains travel from the center of cities to the center of the next, not from some field in the boonies. Maglev high speed transit is also a national security asset, allowing movement of large quantities of goods across the country at high speed, without the need to fly it, its good to have alternatives.
Come on folks, get real, Maglev high speed mass transit is a practical, proven twenty year old technology and the USA is standing on the sidelines whining about environmental impact statements and bogged down in litigation and monopolistic politics. How long do you think the Chinese spent on the environmental analysis for their train (Shanghai to Pudong)? We waste years on futile nit picking debate. I am all for public review, but not as an excuse to de-rail legitimate progress. We run a risk of falling way behind in this technology, instead of leading, lets get over the Not Invented Here problem, and get in the game, call your congresscritter and help make this happen.
What say you Slashdot?
This is a new low cost offshore testing strategy, "Many pirates make all alpha tests shallow?" Reuters News Service notes that a Microsoft spokesman advises against installing this version, thats probably very good advice, but also deliciously tempting...
Wild speculation: If you willingly distribute demo copies of your closed source OS at a conference, you are probably aware this kind of thing can and will happen... So, its plausibly to wonder if its motivated by a deeper goal, maybe...
(1) Appearing to be the wounded victim of Pirates, provides more fuel for DRM, much needed sympathy in courts, press etc.
(2) Who cares. Any publicity is good publicity?
(3) Good viruses take time you know. Virus writers (out there somewhere) need plenty of reverse engineering time to keep the (massively profitable) anti-virus industry in business?
(4) Any bug report is a good bug report.
(5) Deliberate FUD, no signal, just noise, duh, move along now, nothing to see?.
(6) Nah, for my money this is all just conspiracy theory paranoia, triggered by regular PHB incompetence and normal illicit activity. NOP.
But it is true that most guys would probably pay big bucks to understand how women think some of the time! The reverse may be true, no man knows! However this problem does not necessarily mean we cannot succeed in creating, a singular intelligence, probably by blind chance the method apparently favored by AI researchers. Or by an exhaustive search for LGM.
Seems we need a valid comparison in order to place our own intelligence into context and help us understand mankinds version of mind, yes yes even womens minds (plural?), ok weak joke now ended...
The discovery thing seems favorite to me, SETI would be justified simply by providing us with an existence proof that other intelligences can and do arise. Big bonus points if we get to communicate and infer how they think, or what they think with. Hmm, maybe they could help us with our significant other genders mind? What do we do if an Aliens first question is can we help them understand how their females think. Thats scary.
I think the machines will have arrived, when they get here with the beer, chicks and a suitcase full of cash. (Two out of three works for me). We can save the intelligent philosophical repartee until morning thanks.
Here's a poem about AI, written when I was out of my own tiny mind...
Man, the emperor mind,
clothes of ancient dna, woven wetware,
flesh and bone deconstructs, slashdots,
occams digital razor, strips the meat,
philosophy dances naked, logic unveiled,
a purists beautiful quantum enigma,
AI, mind less Man.
Ok, that was short and artificially pointless, now back to the endless chess match algorithm equals nascent AI debate...
1. Simple designs with no moving parts, do not employ lots of people to run them. This is counter to the welfare program currently enjoyed by the Nuclear industry. They needs lots of manually operated, fragile equipment to maintain the publicly funded, fear based, nuclear engineer welfare state.
2. Its designed failsafe and easy to copy. This is completely unacceptable to the hordes of scientists who make a living running studies to evaluate the safety of our non-standard obsolete designs.
3. Its terrorist hostile. This really means it cannot be used for political fundraising. Damn! thats serious, what are they thinking? How can we be expected to set up a fear based, control and surveillance oriented, imperialistic, oil driven world order if people don't get with the program? All new nuclear technologies must be scary as hell. Whats so complicated about that?
4. Its not invented here! (for most values of here). Nuff said. Obviously its bad. Wrap it up in environmental lawsuits and regulatory nonsense for 25 years, or the half life of your oil based political agenda, whichever decays first.
5. It allows energy self sufficiency of small isolated communities. This is horribly close to independence, freedom and the associated evils of free speech, libertarianism, and other non right thinking creeds. Isolated people can decide they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! Alaska might start chucking coffee into the harbor and complaining about taxation without representation! How can we expect such communities to support wars in far away lands for oil, if they don't even need the stuff?
6. The waste it generates (30 years from now) is all in one easily transported and disposable lump. Just shove it on Joe's and Mo's truck and ship it to Yucca mountain(#2), or the New Mexico Waste isolation Pilot Plant (#3). We already know whats in it so we can't even spend billions of dollars characterizing it!. Thats way too easy! Where's the 100 year trillion dollar agency budget in that?
7. The material is the wrong sort to make Radiologic Dispersal Devices (Dirty Bombs for the media folks) what area they thinking, they could at least use something dodgy like Cesium 137, or Thorium or put it somewhere easy to steal (or just plain get a licence and order via the mail, see http://www.gao.gov reports GAO-03-804, GAO-03-638). Using stuff which is just plain safe is ridiculous. So think again nuclear designer folks!.
Many people will be totally opposed to these revolutionary, safe, simple, freedom oriented, cost efficient, anti-terrorist, green, disposable, long lasting, energy producing technologies.
The real world question is, why?
Any fool can take water, malted grain, hops and yeast and come up with something boring like bread, or some such pointless item. It takes a real genius to make a great beer.
I hail from Macclesfield in Cheshire UK, so I was naturally brought up to see beer as a foodstuff, expecially Boddingtons! just one of the local nectars, and never dreamed any misguided folks thought differently until I moved to the USA.
Unfortunately, much as I love the place, beer is quite rare in the USA. The sad liquids called beer here, are usually strange chemical fluids the marketing folks reluctantly pay to put in the cans so their lite-weight flavorings and stabilizers dont just blow off the shelf. US beer is mostly ersatz, semi frozen, colored water, reminiscent of used mouthwash.
Nil Desperandum! Fortunately, Boddingtons is now here in the good ol USA, and better than ever (or maybe I just needed a real beer). Its brewed at the Strangeways brewery Manchester and imported from England by those excellent beer folks at LABATT USA. Boddingtons has genuinely advanced Draughtflow(r) System beer technology. Now thats what using technology is all about!
Any beer distinguishable from Real Draught Pub Nectar, is unsufficiently advanced.
Advanced real beers should be enjoyed cautiously by beer newbies unfamiliar with beer concepts such as having an actual taste, the complex concept of a creamy head (thats bubbles folks) and a reasonable alcohol ratio (thats where the food calories are). A real beer is a freind, treat it with respect and it will feed and look after you.
IANABM (I Am Not A Beer Marketer)
Cheers Slashdot!
IT workers, (that includes me folks) have failed to organize or lobby or publicize effectively to protect themselves.
We think of oursleves as elite, clever hackers (not crackers note), yet we are not a Profession, not protected, even though (I believe) we contribute much more indirectly to efficiency and culture and community than any other so called profession.
The medical community is about making money, yet they market themselves as the caring profession, very smart PR, and impossible to offshore. We should learn some lessons from them.
We may be clever, but we miss the obvious, politically mal-droit, we can build operating systems via open source projects, but politically speaking we couldn't organize a kegger in a brewery. Wake up! they are pissing on our legs and telling us its raining. Are we going to stand here dripping urine and smile at them?
False IT labor shortage projections, created to justify allowing H1B's into the US was politically ok, as the bigger margins between billing rate and wages, accrued to the bottom line of US companies, who then make generous campaign contributions...
Being a good capitalist, I believe they made the right decision, because its important that the US have the best politicians money can buy.
However, the big difference offshoring makes, is that the US tech firms will now NOT see the revenue from that Margin, IN the USA bottom line returns. Firms simply using Tech are better off however.
Margins will drop in the Tech producer US industry, quarterly returns will drop, CEO's bonuses will drop! (NOT).
Jobs will be lost, forever. This means that lovely campaign funds and VOTES will be lost.
All the politicos and lobbyists will have to evaluate lower campaign contributions
for allowing IT wages erosions, plus increased re-election and negative publicity concerns.
So, they will probably pass some half assed, innefective, semi-ludicrous legislative attempt
to be PERCIEVED as trying to halt this trend. I say perceived, as they are not dumb,
they know its hopeless. No country can fight the law of supply and demand. Bandwidth is here to stay.
Net effect (pun intended) is a lot of useless posturing, some marginal and pointless unionizing and
much profitable public raving by media tech pundits.
Then back to status quo apathy about IT workers, (thats us folks), and the long slow spiral into lowest
common denominator wages, global commodity pricing, for all distributable IT services.
IMHO, we either become a profession, with accreditation, licenced practitioners etc,
or abandon all hope of competing with international globalization trends. Pick One.
So whats new here? Nothing much!
Just media noise and politics. Boring. Everyone please move along....
Well.... IMHO there's fundamentally no answer to this because its an incompletely stated, perhaps not well formulated question. I don't mean to offend, but I think its too confused a query to be a useful debate. Its further confused because the Slashdot crowd mostly seem to assume that there's a valid technical answer to a business and quality issue? Why is that? To me, the underlying issue here is definition of Quality, as stated there really isn't one, or at least whats implied varies over time in an uncontrolled manner, so nothing definitive can be concluded as to whats ok, or not.
Basically, its seems that Q&D approach works for your company and your customer, but not for you, thats awkward, maybe consider changing your job. Most any other answer is a slippery slope argument leading to a religious war, for the ever waiting language/methodology/tool fetishists and flame crews.
I do think that management in companies that cause such issues and debates, mostly reveal themselves as incompetent and not worth doing business with, whatever your quality stance, as they clearly have not defined their business process model sufficiently to trust the results or communicated the quality approach to the staff.
My advice (FWIW), fire your company, or the PHB's and move on with your career, if the situation cannot be improved by discussion. Otherwise quit worrying about their dumb mistakes that you can't fix. In other words, maybe its time to just Get a Life.
FYI, I am a technology manager, a PHB to most of Slashdot I guess, and sorry to bust any bubbles but not every shop is this dumb internally.
Of course, thats only true for some limited ranges of stupid, and some sets of PHB's. YMMV.
"I just can't get jazzed about film and pics compared to someone, a real human, being there."
Sorry if this busts a bubble, but it likely neither of us is going to go. We are not going to be standing on the edge of Valleris Marinaris, looking at sunsets.
Do you want to hear "Crackle, buzz, gee thats a great sunset, (Suit temperature Alert) at 30%, I wish you folks at home could see this, I'll (Crackle vvvtt) try to Describe it (ZZZZttt)..... Etc.
Plus a wobbly image from a handheld cam corder (1995 style, courtesy NASA procurement).
Don't get me wrong, if I understand you a-right, we want someone to "Be There!".
I totally agree with you, the dream truly matters. It matters to me personally, it matters because it drives public opinion, and therefore funding.
However, Astronauts are humans, and incredibly vulnerable in space. They are also not Poets or Media personalities (mostly, so far...) they do not spontaneously utter uplifting prose. Thats just not the right stuff. They are and will be our best Scientists, Engineers, and Specialists. What we want is the experience, vicariously, remotely (inevitably). People want to share the Martian sunset experience for 45 seconds, between Maragritas and Sex.
So lets up the remote robot capability to give us 360 deg panoramic, views. Full surround sound (I know, may not apply). Plus any other sensors that drive the experience... Then give the data feed it to the media crews on Sol 3 to add the background symphony, poetry, heroic saga spin, virtual space explorers, etc etc. Hell let em appear to be standing next to the exploring robot, wearing a buck rogers suit, or a space babe bathing suit if you want (guess which gets better ratings and PR).
If you want to hear the experience from a real human, remember you may also get to hear... "My suit got torn!, darn cant seem to seal..., oopss thats hot, Zzzt, hurts... losing.... SSssss...." Probably followed by moaning, choking noises and then sad silence. That sucks!. Is that poetic enough for us all? Real death in space? Is that good PR ?
"If you take humans completely out of space you might as well fold it up and do it on a shoestring budget because only a few scientists (not the public) will get excited about it."
I don't agree, though you make a key point. Like many things, it depends how its presented. Its Real Space!, given the right video feeds, and manipulation, the publics interest can be engaged. The pictures of the Mars sunset can be spectacular, and as real as 99.9999 etc% of us are ever going to see...
Lots of folks in this debate have pointed out it seems that the risk reward mix is screwed up at NASA. Repeatedly traversing the high risk of launch and landing, of their aging space truck, at approx 1:50 odds of disaster,is not good PR and achieves nothing useful. I contend the robot approach gives us enough of the dream, for exploration to continue, and eventually lets us send, irreplaceable (though cheap to reproduce which is different) humans, when... its worth the risk.
I suggest that the "when do we send real people?" should not be under the control of NASA, especially, public relations influence. It should be a decision by an independent risk/reward evaluation board. I don't mean the internally loaded "good ol boys", I mean a board independent of NASA admin, and under public scrutiny. They want to risk peoples lives, let em show us why!
Whats worth the risk? Thats a real serious item here. Well... thats why we need an independent board..., maybe evidence of life, evidence of artifacts, otherwise unreachable resources, etc. Otherwise, send a robot.
Go Opportunity!
I love space exploration, but unfortunately, I can't currently love NASA, their political problems has caused them to lose touch with reality. I for one, would willingly support increasing their budget if I thought they were using it to efficiently generate new useful knowledge. Instead of outdated, political, men in space, goals. Wake up NASA! the world has changed, give us results, not Buck Rogers!
Its clear that travel in space is going to be dangerous for a long time. The good news is we dont need to do it much. The dumb problem is NASA believes it must to survive politically. I contend that is a big fat mistake. That mis-assessment is killing some of our best people. We should only ask those with "the right stuff" to go when we have a destination in mind worth the significant and real risk, of losing their lives. I don't include running soap bubble experiments and other PR related feeble excuses to send the first into space. Did we really want to kill the first teacher into space, or the first Israeli, for this nonsense. We all have to realize we are a long way from needing a space station, for anything other than feeding our space opera, sci-fi fantasies. Get real.
Robotics is here. Remote and semi autonomous control is here. NASA management, thinks in terms of the technology it designed the shuttle with thirty years ago. Cheaper, faster, better, off the shelf, works. Yes we will have a few dumb mistakes like Mars Climate Orbiter, so what, No One Died. I read the Mishap Investigation Board report, it was mostly management cost cutting snafu's. The JPL folks navigating the thing were set up to fail by dumb PHB's (yeah they goofed it up too, but overworked, underfunded, folks will make mistakes). Imagine if that same mistake had lost us the first crew en-route to Mars. Robotics produces good, cheap science in space. Robot probes will boldly go where... You get the idea. Sojourner proved this. Beagle2, Spirit and hopefully Opportunity, will probably settle the issue. The long duration surveyors orbiting Mars right now have produced data thats invaluable in assessing that planet, including discovering water, this for a cost, and risk level, unattainable if humans were involved.
I want to see NASA re-focus their budget on on designing and launching small, cheap probes for a host of long duration missions. Robots should be used to explore truly interesting locations. Finally, they should be used to prepare the target environment for any human visit or colonization attempt. No career astronaut should feel obliged to risk long duration space travel, for NASA's PR and politics.
We should boldly go..., when we know there's somwewhere really worth boldly going to..., where the target has been surveyed and prepared for us by our Robots. Then our Astronauts may consider it worth the risk, to go where none have gone before.
Go Opportunity!
A few humble additions to the latest, Ask Slashdot, unofficial summer reading guide. Lets just get past this reptitive stuff and start a GPL'd Geek Body Of Knowledge. Or GeeBok?...
I guess my list is mostly what I was reading sometime recently and is still lying around the place. Ever noticed that read books, wait to be "borrowed", probably forever by a "friend" or just slid back into infinite "Library Space", by your freindly local Orangutan Librarian...
- 1. Metamagical Themas. The ever fascinating, Douglas R. Hofstadter.
2. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric S Raymond. Nuff Said.
3. The Portable Machievelli. Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa (Ed)
4. The art of deception. Nicholas Capaldi.
5. The Matrix and philosophy. William Erwin (Ed)
6. Asimovs guide to Shakespeare. Isaac Asimov.
7. The Canterbury Tales. Geofrey Chaucer.
8. Crossing the chasm. Geoffrey A. Moore.
9. The Discworld Series. Terry Pratchett.
10. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves series. P.G. Wodehouse.
11. The problems of Philosophy. Bertrand Russel.
Enjoy!. I did.There is another survey about Open Source Developers in the "Communications of the ACM", February 2002 Vol. 45. No. 2, which has the article "Who Is an Open Source Developer", by Bert J. Dempsey, Debra Weiss, Paul Jones, and Jane Greenberg. ACM
The ACM researchers took a different approach, mostly compiling their data by analyzing many of the MetaLab Linux Archives, Linux Software Maps, the formatted metadata files which are often used to describe a Linux contribution. So the article could perhaps be titled "Who are Open Source Linux Contributors who uses LSM's." The BCG survey gets more into the motivations and classifications of OSD's (another TLA?) while the ACM approach focusses on what code gets contributed. The two surveys appear to support and complement each other in several conclusions. The ACM research seems quite realistic, and has interesting insights into Open Source Development, imho its not just a filler article re-stating the blindingly obvious for academic kudos.
The ACM paper has some not totally intuitive results (well some of it was news to me anyway). It also suggests that open source developers are a highly European, rather global group, with Germany in the lead and the UK featuring prominently, this supports the BCG survey. The ACM article does not however get into where submissions based on .com addresses may
really originate from, While the BCG offers some insight there.
It supports the notion that each Open Source Developer tends to contribute a small number of code submissions in a narrow area of specialized interest, usually application oriented (not games), which is counter to the "heroic developer/hacker" stereotype and much more defensible as a stable development process.
The ACM study appears to provide support for the position that Open Source Development posesses an inherently long term and dynamic stability. It suggests that Open Source Development is not dependent on a few people, but rather on a growing effort to submit detailed, practical development work, by a diverse and truly globally community of software developers. That may not be news to most /. folks, but good statistical support for such a conclusion
may be useful news for many technologists. the ACM study appears to bode extremely well
for the long term success of Open Source movements. Enjoy!
A few of my reasons for (rarely) paying for web sites info :
/. are in the business of selling and using packaged information, one way or another. So figuring out a usable financial instrument which supports "Bits4$" transactions, is something we would all potentially benefit from.
1) Time. It takes too long to fill in credit cards #'s etc, for such a small transaction. Time is a rare and precious resource, I sincerely object to wasting it for a marketdroids benefit.
2) Invalid payment model. Most sites use the subscription model, for items and services I view as an ad-hoc and probably one off usage.
3) Cost. IMHO most sites overcharge for the item/service. Often related to (2) above. Information has extremely subjective valuations, and a highly variable, short, shelf life. Many things are like this, the usual solution adopted is called haggling. I want to be able to make an offer if I don't agree with the asking price.
4) Trust. Web sites persist in demanding too much personal information and I have no reason to believe their canned promises not to abuse it. Given that they are usually controlled by marketing people, I have many empirical reasons to believe they will abuse it.
5) Privacy. Many purchases of information are necessarily private, do you want your competitors, significant other, boss, etc, to know what you are reading today? This privacy is at risk if the bills show up on a credit card bill, or in spam to my work email addresses, or in marketing stats.
6) It's hard to find any real value. Most stuff on the web is not truly unique or valuable, mostly I am paying for marginal convenience. Given a choice between spending ten minutes finding raw stuff for myself, or dropping $10 for some pre-digested bits, i'm nearly always gonna do the research... Thats a $60 an hour rate (ignoring tax). Plus the bonus of whatever I learn along the way, often equally valuable....
7) Keeping track. I don't want to have to check an extra 20 or so fiddling little items on my credit card bills. Thats like having to balance an account for the loose change in your pocket each day.
8) Caveat Emptor. I am wary of buying anything I can't see or try in advance. Especially from companys that subject me to problems 1 thru 5 above.
Overall, I don't think we can assume the problem is with our potential customers..., its gotta be our business model. Why "our model", well..., imho, seems to me that many folks on
I suggest we pool some thinking about whats needed and maybe fire up an effort to fix this before the EAOTD (Evil Acronym Of The Day) or whomever start figuring out how to patent/sue/restrain or charge us repeatedly for every web page we hit.
My stab at some specs for micro transactions :
Fast. Easy, quick payment authorization, up to a user configurable limit.
Supports for making bids, can make offers for services and one-off payments.
Zero residual personal information available to vendor.
Fast. Like reaching in my pocket for a quarter fast...
Up front account payment. Zero additional accounting burden.
Umberimas Fides. Utmost good faith. Supports returns, no questions asked.
Did I mention fast?
Item (6) is clearly a tougher issue. However, I think that if a micro payment Bits4$ system was available, it might become a virtuous circle as sites use the funds for research.
I reckon thats about 0.076 worth...
A few, admittedly highly cynical observations, respectfully submitted:
This article is the typical mishmash of clueless quotes, half baked whines and self serving statistics that we all know and love from our friends the papparazzi. It's no better or worse than hundreds of others. I believe the slashdot community is one of the few that knows this, it's not really worth much of our time responding to these kinds of silly know-nothing opinions. That said, I'm going to anway dammit...
One truth (apparently accidentally) embedded here is that most projects should be killed at inception. As most of us know, projects are started by users with no idea what they want, which is frankly understandable, to a point. They are then ably aided and abetted by the common variety of clue challenged technology management teams, too weak to question them or help them figure it out. There's no motivation to challenge or help the users get focussed, because most managers are never measured or held accountable for the time they waste. Why not?, because managers being humans (yes its true!) are very careful not to measure the number and dollar cost of their failures.
I believe that an innovation we need is not some new language, tool or OS (even Linux), but a simple and practical project killing methodology. Basically, software development teams need to consider all projects a waste of time and money, until they are proven to have a viable business case and clearly achievable design. Middle management opinions should be considered inherently suspect. Failing all else, they should document their concerns and make sure these are noted by the CFO when the inevitable failure occurs. If you ever try to do this, you will probably be told its not your problem and the users/leaders/daddy knows best. If you ever hear this , its a huge red flag and clearly bullsh*t, given the failure rate. I consider this a perfectly ethical response to gross mis-management, for which developers are incorrectly blamed.
Remember, the fox is guarding the chicken coop. I believe that most management teams secretly love to have a huge backlog of support and bugs and many understaffed, under-planned, slowly failing projects. They are arsonists, who love to run around being hero's putting out fires they secretly started. Preventing the fires is no fun, and too hard, doesn't get you visibility or promoted and forces you to clash with ingrained cultures and cynical developers (yes that's us). IMHO, this is an un-virtuous circle that lies at the heart of the so called software problem. That is, there isn't a software development problem at all, there is a software development leadership problem of enormous magnitude. I know, I am one (d*mn, how did that happen!, I used to be a real developer honest..).
I am very doubtful that this problem is truly fixable. I believe it isn't because of the nature of human organization, the way technology projects are initiated and the inbuilt motivations to leave the situation the hell alone. These factors are built in, process improvements are transient and subject to entropy, in my experience they all fail, given sufficient time. That doesn't mean don't improve things, it means expect it to be temporary and won't matter much given the meta-chaos just described.
Finally, I believe the business and academic crowd, though fun and entertaining to watch, are fundamentally out of touch with what we need to fix this. They are inadvertantly contributing to the problems and confusion with silly research, bogus stats and idealized impractical methodologies. They mean well, but they can't openly grok whats going on.
Ok, I feel better now, gotta go, there's a new, cool, top priority, mission critical, must be done, greenfield, fully buzzword compliant project just starting. More sharp acronyms for the resume. You want in?...
Gotcha!
Man, the emperor mind, clothes of ancient dna, woven wetware, flesh and bone deconstructs, slashdots, occams digital razor, strips the meat, philosophy dances naked, logic unveiled, the pure, beautiful, quantum enigma, AI, mind less Man.
Opinion : 1. NASA projects often fail, that's to be expected given the difficulties. The real issue is that their political vulnerability and economic dependencies translate the lost missions into further failures of strategic leadership and vision. 2. NASA is simply not set up to be a risk taking/entrepenurial venture, which, is what we, the people, of earth, need. 3. I believe the evidence supports reasonable concern that our species, is at significant risk of extinction, while we remain isolated on an unguided oblate spheroid, trusting to blind chance to let us avoid Earth crossing asteroids. 4. Space has effectively infinite natural resources available for exploitation, with low/zero pollution impact. Take a look at the recent results from NEAR Shoemaker, from Eros. 5. I am not aware of any credible plan or program, from NASA, or anyone else, for the incremental economic buildout and exploitation of space. As a species, we need a business plan. I sincerely believe that the engineers, technologists, scientists, et-al, of Earth have the capability to exploit space. To discover, assess, access, colonize and make use of the abundant material resources. Oh and along the way, learn how to expand humanity into space as necessary and desirable. The game then changes from deciding who gets blamed for the next firework display over mars, to filling out the expense voucher for the next mars shuttle, Spacemiles (tm) ;-). What we clearly don't have, is the required leadership and economic incentives to make that happen. The dinosaurs never saw Chixculub coming, we may end up just as extinct, and a whole lot dumber, because we let a leadership failure defeat our intelligence. Suggestions : 1. NASA apparently can't, or won't, cut it, so lets relieve them of the problem, politically, ethically, legally, as nicely as possible, give em a useful role, make em feel good, but out of the way. Sometime yesterday would be good. 2. It's time to get some serious players get into the game, the best incentive is a clear potential to make obscene quantities of money. Vast uncountable wealth. Whatever the moral implications, it's worked in the past, so it should work again. Space has that incentive, so lets cut the profit factor loose and go get it. Yep there's some serious risk, many good people will probably die trying. Yet, many of us die for a lot less strategic reasons every day. As a species it's not a zero sum game, the upside potential for our race is effectively infinite. Think about that, the upside is unlimited resources, unimaginable technological leaps and survival, any of which are quite literally, priceless. It's not about who gets rich along the way, it's about whether or not humans get to go to the stars. I'm a human, I'm for us, I'm in!. IMHO the stars are the best possible gift, for our children. So, were all geeks, rumour has it we are marginally, smarter than most dinosaurs. How about we start using a few of those smarts to lead a little, obtain the necessary political influence, bend policy, so that there is a credible, incremental buildout, driving economic, exploitation of space. The goal, is the stars. Sound good?