There's an old saying, "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization."
Buildings, at least, don't fly. You won't catch ME in that airplane!
Have you ever played a video game in co-op mode? There are a few games where this makes sense: one person steers while the other shoots, or whatever. But most of the time (for me anyway), this is min-numbingly boring. Give me one-on-one competition any time. My kids, on the other hand, love co-op mode! But if we're competing, they aren't much better as a pair, than I am operating everything by myself.
Maybe it is generational. But I'll wager I can keep up with a programming pair any day. But that's an unfair comparison. Really, you're paying two people to work as a pair. So the comparison should be two people like me, up against a pair programmer team. Now we single-threaded programmers are going to run circles around your pairs!
Every Android device is constantly tracked by Google. You can see this on Google Maps...check out the accuracy and detail of the traffic overlay. Apple does the same thing with iPhones. Both companies comply willingly with law enforcement requests for tracking data. So not only can they read your plate, but they can tell who is in the car with you, where you go, and where you stay.
Is all this information good, or bad? YES! This information can be used to bring about justice, or it can be grossly abused.
Verizon is undoubtedly selling lists of names, phone numbers, and other data to third parties. If you opt out, they lose that revenue. Sure, they're looking for ways to make more easy money, but it's not just about the amount of time or effort it takes to get you on the opt-out list. They want to recover their lost revenue, so they make sure you REALLY want your name off their list before they will do it!
You listed very real problems with the economy in Europe and the US. China, India, and Brazil have real growing pains. It seems that wherever PEOPLE live, there are problems! So the thing to do is go live on the moon! No crime, no national debt, no housing crisis, no politics, no protests. Sounds ideal to me!
Business customers, as a rule, run really old software. My software company still has customers with software that requires Windows XP, and won't run on anything later! Therefore, our company has to continue to support Windows XP if we want to continue to sell software to them.
Most business are starting to move to Windows 7 (bypassing Vista), but they won't use an OS that doesn't let them go straight to the "classic" desktop to run all their old software, which won't be updated for years to come. When Microsoft realizes the sheer numbers involved in lost sales because they wanted to be "hip," they'll see the light and shoehorn something in there to make the business customers happy.
Republicans will be (mostly) pleased with Romney's choice, since Ryan has built up some street cred with them through his knock-down, drag-out fight with Democrats in Wisconsin. But Democrats see Ryan as a monster who must be stopped at all costs, and will likely be motivated to come out and vote against him. It should be an interesting election.
One of the key hallmarks of the Internet is its resilience. As other oppressive regimes have learned the hard way, it's really, really difficult to censor the Internet. All it takes is a few gutsy people (who are never in short supply) to provide links to the outside world, and there goes the Intranet firewall. I'll bet that even elements within the Iranian government will find the lure of the Internet too powerful to resist. Iran won't be able to close off the Internet, any more than the Soviet Union could censor faxes during the Cold War.
I once had a co-worker who spoke fluent Spanish, since he grew up in Puerto Rico. He was called upon to go to Mexico City to teach some programming classes. Before he went, he brushed up on Spanish words and phrases that dealt with programming and technology. As he started teaching the class, he found that his students were not understanding him. He finally realized that they didn't know the Spanish words he had brushed up on! He switched back to using the English versions, and everybody was happy.
Just as Arabic numerals are the language of math around the world, English is the language of computing around the world.
"Sixty-four percent (64%) of survey participants found the transition to Agile confusing, hard, or slow."
Yes, no doubt. Once you've been indoctrinated with the principles of Waterfall development methodology, it's really hard to shift gears into Agile. Remember the first time you saw C++, after years of programming in C? That object-oriented approach was pretty mystifying. But if you stuck with it, you eventually learned the incredible power of classes and objects.
Agile is just as different from Waterfall, just as hard to transition into, but just as rewarding for those who eventually get it.
The survey doesn't discredit Agile. What it does is show that there is wide misunderstanding of Agile, including by those who claim to practice it. I've worked in such a shop, where Waterfall was the methodology, but it was presented as Agile. I've also seen Agile work beautifully, and I've personally implemented it successfully.
What Agile really does is take into account the fact that it's not possible to fully anticipate and visualize all necessary features before a project begins. This is no different from any other physical product development, say, designing a new gadget. Lots of planning can and should be done up front, but once a prototype is complete, it will become evident that changes need to be made. Waterfall assumes that the product can be well understood from the beginning, like building a building. If you are building software that is nothing but data entry screens, maybe Waterfall can work. But for anything novel, it falls far short.
"...we're dealing with malware in completely the wrong way."
So what would he suggest?
Many problems in technology, computer-related or not, can take design lessons from nature. Nature's methods tend to be very elegant and ingenious, worth replicating in the digital world.
How do our bodies deal with viruses or other organic "malware"? Antibodies may be the best analog to antivirus software, as they work in a very similar way. White blood cells are more intelligent and active, possibly more like heuristic algorithms applied network-wide. Barriers (skin) functions something like firewalls.
I have to disagree with the author. We're not doing it all wrong. We just need to keep looking for new ways to make it harder for malware to survive. Yes, it's an arms race, it always will be. Same as nature...we learn to conquer bacteria, only to have superbugs crop up, that are resistant to antibiotics.
Malware is a fact of life, both digital and organic.
I was a Comcast customer for a couple of years, when Earthlink sent me a promotion to switch to their cable Internet service. Turns out it's still Comcast, just resold by Earthlink. The price is lower, and they didn't charge me an extra fee for not having Cable TV! Their price has never changed, unlike Comcast's prices, which keep going up. I even pay my bills to Comcast and get repairs by Comcast employees, the only difference is that my router's default domain name is earthlink.net! I've decided that going with a reseller like this is a great idea.
I've been in management of a couple of different companies that obtained VC funding. In those cases, the VC's didn't really want to build a great company, to change the world. They just wanted to flip properties: buy into a troubled company, pump it up to look better, sell for a profit.
If you're a CEO of a startup, and you're just looking for an exit strategy, then by all means go to the VC's--you're playing the same game they are. But if you want to change the world, it would be better to find a way to make it work all by yourself. It's usually slower that way, but nobody--not even a VC--cares about your idea like YOU do.
You are so right. I've been in management at more than one company that was looking for VC money. In some cases, we were successful. The thing is, the VC's aren't looking for a way to build the next great company, they typically just want to flip properties. Pump money into a troubled company, make it look better, then sell for a profit. That strategy isn't going to change the world, it's just going to move money around.
I hope they DON'T do anything. This is nature at work! If we really care about the environment, we should respect natural processes, like Tsunamis, that contribute to the survival of some species, and the extinction of others. This is part of the natural cycle of life. EVERY living species was once an "invasive" species!
Speaking of Windows 8, maybe they should just get rid of the menus altogether! Instead, you should have to point to an invisible, 2-pixel-wide area of the lower-left corner of the window to see a full-screen page of active tiles representing what Visual Studio can do with your project. Each tile should move, spin, twirl, or change color in some way to keep your eyes busy while you look for the item you want. And since it's hard to do multi-touch on a desktop, it should require two mice to operate!
Most programmers I know think it's "mostly" done when they've written enough code to get through a few seconds of testing. They don't think about all the little quirks, hidden features, bugs, and refinements that took a long time to discover and implement the first time around. Rewriting code often looks like an attractive option (clean code, new technology) until you get half way into it (you know, that "mostly done" point) and discover why the old code was so messy...it had to do so much to please so many people!
I predict there will be a long distance between "mostly done" and "done."
Nobody knew they needed an iPhone until Steve Jobs told them they needed it. Can you imagine Bill Gates telling everyone they need to get this new whiz-bang phone that can play music and games and run all kinds of "apps" (that need to first be approved by Microsoft staff)? Yeah right! In 1991, even the Blackberry hadn't been invented yet!
Microsoft could have made the hardware, but it would have been about as successful as the Zune.
Using biometric identification for ATMs or for building security has been tried many times, but it always turns out to be complex and unreliable. In the late 90s, banks tried to use iris scanners. In 2001, I worked for a company that used fingerprint scanners for building access, instead of key cards. We often had to try numerous times to get a good thumbprint read, so we could get into the building.
The banks, and my company, both replaced these systems with magnetic stripes or RFID...because those technologies, while not so "cool," were more reliable and cheaper. I predict that this Japanese bank will soon be going back to the old ATM cards.
Dr Brigid van Wanrooy, is a woman. Naturally, she would find it easier to see the positive side of female managers, and the negative side of male managers.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an old saying, "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization."
Buildings, at least, don't fly. You won't catch ME in that airplane!
Have you ever played a video game in co-op mode? There are a few games where this makes sense: one person steers while the other shoots, or whatever. But most of the time (for me anyway), this is min-numbingly boring. Give me one-on-one competition any time. My kids, on the other hand, love co-op mode! But if we're competing, they aren't much better as a pair, than I am operating everything by myself.
Maybe it is generational. But I'll wager I can keep up with a programming pair any day. But that's an unfair comparison. Really, you're paying two people to work as a pair. So the comparison should be two people like me, up against a pair programmer team. Now we single-threaded programmers are going to run circles around your pairs!
Every Android device is constantly tracked by Google. You can see this on Google Maps...check out the accuracy and detail of the traffic overlay. Apple does the same thing with iPhones. Both companies comply willingly with law enforcement requests for tracking data. So not only can they read your plate, but they can tell who is in the car with you, where you go, and where you stay.
Is all this information good, or bad? YES! This information can be used to bring about justice, or it can be grossly abused.
Verizon is undoubtedly selling lists of names, phone numbers, and other data to third parties. If you opt out, they lose that revenue. Sure, they're looking for ways to make more easy money, but it's not just about the amount of time or effort it takes to get you on the opt-out list. They want to recover their lost revenue, so they make sure you REALLY want your name off their list before they will do it!
You listed very real problems with the economy in Europe and the US. China, India, and Brazil have real growing pains. It seems that wherever PEOPLE live, there are problems! So the thing to do is go live on the moon! No crime, no national debt, no housing crisis, no politics, no protests. Sounds ideal to me!
Business customers, as a rule, run really old software. My software company still has customers with software that requires Windows XP, and won't run on anything later! Therefore, our company has to continue to support Windows XP if we want to continue to sell software to them.
Most business are starting to move to Windows 7 (bypassing Vista), but they won't use an OS that doesn't let them go straight to the "classic" desktop to run all their old software, which won't be updated for years to come. When Microsoft realizes the sheer numbers involved in lost sales because they wanted to be "hip," they'll see the light and shoehorn something in there to make the business customers happy.
Republicans will be (mostly) pleased with Romney's choice, since Ryan has built up some street cred with them through his knock-down, drag-out fight with Democrats in Wisconsin. But Democrats see Ryan as a monster who must be stopped at all costs, and will likely be motivated to come out and vote against him. It should be an interesting election.
One of the key hallmarks of the Internet is its resilience. As other oppressive regimes have learned the hard way, it's really, really difficult to censor the Internet. All it takes is a few gutsy people (who are never in short supply) to provide links to the outside world, and there goes the Intranet firewall. I'll bet that even elements within the Iranian government will find the lure of the Internet too powerful to resist. Iran won't be able to close off the Internet, any more than the Soviet Union could censor faxes during the Cold War.
I once had a co-worker who spoke fluent Spanish, since he grew up in Puerto Rico. He was called upon to go to Mexico City to teach some programming classes. Before he went, he brushed up on Spanish words and phrases that dealt with programming and technology. As he started teaching the class, he found that his students were not understanding him. He finally realized that they didn't know the Spanish words he had brushed up on! He switched back to using the English versions, and everybody was happy.
Just as Arabic numerals are the language of math around the world, English is the language of computing around the world.
"Sixty-four percent (64%) of survey participants found the transition to Agile confusing, hard, or slow."
Yes, no doubt. Once you've been indoctrinated with the principles of Waterfall development methodology, it's really hard to shift gears into Agile. Remember the first time you saw C++, after years of programming in C? That object-oriented approach was pretty mystifying. But if you stuck with it, you eventually learned the incredible power of classes and objects.
Agile is just as different from Waterfall, just as hard to transition into, but just as rewarding for those who eventually get it.
The survey doesn't discredit Agile. What it does is show that there is wide misunderstanding of Agile, including by those who claim to practice it. I've worked in such a shop, where Waterfall was the methodology, but it was presented as Agile. I've also seen Agile work beautifully, and I've personally implemented it successfully.
What Agile really does is take into account the fact that it's not possible to fully anticipate and visualize all necessary features before a project begins. This is no different from any other physical product development, say, designing a new gadget. Lots of planning can and should be done up front, but once a prototype is complete, it will become evident that changes need to be made. Waterfall assumes that the product can be well understood from the beginning, like building a building. If you are building software that is nothing but data entry screens, maybe Waterfall can work. But for anything novel, it falls far short.
"...we're dealing with malware in completely the wrong way."
So what would he suggest?
Many problems in technology, computer-related or not, can take design lessons from nature. Nature's methods tend to be very elegant and ingenious, worth replicating in the digital world.
How do our bodies deal with viruses or other organic "malware"? Antibodies may be the best analog to antivirus software, as they work in a very similar way. White blood cells are more intelligent and active, possibly more like heuristic algorithms applied network-wide. Barriers (skin) functions something like firewalls.
I have to disagree with the author. We're not doing it all wrong. We just need to keep looking for new ways to make it harder for malware to survive. Yes, it's an arms race, it always will be. Same as nature...we learn to conquer bacteria, only to have superbugs crop up, that are resistant to antibiotics.
Malware is a fact of life, both digital and organic.
I was a Comcast customer for a couple of years, when Earthlink sent me a promotion to switch to their cable Internet service. Turns out it's still Comcast, just resold by Earthlink. The price is lower, and they didn't charge me an extra fee for not having Cable TV! Their price has never changed, unlike Comcast's prices, which keep going up. I even pay my bills to Comcast and get repairs by Comcast employees, the only difference is that my router's default domain name is earthlink.net! I've decided that going with a reseller like this is a great idea.
Maybe if they add a STOP button, we'll be able to use that to start things!
I've been in management of a couple of different companies that obtained VC funding. In those cases, the VC's didn't really want to build a great company, to change the world. They just wanted to flip properties: buy into a troubled company, pump it up to look better, sell for a profit.
If you're a CEO of a startup, and you're just looking for an exit strategy, then by all means go to the VC's--you're playing the same game they are. But if you want to change the world, it would be better to find a way to make it work all by yourself. It's usually slower that way, but nobody--not even a VC--cares about your idea like YOU do.
You are so right. I've been in management at more than one company that was looking for VC money. In some cases, we were successful. The thing is, the VC's aren't looking for a way to build the next great company, they typically just want to flip properties. Pump money into a troubled company, make it look better, then sell for a profit. That strategy isn't going to change the world, it's just going to move money around.
I hope they DON'T do anything. This is nature at work! If we really care about the environment, we should respect natural processes, like Tsunamis, that contribute to the survival of some species, and the extinction of others. This is part of the natural cycle of life. EVERY living species was once an "invasive" species!
...and the author too! "The sky is falling!" Mr. Gladwell shouts. The world is becoming overpopulated!
And now, "Steve Jobs will be forgotten!"
This guy knows how to create a sensation, much better than he knows how to draw a reasonable premise.
Speaking of Windows 8, maybe they should just get rid of the menus altogether! Instead, you should have to point to an invisible, 2-pixel-wide area of the lower-left corner of the window to see a full-screen page of active tiles representing what Visual Studio can do with your project. Each tile should move, spin, twirl, or change color in some way to keep your eyes busy while you look for the item you want. And since it's hard to do multi-touch on a desktop, it should require two mice to operate!
...invites you to "Email article."
Who uses wrist watches any more? I check the time by pulling out my phone! And on a phone, you can do all the geeky stuff you ever dreamed of doing.
What does "mostly" mean?
Most programmers I know think it's "mostly" done when they've written enough code to get through a few seconds of testing. They don't think about all the little quirks, hidden features, bugs, and refinements that took a long time to discover and implement the first time around. Rewriting code often looks like an attractive option (clean code, new technology) until you get half way into it (you know, that "mostly done" point) and discover why the old code was so messy...it had to do so much to please so many people!
I predict there will be a long distance between "mostly done" and "done."
Nobody knew they needed an iPhone until Steve Jobs told them they needed it. Can you imagine Bill Gates telling everyone they need to get this new whiz-bang phone that can play music and games and run all kinds of "apps" (that need to first be approved by Microsoft staff)? Yeah right! In 1991, even the Blackberry hadn't been invented yet!
Microsoft could have made the hardware, but it would have been about as successful as the Zune.
Using biometric identification for ATMs or for building security has been tried many times, but it always turns out to be complex and unreliable. In the late 90s, banks tried to use iris scanners. In 2001, I worked for a company that used fingerprint scanners for building access, instead of key cards. We often had to try numerous times to get a good thumbprint read, so we could get into the building.
The banks, and my company, both replaced these systems with magnetic stripes or RFID...because those technologies, while not so "cool," were more reliable and cheaper. I predict that this Japanese bank will soon be going back to the old ATM cards.
Dr Brigid van Wanrooy, is a woman. Naturally, she would find it easier to see the positive side of female managers, and the negative side of male managers.
http://www.yasstribune.com.au/news/local/news/general/brigid-van-wanrooy-speaks-at-yass-high-the-real-effect-of-workchoices/1391134.aspx