On the Issue of RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) and the instrumentation, I have a hard time believing that the instrumentation could be that sensitive to stray RFI. Think about this a minute, the electronic devices are usually required to meet some specific consumer RFI standards. Equipment on an aircraft are required to meet much more stringent requirements on shielding and interference protection. It's not like we are looking at EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) levels of interference here.
OTOH, one of the reasons I got my license was to take care of my own flying. Yes, I know that it is statistically safer to fly in a commercial airliner than in the Experimental Aircraft I am building, but I feel a lot better when I have the stick in my own hand. Besides my airplane will be better looking:-)
Additionally, a fairly quick experimental will get you from point A to point B often quicker than the much faster commercial airliner. Last year one of our experimental club members flew nonstop from the Denver area to the Tampa area in under seven hours. Cost less and point to point time is about the same since he could start closer to home, avoid airport security lag, and land exactly here he was planning to visit.
The airliners worry me in several ways but I think the idea that they are blaiming cockpit glitches on electronic devices may worry me more. This is not black magic and I know intermitent problems are harder to debug but with the numbers of aircraft flying a reasonable set of symptoms shoud begin to appear and be classifiable. Even factoring in the non-linear aspects of this kind of trouble shooting, we should get something a lot better than vague mutterings about electronics in the cabin.
On a list server I subscribe to about constructing an aircraft called a Bearhawk I noticed a trend similar to the one you see. I was not the only Linux user on the list. So I asked everyone to send me info about their Unix/Linux experience. I found that almost 2 to one I was getting some Unix experience and mostly Linux. not a scientific study but a good indicator that there are a lot of open source people in volved in amateur aircraft construction (above average numbers).
This Bearhawk group is about building an aircraft from plans using the older steel tube and fabric fuselage (like a Piper Cub) construction with all aluminum wings. It is build from plans and not a kit (there is a Kit now but its just hitting the market). This is a four seat large size airplane for heavy hauling.
If you want to know how to take a piece of sheet aluminum and bend it into a complex shape like a wing rib you can learn how. Over the past year I have made 44 wing ribs for a Mustang II (an all aluminum two place speedster). These people openly share lots of knowledge about hand forming, welding, and other (many lost art) fabrication techniques.
These people can chat intelligently about auto restoration, woodworking, home brewing, and many of "Lost Arts" described here. So I tend to think that the tinkerer mindset is drawn to the open source community.
Ok, so I need a Biannual Flight Review to go flying, but after that I think I'll work on the instrument rating. Every time I see the US whittle away at our privacy under the guise of national security it frightens me. The constitution is in tatters and I think I'll just fly myself.
I'll be impressed when, after the game, Kasperov can toss Deep Junior his keys and have Deep Junior go get the car.
We keep forgetting in all the media fluff that, while this is technologically interesting, it is not even scratching the surface of human versatility. Nor do we notice the man behind the Deep Junior curtain. Or should I say programmers?
Additionally it could be reasonable argued that Deep Junior is not playing Kasperov but Deep Juniors programmers are playing against Kasperov with extreme computer assistance.
What is new about plastic paints? Absolutely nothing! Can I buy a car today that has plastic panels with shiny paint?
Yes. There is the Saturn which has had plastic body panels for years and if you look at them you will see that they do indeed shine.
What else? Many bumper parts have been flexible plasic and of course had plastic paint on them that was also flexible. The ugly '73 Ford Mustang for example (Those of us with '69 Mach 1 projects are funny about the Mustangs after '70).
Any older than that? Why yes. How about the Corvette. Sometimes called plastic fantastic by its adherents (I'm not one, but anything without wings is just ground transportation to me). The Corvette used FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic since the first one in the fiftys. Not flexible panels but certainly plastic and usually "Very Shiny".
Any other plastic paints. Well it turns out nearly all automotive paints have been plastic paints for many years.
For example, all paints used on all cars today are plastic bases. Either an acrylic of urethane base.
Back in the late '70s I painted some cars. I used Dupont Centari (a Acrylic Enamel), various Acrylic Laquers, and even Dupont Imron Polyurethane (Dangerous stuff with an isocyanide catalyst).
It even goes back much further than that. In the 20's or 30's someone spilled toluine solvent on some film. Being a real slob they did not clean it up. Later when they returned they found that the solvent had evaporated and left a very shiny coating on the surface where the film had desolved. This discovery was the basis of "modern" automotive plastic paints.
Over the years NASA has had a few successful programs that were swept under the carpet or killed. These were always low cost projects that never got much support and were progressing quite well for the money invested. Not only did they not get support the support they needed but they often had to fight for every dime against NASA.
The first example is the Lifting Body program in the early sixties. The Lifting Body Fact Sheet outlines the history of this project similar to the DynaSoar project of the Air Force at about the same time frame. The biggest difference was that the Lifting Body program cost about 3% of the other program and had real flight data from hundreds of flights. Guess which one got cancelled first?
Then there is the DCX project and thats an interesting study of how successful projects are quietly killed off. For general info see Delta Clipper and DC X FAQ for grneral info. I have run across several documents over the years that highlight how congress and others tried to kill off the DC X. Initially it was under DARPA (the Internet folk) and later it ended up under NASA budget. After NASA got it it was quietly eliminated in favor of the X33. Now the X33 was a great public works project as it required development of new technology where the DC-X was designed to be inexpensive and be iteratively developed to its full potential. Which one was selected for development into the next generation space craft?
Maybe the X33 was retasked for airforce use as the Arora. Hows that for a wild speculation?
In the Moon shot NASA iterated through several platforms while learning and growing along the way. The STS was more of a waterfall big bang approach and when it arrived it was already obsolete. Maybe NASA is just a public works errort after all.
I think you will see the Segway become the "Diskless WorkStation/X Station/Web Appliance" of the transportation world. A product with a real utilitarian, useful, extremely practical, but limited niche.
<p>First the idea is not as new as you think, and prior art may exist for certain aspects of the device. However, it is the implementation that is rather slick. Heinlein wrote about gyroscopically stabilized powered unicycles. Syd Mead has pics of such a device in his book Steel Coutier.
<p>As to the cost structure, all new technologies cost a lot to start but they tend to come down in time. I expect that the Segway will drop in price, and alternatives like scooters with fuel cells will be part of the competition. This competition will cause pricing to trend downward.
<p>When it gets to $500 I expect to see electric scooters (in more traditional format) available with fuel cells and adequite range for more general transportation applications. These fuel cell scooters may even be more expensive but will likely find their own niche.
<p> I also think that a lot of what we are seeing is the early hype, much like the hype we saw with every reincarnation of the Diskless Workstation, where its the next great thing today and later will be a bit dissapointment. People will forget that it has real value but it will continue fit a narrow utilitarian need.
I fixed this problem years ago. I got completely off of M$ back in '95. When people ask questions, I say "I've never heard of it". Or, "Microsoft? Are they still around?."
Over the years there have been tablet computers anf they never dod go over well. The last one I looked at was the AST product of a number of years ago. This is an old idea that is always on the verge of being the next big thing.
Sort of like diskless workstations in the early 80s. Then we had X Terminals (diskless workstations revisited) in the late 80s. In the 90s it was the web station 9or what ever they called the last version of the diskless workstation).
Now, I like tablets but I get the distinct impression that, like diskless workstations of whatever technology is hot, they actually have a limited but real audience. you willnotice that even though there is the potential to replace desktop machines with some crunchy laptops this just does not happen en mass.
I begin to suspect that this is another revolution that will rise again and again with a whimper.
I have used open source products since the late 80s to solve problems for fortune 500 companies. The support issue has not really been a concern. It does however require that the company hire people with clues and not Minesweeper Consultants and Solitair Experts.
Any sharp group of Unix staff will not have trouble supporting Open Source. In the late 80's I implemented the ssc sreadsheet and a communications program similar to a commercial offering. These products were running within a couple of days on several different Unix platforms. Support was a no brainer as well. We did have a complete Unix development team or three around and one guy whipped up some docs that addressed the users typical needs for which there was almost never an additional request for support.
Most corporations have trained support staff on premesis. Larger companies have whole departments and can do a better job of supporting the company with Open Source.
How? Well, let me give you an example. A few years ago a friend who bought one of those all in one office printer/fax/scanner/etc. things. The sales geek claimed that it could work with NT because the geek had only the most superficial understanding of the differenece between W95 & NT. Turns out that many parts of the driver did not work properly. The printer could not be made to reset properly. He called the manufacturer and even sent the printer in for repair (twice)as the sales and support people claimed that "it should work". The manufacturer never did fix the problem and the product always operated marginally. Now the product did not work with Linux but it does now.
Why? Because open source has the best support possible. When the source is available either your staff can handle the tuning for products that the manufacturer won't properly support or someone on the Net will help.
How? My friend worked with me at a fortune 500 client site and one day I was having a Java on Linux problem. Now Java is not open source but there is a team working on it for Linux. I submitted a question to the right location and when we got back from lunch I had answers. It is typical for me to get multiple responses to a query for a problem with purely open source as well. My friend complained that he has been waiting for answers for weeks on a similar question posed to a commercial vendor.
So there are two issues, adequitely skilled staff, and knowing where to look for answers. I have never found that the commercial product vendors provided support that could out perform the open source community. When asking how to solve a problem it is not unusual to get back multiple responses.
Oh, there is one more issue. The Unix community often acts like something akin to a cult of competence and if approached with a clueless and helpless demeanor they are not the most plesant. If the tech type takes the requisite 15 minutes to read relevant faqs and howtos and then asks for help the support is usually overwhelming.
This is my experience since implementing a variety of open source products since the 80s and Linux since '93.
At this time I am not even interested in dealing with the headaches of of commercial products if I can avoid it. I am only interestd in Open Source related contracts. Remind me to tell you about the time I asked a commercial vendor how to get a security feature working and they were supprised that I needed it as they had not even got their product debugged that far in the lab. Turns out they were playing scheduel chicken and thought we would not need some features claimed when the product was sold. Or the time a multi million dollar project went up on a commercial Unix because they promised kernal based threads by version 8.0 and as far as I can tell they never got beyond Posix Threads. At version 10.0 we went to production anyway with at least a year of additional development to do our own thread safe coding.
When it comes to support from the commercial products or Open Source I will almost always choose the open path. The support is simply better.
1) Start with the support staff.
a. Are they adequitely trained to support Linux/FreeBSD/Other OS?
b. Are there enough staff for the task?
2) Next migrate from the top.
a. If upper management is switched over the rest will follow.
b. Most staff will use what ever is well supported.
c. Technical people will be easier to switch.
Be sure that the users understand the value proposition. (Whats in it for the user?)
a. Allow for flexibility in user preferences.
b. Excelent support (coworkers used to be supportised when I got Linux answers faster off the net than they got answers that they already paid for).
c. lower cost and more features (be sure that you understnad what features that people need).
4) When upper management and engieers have been swithced over and and adequite education period has been used you can migrate the remaining staff.
a. Most people never install any software in a work environment.
b. If they see success with upper management and understand the reasons (and buy into it) the mighration can proceed.
If this is representative of the classes you are receiving it is at least 20 years out of date. I have not used those techniques for at least 12 years and that was towards the end of their usefulness. (Note: ER is still useful for Relational Database applications only).
If you are not using UML and your instructor is not teaching it for analysis and design then you are not getting a current education.
For my credentials, I teach OOP using Java in a graduate level program. In my day job I am a software and system's architect. You ask if the time spent in A &D is appropriate I tend to think it is. The purpose of A & D is to help you think about the problem. You may be able to code it faster than you can analyze and design it but the A & D helps you think in the way you solve problems.
For OOP languages you need to study OOAD to understand how to "Think Object Oriented". If you use the structured techniques you are learning you can expect to write structured code. Even if you use an OO language. In my class I call this JavaTran (TM). It is written in Java but it sure smells like FORTRAN. If you think in 1970's structured methodology you will write 1970's structured programs, even if you use an OOP language.
Hey folks. People with skills all look like primadonas to managers. It is quite embarasing to manager types that we can build something without their help (usually faster) and they cannot do anything but warm a seat without us.
Back in the '50s I believe it was, the united States did experimental research in this area. The effort was called Project Ploughshare. Below ground work and above ground may have been explored back then. The work eventually stopped due to the fact that everything near the blast area was highly radioactive.
I don't even think we can call the mainstream media journalists(at least with a strait face:-). In the mid '80s I wrote to Time Magazine about the abuse of the term Hacker. I got a letter back that effectively said that their writer was more of an expert than I was. At that tine I worked for a small company and my title was "Hacker" (Yes I "Was not worthy"). The company ran an ad for a hacker and I was the only person who they interviewed who had built their own computer (a pre IBM PC Z-80 Godbout S-100). The real point is that the media is more interested in sound bites and catchy headlines than accurate stories!
I've used VAJava daily for the past 18 months and I'd take vi and JDK if I could just get a decent debugger. VAJ has a lousy editor (Ok, for java I like to use xEmacs), the source code management system is mickey mouse (Use CVS), and its very clumsy to use (always stopping to do partial compiles breaks your work and concentration flow).
on the plus side: VAJ has a kick ass debugger but I'd throw the rest of it out.
I've found that is is almost impossible to convert DOS/Windoze people to Unix. They (Former NT Admins) don't know that the root user is not their standard login. They often cannot be convinced to use the common Unix conventions for installing software (/ is not the answer), naming, and configuration. "There is no rule that says I can't do it this way!", is a common reply to an explanation of how things should be done. The common conventions are not a standard and there are several techniques for some things but Unix/Linux users usually know the value of picking a reasonable set of the conventions and sticking with them (i.e. waht goes in/,/opt, and/usr/local) and why.
The best way to do this is to bring in a new crew and slowly let the old crew drop off by attrition. The few that get a clue early may not be too brain dammaged to salvage but thats about it. People get religious about OS's, Languages, and L&F. Bringing DOS/Windoze people into a Unix shop usually gets people who can't wait until they can show you a "Better Way" with their favorite crap.
Hey, everyone can play!
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Earlier I wrote about how Andrew Tannenbaum dosn't get mentioned as much as he used to in the Linux community. Those of us who were Minux users know how much we learned from the Minux source code. It was a great place to start. Of course this got me thinking about the many people who have contributed to where we are. The list is endless! Pike, Richie, Kernigan, RMS, Torvalds, Alan Cox, Jackson (one of my instructors), Babbage, Joy, Hopper, and many many more. Good god the list is nearly endless when you really think about it. Heck, I even ask questions on the net occasionally. Maybe they help maybe not. The real question in this discussion becomes, "What role does Ego play in the Open Source world?". Do we let leaders in the movement start a pissing match that leads to the destruction of the movement or will this be more like the Net distributions? Very evolutionary, the person who best fit the need rose to the pivital position at that time. Does this say that one person is better, worse, or indifferent? No, I think it means that someone who was the right person at the right time was there when we needed them. I only hope that the right person is in place where and when we need them in the future. And you know what? That person may just be you....
Andrew Tannenbaum: The real forgotten man!
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Wired on RMS
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I'm aware that RMS is concerned that he is being left out because his FSF movement has been important to Linux development but FSF was not fundamental to the existence of Linux.
Without Andrew Tannenbaums Minux (minimal unix: rimes with Linux) I believe that Linux would never have existed. In the '80's people would often complain to Andrew Tannenbaum that they wanted a 386 version of Minux and Mr. Tannenbaum would respond, "You are welcome to make a 386 version, go ahead, you have the source code." You see, Tannenbaums Minux package was a source code licensed product designed to teach OS design. Linus was on the comp.os.minux newsgroup (or was it alt.os.minux back then?) and that is where he announced his first 32 bit kernel. You can still see traces of the Minux heritage in Linux when you rebuild the Kernel and look at filesystem options.
RMS when I spoke with him in the '80's about working on the OS Kernel (to be called Hurd) I was informed that it was in capable hands. I feel that the FSF has a bit of elitism. RMS did not initially want Linux to be the OS of choice for FSF and planned to have Hurd replace Linux as soon as it was available. Since FSF was not committed to Linux as their core (something they were never able to produce) why should the Linux community rally around the FSF. The linux community has been able to do what RMS never was able to do: Use the GPL to produce a whole OS capable of supplanting commercial products.
If anyone deserves more credit for Linux its Tannenbaum, not RMS who never seemed to really like Linux anyway.
I was just over at: http://leb.net/hzo/ioscount/ "The Internet Operationg System Counter" and here is what I found: ===============BEGIN DATA=================== Date : Jan.`99
Folks, sombody is sure using a lot of Linux out there and it may just be us. After all I have 7 Linux systems running off the last set of CDs I picked up. My boss wants to put it on a high end server host that is not being adequitely used and then pull some older 200 MHx Pentiums out of the parts room and let anyone who wants to play have one. That looks like another 10 systems. If anything the numbers are way too low.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, one of the reasons I got my license was to take care of my own flying. Yes, I know that it is statistically safer to fly in a commercial airliner than in the Experimental Aircraft I am building, but I feel a lot better when I have the stick in my own hand. Besides my airplane will be better looking :-)
Additionally, a fairly quick experimental will get you from point A to point B often quicker than the much faster commercial airliner. Last year one of our experimental club members flew nonstop from the Denver area to the Tampa area in under seven hours. Cost less and point to point time is about the same since he could start closer to home, avoid airport security lag, and land exactly here he was planning to visit.
The airliners worry me in several ways but I think the idea that they are blaiming cockpit glitches on electronic devices may worry me more. This is not black magic and I know intermitent problems are harder to debug but with the numbers of aircraft flying a reasonable set of symptoms shoud begin to appear and be classifiable. Even factoring in the non-linear aspects of this kind of trouble shooting, we should get something a lot better than vague mutterings about electronics in the cabin.
On a list server I subscribe to about constructing an aircraft called a Bearhawk I noticed a trend similar to the one you see. I was not the only Linux user on the list. So I asked everyone to send me info about their Unix/Linux experience. I found that almost 2 to one I was getting some Unix experience and mostly Linux. not a scientific study but a good indicator that there are a lot of open source people in volved in amateur aircraft construction (above average numbers).
This Bearhawk group is about building an aircraft from plans using the older steel tube and fabric fuselage (like a Piper Cub) construction with all aluminum wings. It is build from plans and not a kit (there is a Kit now but its just hitting the market). This is a four seat large size airplane for heavy hauling.
If you want to know how to take a piece of sheet aluminum and bend it into a complex shape like a wing rib you can learn how. Over the past year I have made 44 wing ribs for a Mustang II (an all aluminum two place speedster). These people openly share lots of knowledge about hand forming, welding, and other (many lost art) fabrication techniques.
These people can chat intelligently about auto restoration, woodworking, home brewing, and many of "Lost Arts" described here. So I tend to think that the tinkerer mindset is drawn to the open source community.
Ok, so I need a Biannual Flight Review to go flying, but after that I think I'll work on the instrument rating. Every time I see the US whittle away at our privacy under the guise of national security it frightens me. The constitution is in tatters and I think I'll just fly myself.
I'll be impressed when, after the game, Kasperov can toss Deep Junior his keys and have Deep Junior go get the car.
We keep forgetting in all the media fluff that, while this is technologically interesting, it is not even scratching the surface of human versatility. Nor do we notice the man behind the Deep Junior curtain. Or should I say programmers?
Additionally it could be reasonable argued that Deep Junior is not playing Kasperov but Deep Juniors programmers are playing against Kasperov with extreme computer assistance.
What is new about plastic paints? Absolutely nothing! Can I buy a car today that has plastic panels with shiny paint?
Yes. There is the Saturn which has had plastic body panels for years and if you look at them you will see that they do indeed shine.
What else? Many bumper parts have been flexible plasic and of course had plastic paint on them that was also flexible. The ugly '73 Ford Mustang for example (Those of us with '69 Mach 1 projects are funny about the Mustangs after '70).
Any older than that? Why yes. How about the Corvette. Sometimes called plastic fantastic by its adherents (I'm not one, but anything without wings is just ground transportation to me). The Corvette used FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic since the first one in the fiftys. Not flexible panels but certainly plastic and usually "Very Shiny".
Any other plastic paints. Well it turns out nearly all automotive paints have been plastic paints for many years.
For example, all paints used on all cars today are plastic bases. Either an acrylic of urethane base.
Back in the late '70s I painted some cars. I used Dupont Centari (a Acrylic Enamel), various Acrylic Laquers, and even Dupont Imron Polyurethane (Dangerous stuff with an isocyanide catalyst).
It even goes back much further than that. In the 20's or 30's someone spilled toluine solvent on some film. Being a real slob they did not clean it up. Later when they returned they found that the solvent had evaporated and left a very shiny coating on the surface where the film had desolved. This discovery was the basis of "modern" automotive plastic paints.
Over the years NASA has had a few successful programs that were swept under the carpet or killed. These were always low cost projects that never got much support and were progressing quite well for the money invested. Not only did they not get support the support they needed but they often had to fight for every dime against NASA.
The first example is the Lifting Body program in the early sixties. The Lifting Body Fact Sheet outlines the history of this project similar to the DynaSoar project of the Air Force at about the same time frame. The biggest difference was that the Lifting Body program cost about 3% of the other program and had real flight data from hundreds of flights. Guess which one got cancelled first?
Then there is the DCX project and thats an interesting study of how successful projects are quietly killed off. For general info see Delta Clipper and DC X FAQ for grneral info. I have run across several documents over the years that highlight how congress and others tried to kill off the DC X. Initially it was under DARPA (the Internet folk) and later it ended up under NASA budget. After NASA got it it was quietly eliminated in favor of the X33. Now the X33 was a great public works project as it required development of new technology where the DC-X was designed to be inexpensive and be iteratively developed to its full potential. Which one was selected for development into the next generation space craft?
Maybe the X33 was retasked for airforce use as the Arora. Hows that for a wild speculation?
In the Moon shot NASA iterated through several platforms while learning and growing along the way. The STS was more of a waterfall big bang approach and when it arrived it was already obsolete. Maybe NASA is just a public works errort after all.
I think you will see the Segway become the "Diskless WorkStation/X Station/Web Appliance" of the transportation world. A product with a real utilitarian, useful, extremely practical, but limited niche.
<p>First the idea is not as new as you think, and prior art may exist for certain aspects of the device. However, it is the implementation that is rather slick. Heinlein wrote about gyroscopically stabilized powered unicycles. Syd Mead has pics of such a device in his book Steel Coutier.
<p>As to the cost structure, all new technologies cost a lot to start but they tend to come down in time. I expect that the Segway will drop in price, and alternatives like scooters with fuel cells will be part of the competition. This competition will cause pricing to trend downward.
<p>When it gets to $500 I expect to see electric scooters (in more traditional format) available with fuel cells and adequite range for more general transportation applications. These fuel cell scooters may even be more expensive but will likely find their own niche.
<p> I also think that a lot of what we are seeing is the early hype, much like the hype we saw with every reincarnation of the Diskless Workstation, where its the next great thing today and later will be a bit dissapointment. People will forget that it has real value but it will continue fit a narrow utilitarian need.
I fixed this problem years ago. I got completely off of M$ back in '95. When people ask questions, I say "I've never heard of it". Or, "Microsoft? Are they still around?."
Works for me.
Look, anything that claims to eliminate the need for an OS but has requirements for an OS is a SCAM!
Over the years there have been tablet computers anf they never dod go over well. The last one I looked at was the AST product of a number of years ago. This is an old idea that is always on the verge of being the next big thing.
Sort of like diskless workstations in the early 80s. Then we had X Terminals (diskless workstations revisited) in the late 80s. In the 90s it was the web station 9or what ever they called the last version of the diskless workstation).
Now, I like tablets but I get the distinct impression that, like diskless workstations of whatever technology is hot, they actually have a limited but real audience. you willnotice that even though there is the potential to replace desktop machines with some crunchy laptops this just does not happen en mass.
I begin to suspect that this is another revolution that will rise again and again with a whimper.
td
I have used open source products since the late 80s to solve problems for fortune 500 companies. The support issue has not really been a concern. It does however require that the company hire people with clues and not Minesweeper Consultants and Solitair Experts.
Any sharp group of Unix staff will not have trouble supporting Open Source. In the late 80's I implemented the ssc sreadsheet and a communications program similar to a commercial offering. These products were running within a couple of days on several different Unix platforms. Support was a no brainer as well. We did have a complete Unix development team or three around and one guy whipped up some docs that addressed the users typical needs for which there was almost never an additional request for support.
Most corporations have trained support staff on premesis. Larger companies have whole departments and can do a better job of supporting the company with Open Source.
How? Well, let me give you an example. A few years ago a friend who bought one of those all in one office printer/fax/scanner/etc. things. The sales geek claimed that it could work with NT because the geek had only the most superficial understanding of the differenece between W95 & NT. Turns out that many parts of the driver did not work properly. The printer could not be made to reset properly. He called the manufacturer and even sent the printer in for repair (twice)as the sales and support people claimed that "it should work". The manufacturer never did fix the problem and the product always operated marginally. Now the product did not work with Linux but it does now.
Why? Because open source has the best support possible. When the source is available either your
staff can handle the tuning for products that the manufacturer won't properly support or someone on the Net will help.
How? My friend worked with me at a fortune 500 client site and one day I was having a Java on Linux problem. Now Java is not open source but there is a team working on it for Linux. I submitted a question to the right location and when we got back from lunch I had answers. It is typical for me to get multiple responses to a query for a problem with purely open source as well. My friend complained that he has been waiting for answers for weeks on a similar question posed to a commercial vendor.
So there are two issues, adequitely skilled staff, and knowing where to look for answers. I have never found that the commercial product vendors provided support that could out perform the open source community. When asking how to solve a problem it is not unusual to get back multiple responses.
Oh, there is one more issue. The Unix community often acts like something akin to a cult of competence and if approached with a clueless and helpless demeanor they are not the most plesant. If the tech type takes the requisite 15 minutes to read relevant faqs and howtos and then asks for help the support is usually overwhelming.
This is my experience since implementing a variety of open source products since the 80s and Linux since '93.
At this time I am not even interested in dealing with the headaches of of commercial products if I can avoid it. I am only interestd in Open Source related contracts. Remind me to tell you about the time I asked a commercial vendor how to get a security feature working and they were supprised that I needed it as they had not even got their product debugged that far in the lab. Turns out they were playing scheduel chicken and thought we would not need some features claimed when the product was sold. Or the time a multi million dollar project went up on a commercial Unix because they promised kernal based threads by version 8.0 and as far as I can tell they never got beyond Posix Threads. At version 10.0 we went to production anyway with at least a year of additional development to do our own thread safe coding.
When it comes to support from the commercial products or Open Source I will almost always choose the open path. The support is simply better.
1) Start with the support staff.
a. Are they adequitely trained to support Linux/FreeBSD/Other OS?
b. Are there enough staff for the task?
2) Next migrate from the top.
a. If upper management is switched over the rest will follow.
b. Most staff will use what ever is well supported.
c. Technical people will be easier to switch.
Be sure that the users understand the value proposition. (Whats in it for the user?)
a. Allow for flexibility in user preferences.
b. Excelent support (coworkers used to be supportised when I got Linux answers faster off the net than they got answers that they already paid for).
c. lower cost and more features (be sure that you understnad what features that people need).
4) When upper management and engieers have been swithced over and and adequite education period has been used you can migrate the remaining staff.
a. Most people never install any software in a work environment.
b. If they see success with upper management and understand the reasons (and buy into it) the mighration can proceed.
Regards
Tony Dean
tdean@du.edu
3)
If this is representative of the classes you are receiving it is at least 20 years out of date. I have not used those techniques for at least 12 years and that was towards the end of their usefulness. (Note: ER is still useful for Relational Database applications only).
If you are not using UML and your instructor is not teaching it for analysis and design then you are not getting a current education.
For my credentials, I teach OOP using Java in a graduate level program. In my day job I am a software and system's architect. You ask if the time spent in A &D is appropriate I tend to think it is. The purpose of A & D is to help you think about the problem. You may be able to code it faster than you can analyze and design it but the A & D helps you think in the way you solve problems.
For OOP languages you need to study OOAD to understand how to "Think Object Oriented". If you use the structured techniques you are learning you can expect to write structured code. Even if you use an OO language. In my class I call this JavaTran (TM). It is written in Java but it sure smells like FORTRAN. If you think in 1970's structured methodology you will write 1970's structured programs, even if you use an OOP language.
Hey folks. People with skills all look like primadonas to managers. It is quite embarasing to manager types that we can build something without their help (usually faster) and they cannot do anything but warm a seat without us.
Back in the '50s I believe it was, the united States did experimental research in this area. The effort was called Project Ploughshare. Below ground work and above ground may have been explored back then. The work eventually stopped due to the fact that everything near the blast area was highly radioactive.
I don't even think we can call the mainstream media journalists(at least with a strait face :-). In the mid '80s I wrote to Time Magazine about the abuse of the term Hacker. I got a letter back that effectively said that their writer was more of an expert than I was. At that tine I worked for a small company and my title was "Hacker" (Yes I "Was not worthy"). The company ran an ad for a hacker and I was the only person who they interviewed who had built their own computer (a pre IBM PC Z-80 Godbout S-100). The real point is that the media is more interested in sound bites and catchy headlines than accurate stories!
I've used VAJava daily for the past 18 months and I'd take vi and JDK if I could just get a decent debugger. VAJ has a lousy editor (Ok, for java I like to use xEmacs), the source code management system is mickey mouse (Use CVS), and its very clumsy to use (always stopping to do partial compiles breaks your work and concentration flow).
on the plus side: VAJ has a kick ass debugger but I'd throw the rest of it out.
Welcoming your replacement.
/, /opt, and /usr/local) and why.
Revising your Resume'.
Finding a new gig is a tightening market.
Political manuvering to stop this maddness.
I've found that is is almost impossible to convert DOS/Windoze people to Unix. They (Former NT Admins) don't know that the root user is not their standard login. They often cannot be convinced to use the common Unix conventions for installing software (/ is not the answer), naming, and configuration. "There is no rule that says I can't do it this way!", is a common reply to an explanation of how things should be done. The common conventions are not a standard and there are several techniques for some things but Unix/Linux users usually know the value of picking a reasonable set of the conventions and sticking with them (i.e. waht goes in
The best way to do this is to bring in a new crew and slowly let the old crew drop off by attrition. The few that get a clue early may not be too brain dammaged to salvage but thats about it. People get religious about OS's, Languages, and L&F. Bringing DOS/Windoze people into a Unix shop usually gets people who can't wait until they can show you a "Better Way" with their favorite crap.
Earlier I wrote about how Andrew Tannenbaum dosn't get mentioned as much as he used to in the Linux community. Those of us who were Minux users know how much we learned from the Minux source code. It was a great place to start. Of course this got me thinking about the many people who have contributed to where we are. The list is endless! Pike, Richie, Kernigan, RMS, Torvalds, Alan Cox, Jackson (one of my instructors), Babbage, Joy, Hopper, and many many more. Good god the list is nearly endless when you really think about it. Heck, I even ask questions on the net occasionally. Maybe they help maybe not. The real question in this discussion becomes, "What role does Ego play in the Open Source world?". Do we let leaders in the movement start a pissing match that leads to the destruction of the movement or will this be more like the Net distributions? Very evolutionary, the person who best fit the need rose to the pivital position at that time. Does this say that one person is better, worse, or indifferent? No, I think it means that someone who was the right person at the right time was there when we needed them. I only hope that the right person is in place where and when we need them in the future. And you know what? That person may just be you....
I'm aware that RMS is concerned that he is being left out because his FSF movement has been important to Linux development but FSF was not fundamental to the existence of Linux.
Without Andrew Tannenbaums Minux (minimal unix: rimes with Linux) I believe that Linux would never have existed. In the '80's people would often complain to Andrew Tannenbaum that they wanted a 386 version of Minux and Mr. Tannenbaum would respond, "You are welcome to make a 386 version, go ahead, you have the source code." You see, Tannenbaums Minux package was a source code licensed product designed to teach OS design. Linus was on the comp.os.minux newsgroup (or was it alt.os.minux back then?) and that is where he announced his first 32 bit kernel. You can still see traces of the Minux heritage in Linux when you rebuild the Kernel and look at filesystem options.
RMS when I spoke with him in the '80's about working on the OS Kernel (to be called Hurd) I was informed that it was in capable hands. I feel that the FSF has a bit of elitism. RMS did not initially want Linux to be the OS of choice for FSF and planned to have Hurd replace Linux as soon as it was available. Since FSF was not committed to Linux as their core (something they were never able to produce) why should the Linux community rally around the FSF. The linux community has been able to do what RMS never was able to do: Use the GPL to produce a whole OS capable of supplanting commercial products.
If anyone deserves more credit for Linux its Tannenbaum, not RMS who never seemed to really like Linux anyway.
I was just over at:
http://leb.net/hzo/ioscount/
"The Internet Operationg System Counter"
and here is what I found:
===============BEGIN DATA===================
Date : Jan.`99
Host OS recognized (grouped, sorted) 09/98 %recog 01/99 %recog +/-%
------------------------------------ ------- ------ ------- ------ ----
1.( ) Linux 223441 27.6 287093 30.8 +3.2
2.( 4.) Solaris/SunOS 109579 13.5 178350 19.1 +5.6
3.( 2.) Windows 95/98/NT 190726 23.6 171829 18.4 -5.2
4.( 3.) BSD Family 170228 21.0 150961 16.2 -4.8
5.( ) IRIX 43987 5.4 52941 5.7 +0.3
===============END DATA===================
Folks, sombody is sure using a lot of Linux out there and it may just be us. After all I have 7 Linux systems running off the last set of CDs I picked up. My boss wants to put it on a high end server host that is not being adequitely used and then pull some older 200 MHx Pentiums out of the parts room and let anyone who wants to play have one. That looks like another 10 systems. If anything the numbers are way too low.