My brother is a scientist. I had just gotten a new phone, so he didn't have the number, and I texted him to say "Pi is exactly 3". He send back several long messages explaining why this wasn't true, as far as he knew to a complete stranger. So either scientists are incredibly helpful people or they have way too much time on their hands...
Only an organization dedicated to the billable hour could embrace this monstrosity.
But that is the WHOLE POINT. Rational makes money from selling their process. Consultants make money from billable hours. NEITHER of those groups actually makes money by their customers shipping products on time and under budget. In other words, Rational and consulting companies make more money when their customers projects fail. Their interests are not aligned with yours!
You can trust a consulting firm willing to be paid through revenue-sharing, for example, because its in their interest to succeed. But weirdly, there are very very few of those. That should give you a clue into the mindset of the industry.
Hah! I've read a half-dozen of Baxter's books and while mildly entertaining, "original" is not the word I'd use. Basically he has one story: mankind's war against an ancient race called the Xeelee. Every book is a retelling of the same story, with diffferent characters. Yawn. I thought Coalescent was going somewhere new, but sadly it has descended into the same old plot by the end of the book.
Now some great authors are: Neal Asher, Richard Morgan and Alastair Reynolds. Really if I were Baxter and I read any of their books, I would weep with shame at the lameness of my own offerings.
Most companies in India are certified CMM level 5 (the highest level) using the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conceptual maturity model. Most companies in the US are certified CMM level 3. This says a lot.
Well, I've worked with a subsidiary that's CMM level 5. They got this without ever having completed a major project - literally the office was physically built, a bunch of recent grads were hired, 6 months later they announced they were CMM level 5. You don't even need an external auditor apparently, you just declare yourself to be.
The people rating themselves level 3 are probably the ones who've actually done some major projects and realized that good intentions rarely survive contact with real-world projects, and have answered the questions with what they DID rather than what they think they ought to do should they ever do some real work. I'll take an experienced level 3 over a rookie level 5 any day.
Maybe one day I'll run a tech company - and anyone spouting CMM bullshit will immediately be shown the door.
but instead have the same rights afforded to the New York Times
If they don't, then that is a big, big problem. When the government has to "approve" who is press and who isn't then you don't have freedom of the press, you have outright collusion between media and government against the citizenry.
Microsoft is beginning to rot with it's founders still there. They don't have a Steve Jobs to bring back.
But they do, tho'. Bill Gates spends all his time on his Foundation now, Paul Allen's more interested in basketball and space tourism. If they fully engaged again in Microsoft's business, Microsoft would have back again what made it into a giant.
You'd think that the Korean War never happened... go read some history. North Korea has been butting heads with the West in general and the US in particular for upwards of half a century. Basically the Chinese backed factions in the North to throw a revolution, the US responded to a request for help from the South, there was a lot of shooting, and since then the border between North and South has been the most heavily militarized in the world.
But why is archivability the only factor you care to consider?
Because the thread is about preservation!
I'm a photographer and for fast workflow, you can't beat a DSLR, and they're "as good as" film since the old Nikon D1 for image quality. Got my Nikon D2x on pre-order. But the stuff I shoot that I maybe want to show my grandkids one day, that goes onto traditional silver emulsions and prints through the Ilford Archival Sequence.
If it breaks you can still put together the two pieces.
Not if it's been broken up and turned into walls, roads, etc, which is how lots of Classical Greek writing was lost. Film can't really be repurposed for anything else, there's no motivation for anyone do anything but leave it where it is.
What really bothers me about your argument is your focus on a single factor: keeping the data available as long as possible with an absolute minimum of maintenance.
Archiveability is about more than just technology. It needs to be as near as possible to maintenance free because if you're planning for the long term, you have to assume that no-one will bother after you're gone, not until your era becomes "interesting" (for example, there's no-one alive who remembers it). Similarly, it needs to be resistant to theft, it needs to have little intrinsic value other than the data on it. Countless artifacts from Classical Greece have been lost because peasants smashed up the buildings, statues, etc to get building materials, they didn't care what they were destroying. That's right: even engraving your data on bloody great hunks of stone doesn't work! People might steal platinum, but they won't steal gelatine for any reason I can think of.
Yes, it does. Scanning usually involves physical damage and dye fading.
I've seen fabulous prints made from hundred-year-old negs. There's no more deterioration scanning than there is printing on a traditional enlarger (i.e. none, apart from mechanical if you're careless).
OK, let's talk archiveability. Let's talk about a medium that you can leave in a shoebox for a hundred years and read just by shining a light through it. I'm not talking hypothetical here - this technology is proven by the fact that people used it a hundred years ago and it worked. And the technology is even better now, even more stable.
I am of course talking about film. It is very very easy now to write digital images onto film, not very much more difficult than it is to scan film. There's no need to worry about whether the file format will be supported in the future, as I've already said. You don't need to shovel money into vendor's pockets every few years just to copy it to the latest trendiest type of disc. You can build a machine to project film out of junk if you need to, or you can scan it if you want a digital image and when you have a better scanner (e.g. a higher DMax), you can just scan it again.
The dude who wrote this report is just blowing smoke. He's trying to sell snake oil.
This was in one of the more reputable shops on London's Tottenham Court Road (Micro Anvika). Was impressed that not only did he not bat an eyelid, but he was actually able to make the funny.
I love TCR. Was buying some laptop memory the other day, the dude didn't have it, so he sent me to a "rival" store - what did he care about the lost business, it was his cousin! I wouldn't be surprised if the whole street was run by 2 or 3 families.
If someone parks in handicapped spaces using someone else's placard for their own benefit, they are abusing the system and it is reasonable to inform others. I don't know either way but the cameras of private citizens are often witnesses to crimes.
Well, perhaps, but read his link. She's not in the picture, but the caption on the website is "This fucking bitch...". That is unreasonable, especially considering (as SolemnDragon says below) that many disabilities aren't immediately obvious. "Andy" obviously feels like a big man harassing disabled women like paparazzi on crack, again as Sol says, she should have called the cops and let them decide what was legal or not.
it was difficult for me to accept her angry and indignant view that I needed her permission to photograph her car
The argument exists between her and the owner of the mini-mall. Still, it sounds like you were trying to use your camera as a form of intimidation. Would you have been happy if your picture was taken and shown to people as "watch out for this jerk, he abuses the disabled"? No?
I've heard digital photos are often inadmissible as evidence in court because of how easy they are to modify.
Canon and Nikon now have DVKs, data verification kits, which tag photos with checksums and signatures. You can prove that this image was taken by that camera and wasn't modified between the camera and the file you now have.
These days tho', digital images are really no easier to modify than film. You can do a high quality negscan, do what you want in Photoshop, then write the image back out onto film. The hard part in both cases is the Photoshopping, it needs a lot of skill to fake an image and fool an expert, especially one who can visit the location the photo was taken, get a photo of his own with the same camera and minutely compare shadows, lighting, colours, etc.
I'm not sure about how the law works around it, but I know that it can get pretty complicated if you sell digital photos because you need stacks of waiver forms.
The words you are looking for are "editorial" and "commercial". Editorial usage is what journalists use. Let's say I see Lucy Liu coming out of Safeway one afternoon (hey, it might happen). I can take a photograph and it can be published in a paper or on a web site as a new story with the caption "Lucy Liu spotted shopping at Safeway" or something more vaguely related about celebrity shopping habits in a newspaper. Here's the thing: as a photographer I can SELL that image, for editorial use. In that sense it is technically commercial, but that's not what commercial photography is. The image could not be used to imply that Lucy Liu endorsed or recommended Safeway, not without a release signed by her lawyers. For editorial use, what you can do with the image is restricted, but you don't need any sort of release if the photo is taken in a public place.
Try to get a job at Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing or Lockheed. There's no indication that the economy will become less militarized, so these are places where you have a chance of staying there until retirement.
You never saw the movie Falling Down did you? It wasn't so long ago that the defense sector was notorious for deep cuts, throwing thousands and thousands of bewildered aerospace and electronics engineers into the job market. It used to be, two companies would employ thousands of engineers for a few years to build prototypes, the airforce would pick one, the loser would simply dump the entire team (or division, it was that sort of scale) then rehire as needed when the next pitch came along.
The US economy will become less militarized. Either the War on Terror will be won (or it will be declared won) and a new President will be elected promising to spend the "peace dividend" on healthcare OR the economy will go bankrupt, the US will default on its debts (treasury bills) and there'll be another Great Depression. Maybe both. The companies you mention will be riding high for 4-8 more years, then, implosion. And it'll be messy.
choosing SAP over Oracle still puts money Oracle's pockets
Well, this is why SAP bought ADABAS/D and released it as SAP/DB. It doesn't seem to have caught on, but SAP AG wants to end its reliance on its ERP rival.
Slashdot Mirror
Pi is exactly equal to 3!
My brother is a scientist. I had just gotten a new phone, so he didn't have the number, and I texted him to say "Pi is exactly 3". He send back several long messages explaining why this wasn't true, as far as he knew to a complete stranger. So either scientists are incredibly helpful people or they have way too much time on their hands...
Only an organization dedicated to the billable hour could embrace this monstrosity.
But that is the WHOLE POINT. Rational makes money from selling their process. Consultants make money from billable hours. NEITHER of those groups actually makes money by their customers shipping products on time and under budget. In other words, Rational and consulting companies make more money when their customers projects fail. Their interests are not aligned with yours!
You can trust a consulting firm willing to be paid through revenue-sharing, for example, because its in their interest to succeed. But weirdly, there are very very few of those. That should give you a clue into the mindset of the industry.
Even the best process is worthless if the people doing the work don't have a clue.
That EDS, CSC, Accenture, Perot Systems (I could go on and on) are very successful and profitable organizations suggests that you are badly mistaken.
convinced us that modern compilers are much better at optimizing than humans
Sure he wasn't trying to sell you a compiler?
"That which convinces is not necessarily true; it is merely convincing" -- Nietzsche.
Sounds a little unoriginal
Hah! I've read a half-dozen of Baxter's books and while mildly entertaining, "original" is not the word I'd use. Basically he has one story: mankind's war against an ancient race called the Xeelee. Every book is a retelling of the same story, with diffferent characters. Yawn. I thought Coalescent was going somewhere new, but sadly it has descended into the same old plot by the end of the book.
Now some great authors are: Neal Asher, Richard Morgan and Alastair Reynolds. Really if I were Baxter and I read any of their books, I would weep with shame at the lameness of my own offerings.
Most companies in India are certified CMM level 5 (the highest level) using the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conceptual maturity model. Most companies in the US are certified CMM level 3. This says a lot.
Well, I've worked with a subsidiary that's CMM level 5. They got this without ever having completed a major project - literally the office was physically built, a bunch of recent grads were hired, 6 months later they announced they were CMM level 5. You don't even need an external auditor apparently, you just declare yourself to be.
The people rating themselves level 3 are probably the ones who've actually done some major projects and realized that good intentions rarely survive contact with real-world projects, and have answered the questions with what they DID rather than what they think they ought to do should they ever do some real work. I'll take an experienced level 3 over a rookie level 5 any day.
Maybe one day I'll run a tech company - and anyone spouting CMM bullshit will immediately be shown the door.
but instead have the same rights afforded to the New York Times
If they don't, then that is a big, big problem. When the government has to "approve" who is press and who isn't then you don't have freedom of the press, you have outright collusion between media and government against the citizenry.
"Server" and "neon lights" are mutually exclusive.
Microsoft is beginning to rot with it's founders still there. They don't have a Steve Jobs to bring back.
But they do, tho'. Bill Gates spends all his time on his Foundation now, Paul Allen's more interested in basketball and space tourism. If they fully engaged again in Microsoft's business, Microsoft would have back again what made it into a giant.
Yes.
Kids these days!
You'd think that the Korean War never happened... go read some history. North Korea has been butting heads with the West in general and the US in particular for upwards of half a century. Basically the Chinese backed factions in the North to throw a revolution, the US responded to a request for help from the South, there was a lot of shooting, and since then the border between North and South has been the most heavily militarized in the world.
But why is archivability the only factor you care to consider?
Because the thread is about preservation!
I'm a photographer and for fast workflow, you can't beat a DSLR, and they're "as good as" film since the old Nikon D1 for image quality. Got my Nikon D2x on pre-order. But the stuff I shoot that I maybe want to show my grandkids one day, that goes onto traditional silver emulsions and prints through the Ilford Archival Sequence.
If it breaks you can still put together the two pieces.
Not if it's been broken up and turned into walls, roads, etc, which is how lots of Classical Greek writing was lost. Film can't really be repurposed for anything else, there's no motivation for anyone do anything but leave it where it is.
What really bothers me about your argument is your focus on a single factor: keeping the data available as long as possible with an absolute minimum of maintenance.
Archiveability is about more than just technology. It needs to be as near as possible to maintenance free because if you're planning for the long term, you have to assume that no-one will bother after you're gone, not until your era becomes "interesting" (for example, there's no-one alive who remembers it). Similarly, it needs to be resistant to theft, it needs to have little intrinsic value other than the data on it. Countless artifacts from Classical Greece have been lost because peasants smashed up the buildings, statues, etc to get building materials, they didn't care what they were destroying. That's right: even engraving your data on bloody great hunks of stone doesn't work! People might steal platinum, but they won't steal gelatine for any reason I can think of.
Yes, it does. Scanning usually involves physical damage and dye fading.
I've seen fabulous prints made from hundred-year-old negs. There's no more deterioration scanning than there is printing on a traditional enlarger (i.e. none, apart from mechanical if you're careless).
OK, let's talk archiveability. Let's talk about a medium that you can leave in a shoebox for a hundred years and read just by shining a light through it. I'm not talking hypothetical here - this technology is proven by the fact that people used it a hundred years ago and it worked. And the technology is even better now, even more stable.
I am of course talking about film. It is very very easy now to write digital images onto film, not very much more difficult than it is to scan film. There's no need to worry about whether the file format will be supported in the future, as I've already said. You don't need to shovel money into vendor's pockets every few years just to copy it to the latest trendiest type of disc. You can build a machine to project film out of junk if you need to, or you can scan it if you want a digital image and when you have a better scanner (e.g. a higher DMax), you can just scan it again.
The dude who wrote this report is just blowing smoke. He's trying to sell snake oil.
This was in one of the more reputable shops on London's Tottenham Court Road (Micro Anvika). Was impressed that not only did he not bat an eyelid, but he was actually able to make the funny.
I love TCR. Was buying some laptop memory the other day, the dude didn't have it, so he sent me to a "rival" store - what did he care about the lost business, it was his cousin! I wouldn't be surprised if the whole street was run by 2 or 3 families.
If someone parks in handicapped spaces using someone else's placard for their own benefit, they are abusing the system and it is reasonable to inform others. I don't know either way but the cameras of private citizens are often witnesses to crimes.
Well, perhaps, but read his link. She's not in the picture, but the caption on the website is "This fucking bitch...". That is unreasonable, especially considering (as SolemnDragon says below) that many disabilities aren't immediately obvious. "Andy" obviously feels like a big man harassing disabled women like paparazzi on crack, again as Sol says, she should have called the cops and let them decide what was legal or not.
The minivan is great for soccer moms, but what if the MAN uses them
I work for The Man, and we prefer the term Freedom Mobiles.
it was difficult for me to accept her angry and indignant view that I needed her permission to photograph her car
The argument exists between her and the owner of the mini-mall. Still, it sounds like you were trying to use your camera as a form of intimidation. Would you have been happy if your picture was taken and shown to people as "watch out for this jerk, he abuses the disabled"? No?
The kitten on your website looks more like a cat.
Thanks!
I've heard digital photos are often inadmissible as evidence in court because of how easy they are to modify.
Canon and Nikon now have DVKs, data verification kits, which tag photos with checksums and signatures. You can prove that this image was taken by that camera and wasn't modified between the camera and the file you now have.
These days tho', digital images are really no easier to modify than film. You can do a high quality negscan, do what you want in Photoshop, then write the image back out onto film. The hard part in both cases is the Photoshopping, it needs a lot of skill to fake an image and fool an expert, especially one who can visit the location the photo was taken, get a photo of his own with the same camera and minutely compare shadows, lighting, colours, etc.
I'm not sure about how the law works around it, but I know that it can get pretty complicated if you sell digital photos because you need stacks of waiver forms.
The words you are looking for are "editorial" and "commercial". Editorial usage is what journalists use. Let's say I see Lucy Liu coming out of Safeway one afternoon (hey, it might happen). I can take a photograph and it can be published in a paper or on a web site as a new story with the caption "Lucy Liu spotted shopping at Safeway" or something more vaguely related about celebrity shopping habits in a newspaper. Here's the thing: as a photographer I can SELL that image, for editorial use. In that sense it is technically commercial, but that's not what commercial photography is. The image could not be used to imply that Lucy Liu endorsed or recommended Safeway, not without a release signed by her lawyers. For editorial use, what you can do with the image is restricted, but you don't need any sort of release if the photo is taken in a public place.
Try to get a job at Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing or Lockheed. There's no indication that the economy will become less militarized, so these are places where you have a chance of staying there until retirement.
You never saw the movie Falling Down did you? It wasn't so long ago that the defense sector was notorious for deep cuts, throwing thousands and thousands of bewildered aerospace and electronics engineers into the job market. It used to be, two companies would employ thousands of engineers for a few years to build prototypes, the airforce would pick one, the loser would simply dump the entire team (or division, it was that sort of scale) then rehire as needed when the next pitch came along.
The US economy will become less militarized. Either the War on Terror will be won (or it will be declared won) and a new President will be elected promising to spend the "peace dividend" on healthcare OR the economy will go bankrupt, the US will default on its debts (treasury bills) and there'll be another Great Depression. Maybe both. The companies you mention will be riding high for 4-8 more years, then, implosion. And it'll be messy.
choosing SAP over Oracle still puts money Oracle's pockets
Well, this is why SAP bought ADABAS/D and released it as SAP/DB. It doesn't seem to have caught on, but SAP AG wants to end its reliance on its ERP rival.
Productivity was maintained nation wide, more people were employed, and job satisfaction increased.
Then why is unemployment hovering between 10-15% in France, and 2-3% in the UK where we don't have such silly rules.
If you knew anything about France
Yes, I've lived and worked in France. You?