Perhaps someone needs to make Consumer's Union (Consumer Reports) aware of this - maybe they'll start reviewing software for reliability, security, and privacy. . .
Seems like the industry NEEDS an independent QA body like this.
hell, if insurance companies could prove statistically that having this surgery done improved your risk factor, then you could get a discount. In factmaybe the insurance companies will start paying for this procedure, or insisting on it for people like pilots, truck drivers, etc.
Many folks believe that nature has already caught up with modern health care:
Antibiotic resistant bacteria. Increased cancer rate. Increased instance of allergies and hypersensitivity.
Etc.
I have bad eyes. I know I'm supposed to be dead and have no offspring. My wife recently developed a strong reaction to strawberries (which she didn't used to be allergic to) - after she had kids, but I suppose a death due to anaphalactic shock while our kids were so young could affect the survivabiltiy of the offspring; without a mother to pick up after them, how long would they survive in the wild?
actually, there was a study done last year (sorry, no link - don't believe me, I'm making this up!) that concluded that there was a statistical correlation (not necessarily cause/effect) between nearsightedness, and having had a night-light during the first 5 years of life. If you had a night light, you were more likely to need glasses, they said.
Their hypothesis was that maybe the human eye was not supposed to have stimulation at all druing sleep, during the formative years, that with the eyes closed, and person asleep, enough photons leaked through the eyelids from the night light to affect the development of the eye.
Sounds interesting, but they'll have a heck of a time coming up with a mechanism to support that, even if the data does.
A couple years ago, my company was doing a beta, and we had a clickwrap NDA agreement where the customer can download the beta software. We had this one tester, down in LA, who downloaded the software, never responded to the questionaires, or calls (we call our beta testers once a week, whether they have feedback or not), or emails, but a week before shipping, I noticed a press release on yahoo.com, this company was announcing software that did everything our software did.
Our product manager made some threatening phone calls, we called lawyers, and they said that until we can get ahold of their actual product, we couldn't sue. Well, these bozos never did ship anything, it's been two years, and we never heard from them.
It's harder to get a slanted review in your favor out of the regular magazines, if you don't protect their monopoly on information by going after the rumor rags who jumped the gun, and scooped the regular press.
I've been suprised for years that it's taken this long for someone to sue. I know Apple has been pretty tight against the rumor sites for some time now - I suppose nobody's sued because it's so hard to prove violation of NDA.
uh- if feature creep runs out of momentum, then that's a PERFECT TIME to port to other platforms, broaden your market, maybe, uh, HEY ADOBE, HERE'S A FREE CLUE!!! PORT TO LINUX, PORT TO COCOA! MORONS!
I think that it's totally natural for a product to run out of new features to add. And that's okay if your competitors have also run out of innovations. Sometimes, technology develops to a point where, it's done. The software industry usually cancels a product, or wraps it's functionality into another product, at this point, instead of doing what it *should* do - fix the bugs that have lingered since version 1.0, optimize the code so it runs faster. Port to other platforms. All the crap you don't do normally because you're in a race with a competitor to provide the most checkboxes in the product review matrix.
(something I wish the Backup software industry had a clue about).
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Re:Trying to Stop a Flood with a Bucket and a Towe
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
Who's to say that this executable will execute on a Linux system. Or PPC-based system? Is it Java bytecode?
Such things cannot be made to work. Unless you went with a wholly proprietary format, media, and player system, in which case, nobody would buy it, no matter how exclusive the content. And people would still hack it.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Re:Trying to Stop a Flood with a Bucket and a Towe
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 2
Successor to MP3;
that's fine and dandy, but I think that if the RIAA had a tool like that (let's call it SMDI, just for argument's sake), then it sure as hell wouldn't be $.50 per song. I've heard statements in the news from the likes of Sony that the numbers being bounced around in the marble-paneled boardroom of like $3.00 per track.
If that happens, this new format will be ignored, and people will still be ripping via MP3. Market forces at work. Similarly, if they adopt a "pay-per-view" model, like the Phish song you're talking about, that technology will be hacked quicker than you think, and the piracy will continue.
The only model that will work is unrestricted technology, and very low cost. If you restrict the IP via technology, it will be hacked. If you charge too much, it will be hacked.
Look at VHS tapes. We have Macrovision; we have devices that defeat macrovision. We have movies that cost $19.95. We don't have a piracy problem. (define: "problem" - are they getting rich? yes. would they like to get richer? wouldn't we all? - the question is, CAN they? Try it and see. The tighter you clench your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Re:Aviation Fuel Cheaper than Car Gas
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
Heh, I sure as hell CAN put it in my vintage VW. No catalytic converter.
And I still get 30 MPG.
And since I keep it properly adjusted and tuned, I put out less noxious hydrocarbons than most emissions-equipment laden SUVs.
I have also seen the "bar" problem with QT. This is why I don't install it on Windows anymore.
Yes, there are workarounds for all of these unpleasant things - but the problem is, poor software design. It was designed like crap, and the user has to jump through hoops to get it to work the right way, the way they want it. It's as if Bill Gates' research branch had perfected their mind-control ray and had it trained on the development team in Cupertino.
I remember reading about this, back when I was into the radar-detector thing, , , there wasn't one on the market yet that had something like Ka and X bands, it was either-or (1989,90?). I tried a buddie's detector with mine, and we couldn't get these two things within 6 feet of eachother without them setting eachother off. I then read up on the subject in Popular Electronics, and found out that the radar detector actually is a transmitter as well. Along with the rumor that police in Canada (where they were illegal at the time) had a radar detector-detector.
Not sure about seat belts, those came very late, but safety glass was a very early adaptation, in the US.
Henry Ford lost a dear freind test-driving the Model T. He was thrown through the plate-glass windsheild in an otherwise very minor collison. This prompted the change to safety glass.
Another potentially true urban legend states that the founders of Volvo lost their child in a car accident, so they started a car company that made cars with safety as the #1 priority.
The rest of the bastards in the automotive industry don't give a rat's ass about the thousands of poor bastards every year who are partially scooped by emergency crews from wrecks alongside the highway.
oh, automatic transmissions are not only lame, wasteful, and overly costly (ie. you're a sucker for paying more than $250 for the OPTION), but they are UNSAFE as well.
I drive my car without a working speedometer. It's just busted, I'm too lazy to get it fixed. But I almost always know within 5mph what my speed is, because I know what gear I'm in, and the rev-tone of my engine. (it's a red convertible, often followed by cops, never pulled over). 99% of auto drivers can't say the same thing, they have to quite often take their eyes off the road to look at the speedo, because they have no freakin clue what gear they're in. It's an important detail that's been taken away from the driver. Yes, you CAN get from A->B without it. But forcing the driver to interrupt his or her vision of the road (and obstacles, and pedestrians) periodically is not an improvement.
That's why us tech-support people will always have work. No matter how smart you make computers, we'll always have stupid people using them. (or put another, more familliar way, no matter how idiot-proof you design it, some one else will design a better idiot).
I paid back lars 100 times for the MP3 of his I downloaded.
I made 100 copies of the MP3, burned them onto a CD ROM and mailed it to him.
If a copy is just as valuable - then he should be more than satisfied with that.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Re:Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
Oh sure, and that little move they just made to pressure the SDRAM manufacturers to switch over to DRDRAM isn't anything like that, right? (only in this case, the SDRAM manufacturers told intel to cram it up their IO port)
This is why Bill Gates went to congress this week and testified about poor little ol tech companies unable to hire enough red-blooded americans, please raise the number of h1b visas so we can pay indonesian programmers $5/hr.
When the OS company shuffles off the Office company, they'll keep all the best programmers (transfer them to the OS team), and then leave Office with the crap ones. Then the OS company will hire a bunch of cheap foreign labor, and write a new office suite of their own, intergated in to the OS.
"Voice recognition software? Oh well, I guess it'll be another few decades before we can talk to our computers. (SR won't become universal if it's not supported by the OS.) "
mac-heads have been talking to their computers for about ten years running. Where have you been?
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps someone needs to make Consumer's Union (Consumer Reports) aware of this - maybe they'll start reviewing software for reliability, security, and privacy. . .
Seems like the industry NEEDS an independent QA body like this.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
that makes much more sense.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
hell, if insurance companies could prove statistically that having this surgery done improved your risk factor, then you could get a discount. In factmaybe the insurance companies will start paying for this procedure, or insisting on it for people like pilots, truck drivers, etc.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Many folks believe that nature has already caught up with modern health care:
Antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Increased cancer rate.
Increased instance of allergies and hypersensitivity.
Etc.
I have bad eyes. I know I'm supposed to be dead and have no offspring. My wife recently developed a strong reaction to strawberries (which she didn't used to be allergic to) - after she had kids, but I suppose a death due to anaphalactic shock while our kids were so young could affect the survivabiltiy of the offspring; without a mother to pick up after them, how long would they survive in the wild?
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
actually, there was a study done last year (sorry, no link - don't believe me, I'm making this up!) that concluded that there was a statistical correlation (not necessarily cause/effect) between nearsightedness, and having had a night-light during the first 5 years of life. If you had a night light, you were more likely to need glasses, they said.
Their hypothesis was that maybe the human eye was not supposed to have stimulation at all druing sleep, during the formative years, that with the eyes closed, and person asleep, enough photons leaked through the eyelids from the night light to affect the development of the eye.
Sounds interesting, but they'll have a heck of a time coming up with a mechanism to support that, even if the data does.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
what about for military sharpshooters, government spies, etc.?
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
A couple years ago, my company was doing a beta, and we had a clickwrap NDA agreement where the customer can download the beta software. We had this one tester, down in LA, who downloaded the software, never responded to the questionaires, or calls (we call our beta testers once a week, whether they have feedback or not), or emails, but a week before shipping, I noticed a press release on yahoo.com, this company was announcing software that did everything our software did.
Our product manager made some threatening phone calls, we called lawyers, and they said that until we can get ahold of their actual product, we couldn't sue. Well, these bozos never did ship anything, it's been two years, and we never heard from them.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
It's harder to get a slanted review in your favor out of the regular magazines, if you don't protect their monopoly on information by going after the rumor rags who jumped the gun, and scooped the regular press.
I've been suprised for years that it's taken this long for someone to sue. I know Apple has been pretty tight against the rumor sites for some time now - I suppose nobody's sued because it's so hard to prove violation of NDA.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
uh- if feature creep runs out of momentum, then that's a PERFECT TIME to port to other platforms, broaden your market, maybe, uh, HEY ADOBE, HERE'S A FREE CLUE!!! PORT TO LINUX, PORT TO COCOA! MORONS!
I think that it's totally natural for a product to run out of new features to add. And that's okay if your competitors have also run out of innovations. Sometimes, technology develops to a point where, it's done.
The software industry usually cancels a product, or wraps it's functionality into another product, at this point, instead of doing what it *should* do - fix the bugs that have lingered since version 1.0, optimize the code so it runs faster. Port to other platforms. All the crap you don't do normally because you're in a race with a competitor to provide the most checkboxes in the product review matrix.
(something I wish the Backup software industry had a clue about).
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Who's to say that this executable will execute on a Linux system. Or PPC-based system? Is it Java bytecode?
Such things cannot be made to work. Unless you went with a wholly proprietary format, media, and player system, in which case, nobody would buy it, no matter how exclusive the content. And people would still hack it.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Successor to MP3;
that's fine and dandy, but I think that if the RIAA had a tool like that (let's call it SMDI, just for argument's sake), then it sure as hell wouldn't be $.50 per song. I've heard statements in the news from the likes of Sony that the numbers being bounced around in the marble-paneled boardroom of like $3.00 per track.
If that happens, this new format will be ignored, and people will still be ripping via MP3. Market forces at work.
Similarly, if they adopt a "pay-per-view" model, like the Phish song you're talking about, that technology will be hacked quicker than you think, and the piracy will continue.
The only model that will work is unrestricted technology, and very low cost. If you restrict the IP via technology, it will be hacked. If you charge too much, it will be hacked.
Look at VHS tapes. We have Macrovision; we have devices that defeat macrovision. We have movies that cost $19.95. We don't have a piracy problem. (define: "problem" - are they getting rich? yes. would they like to get richer? wouldn't we all? - the question is, CAN they? Try it and see. The tighter you clench your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Heh, I sure as hell CAN put it in my vintage VW. No catalytic converter.
And I still get 30 MPG.
And since I keep it properly adjusted and tuned, I put out less noxious hydrocarbons than most emissions-equipment laden SUVs.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
whoa, I better drive on out there and pick up a tankfull, because here in California, it's $1.80!
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
I have also seen the "bar" problem with QT. This is why I don't install it on Windows anymore.
Yes, there are workarounds for all of these unpleasant things - but the problem is, poor software design. It was designed like crap, and the user has to jump through hoops to get it to work the right way, the way they want it. It's as if Bill Gates' research branch had perfected their mind-control ray and had it trained on the development team in Cupertino.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
guess I'm gonna have to change my .sig. . .
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
I remember reading about this, back when I was into the radar-detector thing, , , there wasn't one on the market yet that had something like Ka and X bands, it was either-or (1989,90?). I tried a buddie's detector with mine, and we couldn't get these two things within 6 feet of eachother without them setting eachother off. I then read up on the subject in Popular Electronics, and found out that the radar detector actually is a transmitter as well. Along with the rumor that police in Canada (where they were illegal at the time) had a radar detector-detector.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Not sure about seat belts, those came very late, but safety glass was a very early adaptation, in the US.
Henry Ford lost a dear freind test-driving the Model T. He was thrown through the plate-glass windsheild in an otherwise very minor collison. This prompted the change to safety glass.
Another potentially true urban legend states that the founders of Volvo lost their child in a car accident, so they started a car company that made cars with safety as the #1 priority.
The rest of the bastards in the automotive industry don't give a rat's ass about the thousands of poor bastards every year who are partially scooped by emergency crews from wrecks alongside the highway.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
oh, automatic transmissions are not only lame, wasteful, and overly costly (ie. you're a sucker for paying more than $250 for the OPTION), but they are UNSAFE as well.
I drive my car without a working speedometer. It's just busted, I'm too lazy to get it fixed. But I almost always know within 5mph what my speed is, because I know what gear I'm in, and the rev-tone of my engine. (it's a red convertible, often followed by cops, never pulled over). 99% of auto drivers can't say the same thing, they have to quite often take their eyes off the road to look at the speedo, because they have no freakin clue what gear they're in. It's an important detail that's been taken away from the driver. Yes, you CAN get from A->B without it. But forcing the driver to interrupt his or her vision of the road (and obstacles, and pedestrians) periodically is not an improvement.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
That's why us tech-support people will always have work. No matter how smart you make computers, we'll always have stupid people using them. (or put another, more familliar way, no matter how idiot-proof you design it, some one else will design a better idiot).
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
no, Dr. Evil was the first person to use "quotation marks". . .
(For those who have the Austin Powers CD and saw the "deleted scenes" - oh wait, do I need to cut Universal a check now that I mentioned their IP?)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
speaking of that, right now, I was just remembering the last time I heard a Metallica song. I can hear it. Inside my head.
Do I owe Lars again?
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
I paid back lars 100 times for the MP3 of his I downloaded.
I made 100 copies of the MP3, burned them onto a CD ROM and mailed it to him.
If a copy is just as valuable - then he should be more than satisfied with that.
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
Oh sure, and that little move they just made to pressure the SDRAM manufacturers to switch over to DRDRAM isn't anything like that, right? (only in this case, the SDRAM manufacturers told intel to cram it up their IO port)
If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
This is why Bill Gates went to congress this week and testified about poor little ol tech companies unable to hire enough red-blooded americans, please raise the number of h1b visas so we can pay indonesian programmers $5/hr.
When the OS company shuffles off the Office company, they'll keep all the best programmers (transfer them to the OS team), and then leave Office with the crap ones. Then the OS company will hire a bunch of cheap foreign labor, and write a new office suite of their own, intergated in to the OS.
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
"Voice recognition software? Oh well, I guess it'll be another few decades before we can talk to
our computers. (SR won't become universal if it's not supported by the OS.) "
mac-heads have been talking to their computers for about ten years running. Where have you been?
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .