The engineers who formulated and put the faster, better, cheaper model to work expected, indeed predicted, a much higher failure rate than had been the norm.
These people weren't stupid or something and knew just as well as any person with something on the ball, such as yourself, that a high failure rate was inherent in the model.
Doing it fast and cheap is relatively better in the long run on the throwing enough speghetti against the wall process. A lot of it falls off, but some of it sticks, and speghetti is dirt cheap so the stuff that falls on the floor doesn't matter.
However, as the other poster notes, NASA is a government beaurcracy, and run by beaureacrats, not the engineers.
Beaureaucrats punish failure and assign blame. The more failure you can point at and the more blame you assess the more you justify your job.
The other thing they do is develop massive control programs, requiring that they have personal control over a large budget and many subordinates, to "prevent" failure.
It's the violence inherent in the system.
You can't tell these people when they come knocking on your door and asking why your sattelite blew up, "Dude, we built twenty of 'em on the cheap, we'll just send up another."
That just makes them confiscate everything you've got and slash your budget, which they then add to theirs.
You haven't fallen into the trap of believing that NASA is about engineering, science and the gathering of data, have you?
"We ought not to mistake the man and the company that bears his name."
And I have not done so, nor is there anything in my quoted text to imply I had.
I might also point out, however, that we should also not mistake the actions of Disney the company for the actions of others.
Mark Twain was lobbying for a copyright law that protected works for the life of author plus 50 years so that his heirs might live off their procedes before Walt Disney was even born.
Disney the company is only one of the decendents to take up the argument and press it home. They bear no blame for its origination.
Yes, yes, the tales that Disney stole from the Bros. Grimm were in fact public domain folk tales from the first. Yes, they changed them, making them all pretty and full of cute anthropomorphic fluffy bunnies and dishwashing chipmonks.
None of this changes the fact that Disney selected these very tales because they were in the public domain and he could make free use of them as he willed and keep all the profits.
Perhaps the Brothers Grimm weren't the best example though. Are there any identifiable authors from whom Disney took works? Why yes, there are.
How about Rudyard Kipling? Heard of him? Victor Hugo, Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carrol, Prokofiev, R.L. Stevenson, Defoe, Washington Irving, J.M Barrie, Davey Crockett (Yes, Davey was an author), the list goes on, and on, and on.
Disney has made billions of dollars on the backs of identifiable authors whose works they simply took, for free.
The thing is none of these authors suffered by it (ok, some of them had been dead more than 50 years, but some of them hadn't) and Disney serves as a prime example of how *everyone* makes money by a reasonable copyright expiration period.
Here's how it's always worked and always will work.
You do a project.
If it goes well and makes money your PHB takes the credit because he managed it, but any problems with it are your fault because you coded it. The PHB gets a promotion and raise, you get 10 hours more work a week.
If it doesn't make money it was *your* "overdesigned" project and it's your fault. The PHB pays no penalty and you get fired. Then he gets a promotion and a raise for having fired you.
It isn't pretty, but that's the way it is.
So how should you code? The way that covers your ass.
And these lifters are so inefficient that it takes 20,000 volts to not be able to lift a mouse.
This is not what you would call a practical vehicle either.
On the other hand a human being has lifted himself across the English Channel in a heavier than air craft using nothing more than his own power. I'm not going to do this. You're not going to do this, but neither is one of these lifters.
On the other hand a lard ass like Gallager can cruise quite nicely in his pedal powered blimp.
So far as I can tell lifters are a ludicrous solution to a non problem and will remain so.
This doesn't mean they're not really neat thingies. They are.
I have a balloon floating around my room right now at about 5 ft. altitude above the floor. I assure you it has a grand total of one part, which could not be defined as moving.
I have a number of small hot air balloons (small meaning under 10 ft. diameter) with one nonmoving part.
God only knows how many solid fuel rockets with no moving parts I've launched at great velocity into the sky.
I've made kites. No moving parts.
Oh, and a hang glider. The only way this thing could be considered to have a moving "part" is if you think I am a "part."
If you consider a flap of cloth a "moving part" than your radio dials sure as hell are too. I can't even begin to tell you how much time I've wasted over the past 30 years dealing with wonky pots. I gaurun-damn-tee you my flap of balloon cloth is more reliable than your radio dials.
One of my kites ( you know, the kind with a bit of string tied to it) has lifted a man clear off the ground, and didn't require a single volt of electricity to do it. Just a bit of naturally occuring wind. ( Ok, it was a biiiig frikkin kite. I misspent my youth on such endeavors).
How much weight has your dangerous high voltage bit of oven wrap lifted so far?
I'm waiting.
In the meantime there's a helium ( a safe and inert gas) filled bladder over in the corner of my room just hanging in mid air. It should be able to do so for days.
Please note that only code introduced by *IBM* into *UNIX first* is effected by SCO's claims.
None of the code seems to be included in the kernel. Many distributions do not, and never *have,* included IBM's code.
Thus Linux itself and distros that do not include such code will remain entirely unaffected even if 100% of SCO's claims are found by a judge to be true.
At some point in the process SCO will have to take the possibly awkward step of *identifying* the specific bits of code they claim infringe.
Why do you think they have refused to so so far?
Because Linux could cleanse itself overnight and cease to infringe. i.e, Linux would be unaffected, and they know it.
They're actually trying to *force* infringment by denying Linux distros the *right* to not infringe.
This alone should indicate what slimey bastards they really are and lay doubt well at their doorstep.
They're still ink on paper. Individual numbered pages with a table of contents and an index. Actual physical bookmarks. Book navigation is a joke.
Of course it works, and it's optimum given the limitations of the medium, but why should that stop "innovation."
We wanna change shit, dammit!
I like Pete Seeger's definition of "sophmoric." The itch to be unique.
There are an awful lot of sophmoric developers out there, and they're producing a lot of sophmoric software.
Please note that the word "sophmoric" is derogatory. Software that's "unique" and "innovative" isn't a good thing. Software that's A Good Thing is a good thing, even if it's the same old shit.
Sometimes especially if it's the same old shit. Even if that puts some of your jobs at risk.
Well one thing they know for a fact. There is no free hydrogen on Mars. None. Any gaseous hydrogen would literally just wander off into space.
So if they're detecting hydrogen in any quantity it must be locked up in something on the surface and that something must leave the hydrogen still detectable.
The list is fairly short and water is at the top of it.
Number two on the list, by the way, is organic compounds.
"To 'hold harmless' is far different than a grant of license."
This is absolutely correct.
However. ..SCO did grant license at original aquisition, and made that license the GPL. You can find it right in the distro. They remain bound by it themselves.
This is the legal Scylla and Charybdis that SCO is attempting to navigate between. This is why they have to keep making new clarifications of their position every day. As they turn in one direction they begin to come too close to the danger on one side, then when they turn back they come too close to the danger on the other.
I think there's a general consensus that if they keep it up sooner or later they're going to go down the hole or get smashed on the rocks, there is no clear route through, other than somebody sending out the Coast Guard to rescue them with a sweetheart buyout deal.
"But isn't getting filthy rich the American dream?", I recently had someone ask me.
Well, no, it isn't. The American Dream (tm) is to own your own property and to make your living from it so you don't have to hire yourself out as a servant.
Somewhere along the line The American Dream has turned into the idea that you hire yourself out as a servant ( or you're a worthless bum) so that you have the proceeds to buy lottery tickets in the hopes of hitting it rich by chance.
That isn't the American Dream, that's the American Nightmare.
Oh Lordy I wish that were how it worked. They are often quite happy to bleed you dryer than dry. When one side runs out of money the other side gets a default judgment for whatever they ask for.
Collecting it is another matter though, but they can then use that judgement to harass you, quite possibly to your grave.
That's a good one, but it doesn't include the obligatory "Free" that apparently must appear in the name of every OSS copy of some commercial program.
So taking your thinking, but modifying it properly for the genre, I get "FreeWhore."
I admit I like this a bit better than my own idea, which was to redo the artwork so that it featured strange, cylindrically shaped aliens and calling it "FreeBeer."
KFG
Where on earth did they get. . .
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Slashdot Mirror
The engineers who formulated and put the faster, better, cheaper model to work expected, indeed predicted, a much higher failure rate than had been the norm.
These people weren't stupid or something and knew just as well as any person with something on the ball, such as yourself, that a high failure rate was inherent in the model.
Doing it fast and cheap is relatively better in the long run on the throwing enough speghetti against the wall process. A lot of it falls off, but some of it sticks, and speghetti is dirt cheap so the stuff that falls on the floor doesn't matter.
However, as the other poster notes, NASA is a government beaurcracy, and run by beaureacrats, not the engineers.
Beaureaucrats punish failure and assign blame. The more failure you can point at and the more blame you assess the more you justify your job.
The other thing they do is develop massive control programs, requiring that they have personal control over a large budget and many subordinates, to "prevent" failure.
It's the violence inherent in the system.
You can't tell these people when they come knocking on your door and asking why your sattelite blew up, "Dude, we built twenty of 'em on the cheap, we'll just send up another."
That just makes them confiscate everything you've got and slash your budget, which they then add to theirs.
You haven't fallen into the trap of believing that NASA is about engineering, science and the gathering of data, have you?
Silly boy.
KFG
Is that a six sub-D cell R/C stick pack in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
.
I'll be bahck. . . I've got to go get a recharge.
Yippee-kay-ay, motherfucker, I've got the Energizer.
Chemical propellant? Chemical propellant? We don't need no steenking chemical propellant.
Gaaaaaaus me to the moon. .
KFG
these, ya know, computers, and could use them to perform a simple arithmatic unit conversion such as you might find on a 7th grade flash quiz.
Judging from the response perhaps he overestimated his audience.
P.T Barnum lives!
KFG
. . . hereClarencecomes
Oh, sure, maybe they'll get lucky with the first 16 letters or so, but they'll never guess the next few hundred.
KFG
"We ought not to mistake the man and the company that bears his name."
And I have not done so, nor is there anything in my quoted text to imply I had.
I might also point out, however, that we should also not mistake the actions of Disney the company for the actions of others.
Mark Twain was lobbying for a copyright law that protected works for the life of author plus 50 years so that his heirs might live off their procedes before Walt Disney was even born.
Disney the company is only one of the decendents to take up the argument and press it home. They bear no blame for its origination.
KFG
Only one, only one, only *one!*
KFG
Yes, yes, the tales that Disney stole from the Bros. Grimm were in fact public domain folk tales from the first. Yes, they changed them, making them all pretty and full of cute anthropomorphic fluffy bunnies and dishwashing chipmonks.
None of this changes the fact that Disney selected these very tales because they were in the public domain and he could make free use of them as he willed and keep all the profits.
Perhaps the Brothers Grimm weren't the best example though. Are there any identifiable authors from whom Disney took works? Why yes, there are.
How about Rudyard Kipling? Heard of him? Victor Hugo, Carlo Collodi, Lewis Carrol, Prokofiev, R.L. Stevenson, Defoe, Washington Irving, J.M Barrie, Davey Crockett (Yes, Davey was an author), the list goes on, and on, and on.
Disney has made billions of dollars on the backs of identifiable authors whose works they simply took, for free.
The thing is none of these authors suffered by it (ok, some of them had been dead more than 50 years, but some of them hadn't) and Disney serves as a prime example of how *everyone* makes money by a reasonable copyright expiration period.
KFG
You're a software engineer.
Here's how it's always worked and always will work.
You do a project.
If it goes well and makes money your PHB takes the credit because he managed it, but any problems with it are your fault because you coded it. The PHB gets a promotion and raise, you get 10 hours more work a week.
If it doesn't make money it was *your* "overdesigned" project and it's your fault. The PHB pays no penalty and you get fired. Then he gets a promotion and a raise for having fired you.
It isn't pretty, but that's the way it is.
So how should you code? The way that covers your ass.
KFG
And these lifters are so inefficient that it takes 20,000 volts to not be able to lift a mouse.
This is not what you would call a practical vehicle either.
On the other hand a human being has lifted himself across the English Channel in a heavier than air craft using nothing more than his own power. I'm not going to do this. You're not going to do this, but neither is one of these lifters.
On the other hand a lard ass like Gallager can cruise quite nicely in his pedal powered blimp.
So far as I can tell lifters are a ludicrous solution to a non problem and will remain so.
This doesn't mean they're not really neat thingies. They are.
They're just not vehicles.
Sailplanes already are.
KFG
I have a balloon floating around my room right now at about 5 ft. altitude above the floor. I assure you it has a grand total of one part, which could not be defined as moving.
I have a number of small hot air balloons (small meaning under 10 ft. diameter) with one nonmoving part.
God only knows how many solid fuel rockets with no moving parts I've launched at great velocity into the sky.
I've made kites. No moving parts.
Oh, and a hang glider. The only way this thing could be considered to have a moving "part" is if you think I am a "part."
If you consider a flap of cloth a "moving part" than your radio dials sure as hell are too. I can't even begin to tell you how much time I've wasted over the past 30 years dealing with wonky pots. I gaurun-damn-tee you my flap of balloon cloth is more reliable than your radio dials.
One of my kites ( you know, the kind with a bit of string tied to it) has lifted a man clear off the ground, and didn't require a single volt of electricity to do it. Just a bit of naturally occuring wind. ( Ok, it was a biiiig frikkin kite. I misspent my youth on such endeavors).
How much weight has your dangerous high voltage bit of oven wrap lifted so far?
I'm waiting.
In the meantime there's a helium ( a safe and inert gas) filled bladder over in the corner of my room just hanging in mid air. It should be able to do so for days.
No energy source required.
And no moving parts.
KFG
Please note that only code introduced by *IBM* into *UNIX first* is effected by SCO's claims.
None of the code seems to be included in the kernel. Many distributions do not, and never *have,* included IBM's code.
Thus Linux itself and distros that do not include such code will remain entirely unaffected even if 100% of SCO's claims are found by a judge to be true.
At some point in the process SCO will have to take the possibly awkward step of *identifying* the specific bits of code they claim infringe.
Why do you think they have refused to so so far?
Because Linux could cleanse itself overnight and cease to infringe. i.e, Linux would be unaffected, and they know it.
They're actually trying to *force* infringment by denying Linux distros the *right* to not infringe.
This alone should indicate what slimey bastards they really are and lay doubt well at their doorstep.
KFG
Johnny 5 alive!
And a junkie I guess.
KFG
Yeah, now it looks like they were just blackmailing Microsoft. :)
KFG
Of course it works, and it's optimum given the limitations of the medium, but why should that stop "innovation."
We wanna change shit, dammit!
I like Pete Seeger's definition of "sophmoric." The itch to be unique.
There are an awful lot of sophmoric developers out there, and they're producing a lot of sophmoric software.
Please note that the word "sophmoric" is derogatory. Software that's "unique" and "innovative" isn't a good thing. Software that's A Good Thing is a good thing, even if it's the same old shit.
Sometimes especially if it's the same old shit. Even if that puts some of your jobs at risk.
KFG
Is this, like, reading every tenth book or something? :)
KFG
Not trial and success. There's a reason for that.
The odd 747 full of paying commercial passengers has been known to fall out of the sky as well.
You pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, start over and hope to do better next time.
Those who refuse to fail will never achieve any measure of success.
KFG
Well one thing they know for a fact. There is no free hydrogen on Mars. None. Any gaseous hydrogen would literally just wander off into space.
So if they're detecting hydrogen in any quantity it must be locked up in something on the surface and that something must leave the hydrogen still detectable.
The list is fairly short and water is at the top of it.
Number two on the list, by the way, is organic compounds.
KFG
This is absolutely correct.
However. . .SCO did grant license at original aquisition, and made that license the GPL. You can find it right in the distro. They remain bound by it themselves.
This is the legal Scylla and Charybdis that SCO is attempting to navigate between. This is why they have to keep making new clarifications of their position every day. As they turn in one direction they begin to come too close to the danger on one side, then when they turn back they come too close to the danger on the other.
I think there's a general consensus that if they keep it up sooner or later they're going to go down the hole or get smashed on the rocks, there is no clear route through, other than somebody sending out the Coast Guard to rescue them with a sweetheart buyout deal.
KFG
"But isn't getting filthy rich the American dream?", I recently had someone ask me.
Well, no, it isn't. The American Dream (tm) is to own your own property and to make your living from it so you don't have to hire yourself out as a servant.
Somewhere along the line The American Dream has turned into the idea that you hire yourself out as a servant ( or you're a worthless bum) so that you have the proceeds to buy lottery tickets in the hopes of hitting it rich by chance.
That isn't the American Dream, that's the American Nightmare.
KFG
See the limitations of and exceptions to the Doctrine of Res Judicata.
A good corporate lawyer can play these like a violin against a broke defendant.
IANYAL either, but I sometimes play one in court.
KFG
Oh Lordy I wish that were how it worked. They are often quite happy to bleed you dryer than dry. When one side runs out of money the other side gets a default judgment for whatever they ask for.
Collecting it is another matter though, but they can then use that judgement to harass you, quite possibly to your grave.
KFG
As the other poster notes double jeopardy does not apply to multiple counts.
More to the point, double jeopardy does not apply to civil cases between litigants. It only applies to criminal cases.
Money can be argued over forever.
KFG
I guess they're thinking globally and acting locally.
KFG
That's a good one, but it doesn't include the obligatory "Free" that apparently must appear in the name of every OSS copy of some commercial program.
So taking your thinking, but modifying it properly for the genre, I get "FreeWhore."
I admit I like this a bit better than my own idea, which was to redo the artwork so that it featured strange, cylindrically shaped aliens and calling it "FreeBeer."
KFG
a 199 million dollar coffeepot?
KFG