This subject has come up before, and it's just as bad an idea now as it was then.
When you release a physical product, you can issue disclaimers with it like "don't use near flame", "don't use in extreme cold", "don't use naked inside live volcano." Software can wind up installed on systems that are the equivalent of all of these. Can you test on every OS, OS minor version, OS with patches x/y/z, combination of drivers, this chipset, that graphics card? What about on systems that are misconfigured? With corrupt Registries/Netinfo DBs/config files? How about ones infected with Malware? What if the admin/user installs or configures your software incorrectly?
Every system is a potentially highly hazardous environment that you cannot control nor test for.
Representations of the Zeitgeist, sure. What the Zeitgeist is? Eh, no. How about representing many of the things Romero intended? All that stuff hasn't really changed. Mass consumer culture; a rebellion against a sterile, mindless society; unease and dissatisfaction with the state of the country and the world - and the attendant social unrest. Forbes' analysis is interesting, but off the mark, IMO.
The issues that were salient when the original movies were made are just as salient now, if not more so.
A reader for all sorts of diseases, especially communicable ones. It'd cut costs in countries with relatively modern health systems by wasting less of medical professionals' time, and since it'd likely be small (and hopefully very cheap) it'd help countries with very poor or non-existent health care systems. Would also be very helpful during/before epidemics break out. I know some of these exist for specific diseases, but we need ones that can test for thousands at once.
A reader specifically for STDs. Would revolutionize casual sex and libertine lifestyles. Meet, test, have sex without worry. Very liberating.
A nutrient reader. No more relying on labels for store-bought food. Would also allow you to test food from eating establishments that do not supply nutritional information. Stick your reader in your food, find out the exact calorie, fat, etc. content instantly. Would also help with obesity/portion control.
HR departments use these reports, as you well know - along with job history, what font you use on your resume, and what you eat for breakfast - to thin the herd, not determine viability. It's also the reason for credential inflation; what used to "require" a bachelors now needs a masters. Not because the job has gotten more challenging, but because there are ever more people with the older degree. In non-boom times, HR departments can be overwhelmed. Just look at the current number of applicants per job (6(!) for each one as of July 2009.)
It's not just about whether you're "trustworthy". It's trying to make those piles of resumes more manageable to HR. They use whatever they can to do so.
When you release a physical product, you can issue disclaimers with it like "don't use near flame", "don't use in extreme cold", "don't use naked inside live volcano." Software can wind up installed on systems that are the equivalent of all of these. Can you test on every OS, OS minor version, OS with patches x/y/z, combination of drivers, this chipset, that graphics card? What about on systems that are misconfigured? With corrupt Registries/Netinfo DBs/config files? How about ones infected with Malware? What if the admin/user installs or configures your software incorrectly?
Every system is a potentially highly hazardous environment that you cannot control nor test for.
I don't know how many of the people posting about Sarbanes in this thread have actually had to do implementation work in their companies because of it, but I can tell you as someone who has done extensive work on it that it's a way over the top for businesses without huge amounts of resources; that doesn't mean we should scrap it altogether. I've had to do work on change management, privilege separation, accounting, and data reconciliation to support S-O; it's extremely painful. The requirements are probably fine for companies with many hundreds to thousands of employees, but for ones that are 200, 100, or less, it should be seriously scaled down. There should be several levels. Something like:
S-O Max (5000+ employees) S-O Large (1000-4999 employees) S-O Medium (500-999 employees) S-O Small (100-499 employees) S-O Mini (99 or less)
Each one would have progressively more requirements. For example, at S-O Mini and Small, you'd have much more lax privilege separation requirements (sometimes the DBA is also the Systems Admin) but at S-O Large and Medium, you'd have to have a separate DBA, Assistant DBA, DB Backup operator, Systems Admin, and System Accounting people. The idea of S-O is good, and it seems fairly well thought out if you've read the documentation surrounding it and some of the checklists; the current blanket approach, however, is far too onerous.
Read this book. Then read it again. One of the best books written on the subject in recent years. I think it's been updated recently, so you may want to get that one, but this version is excellent.
Religion, like culture, what your favorite color is, or what foods you like is a choice, and is therefore open to ridicule, mockery, criticism, reuse in art - anything. The "British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal" is a complete sham. Many religious beliefs and written works are anti-human rights or hate speech. Why are these religions not on trial?
"Martha J. Farah, a bioethicist who teaches undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was beginning to detect resentment toward students who used the drugs from classmates who did not. She has wondered whether improving productivity through artificial means also might undermine the value of hard work.
In an article published today in the journal Nature, Morein-Zamir and University of Cambridge neuroscientist Barbara J. Sahakian say that clear guidelines are needed to decide what's fair."
The problem with this is the assumption that without these drugs, there exists a level playing field. Financial resources, environment, and genetics are all things which put people on a non-leveling playing field, yet who would think of considering whether someone had access to good books or money for tutors as a child as part of any fairness guidelines?
The playing field is amazingly lopsided as-is; assuming these drugs are affordable to many/most, they should be allowed, if not encouraged. On the flipside, if they are aren't particularly affordable, they're likely to exacerbate the situation.
Ok, the headline says "web" addiction, but is that really accurate? The people who are addicted, what do they actually do online?
Read? Watch videos? Listen to music? Play games? Ok, let's say they spend 12 hours a day doing these things.
4 hours reading web sites 2 hours watching videos on Youtube 4 hours playing Counterstrike 2 hours listening to streaming music
Now, let's get rid of the Internet and say they did this instead:
4 hours reading books 2 hours watching a DVD 4 hours playing checkers 2 hours listening to a victrola
Hey, are they "real life" addicted now?
What if I went inside and outside my apartment to do things. Am I now addicted to doors? No, the doors give me a a way to get to places where I can do "stuff" I want/need to do.
Addicted to the Internet? How about "doing things they enjoy/have to do"? The Internet is not the "target". It's what it allows you to do. If all the Internet had was the WWW (nothing but HTTP servers), and they all contained web pages filled with the word "monkey", there would be no "Internet addiction".
It's a means to an end; it is not an end unto itself.
Now, if you want to argue that people are addicted to some individual thing that you just happen to be able to do on the Internet, fine. Game addiction, "chatting" addiction, "reading" addiction, OK. There's a reason it's called "nicotine" addiction and not "cigarette" addiction. Means != ends.
He may or may not be correct about his assessment, but it's largely irrelevant IMO. There are much larger problems with US schools. This applies to public and private schools, both of which I've attended. This is an NYC-based, personal, anecdotal perspective, and doesn't feature any sort of statistical rigor.
Co-student apathy, class disruptiveness, and disinterest. Seeing other students cheat, fall asleep, space out, not participate, and fail horribly can be a motivation killer.
A predilection toward violence by many students/the constant threat of getting "jumped" (less of an issue at private, but not completely eliminated)
Overcrowded classrooms
Teaching to the lowest common denominator. No attempt at tailoring education to individuals or logical groups.
At times, more time spent on attempting to restore order than teaching
A habit of blaming "everyone involved" (i.e., anyone in the vicinity) instead of attempting to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of activities that were against regulations. A very "short-cutty" attitude towards determining any sort of blame. Nothing resembling due process and no requirements for sound evidence. "10 guilty men go free" had no meaning.
Little to no coverage of the source theories or practical future applications of subjects. Much focus on facts, figures, and formulas without any attempt at relating it to the real world, past, present, or future. "Real world" examples tended to be laughably contrived. Attempting to glean information about sources/reasoning for the thing's existence often met with angry stares ("you're causing us to veer off the subject and confusing people!") or simply stopped cold ("it doesn't matter, just learn it").
Poor facilities and equipment (not an issue at private)
Alternately attempting to paint the currently taught education as a personal enrichment experience ("it's for your own good") or a necessity for future survival ("learn this or you'll sleep in the street"). Neither perspective was accompanied by anything resembling *why* or *how* it was beneficial.
A jarring, cacophonous, impersonal, zoo-like atmosphere. Getting up early, waiting outside in the cold/heat, being stuffed into classrooms/buses/lunchrooms with people who had horrible hygiene; disgusting habits; were loud and obnoxious; were dramatic, crying, whining, moping children; were four feet tall and no life experience, yet filled with endless arrogance and bravado. Blaring bells going off when you're still half asleep. If you were precocious/mature, you tended to feel very uncomfortable and out of place. Arguments about this being like the "real world" are complete and utter nonsense; if I don't like a place of work or other institution, I go somewhere else that I like better.
Absolutely horrible food.
Far too much focus on testing rather than the ability to understand and apply knowledge (which goes right along with not attempting to teach how said knowledge could be usefully applied).
Lack of depth. I've learned (and continue to learn) more about subjects researching them on my own than I ever learned about them in school. Perhaps that's a given considering how much time we can personally spend on subjects outside of school, it still seems like schools could do a lot better job of it.
If it's "software developer", "software architect", "systems analyst", or something of that sort, it's your job to figure out and document the requirements. Talk to your users, watch them work, etc., then write use cases, user stories, or just plain old lists of what the users say the system should do and translate that to specs.
If you're "just a programmer", then you need to convince them to hire one of the above (or get a new job).
If you're actually both, which in many companies is the case - then do all of the above.
There's endless books on the subject, from CMM in Practice to Extreme Programming Installed and everything in between. Go read some.
Sorry, but those alternative "theories" aren't theories at all. Until they have some sound scientific backing, they're going to remain what they are now: fiction. They want equal time for their beliefs? Pony up some sound evidence that stands up to scientific rigor. Get it peer reviewed and provide the results of your repeatable experiments, then complain. Put up or shut up, as it were.
How many hundreds of years has this been tried? Fairy tales are still fairy tales, no matter how hard you wish (or litigate).
How many times can one use the phrase "raise a family" in one post? Here's the flipside of your rant, Mr. AC: not all of us are going to *have* children, "raise a family", or care about what "they" think about our "foolishness" so this isn't an issue. Some of us are happy with what we make (which is decent, but not amazing) and do this work largely because we _enjoy_ it, and aren't using this to support anyone but ourselves. Crazy idea, eh? If you got into engineering thinking you were going to make a CEO's salary, you didn't do your career-choosing homework. Not to mention the fact that engineers all over the US are doing just fine financially, even if they aren't traveling to work in a yacht.
What's foolish? Choosing a career which isn't in line with your actual goals.
The idea behind number one is based solely on a (repressed) opinion; that there's something wrong with prostitutes, or prostitution. It people like the article writer that continue to propogate the unfair idea that prostitution is "bad", and it's why very few places in the United States are enlightened enough to have it be legal (unlike Europe, which has plenty of places). Your sexual repression, maintenance of the status quo, and thinly veiled non sexual-positiveness shine through, righty.
To the more enlightened of us, there's nothing wrong with prostitution. We're sex-positive, support open sexuality, and shun your ugly repression.
Slashdot Mirror
This subject has come up before, and it's just as bad an idea now as it was then.
When you release a physical product, you can issue disclaimers with it like "don't use near flame", "don't use in extreme cold", "don't use naked inside live volcano." Software can wind up installed on systems that are the equivalent of all of these. Can you test on every OS, OS minor version, OS with patches x/y/z, combination of drivers, this chipset, that graphics card? What about on systems that are misconfigured? With corrupt Registries/Netinfo DBs/config files? How about ones infected with Malware? What if the admin/user installs or configures your software incorrectly?
Every system is a potentially highly hazardous environment that you cannot control nor test for.
Representations of the Zeitgeist, sure. What the Zeitgeist is? Eh, no. How about representing many of the things Romero intended? All that stuff hasn't really changed. Mass consumer culture; a rebellion against a sterile, mindless society; unease and dissatisfaction with the state of the country and the world - and the attendant social unrest. Forbes' analysis is interesting, but off the mark, IMO.
The issues that were salient when the original movies were made are just as salient now, if not more so.
A reader for all sorts of diseases, especially communicable ones. It'd cut costs in countries with relatively modern health systems by wasting less of medical professionals' time, and since it'd likely be small (and hopefully very cheap) it'd help countries with very poor or non-existent health care systems. Would also be very helpful during/before epidemics break out. I know some of these exist for specific diseases, but we need ones that can test for thousands at once.
A reader specifically for STDs. Would revolutionize casual sex and libertine lifestyles. Meet, test, have sex without worry. Very liberating.
A nutrient reader. No more relying on labels for store-bought food. Would also allow you to test food from eating establishments that do not supply nutritional information. Stick your reader in your food, find out the exact calorie, fat, etc. content instantly. Would also help with obesity/portion control.
Until they're spread on sidewalks the way those little ad cards are now.
Until people complain that they're getting them in their mailboxes.
Until people complain that they opened their curtains and saw them stuck on the window, facing in.
Until they are on windshields and in clubs like flyers are now.
Until you hear the stories of people getting these things thrown at them by "drive by" marketers.
I can smell the lawsuits now.
HR departments use these reports, as you well know - along with job history, what font you use on your resume, and what you eat for breakfast - to thin the herd, not determine viability. It's also the reason for credential inflation; what used to "require" a bachelors now needs a masters. Not because the job has gotten more challenging, but because there are ever more people with the older degree. In non-boom times, HR departments can be overwhelmed. Just look at the current number of applicants per job (6(!) for each one as of July 2009.)
It's not just about whether you're "trustworthy". It's trying to make those piles of resumes more manageable to HR. They use whatever they can to do so.
When you release a physical product, you can issue disclaimers with it like "don't use near flame", "don't use in extreme cold", "don't use naked inside live volcano." Software can wind up installed on systems that are the equivalent of all of these. Can you test on every OS, OS minor version, OS with patches x/y/z, combination of drivers, this chipset, that graphics card? What about on systems that are misconfigured? With corrupt Registries/Netinfo DBs/config files? How about ones infected with Malware? What if the admin/user installs or configures your software incorrectly?
Every system is a potentially highly hazardous environment that you cannot control nor test for.
The first half really was excellent, when they focused on story and atmosphere. The 2nd half that largely disappeared, and it got boring.
I don't know how many of the people posting about Sarbanes in this thread have actually had to do implementation work in their companies because of it, but I can tell you as someone who has done extensive work on it that it's a way over the top for businesses without huge amounts of resources; that doesn't mean we should scrap it altogether. I've had to do work on change management, privilege separation, accounting, and data reconciliation to support S-O; it's extremely painful. The requirements are probably fine for companies with many hundreds to thousands of employees, but for ones that are 200, 100, or less, it should be seriously scaled down. There should be several levels. Something like:
S-O Max (5000+ employees)
S-O Large (1000-4999 employees)
S-O Medium (500-999 employees)
S-O Small (100-499 employees)
S-O Mini (99 or less)
Each one would have progressively more requirements. For example, at S-O Mini and Small, you'd have much more lax privilege separation requirements (sometimes the DBA is also the Systems Admin) but at S-O Large and Medium, you'd have to have a separate DBA, Assistant DBA, DB Backup operator, Systems Admin, and System Accounting people. The idea of S-O is good, and it seems fairly well thought out if you've read the documentation surrounding it and some of the checklists; the current blanket approach, however, is far too onerous.
Read this book. Then read it again. One of the best books written on the subject in recent years. I think it's been updated recently, so you may want to get that one, but this version is excellent.
Religion, like culture, what your favorite color is, or what foods you like is a choice, and is therefore open to ridicule, mockery, criticism, reuse in art - anything. The "British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal" is a complete sham. Many religious beliefs and written works are anti-human rights or hate speech. Why are these religions not on trial?
Dungeons & Dragons for Intellivision. First person CRPG with big, blocky monsters. It was great when I was 4, though.
to prove it was a failure. Now we're moving towards an era where you have to sell DRM-free music to compete. So it goes.
is Neo!
"Martha J. Farah, a bioethicist who teaches undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was beginning to detect resentment toward students who used the drugs from classmates who did not. She has wondered whether improving productivity through artificial means also might undermine the value of hard work.
In an article published today in the journal Nature, Morein-Zamir and University of Cambridge neuroscientist Barbara J. Sahakian say that clear guidelines are needed to decide what's fair."
The problem with this is the assumption that without these drugs, there exists a level playing field. Financial resources, environment, and genetics are all things which put people on a non-leveling playing field, yet who would think of considering whether someone had access to good books or money for tutors as a child as part of any fairness guidelines?
The playing field is amazingly lopsided as-is; assuming these drugs are affordable to many/most, they should be allowed, if not encouraged. On the flipside, if they are aren't particularly affordable, they're likely to exacerbate the situation.
covered in bees!
Ok, the headline says "web" addiction, but is that really accurate? The people who are addicted, what do they actually do online?
Read? Watch videos? Listen to music? Play games? Ok, let's say they spend 12 hours a day doing these things.
4 hours reading web sites
2 hours watching videos on Youtube
4 hours playing Counterstrike
2 hours listening to streaming music
Now, let's get rid of the Internet and say they did this instead:
4 hours reading books
2 hours watching a DVD
4 hours playing checkers
2 hours listening to a victrola
Hey, are they "real life" addicted now?
What if I went inside and outside my apartment to do things. Am I now addicted to doors? No, the doors give me a a way to get to places where I can do "stuff" I want/need to do.
Addicted to the Internet? How about "doing things they enjoy/have to do"? The Internet is not the "target". It's what it allows you to do. If all the Internet had was the WWW (nothing but HTTP servers), and they all contained web pages filled with the word "monkey", there would be no "Internet addiction".
It's a means to an end; it is not an end unto itself.
Now, if you want to argue that people are addicted to some individual thing that you just happen to be able to do on the Internet, fine. Game addiction, "chatting" addiction, "reading" addiction, OK. There's a reason it's called "nicotine" addiction and not "cigarette" addiction. Means != ends.
The label is stupid.
US schools. This applies to public and private schools, both of which I've attended. This is an NYC-based, personal, anecdotal perspective, and doesn't feature any sort of statistical rigor.
The Hot Coffee "scandal"? Please, it was only a problem because of the Puritans that still infect offices like the FCC in this country.
If it's "software developer", "software architect", "systems analyst", or something of that sort, it's your job to figure out and document the requirements. Talk to your users, watch them work, etc., then write use cases, user stories, or just plain old lists of what the users say the system should do and translate that to specs.
If you're "just a programmer", then you need to convince them to hire one of the above (or get a new job).
If you're actually both, which in many companies is the case - then do all of the above.
There's endless books on the subject, from CMM in Practice to Extreme Programming Installed and everything in between. Go read some.
"There is this assumption permeating the whole society that if something is expensive, it _must_ automatically be better"
This is known as the Veblen Effect based on work by Thorstein Veblen.
Bad breath, colorful language, feather dusters. What do you think they're armed with? GUNS YOU TIT! GUNS!
Sorry, but those alternative "theories" aren't theories at all. Until they have some sound scientific backing, they're
going to remain what they are now: fiction. They want equal time for their beliefs? Pony up some sound evidence
that stands up to scientific rigor. Get it peer reviewed and provide the results of your repeatable experiments, then
complain. Put up or shut up, as it were.
How many hundreds of years has this been tried? Fairy tales are still fairy tales, no matter how hard you wish (or litigate).
How many times can one use the phrase "raise a family" in one post? Here's the flipside of your rant, Mr. AC: not all of us
are going to *have* children, "raise a family", or care about what "they" think about our "foolishness" so this isn't an issue. Some of us are happy with what we make (which is decent, but not amazing) and do this work largely because we _enjoy_ it, and aren't using this to support anyone but ourselves. Crazy idea, eh? If you got into engineering thinking you were going to make a CEO's salary, you didn't do your career-choosing homework. Not to mention the fact that engineers all over the US are doing just fine financially, even if they aren't traveling to work in a yacht.
What's foolish? Choosing a career which isn't in line with your actual goals.
The idea behind number one is based solely on a (repressed) opinion; that there's something wrong with prostitutes, or prostitution. It people like the article writer that continue to propogate the unfair idea that prostitution is "bad", and it's why very few places in the United States are enlightened enough to have it be legal (unlike Europe, which has plenty of places). Your sexual repression, maintenance of the status quo, and thinly veiled non sexual-positiveness shine through, righty.
To the more enlightened of us, there's nothing wrong with prostitution. We're sex-positive, support open sexuality, and shun your ugly repression.
Games don't need help. You do.
Not all are management speak; many are just standard
IT industry speak/marketing speak:
"synergy"
"market forces"
"leverage" instead of "use"
"solution" instead of "product" or "suite of products"
"community" for any group, regardless of whether
they have any real commonality besides using a single
vendor's product(s)
"strategy"
Here's one list
and another
Oh, and try the Web Economy Bullshit Generator